Yup, the experienced you are having do sound like you are very close to becoming lucid, and yes, those kinds of things do happen - I've had RC failures, and DCs alas are notorious for leading one astray although as you found out they can also at other times drop helpful hints. Continue to do what you are doing since it has brought you this far, you are likely to succeed soon. You may want to increase your expectation that RC will succeed before you do RCs because RC failure is often due to expectations of how it works in waking life leading to same result while dreaming, so if you adjust expectations to expect RC to show that you are dreaming then it is less likely to fail in dream. Best!