I dreamt I was hanging clothes to dry on a line
The sun was setting and the clothes line stretched amazingly long down a mountain path, with a vast valley just beyond a steep edge -
one of those sudden drop-offs with a hidden threshold
where it looks like it might round over enough so you can actually walk all the way down to the bottom,
but as you stare and slowly comprehend the true distance of the valley floor,
you know there must be in fact a brutally sheer cliff somewhere just ahead.
While I spread the clothes out to allow them space to properly dry, the wind grew stronger, so I began to bend the hook-ends of the hangers so the clothes would not fly down to the gaping valley below, and my legs were leaden yet wobbling uncontrollably from vertigo.
The clothes line and path went downhill, and farther down the line were a group of young women also hanging their laundry; they were temporary residents or visitors I somehow instantly knew, and as I got closer and closer to them the clouds were beginning to cover our view of the valley and beginning to whip around our feet. The young women were gazing back up the path from where I had come (the closest one had her hair in a gorgeous, dusk-reflecting ponytail) and I could now hear what they were saying: they were exclaiming in wonder.
I looked back up the path and next to the path was a road, and on that road was an enormous balloon-like structure, similar to those things car dealerships put up along the road to attract attention during a grand opening, but this one was more,
it was a breathing castle, it was near-monumental, colored with reds and oranges and pinks all emphasized by the slowly descending sun. The clouds now formed a changing, swift-moving floor to our new world above, and just as I ventured beyond the clothes line to try to better see the balloon-castle, it suddenly took off, flying somehow against the wind up the mountain and away towards the setting sun.
Louder exclamations grounded me enough for me to realize I must have been standing at the precipice, now even more invisible from the layer of clouds
and I called back to the girls jokingly about how I had probably almost died during one of the most ecstatically beautiful moments of my life
but the young women couldn’t hear me - they had begun to trek back up the path towards the castle,
their feet in the clouds
and I struggled back up to the path to continue after them.