Photo by my Husband

At the beginning I was swimming in the sea. It was a sunny, warm day, perfect weather for enjoying the calm, transparent vastness of the water. At a certain point, my friend waved to me from the shore, and I joined her in a very short time, water dripping from me onto the soft, golden sand. She introduced me to a dark-haired, tanned guy and told me that he was “the one”. Sure thing, I was happy for her. We climbed onto the pier and watched the waves crushing against the stone. We discussed something, but I don’t remember the nature of the discussion, just the fact that we stood there watching until the sunlight lost its brightness, hiding shyly in the density of the clouds.

The wind grew cooler, and I felt a cold touch on my elbow. As I turned, I noticed a giant black snake coiling around my arm, its long fangs sinking into the skin of my wrist. I felt pain even though I was sleeping. There was no blood from the bite, only two raised bumps on my skin. My friend and her suitor called for an ambulance, and I was taken to the hospital.

A strange thing followed, though. Instead of undergoing some kind of treatment for being poisoned, I went through a series of X-rays, which caused me to go back in time. I became younger and younger until I reached the age of 15. Then, the nurse took me to an even larger X-Ray chamber and took a shot of the right half of my skull; it was important for the research, as she stated. After she finished, she let me out of the hospital.

The next thing I remember is returning to the seashore again. The clear water, shimmering in the sunlight, reached my knees. Once again, everything was peaceful and very clean; the sand was sparkling with gold and creamy hues. There were almost no people there, except for my deceased grandfather, who was sitting on the shore and smiling at me. I kneeled in the water and started sieving the sand through my fingers. To my surprise, there were plenty of amber hidden in the sand. I gathered a huge pile of tawny, glistening pieces and handed them to my grandfather so that he took care of them because I wanted to swim. He told me, ‘Learn the language, it opens many gates.’

And I woke up.