Dimmer switch. The room must have dimmer switch and it must be around 40% power of a regular lamp. There is also a fireplace which sometimes lets out a crackle, which also lights the room with color similar to the lamp the room has.

He cannot say for sure what the fragrance the room is enveloped in. It is a kind of perfume that is neither too strong nor too weak, the type where the sweet lingers but after a long time does not hurt your nose.

There is also a vague sound of music from somewhere that reverberates quite nicely to the acoustics of the room. It is Scarborough Fair by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. It has been repeated for quite some time now like there is no other song in the playlist but that one.

Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

He knew quite some time has passed after he got into the room, but he cannot be sure how long. Being in the room for that exact long time drive his head a little numb and pretty much difficult to think straight.

“So, how are you feeling?”

Another man has been sitting on a leather sofa near where he lies down. That other man holds in his hand a pen and a writing pad, while his legs he crossed european-style to ease his writing. He seemed to have a complexion to straighten his glasses more time than necessary.

“Just remember to be relaxed. You do not need to feel like you are in a hurry to say anything. You can tell me just whatever it is in your mind and we maybe can move from that to help with your condition.”

The man feels a little like paralyzed in his position but now he remembers where he is and what he is doing there.

“Recently I have been having this dream,” he started, “it really felt very vivid, like I can feel all there are in it, emotion and taste and everything.”

“Some dreams are like that. It is just that they are usually a result of a desire you hold strong enough to disturb your unconscious mental state.”

“I have those, but these are very different. They were lucid. They were almost all too true that when I woke up the next day it took me an increasing amount of time to realize which one is reality and which one is dream.”

“It might possibly be due to depression. Have these past few weeks been hard on you, like, have your job been going wrong, or has situation at home grown unlike how it should be?”

“I don’t really feel like that at all. If there was any, it should really not be something I would possibly forget as quick.”

The other man looks up from his writing pad to the man. Clearly, this is a point of interest for him.

The song on the background is repeated again. Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

“The thing is, after every experience of the dream, I could feel that my real self is losing portion of itself to the dream. It is like my memory is being erased at an alarming accelerating speed,” the man continued, “they started off a regular dream, but after every repetition it gets more vivid all the while my real life starts to blur.”

“Can you tell me what kind of dream it is? You can start off with what the dream is, then its correlation to you in any way, or how you usually feel in it.”

“In those dreams, I am a butterfly.”

“A butterfly?” the other man wrote on his writing pad.

“Yes, a typical butterfly. Not unique, not interesting, not anything. I act also like any other your usual run-off-the-mill butterfly.”

“What did you do in those dreams?”

“I don’t know, really. I guess, in terms of an insect, I am trying to live, to survive. I just flutter around, flap my wings, collecting nectar from flowers I know of, evading predators; birds, men.”

“Any variation?”

“No, not really. If I have to say, those dreams were more static than what happens in this reality. I tried to think this feeling is an effect of the dream, which I have said to you before, becoming more vivid after every time I dreamed the dream.”

“Reality is usually the duller one compared to dream, especially those that are caused by strong desire. That, however, does not work the same way if the way you see reality is as something you find hard time to adapt to, like, things are all happening too fast and you could not keep up, or if everything outside of you cause you nothing but fear. Tell me, have you any case of xenophobia before? Have you ever felt like everything foreign to you is fearful?”

“Not that I could think of. I never really need any help with my mind before this case.”

“So, not being xenophobic,” the other man seemed to think a little before making a motion on his writing pad with his pen. “Any other thing you can mention to me?”

The man fell silent. He realized after some time that the song in the background has been repeated yet again. Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

“Maybe I should tell you how the dream changed me; that part about it being more vivid after every repetition?”

“Go on,” this also seemed to interest the other man.

He exhaled a long breath and starts to talk.

“I feel like all the more I dream, the more I know how to act like a butterfly; how to flap my wings and fly, how to suck nectar with my straw-like mouth, how to hide from common predators. That, however, comes in cost that I forgot parts of my life.”

“It certainly is strange that you can remember so much out of your dream. We usually forget almost our entire dream by some few minutes after we wake up.”

“Is there anything you can do to help me?”

The other man fixes the position of his glasses for the third time after the man noticed his complexion now. “I certainly can give you prescription to certain relaxant drug. What I can mostly catch from what you said is that there is this depression and distress in reacting against your dream. This may be due to what most people would call mid-life crisis on older men of certain age as you. Then again, there is this other hypothesis I can think of.”

He waits for a few minutes before putting down his glasses. By this time, he is sure that his patient had already succumbed to partial unconsciousness. He starts a metronome he has near him to sway and lets out this ticking sound that repeats itself every second.

“Let’s say that you can sleep well now, you can close your eyes freely and you do not need to be afraid of anything.”

The man does not react upon hearing the other man’s whisper.

“Close your eyes slowly, try to imagine anything nice in your head, but not too powerful nor exciting as to disturb you from your sleep. Breathe in a momentum slowly; inhale a long breath, exhale a longer breath. Repeat. Repeat.”

The man followed what the other man said exactly and now begin to lose his linger on himself.

Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

“What I need to tell you now, is that this is most probably another one of your dream. What this maybe is, is that in your head you got reality and dream inverted,” the other man said slowly, “now you are going to close your eyes and when you wake up, you will be a whole new individual to this one you are now.”

A whole new individual.

Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

“Inhale longer, exhale longer. Repeat. Repeat.”

The other man kept saying those words over and over in a slow momentum that it helps not to let him stay awake. His vision gone dark and slowly but sure he drifted off to slumber.

Parsley, sage. Rosemary and thyme.

When he wakes up, he spreads his wings and flaps and flutters away.

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