In my dream is a prayer room. It’s under a square white tent that seems to float in place. There is a door. There is a curtain before the door. Its bottom left corner is raised diagonally to its top right corner. There is a light flickering in the prayer room. But it’s not a candle flame. It’s from a basket of jasper stones, clear as crystal. Above the jasper is the cross of the Lord – wooden, shimmering.

In my dream, the prayer room is in a great atrium. When you look up, you see the sky. Blue, cloudless. Office-types, on their lunch break, are coming and going. The flickering light in the prayer room steadies into a glow.

I open my eyes. The hill is within distance. A unicorn is grazing in the vale before the hill. She is in a curvy white dress. She walks over and sits down next to me, carefully scrolling through her phone. I think someone has stood her up. A minute more. A minute more.

I close my eyes. I’m on my knees before the cross in the prayer room. Leaves are rustling. Sound of white water. But it’s an unmistakable voice. The wind has picked up, making fuller the rustling and the white water. The rustling is the voice; the voice is the white water. And it’s riding the wind, warning me to wake up, lest I get carried away in the sleep of destruction.

– I don’t understand, my Lord. I came to pray.

A shout. The office-types in the atrium stand still, staring at the unicorn staring at the once clear sky. It’s blustery. Clouds are taking over blue. The phone rings. I turn to look.

I instinctively reached over to the night­stand. My eyes were burning. I was pinned down. My wife had fallen asleep straddling me, her billowy white nightie falling around our bodies.