A Magic Staff

     I finally said yes to an old invitation on the day it was about to expire. Suddenly, I was floating away, and a musical wooden staff or a meter-long twig was in the background. I was carried away with it towards some location that I somehow knew to be hidden but familiar. (All the staffs in this dream were rough twigs, as if they were just torn off a tree.) I could sense how the whole world had transformed. Everything on Earth became brittle. Fresh leaves would crumble down to white ash when touched, as if the world--the air, the soil, even Time itself--were made of a very thin and fragile material.

     I arrived in a big house with all the candidates. The next scene involved some tests. We were supposed to find something somewhere "underneath." When I tried looking under the carpet or the flooring, instead of uncovering the ground itself, I would just peel off one layer after another, as if the ground were an infinite series of crusts made of foam or mattresses.

     Then I remembered a previous message that came with the invitation. I had a kind of puck or token in my pocket and so I threw it in the air. It floated away and stopped spinning over some hidden entry point for an underground bunker or garage. I lifted it with the help of two or three candidates who I felt were close associates. Below were four or five pairs of old, really run-down, classy leather shoes, all ankle-cut high, in different styles, all colors faded brown or tanned. I picked up the pair with a greenish hue and let the others choose from the rest. There was a hint that these shoes had some magical import.

     After that, there was a set of combat tests. The last one had me facing a powerful female magician. I simply said it would be futile to fight her because I would just certainly lose. Because I declined to challenge her, she revealed that she has now become my ally and mentor.

     In the last scene, while I and my mentor were walking together, an old man who seemed vaguely familiar suddenly appeared out of nowhere and he stabbed her with another wooden staff. I thought she was going to die, but eventually her wound started healing up. The old man left the scene casually, and even hinted that he did it to protect me, although I wasn't convinced, and I felt that there was yet another undisclosed reason for his actions.