Unforgetable Dreams

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 Source- Oil Painting

The stone halls of the Duke’s estate were always cold, but in the dream, they breathed. The walls pulsed with a slow, rhythmic heat, and the paintings of Ebrada had created seemed to watch the Duchess with amber, unblinking eyes. The Duchess moved through the corridor, her silk nightgown trailing like a dying mist. She was looking for the life she had been promised before the droughts began.

She found herself not in a room, but at the edge of a vast, obsidian pool. Sitting upon a throne of wet river lily pads was a figure that defied the rigid geometry of the ducal court. Ebrada had heard of the Egyptian God Heket, the frog-headed goddess, her aura gold like the sun. She looked just as was reported to her.

"You walk heavily for one who carries nothing," Heket said. Her voice didn't come from her throat; it echoed from the water itself, deep and resonant. The Duchess knelt, the dampness seeping into her hem. "My husband speaks of lineage. The people speak of famine. My womb feels like the cracked earth of the outer fields."

The Duchess reached out. As her fingers brushed the goddess’s cold, damp palm, the dream shifted. The stagnant air of the castle was replaced by the scent of rain on hot dust. "The Duke wants sons to continue his legacy," Heket whispered, her golden eyes widening. "But I give you the seeds of a transformation. You will not just bear sons; you will bear the spring."

The water in the pool began to rise, swirling around the Duchess’s ankles. It wasn't drowning her; it was waking her up. She felt a sudden, sharp vitality—a rhythmic thrumming in her own veins that matched the heartbeat of the goddess. The Duchess bolted upright in her bed. The moonlight was silver across the heavy oak furniture, but the room felt different—smaller, more fragile.

Beside her, the Duke slept, a man of beliefs that the world should be wandered. The Duchess placed a hand on her stomach. She didn't feel the cold marble of the palace anymore. Instead, she felt a strange, new warmth, and from the gardens outside—long parched and silent—came the first, solitary sound of a frog signaling the coming rain.

Source- Photo from Scarborough Fair, Waxahachie, Tx