The Moment of "We, Together"...

I dreamt last night of a lost civilization, on a dying world.

An immense vista of impossible sandstone spires, surrounded by a glittering, crystal sea.  Wind, and the grate of sand sliding over sand, the only remaining sounds.  An empty world, like a giant child's forgotten sandcastle, left on the shore to be washed away.

I dreamt last night of the last of its people, an ancient King and Queen, left alone in their crumbling tower, to await the inevitable end of their once proud land.

He, in robes of purple trimmed with gold, wearing a crown of shells.  She, in robes of white trimmed with silver; on her head a diadem, the oil-slick colors of abalone shell.  Their subjects now all fled or perished, the King and Queen sat alone on driftwood thrones, bent and weary with the weight of their years, their faces lined and cracked and sagging; they could've just as well had cobwebs for eyes.

In the orange-gold-lavender glow of twilight, as the old sun began to set behind the sparkling sea, they rose together, and crossed their hall to the open arches at the far end, overlooking their empty kingdom of impossible towers.  They watched as the sun set, and below them, the first of their towers began to crumble and fall.  And then another.  And then another.

The sense of loss and regret and longing and sorrow and even fear that they felt at this sight was overwhelming, and the Queen, overcome, reached out and took the King's hand.

The King was startled by this sudden event.

He couldn't remember the last time they had touched one another in affection.  It felt like eons ago.

All at once, the King began to stand up straighter, taller.  He felt stronger.  He felt bigger.  He felt more alive.  He turned to his Queen, and saw that she was standing straighter, as well.  Her hair shifting before his eyes from the wispy straggles of grey straw that they had been, to the long, golden flax of her youth.  The lines in her face began to fade and smooth, and her eyes absolutely lit up and began to shine bright and blue the way they once had long ago.  Oh, those eyes!  How he had once lost himself in those eyes!

But, wait.  What is this?  What is happening?  The King was suddenly afraid.  He let go of his Queen's hand, and stepped away, fearful of the strangeness of the event.  And when he let go, he felt the life and strength drain from him.  He felt his back twist and bend under his weight again.  And he watched as his beautiful Queen withered and wilted back into the crone she had been moments before.

The Queen looked at her King, lost, and confused; afraid and alone.  Please, her look said to him.  Please don't leave me.  Not now.

Not ever.

The King couldn't bear that look.  Their world was lost and forgotten, crumbling around them under a dying sun; this he could endure.  But that sight of pain and fear on his Queen's once-beautiful face, the plea in her eyes, he just couldn't abide.  Whatever else was happening, he was The King, and she was his Queen, and they would stand through this together.

He reached out, and again took her hand.

And again the sense of strength and life returned to him.  And again he watched as his lovely Queen aged backwards towards her strong middle-life.  And she, too, watched as her King became again the powerful and handsome man she had loved so fiercely.  His hair the silken auburn she had loved to run her fingers through.  His chest and his arms and his hands - oh, his hands! - as big and strong as she remembered him to be so many years ago, as if he could pick her up in one arm and cradle her like a child.  She remembered the years it must've been that she spent with those strong arms wrapped around her, feeling as if all was right in their world, and that their happiness could never possibly end.

With their renewed sense of strength, they turned together again toward their view of the city below them, spread out to the sea.  And they saw that the towers had stopped crumbling.  And upon closer inspection, that not merely had the tide of destruction ceased, but that it had stilled in mid-act.  Clouds of sand hung frozen in the air beside minarets in mid-fall.  Massive blocks of sandstone wall the size of boulders appeared to float in place, as if held by some unseen hand.

Confused, but encouraged, by this wondrous sight, the King reached out and wrapped his strong arms around the Queen, holding her close to him.  Oh, stars and oceans!  How could he have ever forgotten the feeling of holding her this way?  How could he have lost the memory of this sensation, their bodies pressed together, the feeling of her warm breath on his chest, the scent of her hair?  And if he could forget this, then what else had he forgotten as the centuries had swept past?

And in amazement, they watched, as the towers began to rise again.

Dervishes of sand spiraled high into the air and worked themselves into stone and wall and spire, pointing up, up, up into the wisps of clouds streaking across the bruise-palette sky.  One-by-one they rose again, crumbling backwards up from the ground to become again the glorious and majestic kingdom-on-the-sea they had loved for so long.  Over the raspy sounds of wind and sand, in the far, far distance, they heard the cry of a gull; a sound so long lost that their ears had grown unaccustomed to the hearing of it.

The King ran his powerful hand over his Queen's head, through her hair, and cupped her delicately behind the ear, cradling her head in his soft grip.  The Queen looked up at him, this beautiful, powerful man that she had given her life to so long ago.  And the King lost himself in her eyes again, remembering that this was all he had ever really wanted all along.

And as he kissed her, and she kissed him, and the wave of life and love and memory washed over and through them, the roaring sound of the crowd in the castle square below rose up to ring in their ears forever.