I was dreaming.

The world was different, brighter. The sun shone more vibrantly than it ever had before, and the bright hues of some strange forest below me seemed to be painted in the most vivid colors of the world. The loud catcalls of some strange creature rang out, the sound rebounding off the walls of the canyon, as a shockingly beautiful bird shot out of the lush green canopy then plummeted back down. I was seated on a mound of earth that was covered in flowers that were every shade of color known to man, and every color that wasn’t. Below me, the forest stretched out on a sort of circular ledge from one of the huge walls of the canyon, and below the ledge lay a shallow valley that I couldn’t see into.

I climbed down the side of the hill I was standing on, marveling at the wonderful shades of blue, green, and every other color in existence that I never saw in modern day New York. Soon, I had entered the forest itself, and the temperature dropped a few degrees as I entered the heavy shadows. Strange animals scurried through the underbrush, cheeping and squeaking, and the world had grown strangely silent save for what I suppose should have been the natural sounds. I had read about this once, in that book Timeline by Michael Crichton. It had said that people from big cities weren’t used to the quieter environments, without the cars and people clogging up the air with their almost normal noises of honking and yelling.

Eventually, I reached the edge of the forested ledge and the start of the shallow valley, and what I saw below me shocked me enough that I stood there for a few moments, rubbing my eyes, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming – oh wait, I was. Because otherwise the huge, gargantuan figures couldn’t be real.

Dragons. I was looking at dragons. Thousands of huge, wonderful dragons, whirling around in the air in streams of rainbow colors to a rhythm only they could hear, sounding out these peculiar catcalls that seemed to be half chirp half roar. Some were green, others were blue, and others were colors that I’d never even heard of and couldn’t name. But they all swirled around in a cacophony of wonder, a calm tornado of beauty and awe.

And then suddenly, I was a dragon too.

I flew through the air, soaring and diving and flipping and spinning, and the other dragons shouted out my name in their exotic language that only we could understand. It was wonderful, pure joy. And a gleaming city stretched out below us, a city that you could never see today. It was as if Atlantis had risen from its watery grave and had planted itself in this rainforest of wonders. Shining red roofs, bright white walls, and in the center of it all, a golden castle towered over everything else but the dragons. Children ran freely through the streets, laughing and shouting and pointing at me and my fellow group of fliers, and I dove down to skim the roofs as my gargantuan wings deftly navigated through the maze of towers and houses. And then I saw a fountain almost the size of me in the largest courtyard that I’d ever seen, and I landed by it, twisting as I landed in the dirt so that a spray of dust flew into the air and then settled back down.

The fountain was made of glowing white marble, with intricate designs and stunning jewels spattered across its wonderful surface. The water was clear and aquamarine blue, so flawless that I could see the bottom where the tiles formed a series of swirls and circles. I lifted my great head down to drink the water, and as I lapped from the wondrous fountain, I felt a small hand on my neck. I raised my head ever so slowly to see a little girl, maybe eight or nine, stroking the shining purple scales on the back of my head. She was so small, so precious, and had an infectious smile spreading across her face, and I soon joined her in her joy.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Are you new here?”

After a moment of experimenting, I discovered that I couldn’t speak in this form, and so I nodded gently so not to dislodge her hand. Then I cocked my head a little bit to the side, so as to ask Where am I?

The little girl laughed. “You’re in Paradise, of course.”

Paradise? But how? That would mean that I was –

And then I remembered, the memories crashing back down onto me like the full power of a roaring, tumbling waterfall. Driving back from work in a car, the strange man with a glimmer of something unidentifiable in his eyes, and the faint, almost imagined whiff of alcohol before all sound stopped and thousands of pounds of metal crashed into my car –

And then red. Terrible, terrible red, seeping through the metal and pooling onto the ground. Not the red of the dragons, or the red of the flowers. It was a dark, evil, spreading red. And I remember my last thought before I fell asleep only to wake on the hill of flowers – I wonder what Eden is like.

The girl was frowning ever so slightly now, tilting her head a little to look at me. “Paradise? You don’t know? You must’ve passed through the garden of Eden to get here, now we’re in the valley of Shangri-La…”

But her words were fading out as I felt a dragon-sized tear roll down my scaly cheek. I heard the girl softly ask what was wrong in the back of my mind. Why was I crying? Why? Because we can’t change the future, Fate has already paved the road for us. Because we don’t get what we want, even if we didn’t want Paradise if it meant just living a little bit longer. Because in the end, we can only imagine dragons, and hope that our dreams come true.