(no subject)
The room is lined with chalkboards that stretch from corner to corner on all four walls. The floor, Nita notices when she walks closer to one board, is covered in chalk dust. She can see each bare footprint she leaves, clear and precise.
The boards themselves, old-fashioned blackboards that look like slate, are covered in a complex math equation. An expression here and there looks familiar -- calculus, maybe? -- but most of it is far, far beyond her. Of course, she muses, examining a symbol, it's entirely probable that it's all just nonsense. At the moment, though, it makes sense, because she's dreaming, and a dream doesn't have to be accurate to make sense.
She pads her way around the room, following the equation. A few times, she doubles back across the floor to compare two expressions. Soon the floor is covered with footprints, jumbled together.
Nita finally reaches the = sign, having come full circle, and looks for the other side of the equation. As she does, she catches sight of the floor, covered in her footprints, and pauses. It's chaos, of course, because of the backtracking and wandering, but it seems like -- it seems like --
It seems like there's order there just out of her grasp, the same way she can almost understand the math equation, if she just looked a little harder.
She wakes up abruptly, and keeps her eyes closed, trying to fix the dream in her memory. Footprints in the dust, showing where she had been . . .
What did the expression equal? she wonders. Her eyebrows draw down as she tries to remember.
Finally, she sighs and opens her eyes.
The blank ceiling over her triggers the memory. Nothing, she realizes. The board was blank after the "equals" sign.
Time to pull out the dream journal again.
The boards themselves, old-fashioned blackboards that look like slate, are covered in a complex math equation. An expression here and there looks familiar -- calculus, maybe? -- but most of it is far, far beyond her. Of course, she muses, examining a symbol, it's entirely probable that it's all just nonsense. At the moment, though, it makes sense, because she's dreaming, and a dream doesn't have to be accurate to make sense.
She pads her way around the room, following the equation. A few times, she doubles back across the floor to compare two expressions. Soon the floor is covered with footprints, jumbled together.
Nita finally reaches the = sign, having come full circle, and looks for the other side of the equation. As she does, she catches sight of the floor, covered in her footprints, and pauses. It's chaos, of course, because of the backtracking and wandering, but it seems like -- it seems like --
It seems like there's order there just out of her grasp, the same way she can almost understand the math equation, if she just looked a little harder.
She wakes up abruptly, and keeps her eyes closed, trying to fix the dream in her memory. Footprints in the dust, showing where she had been . . .
What did the expression equal? she wonders. Her eyebrows draw down as she tries to remember.
Finally, she sighs and opens her eyes.
The blank ceiling over her triggers the memory. Nothing, she realizes. The board was blank after the "equals" sign.
Time to pull out the dream journal again.