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Darkness is everywhere, until the full
moon rises over the shading trees.
Silver-blue moonlight filters down, illuminating the stone altar at the
center of the grove.
Sounds of frogs, nightbirds, rustling leaves and chirping insects fill
the darkness.
All at once the animal sounds cease, and only the rustling of the leaves
continues.
A small bell, high pitched, rings twice.
As the second tone dies away, a figure, dressed in long robes, hood pulled
over his head, steps to the altar.
The figure had been present from the first, but was invisible until movement
drew our eyes toward him.
The figure raises his arms in an intercessional gesture of prayer. But
no prayer emerges from his lips.
He lowers his arms to his sides, and speaks aloud in an agéd voice:
"Bring in the dreamer."
Two attendants, robed as the first, carry in a sleeping man, dressed in
a loincloth, and place him on the altar, his head pointing to the West,
his face to the sky.
The attendants step back and to each side of the first figure.
" Do you dream?" asks the priest of the sleeping man. "Subject:
do you dream?"
The Dreamer replies: "I dream."
I dream.
It is an epic dream: of epic proportions, episodic.
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