Instead she's managed to end up at the edge of a very large settlement. The buildings are sometimes as much as ten times taller than her and there's a lot of them it's the biggest settlement she's ever seen it's also a bit less colorful than she's used to.

Her eyes go pretty wide. "Did I eat something I shouldn't have?" she mutters to herself, but... This doesn't look like a hallucination. 

Maybe they're very reclusive and the region has a taboo on mentioning them, which is why Anathema hasn't heard about this big and weird a settlement? Very rude of people to not warn others when outside the taboo area, then. 

Anathema approaches, somewhat cautiously. 

As she gets closer it becomes obvious that the people in this settlement are weird. Their clothing is drab and they have almost no jewelry. She'll also notice several benches around that seem designed for people to nap on, indeed several people seem to be napping.

The napping thing isn't that weird on its own - she's figuring they're not actually asleep, that'd be weird - but the clothing is, and she starts getting the vague sense that maybe she's violating a taboo.

It's usually kinda important to stop violating taboos as soon as you can - she observes for a moment to see how people are interrupting strangers, if any examples present themselves.

They do seem pretty limp when they're doing whatever they're doing but they go limp very abruptly and then become active again almost as abruptly, sometimes they're only ever limp for less than a minute before getting up and walking off again.

A number of people want to reach other and call out in an unfamiliar language as they walk down the paths. It's not clear if they're strangers or not but sometimes a few exchanged words are the extent of the interaction before both parties keep walking.

It seems like the people walking around with larger bags are greeted more often.

Hm. 

She'll approach the nearest person with a large bag then, trying to look friendly, and call out, "Heya!" (It's one of the few words with a cognate in almost all dialects.)

He turns to look at her. There's a slight downturn to his lips and he says something in a language she doesn't know ("I'm sorry I don't know that language.")

She'll tilt her head and try quick samples of all the ways she knows to say 'hello,' aiming for as wide a spread as possible. (This is a lot of ways.)

"That doesn't sound all like one language but I don't recognize any of them. How about we go dream?"

He points to a nearby bench with two empty seats next to each other and slowly starts moving in that direction.

...She'll follow him? 

He sits on the bench and gestures for her to do the same.

Sure, she'll sit down. 

He slowly reaches out to take her hand giving her a chance to pull away.

She doesn't. 

A second after he makes contact she feels not exactly tired but something in the same family except it's also like something is pulling on her. She could reject it if she wanted to. There's also a sense of invitation.

It's too interestingly new to reject! (Also like most people she very desperately wishes she was telepathic, so...)

She feels herself going limp and then they're sitting on an identical bench in the middle of a field of flowers with some tall climbable looking trees dotted around. "Hello, hopefully you can understand me now." She can. He's still speaking an unfamiliar language but there's a telepathic underlayer that contains his meaning.

- Woah!!!

"Yeah," she says, staring wide eyed at the - teleportation?

"This is a dream realm, have you never dreamed before?"

"No? What's a dream?"

"Among my people we see the world in two parts; the dream and the physical. The dream is almost endlessly flexible able to twist and change to match whim and intent. The physical on the other hand is hard and unyielding. You can only change the physical world by hard work and cleverness. The physical world is also given to decay. Our bodies in the physical world inevitably succumb to that decay like everything else and after that we live in the dream alone."