Carabas

During a string of fairly uninteresting dreams, I escaped out a window and found myself lucid. I was looking at a dark mountain range in the far distance, and hearing a voice saying "Aurora, awaken." Aurora apparently was me, which I thought of as an odd choice of names; I associated it with Sleeping Beauty. I thought of this place as the abyss. I attempted to create a bridge, but found I was altering the scene as a whole instead of individual elements; I saw scenery representing my bedroom around the edges of my vision. I stopped the attempt to alter the scene and exited back through the window instead.

I'm walking through the basement of a tower, grey stone walls. There's some kind of chaos going on on the main floors above me, a distraction while I was taking care of something in the dungeon on the next floor down - but now that it's time to go, I want to avoid getting caught in whatever's happening on the main level.

There's two people waiting for me with two different escape routes - neither of them knows exactly what I was doing here, neither of them knows me personally, and neither them knows about the other. There's a person I work with who'd arranged for a man to meet me by the stairs up to the main floors, but I'm having second thoughts about trusting him. And there's a woman waiting by a wooden door that leads elsewhere; she's not involved at all, she just wants to escape whatever's going on upstairs and is willing to take me with her, recognizing me as a friend of a friend. I believe she would be more sympathetic to what I was doing here, if it came out.

Deciding to go with that woman at the wooden door, I'm doubling back, passing by the stairs leading down to the dungeon. I debate whether I have time to go back down there - there had been something else I'd wanted to look into down there, though it's not a priority. I start down those steps, but it becomes so dark I can't see, and I have a vague impression of massive chains. I can hear a woman's voice crying. I decide I don't have time to be fumbling around in the dark, and I head back up the stairs.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man is looking at a wall recently painted green in an attempt to emulate some other place, and talking to someone about a man he knows, saying that while he wasn't looking, the man went and got married to people so unsuited - people, plural, meaning both the wife and the stepkids - people he'll have to keep secrets from.

I'm watching light play over the features of the man in question in an interesting way. He's looking at a signet ring with an image of a rose, which he's just removed from a hiding place in the base of a lamp. I'm hearing a kind of tinkling sound like a music box repeating a single measure over and over again.

A woman and I have been tracking some thieves who stole the animals that her people raise - creatures like elephants but smaller, and with a sort of moss-like fur that grows on their backs and the top of their heads. Now the trail I've been leading her through ends at a beach. We're too late. Their ship is gone. But I'm able to pick up a mental impression of it and relay it to her - the tigers that they stole are in cages, but those other creatures have already been killed. The thieves only wanted their pelts. She sits down in the sand and starts to cry.

As we make our way back the way we came, over a mountain path, I'm attacked by some creature - it happens fairly often in this region and I take care of it easily, hitting it over the head with my staff and expecting it to run off again. She'd been hanging back before, but when she sees this she comes rushing over, though I don't think of that as necessary; she starts beating the creature, far beyond what's necessary. I stand back and watch.

I'm a demon - the long sharp teeth and writhing cloud of darkness make it hard to miss - but as we make our way down the other side of the mountain, I'm watching her and thinking that the people who tell stories about today will take one look at her and assume that two demons came down from this mountain.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a dream with her, but at the moment we've come across an image of myself in the distant past, before I became a demon. I'd been speaking to a man dressed in armor standing in front of a sacred building, and that past version of me is saying something to the effect of, yes, I'd very much like to learn more about our people. It had been a rare opportunity - it was rare enough to meet another of my kind at all, but this was far beyond that, I'd jumped at the chance. I watch that past version of me follow the man in armor into the building.

This isn't what I brought her here to show her, it's just one of my memories intruding on the dream. I intend to continue down the road we're on, to take her to our actual goal here - but she wants to see more of this memory. So that's what we do. We follow that past version of me into the building.

Inside we're in a stone corridor; there's no sign of that past version of me or the man in armor. While the outside of the building had looked the way it had when it was new, the inside is a ruin from much later in my memories. But there's a few objects out of place, things that had been looted by the time it got to this point. I kneel down before one of them, a mirror made of bronze. I say to her, "It's a gate-"

Someone's been describing a group of people to me, and he's just moved on to describe two partners who are separate from all the others in some way. His description focuses on one of these two, but my memory only really picks up when he moves on to the second one by saying "Another one, always in darkness." (Or shadows, or something with a similar meaning). I see an image of him as a tall hooded figure. I like him instantly. The guy describing him says that unlike all the others, this one exists in "both long time and short time." I see him in modern clothing now, living and working at an isolated shrine. By "exists in long time," it means that this guy's forced to go through time the long way around, living through each day one at a time (that is, the way time usually works), waiting for the others to reappear. That seems tragic. I'm thinking that he must be immortal in some fashion, to be able to wait for the others' timelines to intersect with his over centuries. The guy talking references "the swords that take the end of each user's life."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm sitting on a bus waiting at an intersection, looking out the window. One of the other passengers says we've reached Las Vegas now. I see a sign on a building that includes Las Vegas in the name, but the road we're on now is in a small neighborhood, small town atmosphere. The bus is just across from a small store, and there's a guy standing by the door playing a guitar. I'm enjoying the music. So is the girl sitting on the seat next to me. There's an old man sitting across the aisle who looks over at us to make sure we're paying attention to the music. He talks about the importance of paying attention and enjoying what's going on around you, something about being open to messages from the universe and synchronicity and all that. I'm bored with this conversation, but then I think that I've been hearing that sort of thing so often lately, between work and now this guy, it's a synchronicity in itself. (Except since it's turned out to be a dream, that's no longer true. Dreaming about things from work isn't exactly synchronicitous.)

