“DREAM HOLY SHIT - 12:00-12:24” (the title of the notes I decided to stick with at the time, lol)

So it essentially started as a false awakening. That night, my old roommate was working on her computer and it was out in our respective living space. In the dream, everything seemed the same in my room and out in that space but I noticed she was back home in her room so I went in wanting to ask what the deal was with it just sitting around. Walking in, I immediately noticed the room suddenly seemed like some surreal amalgamation between her room and my old childhood bedroom. A lot of familiar belongings were in there but there were also tons of knickknacks that I’d never seen before. Among them included a few native-looking woven tapestries/macramé wall hangings, bearskins, old paintings, porcelain trinkets (one of them being a small angel-like figurine) and some maps. Two of them were maps of Washington state for some reason but one seemed to be a star chart of the Big Dipper which was pretty interesting and will eventually put some things into perspective. Turns out my roommate, who only looked like her from the neck up because she was dressed in these uncharacteristic black drapes for some reason (honestly felt like something or someone masquerading as her), was doing some redecorating which was why the PC was out in the first place (in the dream that is, irl she just forgot to put it back for a little while). I asked her where she got a lot of these assorted items and she just gave me this knowing smile and said “from Apartment 102” (or maybe 120). I asked for some clarification and she said “Don’t you remember? We walked up the hill and asked some of the Natives to paint them for us.” All I said in response was “Oh.” even though that still didn’t make a lot of sense in the moment. The dream kind of pittered off after that but it quickly started up again in a much more significant way.
I was suddenly back in the house I grew up in,  looking out at the big backyard I had from this huge window which wasn’t actually in the place it was in my irl home. My view of the backyard seemed overtly dreamlike, it was essentially superimposed over this other far more naturalistic environment but I was mostly seeing the yard I used to know like some kind of hologram almost. I was leaning against the windowsill and crying to myself, don’t know why exactly, when a disembodied voice of an older lady then asks me if I’m okay. I stop crying enough to pull myself up and exit out a nearby glass door to my old patio. Looking behind me, I notice I’m now with this vaguely-familiar younger black girl with a yellow top and very short hair. We start having a small conversation as I’m still sniffing to myself while trying to calm down.
“This was my home, my dad made most of this.”
>“Oh really? Phwuh, I never would have guessed!”
“Yeah, this stove was his and my mother helped with some of this too.”
>“I know.”
It felt both natural and unnatural in that weird way only dreams can manage. For some context, my parents used to do a lot of landscaping and had ended up turning much of the area behind the house into an outdoor garden/communal space with a BBQ, a fire pit, a little fountain; the works. We also had a big pond with a waterfall & a gazebo that was regularly home to families of frogs every time spawning season would roll around. In the dream, it all looked a lot newer and far more refurbished than it ever managed to be irl which felt really nice. Me and the stranger girl start walking up the pathway behind the pond towards the gazebo, I remember making a comment on the frog population as we walked, and I take a moment to admire things once we finally reach the gazebo. The thing was always a little aged, even when I was younger, and held a lot of these dangling decorations and chimes my mom used to make using old shells and other natural objects. It felt just as calming and ephemeral as it always did and seriously calmed me down. The girl had kept walking ahead of me and suddenly called for my attention while I was still distracted.
>”Hey, (real name)! Look at this!”
