It begins with the walnut orchard. The house and gardens are to the west, the road to the south. I know this house well in the waking world. It's the site of my first Thanksgiving, where I first started meeting Christine's family and friends. In the front garden is the olive tree where we were married. There's the studio apartment where I lived for several years until very recently. I have many memories based here, more than anywhere in California, as many as at Lake Matinenda where we summered for many years.


In the dream, I feel like I'm flying over the land, but it's not a traditional flying dream; I rarely have those these days. I can see people playing in the garden, it seems that I recognise a lot of them, and desiring to get closer, I appear among them. there's a group of children playing in the grape arbor, the adults are chasing them and the children trying to hide. The kids have the appearance of faeries, barely knee-high to the adults who are gallumphing and laughing as they chase the kids through paper-cut-out flowers.

These are mostly Christine's cousins and their kids, though I do see other people, notably Tessie, the Dryad and her two youngest. Sitting around the pool I see shadows of others, who I realise are the family I never met. They either died before I met them, or live too remotely. My sister is there, I realise, and her children, but I can't see them properly.

I try to get into the apartment where I used to live, but the doors are closed to me now, the windows are dark. The darkness is moving, has the texture of theatrical curtains and I move away quickly.

I start to look for people I know, try to converse with them, but not only am I not there for them to see, but they too are fading away. I walk around the now-empty garden. It's lost something, some vitality; even the paper flowers are fading and becoming tattered. I try to find a way into the house. The screen door is now a wall, the kitchen door is no longer there, but I still want to gain access. From inside I hear music, and hear voices. It makes me want to join all the more, so I walk around the house to the front door, which opens into the library. It's bigger than I remember it; like the Tardis, it fills more than the space outside. I walk around trying to find the source of the voices, and find myself somehow back in the living room, and the library has shrunk to its normal size.

Sitting on the floor are the Dryad and her two youngest. I greet them, hugs are exchanged. They're playing Bananagrams and somehow I have joined them, am sitting next to the Dryad on a fainting couch. She looks at me, kisses me and we continue to play the game. I know I will lose because am am distracted by looking over to her.

Now I am watching the game from the outside. Watching myself in my happiness, watching them. Through the ceiling I can see the Moon faintly, as though through mackerel alto-cirrus clouds.


And then I wake up. I'm feeling sad because it felt good, normal to be with the family, and hopeful and happy that I could have the dream. It's a dream I want to make reality. I love you, Dryad.


$ xclip -o | wc -w
584

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