I wrote this down so it wouldn't take me 2 hours to type out, lol.
This is going to be a long read because there was kind of a lot going on in this dream. It was strange because it wasn't strange. Which will make sense at the end. I don't know whether to talk about stuff while I'm writing it out or save it for after. I think I'll just wing it and see how it goes. I'll put the dream stuff in italics and my own comments on it... not in italics, lol.
I wake up to sunlight in my eyes, with a headache. I didn't close the curtains properly last night and now I'm paying the price. It's early morning, around 6am. The birds have been up a while and I can see blue sky through the crack in the curtains. I feel sick and have to claw the thick, duck down duvet off myself with more effort than I'd have liked. There's a smell of woodsmoke and lavender in the room. My husband is burning stuff again outside. I keep telling him not to do it so close to the house but he never listens.
I remember the bed. It was heavy, iron I think. With little dull silver globes on top of each corner. Heavy flannel sheets, a monstrously thick duvet and a pale yellow blanket on top. I felt smothered. Like I was drowning and trying to come up for air. Which was a very unsettling feeling. The room had a sloped ceiling. I think the house wasn't all that large. Wooden floor, pale yellow curtains on the single window, barely reaching below the sill. Large dressing table in one corner. Dark wood. With a mirror on top. And a tall vase/jug type thing with several bunches of lavender in it. I've never been married, nor do I have any desire to be.
I walk slowly over to the dresser and sit down, staring at my own reflection in the mirror. Staring into my own eyes for what seems like an hour. I take my mother's pearl inlaid hairbrush and begin to work on my hair. It fights me at first, as always, but I have it tamed and decide to go for a braid. Practical and I like it.
This is... one of the unnerving parts of the whole thing. I'm not me. I'm not even the me I see when I do trance work and meditation. I am someone completely different. Smaller, around a foot shorter than my actual height I would guess. Dark brown eyes (my own eyes are grey/green), dark brown hair. Delicate, slim, but with a noticeable bump. I'm pregnant. Maybe a six weeks, or two months along. I can't really tell. I'm wearing a nightgown. Cotton. It reaches down to my feet. Obviously I can't get pregnant, but I've never even wanted to or entertained the notion even if it were possible. This woman in the mirror didn't look like me at all. But that didn't matter. Staring into her eyes I felt sadness, but also hope. And the fact that I wanted to sit there for a long while but knew I had things to do.
The hairbrush was beautiful. Silver handle with a row of pearls inlaid along its length. Many, many white bristles. I kind of picture it as something Victorian, but I don't think that was when the dream was set.
After washing my face in the porcelain bowl to one side of the dresser, I slip out of my nightgown and into one of my spring dresses. Soon these won't fit anymore. Already I'm feeling the tightness around my midsection. I smile and put my hand on my tummy. I hope it's a little girl. Three men in the family is more than enough already. I love my sons but they can be unruly.
So yeah, I already had two kids. Two little boys. Which is weird for the above reason. I've never thought of myself as a parent. Not ever. I am almost certain I would be horribly terrible at it. One was four and one was six. I'm not exactly sure how old I was in the dream. I think maybe mid-late 20s. Maybe. There was a lot I kind of didn't explain to myself, like a writer would explain to a reader, but things I just sort of... felt, or knew, you know? It's hard to put into words. Like living someone else's life. Seeing through someone else's eyes.
I hurriedly put on my sandals and half trotted downstairs and out of the side door. Nature calling. Sure enough my husband was standing there with a dirt-smudged smile on his face, in front of a crackling bonfire. Tangled branches and dry grass drifting grey smoke lazily into the air. I frowned at him but he just smiled more. So I gave up and ran to the toilet.
I'm not going to go into the details of it but yes, at the time it was all perfectly normal. Looking back on it now... I still have a kind of phantom body thing going on and it's a bit... weird. Let's just say I have sensations of stuff I shouldn't have sensations of, and don't know why. The toilet was out the side of the house, along a narrow path with oddly laid stones in it. Kind of like at my grandmother's house, but I still don't think this dream was set a long time in the past. Just a feeling.
I couldn't help but stare as I started back to the house. At the sheer beauty of things. The lake, still and calm. A saucer of deepest, wisest blue, carved into on one side by a gentle hill rising to meet the sky. Sometimes I wish I could just stay like this forever, looking at the simple majesty of it. Birds dart overhead, in seeming mock medieval jousting sessions. And I feel serene.
It really was beautiful. Like something you'd see in the Scottish Highlands, or the Lake District here in England. I have no idea where "Here" was. Only that it was so peaceful and untouched. There was a breeze, like almost the world was breathing. I think it maybe was a creation of somewhere I've been. Maybe Windermere or Conniston, in my past. The Lake District sure is something else. You almost feel outside of time. Like you could just stay there forever being one with the world.
I won't bore you with the rest, although I could go into absurdely minute details... it was that vivid. But I don't want to write a book. It literally lasted the whole day. I made breakfast, a porridge type deal with honey and berries of some kind. I'm not exactly sure what kind. In this giant pot on a wood burning stove. Then got an even larger pot and put in a couple of joints... one beef, one pork, and a third world country's supply of vegetables. For the evening meal. It would cook all day and fill the house with mouthwatering smells.
Then I settled down to... um... you know that sewing thing people do where they have the wood rings? I'm not entirely sure what that is called. But I was sewing a flower. With blue petals. I am useless at crafts but this woman was incredibly dextrous. I think from lots of practice. It felt very easy and relaxing. Meanwhile my sons were out helping their father, in whatever small ways he allowed them to. One of them fancied himself a Knight. It was adorable at the time, but feeling it now just feels... strange.
The moment I woke from this dream was when I was taking a bath in the evening. It was a metal tub that I had to fill with hot water from the stove. We didn't have running water in the house. Only a well at the back. So I had to use a kettle type contraption to dump water into it multiple times. And I lay down in it and started to drift off. That's when I woke up... like... for real.
And... I woke up feeling really, really dislocated and disorientated. I'd slept for 14 hours straight. Which is unusual for me. I normally sleep in broken segments of 3-4 hours before something, usually pain of some kind, wakes me up. So much about this life, this woman, was so different to how I live, or feel, or even thought I could feel... as I say I had, and still have the remains of a sort of phantom body. Initially I almost injured myself trying to stand up, heh. I still feel kind of disorientated even now. It's not the first time I've had a dream like this, but it is the first time in a long time. I don't think it's a memory or anything like that. I'm sure it's more likely a character for a story I've had buried in my brain for years, and never really experienced. But damn... it was strange. In the best way. I can still smell the lavender and woodsmoke.