We lived in the house I grew up in, which was outside a town that was rice university, Castroville, and lakeside mall all sort of cobbled together. I found a small alligator hiding in a glass-topped curio table in my bedroom, and we found sharks in the muddy water of the tank in the back yard.
I was in high school again, and friends with the kids from the comic Luann, and Luann herself was dating Jeremy from the comic Zits. Jeremy had a helicopter that he could fly, but also had a hired pilot for it, and he used it to take us all to the mall, though they always had to fly us to the book store to keep Jeremy's mother happy.
The bookstore was having a sale on all things renaissance, and had called in a costuming specialist, so we were all going to talk to her about fabrics and patterns. I discovered I had a book of portrait artworks from the time of the Tudors and an enormous wardrobe box of ribbons and trims and lace made in the style of that period. We brought these along, and I told the others that once they knew what they needed, they could take their pick.
In the box I found for myself a silk gauze a-line over dress in medium green, embroidered with willow leaves, meant to go over a darker green dress that the consultant would help me design. There were matching green laces in different widths. It was going to be perfect. There were pink and ivory and blue ribbons in the box, too. We were all set.
As we looked through the paintings in the book, I began to formulate a theory that our current penchant for historical, factual, proportional accuracy in art and literature may have begun with the enlightenment and the rise of rational scientific process, but it really came to the fore with the development of photography, and the idea that a photograph is a truer representation than a painting. Everyone was very interested.
I returned home to find a party of Japanese dignitaries visiting to negotiate my marriage to a nobleman's son. My least favorite aunt had apparently been arranging this in secret, actually writing letters to the boy, supposedly from me. My mother say me next to the head ambassador at dinner, and I told him politely that while it was certainly an honor to have them here, I had known nothing about this until now, and was not interested in marrying into Japanese high society and leaving my home. The table cloths and dress shirts were blazingly, pristinely white, their hair and dinner jackets were coal black, and candlelight gleamed from the chandelier and tapers on the table, shining on silver and crystal and cuff links. I looked into the strange amber eyes of the ambassador and said all of this calmly and firmly, with courtesy, and without wavering or looking away. He was very impressed, but before he could decide what to do, I woke up.
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