On the other side of the gazebo, where there normally would’ve been the start of the pond’s waterfall and nothing much else besides undeveloped space, was this sprawling outside area that was lavishly developed and decorated with Shrines, plants, crystals, streams of water, altars and all sorts of wonderful votive things. Words really can’t do it justice but it was beautifully breathtaking and brimming with life & soul alike. The girl leads me forward in my stupor and our first stop is this small enclosed area that almost seemed like an even tinier gazebo (maybe a little bigger than your average dog house). It was octagonally shaped with white wicker walls and a wooden tiled roof. The ground within was made up of smooth pebbles that had this velvety blue fabric draped over top and held a few assorted objects. To the left, a thick silver key with a large head interlaced with raw amethyst crystals. To the right, a chain necklace donned with pearls and finely-cut slabs of more amethyst. In the center was a small indigo cushion embroidered with gold thread holding this really pretty opal stone the size of my hand carved in the shape of a heart that had a bunch of geode-like rose quartz crystals growing out from one side. It felt really really important so I took it and decided to hold it against my chest as I laid my head back on the cushion to admire the inner ceiling for a moment (the rest of my body was just kind of sticking out the front). There were a lot of dangling crystalline trinkets tied to the inside of the roof that were swaying gently in the breeze and creating this perfectly serene atmosphere. I got up and decided to take the heart and key with me since they felt so significant, the former staying in my left hand for essentially most of the dream afterwards. The girl gets my attention again not long afterwards, but her tone had gotten a little more somber & serious.
>”Hey, come see this. They’re over here.”
I somehow instantly knew what she was talking about despite the lack of context and got up to check things out. I walked over to find a small, rounded headstone in the ground adorned with fresh flowers. It had some biographical information carved into it that I couldn’t quite fully decipher, dates and maybe an epitaph of sorts. The girl then handed me two highly aged photographs that kept changing/phasing depending on how I was looking at them, like some kind of magic eye picture or other illusion. One was smaller, more Polaroid-like, of a stone heart with the phrase “Don’t cry that it’s over, be glad that it happened” carved into its center. It kept on changing to a skewed view of someone’s dingy ceiling complete with a rounded lamp for some reason. The other photo, more fit for a rectangular frame, was of the grave itself which I now understood as belonging to a Grandmother of mine (who is thankfully still alive irl). That one kept fading into indecipherable overlapping excerpts from poetry and other dream stories, while the other side of it had a pressed impression of my Grandmother when she was younger with two children under her arms. Even though the emotional weight of things was obviously now pretty heavy again, the environment around me stayed sunny & pristine with the sounds of everything calmly twinkling or chiming. I try pulling the classic ‘pulling out your phone and taking a picture for posterity’ but the camera was giving me trouble. However, my usual lock screen had been replaced with a looping gif of a large white-scaled snake with red eyes. It had this ember-like glowing pink aura around its body and was yet another striking detail overall, no doubt being a manifestation of Kanako-sama’s presence. I placed the photographs by the headstone as I was urged on by my companion.
We then headed into a small enclosed area of interlaced wood planks marked by a white torii gate that had plenty of other crystal artifacts sitting around on various shelves and such. It housed a far more extended version of the upper half of the pond’s waterfall which I decided to further follow myself. I eventually reached this four-sided wooden overhang area laced with overgrown vines where a small rustic spout was providing the source of the water. However, it was arranged in such a way where the water would first gracefully flow down & around this stout two-leveled pyramid-like stack of various pond plants and lotus flowers, acting as the water source for this assortment of flora. I remember openly remarking how cool it was when I then noticed the silver key I’d been carrying with me had suddenly turned into a small aquamarine porcelain watering can covered with painted flowers. My dorkish enthusiasm only grew as I discovered it was also pre-filled with water and I knew what I had to do. I started watering the arranged plants with glee as my travel buddy watched over my shoulder with satisfaction. I was kneeling down by the squared planters as I was doing this and, to my surprise, looked up to see Suwako-sama suddenly perched at the top of the plant stack looking down at me as well! She looked happy for me in a very genuine way but I was already too enthralled in the moment to truly register her presence.
The girl behind me encouraged me to keep exploring so we then started walking through this precariously assembled wicker corridor of back-to-back wooden torii gates lined with water streams and smaller walkways better suited for cat traversal more than anything else. This led us to an open area that seemed to still be a minor work in progress compared to the intricacies of everything else I’d seen. There was a partially unfinished loose tapestry made of wool decorated with strange patterns in shades of browns, creams and greens laying under mostly broken suspension strings tied to various poles. Behind that was a larger white gazebo surrounded by several stones and the whole area was built upon basic dirt with scattered square patches of grass, like they hadn’t been fully placed all over yet. This whole time the sky above had been clear & sunny but, upon reaching this area, it was suddenly overcast while still being fairly bright outside.
