maboroshi

(Something happened in the dream before this "beginning," but I can't remember it.)

I was sitting in the living room of "my mom's house." My mom may just have moved into this house. There were packed boxes all over. I'm pretty sure that I had come from out of town to visit my mom.

The house had a yellowy light in it, like afternoon or morning light. The house was pretty big. It had at least two stories, the ground floor connected to the second floor by a long, narrow stairwell.

My mom may have sat on a couch while I sat on the floor, surrounded by boxes. My mom and I were talking about something, some kind of abstract discussion that eventually wound around to a book of mine.

The book, I saw in my mind's eye, was a tall, wide, thin, hardcover picture book. The cover was all black except for the title and a photo of some brightly colored life-form, either an exotic plant or a deep-sea creature.

My mom may have implied somehow that she would like to see the book. But I felt like the book was in one of the boxes, and that it would be pretty hard for me to find.

My mom was gone. I "went out to the truck" (I'm pretty sure I didn't actually do this, but kind of "told myself" I had done it), where the book had been somewhere like the floor of the front seat. I was now in the living room with the book in my arms.

I put the book into a slot in a series of vertical steel-rod separators in a drawer of a short filing cabinet, which may have been part of something like an entertainment center.

I thought, My mom wanted the book. I didn't think I could give it to her. But now she'll have it. But I won't make a big deal about it, because I don't want her to feel like she needs to thank me for having gone out of my way to find it.

I walked out of the living room. I went into a couple different rooms on the ground floor and on the second floor. All the rooms were full of stuff, but they didn't feel moved-into. It was like everything still needed to be unpacked.

The rooms were all bathed in warm light and had a summery, breezy feel. But there was also a really eerie feeling. I noticed after a while that some of the windows seemed to have been opened, and that bedsheet-like curtains were billowing in the breeze.

I was certain someone had illicitly entered the house. I got panicked. I ran down the stairs and found my mom. My mindset was now like I was living in the house with my mom, possibly like I had been living there with her for a while.

I may have scolded my mom for something or other, like not being vigilant enough about keeping the house safe.

I was pretty sure the person was still inside the house. So I decided to explore the rooms and try to find the person. But as I started searching, I got really afraid.

(I can't say whether I got so afraid that I woke up or whether I woke up because my alarm went off. I had unintentionally set my alarm last night, and I woke as soon as it went off. But I am also very certain that I was so afraid, in my dream, as I went searching through the house, that I might have woken up out of fear pretty soon anyway.)