The Daydreamer

If Blue Dream is your strain, this is your sign: the Daydreamer. The bluff above the cove, first light, the fog not yet decided what the day is, and you already drawing it.

The bluff above the cove, first light. Page one, every morning, before the fog lifts. Five seconds of it.

If Blue Dream is your strain

You are up before the sun, not out of discipline but out of appetite: the best ideas arrive early and leave if nobody is there to meet them, and you intend to be there. You like the twenty minutes when the day is still a sketch. You like fog for the same reason other people like a blank page.

You draw it before you know what it is. That is your whole method, and it works more often than it has any right to. You are curious, upbeat, a little distracted by clouds, and you laugh at your own ideas, which is how everyone around you knows they are going to work.

At your best you are the person who remembers the morning of its lines: a beat ahead of everyone, delighted, generous with the pencil. Things you make lift off the page a little. People notice, and then they stop noticing and just expect it of you, which you have decided to take as a compliment.

Your flaw is page nine. You start more than you finish, and by the time the sun is fully up you have moved on to the next idea and the tea is cold. The people who love you have learned that the unfinished ones were never the point.

What you need is a chair-shaped rock at the edge of something, a thermos, and nobody talking until the fog lifts. Give you that, and page one gets its sun.

Your hour: First light
Your place: The chair rock at the edge of the bluff
Your object: A notebook open to page one
Your tempo: A beat ahead of the morning
Your weather: Fog, thinning from the top
Your flaw: Page nine

Your people

The Night Owl (Purple Urkle)The Night Owl keeps the other end of the night, with the other notebook. You hand the sky to each other at dawn.
The Aurora Keeper (Northern Lights)The Aurora Keeper: sky people. She waits for hers, you draw yours first, and you both end up looking at the same thing.
Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy leaves a shoe behind, you leave a page. Neither of you goes back, and somebody always brings it.

Things you say

The best ideas show up before the sun does.
If you can see the whole coast, you got here too late.
Draw it before you know what it is.
Fog is just the sky coming down to look.
Page one is for the sun.

A scene from your world

Before the fog lifts

The Daydreamer is up before the sun, which is not a discipline so much as an appetite. The best ideas arrive early and leave if nobody is there to meet them, so the alarm is set for the dark, the kettle is already cooling by the door, and the path up to the bluff is walked by feel: wet grass, the blueberry bushes brushing both sleeves, the sound of the cove getting bigger with every step.

At the top there is a flat rock the shape of a chair, a thermos of tea, and the fog. The fog is the whole point. Below it, somewhere, is the coast; above it, somewhere, is the sun; and in between, for about twenty minutes, is a blank page the size of the sky. The Daydreamer opens the notebook to page one. Page one is always blank. Page one is for the sun.

The pencil moves before the idea does. A circle. A line for the horizon that isn’t there yet. A pelican, because one just went past, low and unhurried, like it owned a share in the morning. A blueberry with the pelican’s wings, because why not. The Daydreamer laughs at it, which is how you know it is going to work.

This is the part the bluff is known for, among the few who know it. When the fog is thick enough and the hour early enough, whatever is drawn on page one lifts off the paper, light as pollen, and drifts out over the cove. The winged blueberry goes first, wobbling. The pelican follows it. The circle hangs where the sun should be and, after a while, the sun gets the idea.

The fog starts to thin from the top down, lavender first, then a blue so clean it looks newly made. The coast comes back in pieces: the point, the lighthouse with its lamp just going out, the long curve of sand, the water filling in last. The Daydreamer draws all of it as it arrives, a beat ahead, as if reminding the morning of its lines.

By the time the sun is fully up the notebook is on page nine and the tea is cold and the ideas have stopped floating, which is fine. They were never the point. The point was being here when the day was still a sketch, and getting it down before it knew what it was.

The bluff

The chair rock: A flat rock the shape of a chair at the very edge of the bluff. It has been the Daydreamer’s studio for years and has never once been cold enough to matter.
The fog: It comes up out of the cove every night and leaves every morning, and for twenty minutes in between it is a blank page the size of the sky.
Page one: Always blank, always for the sun. The sun is drawn first and rises second; that is the order of things here.
The blueberry path: The way up from the road, lined with bushes that catch at both sleeves. In season, breakfast is on the way to work.
The lamp on the point: The lighthouse goes dark at first light. That is the signal that the drawing has to start now.
The cove: Below the fog, unseen until the fog decides. Pelicans commute through it, low and unhurried, like they own shares in the morning.