Angela shifted into gear and buzzed the small pick-up truck up the steep logging road. Absently humming under her breath, she crested the slope and rounded the sharp corners with ease, driving as though it was all routine and paying very little attention to the dangerous sheer ravine to her left. She smiled, unconcerned. There was no reason to be cautious. Angela was supposed to be here.

She headed west when she reached the bottom of the mountain and drove a short distance to a vacant gravel parking lot. She parked the truck nearest to the beach-white petrified footpath and stepped out, gazing at a quiet reposed estuary. Angela frowned. Unless her memory was failing her, there should have been cropland here. Acres of produce that once stretched out as far as the eye could see. Hay, beans, corn and berries. All of it was gone now, like it never existed.

She closed her eyes and shivered. The entire environment was alien and new. She had received the acquaintance of the warm summer glow on her skin and the sea currents through her hair a million times before. This time it was striking and exotic. It seemed the sun and the wind she had known all her life was somehow different today. Like Christmas is different then Easter.

A moment later, she opened her eyes. Odd as it was, it really didn't matter and she shrugged. She wasn't here to speculate, she was here to see.

She strode on and followed the footpath until it led her to a marbled highway that lined the sun-speckled glittering waters of the bay. She turned right at this junction and continued walking, hardly alarmed that the road was completely devoid of people. There was only her and the sparrows that chirped in the green animated pastures on her right and the seagulls flying overhead. She was cheerful, jubilant and enchanted as she wandered about, stopping to study strange memorials and other stone shrines. Angela arched her neck to study a high-reaching white pillar and was reminded of the Washington monument.

She leaned against the monolith and sighed. There was much to see, she realized and her eyes skipped across the many other structures yet to be examined and halted finally on the most alluring site she had ever seen.

An illuminated blue-colored city flanked the Western Sky. It was majestic and also estranged, like it was crafted from some subsequent time. Her skin prickled and a thrill of delight and discovery lanced through her. Angela had never seen anything of the like. A crystal and glass metropolis from a sublime legend; it might have been Atlantis rebuilt.

Angela's heart ached to go there and she imagined wandering its streets delighting in all the new things to see and taste and smell. Would the people understand English or would there be a new language to learn? Was there religion? Sensitive social norms? Customs and traditions similar to the ones she knew? A thousand questions swelled in her mind like popcorn and her hands clasped together with an enthusiasm to explore and learn.

She took a few eager steps towards the city and then stopped abruptly, her smile slowly fading. As much as she yearned to visit, she was confronted with a feeling that now was not the time. Indeed, she could not deny the sudden heaviness of the air and a gentle urging, a sympathetic tug from the East calling her back.

It's time to go home, Angela. The wind seemed to say as it exhaled over the prairie grasses. Angela understood and gazed wistfully at the sapphire wonder a few minutes more before turning on her heel to slowly pace back to her vehicle.

She took her time walking back, reluctant to leave this lovely dazzling country. She hungrily absorbed the tender rocking sea and the bright vibrant meadows that buzzed with bees, butterflies and other life. The obscure memorials she'd fathom in her mind until next time, whenever that was.

Angela stood by her truck at last. Her hand hesitated on the door and she stared at the mountains that awaited her return. Those mountains would take her home and to what? To the grinding stone! To the ordinary! To a world, she realized sadly, already discovered and explored. A world rocked with war and scandal.

She kicked at a few rocks and sighed, knowing she was being a childish. Her world, though ugly at times, was full of beauty and hope and compassion. For every act of brutality against the weak there were greater feats of heroism and benevolence. Sometimes, it was hard to see these things. The nation's cameras chose to focus on the vulgar and sadistic while great accomplishments as large as the liberation of an oppressed people or small as a hand out to the homeless went often times ignored. Many in Angela's world, particularly the intellectual elite, did not believe in heroes and scoffed at virtue.

Regardless of them, she believed in heroes and wanted to be among them again. So she said her goodbyes to the brilliant estuary and the Blue City, faint now against the horizon. As the engine turned, Angela smiled a secret smile and she knew she'd be back someday. After a few turns of the wheel, she soon found herself back on the lonely logging road, back in the mountains and finally back in her bed awake.

***

Three posts in one day, I'm on a roll!

This version 2 of a story based on a dream I had, perhaps the most wonderful dream ever. Several months later I dreamt again of this strange world but I never made it to the Blue City. I dare say, I feel like Randolph Carter!

Anyway, criticism is welcome. After all, it was criticism that made me rewrite it.