The Dream Chronicles

 I had always found it terribly sad, how easily dreams slip away, piece by piece - how they seem to return to a realm in which you are only entitled to when you are unconscious.
 But what I have also found quite interesting… is my unconscious ability to log those dreams. I have often suffered in an endearing sort of way with sleep. Sleep has woken me, and yet left my sights in the realm beyond, sleep has offered me what reality would be and allowed me to believe it whilst still in the walls of said realm… on one occasion, my dreams even woke me up three or four times before fully committing to doing so. 
 But it seems the… realistic side, the waking side, has possibly been getting a similar revenge.
There are odd moments, in the very early hours, when I do wake between interesting dreams, and I’ll try any of the nearest means in my half-sleep state to write down what it was I had seen. In terribly sometimes indecipherable ways. Be that a pad, a phone… any thing. 
 And then, just the other day, I was deleting a few things from my mobile phone, and there in a draft folder I found these words. 
‘Found dragon bones byprive, dna and orange.’
Like a message that had been sent to me, like a humorous note saved by some one close without my seeing … I don’t use those predictive texts systems, so it couldn’t have been an accidental sort of thing. 
Besides, it was far too obvious. 
 In a time I cannot remember, in an evening long forgotten, images and scenes regarding those three things (and we will say things) took place before and around me. They lay forgotten, a whirl that the realm created and whirl diluted by the waking world.
 Only I don’t remember the waking world either. 
Where was I for that particular moment? Those moments, perhaps they were?
It’s simple, comes the argument, ‘We all forget things when we’re tired, it’s natural’.
But what if it isn’t simple. 
 Recently I had another dream (granted, I have them -a lot-) in which the ending was a little too suspicious. A little to like a film coming to a decent end. Something like when the kettle boils to a whistle. A lot like I was going to see a little something too much. 
 I woke so comfortably, I woke like they wake in films. When they open their eyes slowly, gracefully stretch an arm across the pillow and sigh softly. 
That’s not how I wake up! I either jump unnecessarily and wrench my eyes open amongst all the sleep, or I make some kind of unearthly sound and throw myself onto my front in a bid to go back to the realm.
 I should explain the dream.  I usually have series of them, and I am sure that there were more, however, we will start from the movie-finale. 
 I shall keep it brief (I often log details so small as colours of walls and shapes of cars, I’m not sure why, perhaps for a therapist to pick over in my later life or to relive like child hood memories).

 I entered a familiar courtyard, and in it a woman I had seen often on the television in the waking world. My partner was with me, and we strolled happily, we strolled like we partook in skipping about time - like we had had troubles in our lives and yet we were so pleased. 
 This woman seemed thrilled to see us, and yet she smiled knowingly, smiled with sadness. Her familiar eyes glistened as she walked us around the courtyard, and all I could think was that I had to be in work at 4 o’clock, and it must have been about half past three. But I was so pleased to see her, and I was so comfortable in the leggings and leather jacket that I was so memorably wearing. 
I was beginning to let the waking realm worries go, I was allowed to assume I wasn’t going to be in trouble, and yet I still felt I was awake, as I so usually do when dreaming that way. 
As we (practically) danced around to the other side of the courtyard, speaking with this woman about times gone by and how happy we were to see each other, it came to us that it had recently, or was about to be, my birthday. And my partner and this woman spoke of something about me, for me, that I assumed to be a surprise. I urged them to tell me, and we ran into our male friend (also from that programme on the television). He too knew something that I didn’t. 
There was a lingering melancholy, the sky above was colourless and the pavements the greyest of greys. 
To remain brief in my description of this dream, I will bring it to it’s final moments. The three people with me all looked to each other, as I urged them onwards for my surprise, to tell me what they knew. They all smiled sadly, and stepped into three different spots. The other male was centre stage, and he looked to my partner, who nodded to him with a firm and yet emotional expression. 
I had become nervous, and a song was playing some where, so I had begun to dance, a subtle and rehearsed dance from years before in the waking world.
I probably looked ridiculous, and once the nod had been exchanged, it was as though the record playing began to skip. The lyrics repeated themselves without mercy, but with rhythm. 
‘You know the rules, and so do I’.
He stepped toward me slowly, he stepped toward me like we all suddenly realised there were cameras, that this was rehearsed, that we knew we were being filmed. And then he cupped my face, and kissed me as though we were acting. I had closed my eyes, the moment his hands had touched my face, and it’s a peculiar thing, closing your eyes in a dream. I was entirely unaware of what was going on before me, the distraction being a perfect one, and whatever it was that they had all shared, whatever melancholy coming or surprise they had for me remained a mystery, as when I opened my eyes I was in the waking realm. 
But it had felt that simple, it had felt as though I had simply closed my eyes for a couple of moments and then opened them again, and found myself to be in a bed and not a courtyard. 

When I look back on the end of that dream, I find that my partner and the woman in the dream behind him were looking to each other, were communicating in some way unknown to me. They knew I had to wake, they knew the rules. The rules the lyrics assumed me to know.
But that realm can seem so very real, and again, an argument is that it is natural.
But I trip on that fact, that statement, I find it simply too suspicious, the way people I have never seen enter my dreams in a way I cannot fathom, in a way that I should then find them in the waking world. And in the waking world, I find myself unknowingly logging those things that should probably be important.