I was visiting an antiques dealer in one of these towns. He had an old house converted to a shop, very dark inside and stuffed to overflowing with Victoriana and Continental pieces, stags's heads smothering the walls and dirty gilt frames everywhere. As I was working my way through the place I looked up and saw a turquoise necklace pinned to the wall overhead, its beads as big as my fist. I asked the dealer about them.
He was a strange man, decrepit in the same manner as the little fortresses, looking as though there was something biologically wrong with him. He wore a white suit with narrow black stripes and started talking in a croaky frog-like voice; then the dream ended. I don't know what he was saying but he wasn't talking about the necklace.
I think it's really interesting that I'm having all these graphic, narrative-style dreams during such a productive phase as far as the second book goes, which I'm writing now. For me, these 'dream runs' often coincide with periods of imaginative fertility; I have a theory about our levels of consciousness and creativity and I will bore you with it some time soon lol.