Occasionally I have extremely detailed and memorable dreams. One such dream from several months ago featured an object/concept that I developed further while awake and ended up calling the Kaleidoscope.
Calling the Kaleidoscope an “object” isn’t quite right, but it’s probably (big “probably”) a better descriptor than, say, “entity”. It’s a crystalline, ambiguously-shaped, floating thing, shiny and red and otherworldly. The short version is that being near it transforms you into something else (because of course that’s what my brain would come up with), while the longer, more dreamlike version is like this…
A regular kaleidoscope doesn’t really do anything. It has a lens, and so the lens observes. The light, because it is observed through the lens, is distorted. It can’t escape, or have any say in what happens, it simply is, just as the lens is, and because they both are, the kaleidoscope “acts on” the light.
The Kaleidoscope from my dream is similar to that somewhat nonsensical definition. Instead of light, though, the thing that’s “acted on” is your humanity. Because your own self shines on and through the Kaleidoscope via proximity, you are distorted. You are within it now, because it has observed you. Its terrible red light illuminates you, and you illuminate back, with an image that is quickly becoming Other…
I remember, in the dream, being lifted off the ground, slowly. My clothes simply falling off as I became too small for them. I think I was becoming a rabbit, which is nice, because that’s one of my favorites… but then I was stuck inside the Kaleidoscope. Floating, unable to move, with walls of red (yet multicolored) crystal surrounding me. It was loud, and bright… I don’t remember much else.