Last night I dreamed I was part of a procession—about a hundred people, uniformly drab, dressed in the colors of resignation. Their faces carried the dull serenity of those who had long ago outsourced judgment. We moved in silence toward a high school, then funneled onto the soccer field like obedient data packets. At the painted boundary lines, the crowd stopped as one body, lifted their arms, and pointed north.
There, planted beside the goalpost like a sanctioned myth, stood the figure they feared. He was Zeus-shaped—early sixties, six feet tall, silver beard, posture stiff with authority. His eyes were sharp, avian, and distinctly unwelcoming. The crowd murmured instructions without turning around: Do not cross the line. Do not approach. This is as close as you’re allowed to get.
Naturally, I crossed it.
I wasn’t hostile. I didn’t charge or shout. I walked toward him calmly, the way someone does when they want to verify whether a warning is wisdom or superstition. I told him I meant no harm. I only wanted to test the claims made on his behalf. He responded tersely. He ordered me back behind the line and, to clarify his sincerity, lobbed a few lightning bolts in my direction—carefully calibrated to miss, close enough to educate but not annihilate. The message was precise: curiosity would be tolerated once; persistence would be punished.
That was enough. I had learned what I came to learn—not from the crowd’s trembling consensus, but from direct encounter. The boundary wasn’t imaginary. It had teeth. I stepped back across the painted line and rejoined the mass, now wiser, now compliant, waiting quietly for the next instruction to arrive from the sky.
Cinemorphosis 
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