Setting

Date: 9/20/2018

Sometimes the settings in my dreams stick with me more than the actual events, though I’d kill to remember what dream this is from. In the dream I’d been sent out on a super important errand for a group of people I guess you could say were my friends. I was supposed to look for a restaurant and someone in the restaurant would be able to help us do something. But the restaurant itself...also there was something to do with rubber ducks? They were floating in a flooded dish bin and the restaurant owner was holding one. The outside of the restaurant is what sticks with me most. It’s this little back alley that starts off grungy and gross but the further back you go the more forested it gets, then finally it opens onto this edge street of a city LITERALLY floating inches above the water. The pathways are all wood and there’s moss everywhere. I kept going back into this alleyway and the trees got thinner and neater and there were little pools in barrels with small fountains. It was super quiet and peaceful. The alley comes to a dead end, but at the end of the alley is this little Chinese restaurant. The doorframe was round but it slid open. What little you could actually see of the restaurant was sided with black bamboo. The while thing was tucked under this thick mass of quiet buildings, almost like a cave, and the kitchen entrance was outside and right next to the main entrance. I remember thinking about the fish they were probably killing and cooking. But the owner came out. He was different every time I went back to that restaurant but he wore the same clothes and used the same name. He dressed in this shiny black and red robe with a matching hat and he had a little thin braid running down his back. The first time I met him he was really cold and mean and made me leave. But when I went back he was shorter and chubby and super smiley and nice. These dreams were so long ago that I don’t really remember them, but the setting always stuck with me.