I dreamed I was on a trip in Europe with a small group from my university band. I was having a hard time sleeping, and would spend every night awake, then get on a bus and travel all day. We were taking a break in one place, and I decided to try sleeping in a warm bubble bath. I accidentally spilled a bunch of rice in the water, but it didn't seem like a big deal.
I woke up in the middle of the night, so at least I had slept, but the water was cool, so I started to drain it, then turned the hot water on. There was something squishy in my mouth, and I figured it was some of the rice, so I just swallowed it. Then, as I felt the warmth of the hot water spreading from the faucet end, I noticed a flicker of movement in the water, just where the warm met the tepid. I couldn't see anything, really, just a sort of ripple. There was a jar by the tub, and I scooped water around the movement the next time I saw it.
I looked closely at the jar, and I saw more than a dozen little... things. They were sort of shaped like sideways droplets. They were perfectly clear, so I could only see them when they moved. But they would swim jerkily, like tadpoles, and then I'd see them, circling around in the jar. I searched the bathwater, and I decided I'd got all of them. I really hoped that wasn't what I had swallowed, and that if it was, I wasn't going to have a chest alien bursting out in twenty-four hours.
I set the jar down, and I decided they must have come from the rice, so I started scooping the grains out. I put some into the jar, and the clear things rushed up and began to climb on top of them, so I stopped putting anything in the jar, because it was still only half full, and I did NOT want them climbing out of it.
Instead I started scooping the rice grains out onto the bath mat. There, a bunch of tiny pandas, each about the size of a nickel, hurried out and began eating the grains of rice. I got most of it out, and the water was warm enough now. I set the drain and faucet to flow at about the same rate, so the water would stay warm for the rest of the night.
As I was trying to go back to sleep, I wondered if this was a very good idea, to sleep in a bathtub every night, and would I drown? I decided if I breathed in the water, I'd wake up sputtering, so it was okay. I was just getting comfortable and drifting off to sleep when the trip coordinator knocked on my door and said it was time to get up. And then I woke up.
