Rhinosaur

It surprised him, the dream. He didn’t dream too often now, and that’s the way he preferred it. He’d been lying awake, sleepless, for God knows how long now, and he didn’t realize when he fell back asleep. He thought h never would, because he had no idea of the passage of time, just like on a hot summer’s afternoon when the electricity quits and you have nothing to do except swat extremely persistent and nagging flies.
It was extraordinarily ordinary- the same scene from every afternoon; the train. He was traveling home from work yet again. Only, as he looked around, he noticed his fellow commuters weren’t the nameless, featureless faces of his usual experience. He recognized the faces this time; there was Rohit, and Andy, and…
…her.
He was surprised to see her in the train, for he knew she caught the bus to work. It was then that it struck him, this might not be real; he was dreaming. In that moment he felt surreal. He became aware of his own weightlessness.
She was facing away from him; he could see her right profile. He studied her intently, finding things he’d loved a long time ago. Her hair- as silky as ever. He still wanted to stroke it. Her sad eyes, her nose…
That was when she turned and looked right at him, as though she knew he was looking at her. He didn’t know how to react- after all, he’d been caught staring. To his surprise, she smiled at him in a way she never did before. It was innocent, naïve, without malice.
He floated over to her and sat facing her. She seemed tiny- her head came only up to his eye-level. She began talking to him; her lips forming soundless, incomprehensible words of a language unknown to him. He let her continue without indicating that he couldn’t decipher what she was saying. While she talked, he studied her face, committing everything about it to memory, even the faint acne scars.
She seemed incredibly demure, and this astonished him. In real life, she was the most courageous person he knew. Their eyes hardly ever met during the entire conversation, but at times she was unaware of what she was doing, and studied his face openly. It looked like she, too, was trying to memorize his nose, his eyes, and mostly, his lips. He wondered what she was thinking.
He remembered asking her something, why they couldn’t go back a couple of years to the great friends they used to be, why they couldn’t erase the fights they’d had for no apparent reason, why she didn’t- couldn’t- trust him anymore…
He woke with the alarm sliding up the scale of his consciousness. Did she answer his questions? He tried recalling it, but the memory of the dream was fading, like water trickling through the fingers of his cupped hands…
He got out of bed. Another long, empty day awaited him.