I went semi-lucid during a nightmare - a scene involving IRL characters - and wanted to change the scene in order to get away from the nightmare. I had a false awakening - possibly two, memory's vague on this point - either way, I eventually wound up in my IRL bedroom, lucid (now unsure on whether or not I lost lucidity in between).

The room's dark, and I'm frustrated, feeling trapped. I've got the impression I'm stuck in some in-between state, not dreaming properly (whatever that means) and not able to wake myself up, and I'm trying to escape this state. I'm thinking about lack of control, and I look at an object in my hand and turn it into a sword, thinking of this as somewhat pointless, and thinking something about the way the dim light affects this. I find myself moving along the ceiling, as if I'm held up there against my will. There are two windows, and I manage to claw my way over to one while avoiding being pulled toward the other. I slide it open and tear out the screen (I was thinking something I can't recall in detail, something about the way the window responds to my actions by opening or not opening due to it being a part of a dream rather than a physical window), and with great effort manage to crawl through the window.

On the other side, I'm floating over water, surrounded by cliffs and hills covered in snow. It's night. There are wooden buildings and people outside, dressed in clothes from at least a few centuries ago. My perspective is moving, but I'm still partway in the window; when I look behind me, I can see the window hovering in midair. I'm moving toward the town center, and I can hear people talking - not a language I understand, but from some of the words I catch I believe it to be German, or some variant of it. There's some event about to take place, I believe it's something religious, some ritual.

I enter a building. Memory goes spotty here again, but eventually I wound up speaking with an old woman who gave an impression of beauty and power. To her left was a woman sitting asleep in a throne, dressed in a costume that could have been straight from the LotR movie elves - I specifically compared it to a costume while I was looking at her. I wondered if she was Julia. (It's unusual that it's something I wondered about, as opposed to just knowing.) The old woman was telling me about her plans, including something she was going to discard, and I requested that she give me that thing. She was surprised but amused and granted my request, but afterward I thought of this as a missed opportunity - I became distracted by the thing she gave me, I should have just listened and followed along with her.

I'm lying in my IRL bed, looking out into the hall, and I seem to see movement, as if there are several small creatures on the floor. It's too dark to be sure my eyes aren't playing tricks on me. I reach for the lamp - as I do so, I think I see one of the maybe-creatures-maybe-tricks-of-the-eyes come into the room and look up at me - but the lamp won't turn on. Although I'm aware the bulb could just be out, I suspect this is a dream.

To test it, I will myself to float up into the air, but nothing happens. I close my eyes to test whether I can see through them anyway, and I can't (in fact, after closing my eyes here, there were no more visuals for the rest of the dream). But I'm still convinced this is a dream. As one more test, I reach up and touch the ceiling, sure that it won't be solid. I encounter solid material, but it's spongy, my finger sinks into it, creating a depression, and then reaching some limit - the material breaks, creating a small hole. For a second I consider whether this might not be a dream and I've really poked a hole in the ceiling. But I keep digging at it until I create a larger hole, large enough for me to pass through, and I climb up into it. As I pass through, I find I'm now moving downward, not upward - and this makes me wonder if opening up this hole was really a good idea. I have a vague thought about moving down into a basement which stores unpleasant things. But once on the other side, I become aware that I'm lying in bed, and that I've woken up.

Fragments from later (insomnia's been killing me this past week and my recall's a mess):

A desert in a futuristic setting. I'm talking to my wife about some intrigue going on within an elite group of all-female guards who work for us. They're slaves, and I'm thinking about the tensions created by relying on people while keeping them in slavery.

Different scene, same POV character. I'm in a small spaceship, with the pilot - a good friend who works for me - to my left, and a boy whom I'm kind of mentoring sitting behind us. I'm explaining to the boy about a weapon I'm expecting our enemies to use, something that increases the heat of a star. It's related to the lifespan of the star, and the boy deduces that since the star in this system is very young, the effect will be very great. He sounds horrified, but I'm not feeling particularly concerned; it's just one more thing to take into account.

I'm in my IRL home, and I'm very, very tired. I've got a few things I should take care of before going to sleep, but I'm going to have to do them tomorrow, I'm too tired to focus. It's dark, the lights are off and the sun hasn't risen yet - I realize that's strange, why am I tired at this hour? I hit the light switch as I pass it, but the lights remain off. My assumption is that they need new bulbs. At the top of the stairs, for a moment I think I see something standing in front of me, a person, or more like the shadow of a person, inches in front of my face. It's just for a moment, my eyes playing tricks on me in the dark. As I walk down the hall, I think how this darkness reminds me of those dreams where the lights won't turn on. I don't think about that too deeply at first, but a few moments later I realize that this is, in fact, one of those dreams. But I'm already waking up. (I was disoriented afterward, couldn't remember actually getting to bed, for a few moments.)

A fragment about a castle where there's a bottle containing the souls of witches, kept as a historical item for tourists to look at.

Based on Legend, I'm visiting Darkness. He's going on and on about his plans to marry Lili, have her kill the unicorn and so on, gloating. I say to him, no. Her human boy, Jack, he's on his way here, and she's going to have to make a choice. She might have sided with darkness for the moment, but my side's going to win her in the long run. Darkness grants me that point - but "we don't have years." The choice she makes in the moment is the one that matters, not whatever regrets she'll have afterwards.