I wasn't sleeping, but I woke up.
Not from a dream. Into one.
The mission had already begun.
I saw 2100.
I was standing in a kitchen, holding a box of Frosted Flakes, and I started crying. Sugar-coated corn. Bright blue cardboard. A tiger surfing on a wave of milk. "Mission Tiger: over 1 million kids helped." What a joke.
In 2100, millions starve in months. The lucky ones receive standardized blue packs of processed corn, distributed by what remains of the United Nations. Livestock feed, reformulated for human survival. No tiger. No milk wave. Those million kids inherited a world no cereal box ever promised them.
There are no tigers in 2100. Not on boxes. Not in the wild. No birds to hear. No squirrels to see. Sheep only to dream of.
I was sent back to change that future.
Spring is arriving earlier.
You've noticed it, even if you didn't name it. The buds open before they should. The air shifts ahead of schedule.
It feels like relief.
It isn't.
There is a saying: in filth it shall be found.
I saw a sapling once. Born in a pile of refuse on a highway median, growing regardless of its circumstances. It shouldn't have been there. It was.
It lived in my memory, bugging me, until I went back to the spot it first grew years ago. The pile was still there. The trees above unchanged. The sapling was gone. Not gone enough to forget.
That's when I understood something.
Not everything that appears is meant to remain. Not everything that disappears is gone.
When you see things this season that feel slightly out of place — do not ignore them. Do not explain them away. Keep them.
Spring is coming.