“This must’ve been where the backyard stopped and the neighbors house started, see look”, I say as I point out where some random logs and scattered sagebrush signified the start of my old neighbor’s property. I start carefully inspecting the unfinished tapestry before the girl draws my attention once again, pointing out a nearby dog that had been resting near a ledge overlooking the beginning section of this whole area (turns out we had apparently made one big loop). The dog was fairly stout with a Husky-like body but the head of a Bulldog or some other bully breed. It had an old robust orange nametag with ‘Alfose’ or ‘Alfonse’ written on it, but for some reason I read it aloud as “Alfred”. I was reminded of another irl person I know as I started feeling like I should somehow make my way over to the backyard I was gazing upon at the very start of this whole ordeal. The girl tries urging me on once again but, before we can step back down to the starting zone, the dog decides to stick my entire right hand in its mouth. I’m now in a tug of war with the thing, though it didn’t really hurt due to the fact that the dog didn’t even have proper teeth. It’s mouth was mostly puffy gums with a few disparate and small needle-like bone points sticking out in random places, as disturbing as that might sound.
>“Or not…”, goes the girl as she watches me wrastling with this thing until I can pull myself out and step back down to the front of that octagonal mini-gazebo from earlier.
>”Good job, the heart really liked that!”
I assumed she was referring to how I’d managed to hold on to that opal heart throughout all this, perhaps using it as a conduit to collect all the surrounding spiritual energy. I’m starting to grow a little anxious over getting to the backyard and end up backing into one of the wooden constructs and bumping my elbow, knocking a part of the wall slightly out of place.
>”Careful! If you bump into too much it’ll all break and start a chain-“
“A chain reaction…Right”
Thankfully it was easily fixable, though my anxieties did not share the same trait.
“Wait, where’d I set the heart??”
Pretty sure it had made its way back into its cushion but I still start frantically looking around anyways.
>”Here.”, she says as she pulls down a shade within the mini-gazebo so the inner objects could better come into focus. At this point it the sky had cleared up a bit again but the sun had started to finally set on the horizon. I find myself kneeling down in front of the mini-gazebo in an attempt to pick up some scattered trinkets I’d somehow dropped at some point, but they kept slipping out of my grip due to how many there suddenly were. I started getting this sinking feeling that my time in this zone was almost up which only made my anxiety worse, especially since I still wanted to get to that yard. It was at this point that the girl that’d been following me, who was now standing in front of where I was kneeling, at last revealed her true form. Turns out it had been Okina-sama leading me along the entire time! Her boots and the bottom of her orange tabard was unmistakable, though I was initially too caught up in myself at the moment to properly let that fact sink in.
>”(real name), sweetie…Let go.”
“Wait wait, I…they keep slipping, hold on, I still need to…”
It was then that I realized who was standing right in front of me, though I didn’t have enough time to look up at her before I felt my own backdoor being opened up. The surroundings I’d been incredibly engrossed within started being pulled away from me into darkness without me being able to do anything but fail to resist being sucked away.
“Wait! Please don’t send me back!” was all I could manage to echo through the darkness as I felt myself waking up. Felt very much like the end of the 3D sequence from that Flatland movie I’d brought up a few threads ago. The last view I was allowed was a shot of the opal heart resting on its cushion as the faded murmurs of Okina-sama discussing something unintelligible with what was likely Kanako-sama echoed around me as well. My real life bedroom faded back into view as I woke up nearly instantly, everything I’d just been permitted to witness hitting me with near-perfect clarity like a ton of bricks. It may have been the middle of the night but I wasted no time at all feverishly whipping out my phone and penning all this down for the future before I started forgetting or misremembering everything. It took me over an hour, but the experience still rattles me in the best of ways even now.