The Book of Ineffable Dreams

21.04.19

1035 hours

Judging from the buildings and the clothes of the people around me, it seemed as if I was in ancient China.

There was a large city that had been built upon the green-grassed hill that was in front of me. The shape of the hill was very strange; the hill had been shaped almost like an Aztec temple.

The city itself had short red walls (much like the Forbidden City of China) and an archway with a dark-coloured pagoda rooftop. There was a smooth grey stone pathway leading from the bottom of the hill to the entrance of the city. The pathway was narrow and, instead of being placed in the centre of the hill, it was placed at the edge of the hill. The rest of the hill, for some reason, had wooden planks half-buried into the ground.

I was near the bottom of the hill with maybe one or two other people. I could see neither the faces nor the clothes of the people that I was with. I just knew that they were there. I could feel their presence.

Two Chinese officials walked past us. The officials wore long black garments and Chinese traditional black hats. They had their black hair tied into a long but thin braid.

"Back when China was a communist country, the stone pathway could only be used by higher-ups. Like the Officials who just passed by us. They've since opened the pathway to public use but I think that it just serves as a subtle reminder of what the country used to be," is what I said, more or less.

* * * * *

My friend and I reached the city on the hill.

Walking through the imposing the gates, we realised that (at least) half of the city was just a bustling marketplace, made of dirt roads and wooden stalls and multitudes of buyers, sellers, and workers.

My friend and I walked towards the Eastern side of the city, where the dirt had piled up to form a miniature hill. There, we saw a few people wearing white shirts and dark rolled-up pants. They were workers, we realised, and they were stirring a green mixture; the mixture was apparently being used to help layer the brown dirt with synthetic green grass.

I could see that the work that they did was patchy, causing the synthetic grass to have quite large holes in it. I could hear the supervisor say that the work was alright and that the workers just needed to pour some more of the mixture into the holes.

The workers did so. One worker poured the semi-solid mixture into a hole and mashed the mixture together to make it a little firmer. A second worker slowly stirred the mixture that had been poured into the hole (the action reminded me of how one would stir dodol in a wok). And after some more mashing and stirring, the workers smoothed out the surface of the mixture (like one would when they smoothed frosting onto a cake). And voila! The layer of synthetic grass actually looked natural.

I left my friend behind, standing at the top of the mini hill of dirt, as I edged closer to the workers so that I could have a better view of them working. Somewhere along my way down, I picked up one of the long sticks that I had seen the workers use to smooth the mixture over. The stick was a narrow and light-coloured wooden plank, shaped similarly to an oar.

I dropped the stick after observing it, and looked farther down the mini hill. At the bottom of the mini hill was a third worker building a miniature...something. Not much farther behind the worker was a woven basket that was filled with stars. The stars in the basket were golden and had white circles in the middle of them.

Shifting my eyes, I saw that, nearby the basket but closer to the worker, was a small wooden figurine of a swan. The figurine was placed sideways so I only managed to see one of its painted-on white eyes.

I woke up.

— — — — —

A/N: LMAO, "When China was a communist country". Bitch, it still is one.

Also, dodol is like a sweet treat that's popular amongst the Southeast Asian countries.