Shadowplay

Another dream. I am alone in a field. Again the sun is setting. Shadows get longer and longer as the sun comes down sinking behind the mountains. Renan appears out of the blue, a shadow walking around me. I know it is him, I see his shadow but however much I turn around can never get to see him the master of that shadow. This shadow passed through my whole body as if it were dancing with me. A sensation so light and yet so ominous.

At ten in the morning, I was called on the phone. It was Andrés telling me the same dream. I told him I had had the same dream and heard a deafening noise on the other side of the phone. Then, there was only silence to be heard. When I was getting ready to hang up and call help, Andrés came back to the phone. He explained he had fallen from the chair with the speaker in his hand. I asked him what was so stunning about us dreaming about the same thing. He said it was weird. I replied that he, as a natural born Mineiro, should have already gotten used to these things.

Now that was weird: having Anderson call me not thirty minutes later and tell me exactly the same dream that Andrés and I had had. He didn't fall from the chair when I told him about me and the plump one experiencing the same, but he was speechless for some moments as well. Mentally I asked myself what this must be now. What new challenge we are facing in our life in Taurinos.

We got together at master Danilo's at dusk. Andrés and Anderson even brought cheese bread from home. We were intrigued by the issue of the dream we shared last night. Apart in dream and reality we had the same vision of the same place and the shadow dance around, movement precisely repeated throughout our experiences and narrations.

"I had heard about this before, but had never met people who went through this for real", said master Danilo smiling, "and all of you knew it was Renan all the time?"

We said so. Anderson was the one who got to see him better, but it was a glimpse only, all covered in the shadows and the motion at the moment.

"But even not seeing very well, I'm dead sure it was him."

I told them I had called Bruno and he told me he had not dreamed of anything remotely similar. In fact, he didn't even remember what he had dreamed about. I called him because if it happened to me, Anderson and Andrés it might have happened to any of the seven members of the Taurinos' Ancient Society. Yet nothing happened to Renan, Guilherme, Bruno or Adriano. I asked the Teixeira brothers personally without mentioning Renan's presence in the dream. Guilherme told me he had dreamed of nothing of note during the night. Renan said he dreamed about being at an amusement park in Belo Horizonte. Adriano, asked by his brother (the first thing Andrés must have done upon waking up in the morning), said he didn't remember dreaming about anything.

"Interesting, only the three of you", master Danilo had a strong frown, "what should it be?"

"D. Stella and I talked about it once", said Andrés, "since the ceremony day when we slew the bulls, he was a bit weird after the ceremony was over. He was fascinated for what Ms. Grisam did to the bull and it seems he wants to be much more than she was. I remember well that he wanted to slay that bull because it was the bull that killed our friend Arthur one day before the ceremony. How Anderson and I got involved in the story, I don't know."

"It might have happened when you denied him that bull", suggested Anderson, "it might have been tons o' things, Andrés."

"It wasn't me who assigned her the bull, it was Mr. Horácio Trindade, our friend's father, remember?"

"What does Renan care? For him it was you who banned him from doing it and period."

Andrés was silent this time. I said that if I agreed with Anderson it was when he said it might have been loads of things.

Bones and stilettos | People and vultures

Radio Universal: Shadowplay