Carabas

A place based on the Heian era, a woman's emerging from behind a curtain that partitions off an inner room and moving between two wooden tables where a couple other women, her friends, are eating and talking. She's dusting the tables as she talks with them. I'm standing off to one side and watching her, feeling fond but bemused. I've just noticed the wrinkles she's developed, and I wonder how long it's been since we first met. When she gets to the end of the table, I stop her and ask why she's dusting - she knows this place is an illusion I'm creating for her, she doesn't need to clean it. She says she's probably being silly, laughing, and she hands me the thing she was using to dust. I'm feeling vaguely sad about this.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm walking across the moors, heading towards a building I think of as haunted - then I mentally correct myself, it's not haunted, it's a dream of a haunted place. This distinction matters to me; something deliberately created to present a certain experience.

I came across a mirror lying on the floor, remembered the TOTM and went lucid. The mirror's rather small for this - I take hold of the edges and pull it wide enough to stretch out on top of it. Initially, unusually, the mirror showed me my reflection - I focus on the background behind it, and it goes black. I briefly imagine stars in that blackness, but don't actually see them; that acts as a trigger, and I sink into the mirror as if it's liquid.

On the other side, I'm walking out of an apartment building into an alley. I have a thought that this is supposed to represent somewhere in Wyoming; but looking around at the buildings, the vending machines, this definitely looks like Japan. I wonder if that's just my mind filling in the setting with familiar memories, or if this is actually meant to be Japan; I keep walking, figuring it'll work itself out, and I had no particular goal here anyway.

I cut through a shopping area where people are eating, listening to them talk, no one saying anything particularly interesting to listen in on. I'm uncertain whether I'm visible to others; my initial impression had been that they couldn't see me, which is how I preferred it, but there do seem to be a few people here and there who notice.

Out of the shopping area and onto a main street, there are Christmas lights in the trees here. I cross the street and find the sidewalk's lined with little garden plots, blocked off by ropes - some kind of display, or some kind of competition maybe. One such plot holds a tree that fascinates me - it's white, not much taller than I am, gnarled, no leaves, and covered here and there in pale green moss with small blue flowers. Very beautiful.