I wake up from a hole in the ground. It’s just a small pit in the earth, maybe four or five feet deep, its walls made of dried and clotted soil. I climb out of it. It’s an early morning and the sun isn’t even properly up yet. The sky is a pallid grey, hinting of a day to come but not yet promising it.

Everything is a dark, rich and sleepy sort of green and brown and I walk around on a forest clearing or a square of sorts. There’s a statue and a well on the middle of it, with poison ivy growing over and around everything.

I look at the statue, portraying a robe-clad angel, made of white stone. It looks brittle, small cracks dotting its skin, wings and robe. The face is female and lacks any clear emotion or expression. It just stands there above the well, both structures about a foot or two higher than everything else on the clearing. It seems they have a tiny knoll built for them, with large stones creating a circle around it.

I keep walking around the well though it’s dry and I know it’s dry. And at that moment I realize I need to drink – and at that moment I realize I can’t since the well is dry. I feel the first signs of panic: I know I’ll need to drink soon and there’s nowhere to go because the well is dry.

Dumbfounded and frustrated, I kick at the well. That knocks off a single brick. But the mortar of the well is loose. The well begins to break and quickly comes all apart. The bricks fall one by one down the well and all I hear is the sound of rock hitting against other rocks in the dark depths.

The well is dry and I want to drink. At that moment, the sun starts coming up. I turn to look at the edges of the clearing and see a whole group of women dressed in white, thin robes appearing from the woods surrounding me. I look at them, knowing they have come to get me now. I somehow know what is about to happen.

“You cannot touch the well“, they whisper all at the same time. “The well was, is and has been and will be and you cannot touch it”, they start saying over and over again and walking towards a step at a time, the circle of white garments and eerie female figures closing around me slowly yet surely.

“The well is dry”, I try to explain but know that all I say is pointless. “It’s dry”, I say over again and their voices rise higher and higher and they are like one, drowning out any apologies or excuses I try to tell them.

I know that there’s nothing I can do to stop them or shield myself from their judgment. It’s time to go and all because I wanted a drink of water.

The women gather into a small circle around the knoll on which I stand with the angel statue and the well. One of them steps forth. I couldn’t move if I wanted and if my life depended on it. She steps to me and I cower against the remains the well, losing my balance and grasping with my hands the ground.

She looks down on me, like not sure what to say or do. As if she’s not certain if she feels anger, sorrow or pity towards me. Or just simple judgment for what I have done to the well.

She kneels down to me and repeats with an icy voice, speaking by herself but sounding like dozens of their voices speaking in unison: “You cannot touch the well. The well was, is and has been and will be and you cannot touch it.”

“The well is dry”, I think and I find myself crying. I don’t say it and just shake my head. “Please, no. I am sorry”.

“The well is not dry. It is you who are dry”, she whispers and holds out her hand to touch my forehead. I close my eyes and everything is dark.

At that point I wake up.