Mirage
I had spent much of the day working with photographic images, using Photoshop to render the facsimile of reflection, so I know the genesis of this dream.
A man is walking slowly and deliberately across an expanse of loose, fluid sand. He is dressed like Rick of Rick’s Café and would be suave, except that he is becoming increasingly wilted from the heat and exertion. He approaches a stand of palm trees that ring a pool of oddly cool water. He may be a mirage, because he reflects in the pool but can’t be seen in the air above it. Then I see that the trees surrounding the pool cast no reflection. So the Oasis, too, is a mirage. A vampish red head is lounging on pillows at the water’s edge. Her name, I decide, is Fatima O’Brien. And she is an oasis of delusion in the desert of his reality.