Indeed. This wasn't a dream.

As for Verin, she doesn't nearly know enough about the Aiel to pull this off convincingly. This is also not quite her style, especially in the late game. She seemed to have run out of time, she had in the end to find messengers to deliver some of her letters. She had no time to play obscure games with Aviendha.

There doesn't seem to be other candidates among Lightsiders, and the nature of the discussion fits very oddly with the Shadow. Few in the Shadow have time to play such games anymore anyway. The Shadow is down to more direct approaches nowadays.

Nah... that conversation nudged Aviendha, prepared her for what was to come, without interferring too much. This was oddly similar to the series' oracular Talents (Foretellings, Dreams etc.) ... for someone with no such Talent.

Rand at the time had reached a very dark, very desperate state. The whole world hung in the balance.

In the Aviendha scene, some odd things happened with reality (the coals, the weird way time felt, her vanishing, the complete disappearance of her gear - all this leaving no trace at all). We know of two, possibly three forces capable of doing this, of altering reality itself One is Shai'tan, but the whole thing doesn't seem to fit the Shadow's goals. The other is the Wheel (as it did in Falme, for instance... making Rand and Ishamael appear in the sky) Aviendha was alone, away from ta'veren, and a lot hanged in the balance. We might have witnessed a direct intervention by the Wheel. Nakomi might be exactly who she pretended to be, but reality was altered to place her on this path.

The third force is an unknown, but theorically it has the power to do a shifting of reality or create itself a body, let's call it a Light bubble: the Creator. Her last words : "Sorry, nature calls" would be an inside joke... if Shai'tan can have a sense of humour... that might be the sort of humour of the Creator...

In EOTW, we may (and most likely did) see a divine intervention in a tight spot. Not interference, merely a nudge, a nudge that Rand had to make a choice, that he had been chosen and his role was set, but that down the line he would come to a point where it would be his choice, to embrace his role, or to decide Creation didn't deserve to be saved. The choice Rand made on DM, which unlocked everything.

It's not impossible Aviendha also got a nudge about the choices she would soon have to make. Odd, definitely, but not impossible. The weakening of the Pattern perhaps opens the way for the Creator such nudges now.

The recent revelations about the nature of Shai'tan, that the TP is him, his essence etc. have added a lot of weight to the notion that the Creator is the OP. The Pattern, the fabric of reality itself (and this everything the characters call "real" is made of the OP. Thus, the Creator is... Creation. Shai'tan keeps his essence, but the Creator made creation out of it, made souls - or offered shelter in Creation to "lesser beings" etc.. That would be why the Creator cannot fight directly. To do so, to gather his essence to him to fight Shai'tan directly, would mean the end of parts of the Pattern, or break the whole system. It also seem to me that while Shai'tan is the absolute control freak, the Creator may fear his own temptations to interfere, to ease life, to correct wrongs etc. To prevent this, he placed the Wheel between his will and Creation. The Wheel is impartial, and non-sentient, a giant computer that keeps things within parameters (the things which are set and can't be changed) and seeks to maintain balance.