The world shifted again that morning, when Cimmy woke up in a garden not unlike the one in her old dreams, and right before awaking, in that twilight space between dream and reality, Cimmy saw a healthy rose bush overflowing with blue blossoms.

It was so close she could smell their perfume, a sweet honey and citrus scent, and when the breeze blew through it, one of the soft petals touched Cimmy’s cheek.

The vision lasted but a moment, and yet it felt so real, she wasn’t even phased by the fact her surroundings had changed again: it was summer, it seems, a beautiful summer morning in a garden filled with flowers, with sun shining through the tall foliage, and a cool breeze wicking up the sparkling dew.

“Am I not in the world of things anymore?” She asked herself, because nothing she’d ever seen before, other than in her dreams, could ever compare to this wholesome, eerie beauty.

Beliefs about the afterlife are as old as humanity, and of course, if someone were to ask Josepha, she could recount all the wonders and rewards of the blessed, if only to emphasize how unworthy and sure to be cast out someone like Cimmy was.

One had to work hard for one’s rewards, which were not likely to be bestowed on one, even by a higher power, without the approval of one’s elders, so now Cimmy hesitated contemplating the obvious thought, that she had passed and was now enjoying her great rewards, because, by all societal rules, she didn’t qualify for the privilege.

Truth be told, she never gave a lot of thought to thereafter, not many young people do, even in a village like hers, where tragedy visited often and took its share of lives indiscriminately, but she had been sure whatever awaited her on the other side must be modest and common, as was befitting her station.

She got scared to find herself surrounded by such unearthly beauty, thinking she might have trespassed into the forbidden garden area, and as exciting as that thought felt in the world of the living, she was sure the afterlife would not look kindly upon it.

Maybe it was all of her wanderings through the dream garden of her childhood that had brought her there, and she breathed a sigh of relief, reassured she was probably asleep.

“Cimmy! I was looking all over for you! Do you want to hear Bertha holler? You were going to meet with her to go over the crop rotations and she’s been waiting for you for over half an hour. Did you fall asleep in the flower garden again? You know she gets all weird every time she remembers she approved it: if you can’t eat it or wear it, what’s the point?”

‘What a strange dream I’m having, and Rahima is in it!’

“Cimmy, shake that dazed look off your face and go talk to Bertha before she blows her top!”

Cimmy frowned as she tried to get up from the bed of grass she’d been sleeping in, and noticed a scratch on her arm, which looked very much like the kind one would get in a lost battle with a thorny rose bush. The scratch stung a little, enough to make it clear to Cimmy that whatever this afterlife body was made of, it could still feel pain.

“I had the strangest dream!” She whispered in a daze.

“Considering the regular contents of your mind, that’s scary enough for me!” Rahima teased her. “Weirder than usual?”

“No. That’s just it: everything looked just like reality, just like here. In fact, I suppose it was here. I was right here, Rahima, seeing everything I see right now, except for this one rose bush. I think it scratched me, see?”

“So, what’s so strange about a rosebush?”

“The flowers were bright blue.”

“You know there are no such things as blue roses. Roses can’t be blue, Cimmy. They have the wrong pigment for it.”

“I know.”

“So, did you imagine them, then?”

“It felt so real: the sight, the scent, the touch of the petals. It felt absolutely real, Rahima, as real as you are now.”

“How do you know I’m real?” Rahima teased her again, but retreated quickly when she saw the terrified look in Cimmy’s eyes.

“Cimmy, it was just a dream! For crying out loud, here, take my hand. I’m as real as it gets.”

“So were the blue roses,” Cimmy uttered a tiny whisper.

“Ok, we’ll talk about this later. Obviously, you’re very shaken by this experience, but right now you have to go talk to Bertha before you’re even more shaken by her batting your ears.”

Cimmy attended her elder’s instruction, copiously seasoned with verbal discipline, as if from another world, taking in her surroundings, which were still unfamiliar to her, with bemused detachment: the grand hall with the heavy wood furniture, the bay windows overlooking the flower garden, the pond, with the skipping stones and the gazebo, all looking so much like her old dream she now had no doubt she had passed, and figured since she didn’t do enough to earn her blissful place in heaven, the perceived presence of Bertha must be her penance.

“Are you even listening to me, you useless airhead? What did I just say?”

“The onions should go into quadrant three this year, to allow quadrant four to lie fallow and rest, since there are no other plantings planned there.”

Bertha stared her down intently, meant to say something, but sighed instead and dismissed her to her task.

The feeling that everything was surreal followed Cimmy around, like a sudden awakening, and all the strange events of her life, her skipping through reality and its unlikely details, Fay, the constant reshaping of her surroundings, all snapped into place to let her know she hadn’t been in the world of the living for a long time now, and whatever this place was, this illusion of life, was no more real than the blue roses.

“Cimmy,” Rahima whispered, careful not to further distress her friend, “are you alright?”

Cimmy looked at the face she knew so well, and could remember all the memories they’d made together, sharing sorrow, mischief and trust, but she also remembered that every time her reality shifted her friend didn’t seem to remember anything from their previous life.

It almost felt like an untold number of Rahimas lived in all these different worlds, all recognizable as herself, but with completely different pasts.

How can one love a person who isn’t real?

And yet, as she looked at the worry in Rahima’s eyes, she felt blessed by their years of friendship and the memories she had of her, memories maybe not shared by the latter, but real nevertheless.

Her world might have been nothing but, but the memories of it were real. Maybe that was all real was, just pictures of a pretend life we make up for ourselves in our own heads, but if that is all there is, then does it even matter, if we can’t shake our own illusion?

If it’s there, it’s real. It can’t get realer than that.

She could still hear Bertha’s familiar rant in her head.

Another memory, maybe another manufactured moment, who’s to say, which had lost all its emotional weight, like a picture you stared at for too long.

“Do you want to talk about the blue roses?” Rahima enticed.

She did! She wanted so much to talk about the blue roses; she wished she could share that feeling, but there weren’t any words for it, and it all sounded so banal in spoken form, so unworthy of wonder and awe.

“It was just a dream, it doesn’t matter,” she said in the end.

“Anyway, I’m glad to have you back. You scared me a little, you know? I’ve never seen you this unraveled. Whatever you do, don’t tell Bertha and Josepha. Can you even imagine what they would say about that?”

“Who cares what they would say about that?” Cimmy replied, her soul far away, already longing for the blue roses.

“Maybe I should stay with you for a few days,” Rahima’s eyed filled with worry again. “You know, you didn’t even ask about Fay. I’m seriously concerned for you, Cimmy.”

“I’m sure he’s around,” the latter smiled.

In all her falling through reality, Fay had been an unquestioned constant, and she didn’t doubt he was somewhere close by, ready to follow her in the next step of her journey, wherever that journey might lead.

Was there a point to this ever evolving experience?

She didn’t know, but she felt it in her gut that there was more to the story than what she could see and touch - meaning, purpose, direction, a path to follow, laid at her feet one stepping stone at a time - and maybe for the first time in her life she wondered whether there was something or someone out there, something much bigger than her, unbound by space, time and the fleeting illusion of materiality.

Strangely enough, after all these years of devoting herself to scientific discovery and to shattering unfounded convictions and passed down myths, she felt what it meant to have faith.

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