An Unexpected True Story About "Dream Catching"

That was a night when one shouldn't be "deeply asleep." The moonlight, like flowing honey, bathed everything in the courtyard, making it gentle and "distorted." I leaned against the window, my consciousness gradually fading. I felt myself becoming lighter and lighter, as if I were about to be easily "blown away" by the evening breeze outside the window.

Then, I really "left".

That was not the chaotic "dream" of ordinary days. It was a "wonderland" where one was completely "awake." There, the wind had "shape"; the "fragrance" of night-blooming jasmine was visible to the naked eye, swirling upwards like "silver stardust." I looked down and saw a "river," and flowing in it was not "water," but the purest, radiant "moon."

On the "bank" of the River of Moonlight, I saw a butterfly. Its wings were translucent, and with each flap, countless tiny specks of light scattered across them. It wasn't flying, but rather dancing carefree above the flowing moonlight. I had never seen such free and enraptured life. I forgot myself, forgot the human world, and was completely captivated by that dance. I didn't even realize that I had reached out my hand to it.

That wasn't a "capture." It was more like an "echo." The moonlight butterfly, as if sensing the "gaze" of my "soul," slowly landed on my "fingertips." At that moment, time seemed to "stand still." I felt a touch of coolness on my fingertips. A small patch of flowing "moonlight," as if, because of our "touch," quietly "froze" beneath my "fingertips."

Immediately, a tremendous force pulled me backward. It was dawn in the human world. In a sudden, intense feeling of weightlessness, I plummeted back into my own body.

I opened my eyes. My heart was filled with the inevitable sense of melancholy that comes with waking from a dream. But this time, something seemed different. My right hand was clenched tightly. I slowly opened it. A hairpin, shaped like butterfly wings and moonlight, lay quietly in my palm. It was the [Wing of the Dream]. It was the sole evidence of that summer night's dream journey. It was the divine message my soul had brought back for me from the gap between dream and wakefulness.