Carabas

Me and a few others have been poking around this seemingly abandoned house, and I have a suspicion that I'm getting more and more certain of as we explore. I finally voice it: this is my house, or rather, this world's version of me; a female version apparently. I'm reasonably certain we can use this as a way to connect between the worlds, since neither version of me is in our original world right now. We'll test it by passing through some random object - I pick up what looks like a game piece, a notched wooden peg painted green. I'll go to sleep with it in my pocket, and it should pass over to her side while I'm asleep.

Time skip. One of the people I'm traveling with - earnest young blonde man, round glasses, dressed in robes that remind me of the Magician's - is setting up what looks like a summoning circle, directing the others. He fills me in on what happened while I was unconscious this time around: the people in the other world were able to deliver the third of the necessary artifacts to us. It goes unsaid, but the important part was less the specific artifact and more the fact that it was an object that had passed between worlds, though they also have to represent specific elements. We're going to use the artifacts to open up a portal we can all get through. I'm vaguely annoyed about having such a one-sided view of things, only being able to see the events unfolding in this one world, getting half the story; but it can't be helped, I have to be asleep for any communication between worlds to occur.

Recent dreams included an appearance from Inanna and Dumuzi.

Today's:

Avoiding direct sunlight, I made my way into a bar where I'm surprised to find a certain man - I'll refer to him as my friend. That's a lie, but it entertains me and disturbs him when I adopt a friendly attitude. I sit down and address him by name, and say, "I thought you were going back to Australia."

"This is Australia," he says.

That explains a lot. My aim is terrible, but at least I've got him to serve as a guide now. But to my surprise, he's not at all impressed by seeing me here. I'd really expected more of a reaction. We talk at cross purposes for a while, until he says that he'd thought I'd disappeared with yadda yadda event - I realize he believes he's talking with the hallucinatory version of me who'd been with him for a while. I'm surprised that lasted so long, it wasn't intended to. I explain to my friend that I'm not his hallucination, I'm the real thing. He doesn't seem to believe me.

I sit down at the bar and wait for him to come around, and watch the sun go down through the window. A woman comes over and sits down next to me - on the bar itself, not a stool. We explain pleasantries, and she says a few things that don't make much sense to me until I recognize this as the opening moves of a mating ritual. I start to tell her that I appreciate the intention but our species aren't compatible in that way - and now my friend's hurrying me out the door. Oh good, it seems he's accepted that other people can see me.

In the parking lot outside the bar, I stop and stare at the stars. I'm absolutely in awe of them. I call my friend by name, and ask him, "What am I looking at?" Seeing them in this unfamiliar arrangement is astonishing. He doesn't seem impressed by them, and I can't figure out why - this arrangement must be the one he grew up with, the one he spent so much time trying to get back to, so he should appreciate it. Seeing them through an atmosphere creates such an amazing effect. There are a few wisps of cloud adding to the view - and for a moment a patch of stars appears to be moving, but then I realize there's a children's toy floating above our heads in the shape of a translucent butterfly, distorting the view. I look down at the kids - they're looking at the toy, not the stars. My friend is trying to hurry me along through the parking lot, and I try to impress upon him how moving this is. "Do you know how long it's been since I've been down to earth? Any earth?" He remembers, he was there, and he is not interested in reminiscing.

Short note from an earlier dream today: reading a description of "laurel leaves, called apollon," in which the author acknowledges that they cause strife but states that it's merely like the rebelliousness of an adolescent, and that they are indisputably sacred to Apollo.