Elurea

Sometimes in dreams you meet people who seem to all intents and purposes, real. And I'm not talking about succubi, not this time. It was up in Paddington, I was working a shift, but had for some reason taken a break. At the bar of a hotel in Oxford Street, ordering a (soft) drink. She came up beside me, smiled and suggested I ask her out sometime. To a movie or a dance. So I did.

She was slender and small, though not tiny. Later that same evening we were walking together in another part of Oxford Street, holding hands. Her hands were different from each other, the left was littler and a bit wizened, the right fuller and smoother. A close friend of mine was with us, I knew she was looking at us holding hands and wondering what it meant.

Later still, back at the cab, which was in fact my own car, parked under dark trees near the Paddington Town Hall, I said, yes, I'll take you back to Elurea. This meant somehow fitting her pushbike into the boot of the car, but we managed it. And off we went. The final image of the dream was a map reference, Elurea, far to the south of the City, north facing, on the shores of the Georges or the Hacking River. I woke with a strong sense of the sweetness of person of this nameless woman. Wanting to see her again. Absurd as that sounds.

So I went to my Sydway for a look in the south ... the suburb that corresponds to the map in the dream is Illawong, somewhere I've never been, a place I was only vaguely aware of, on the south bank of the Georges River. Yesterday, it's true, I was looking at Sydney's outer suburbs, but I was looking in the north: at Glossodia, Ebenezer, Sackville, Maroota and Fiddlertown.

Then, I googled the dream name, trying various spellings: both Illuria and Eluria are places with established, if fictive, existences, so I settled on the spelling above, even though, in the dream, I thought it was probably Illuria we were going to.

How now will I find my way back to Elurea? And, when I do, will she be waiting there for me? By the wharves, perhaps, at the end of Letter Box Lane?