Carabas

Based on F/SN, as Emiya, I've just found myself in a timeline where I'm acting as Servant to the white-haired version of Sakura. I'm thinking that I've been through this type of timeline before, and there are only two ways events play out after this point, neither of which I want to go through again. I'm trying to think up a way to avoid repeating those same patterns, to create a third possibility instead. At the moment, I'm helping Tohsaka climb up into some passageway, to either hide or escape from Sakura.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After a series of extremely loosely IRL-based scenes (although I thought of all the locations as IRL-based, the only thing that actually resembled IRL was my own identity), I'm walking into the lobby of a hotel where I'm living, heading for the stairs. I pass a woman working at the front desk, a woman with straight black hair in a bob. Looking at her, I think that she reminds me of the woman who appeared in a shared dream with my IRL sister years back, in which she'd been my sister's roommate. Her hair's longer this time. When I make eye contact with her, I become lucid. I immediately start floating. I remember my intention to try summoning Julia today (usually my most common recurring DC, she hasn't reappeared since my first and last attempt at deliberately summoning her), and I start to do so, but then I change my mind about the method - rather than try to summon directly, it's easier for me to 'summon' by traveling. Since I'm still moving towards the stairs, I decide that Julia is at the top of those stairs. It's a spiral staircase, gold railing, huge, in the center of the room; it reminds me of a pillar and also of DNA. As I focus on it, I become aware that I'm waking up. I can feel the bed against my back, and the image of the staircase has frozen, as if I'm no longer moving. It gives me the impression that it's melting - not the staircase itself, but the visual image, like a filter being applied to a photo. I lose visuals. I spend some time trying to force the dream to reform, and have the feeling I'm getting somewhere, there's a brief sense of something shining in the darkness, but I eventually have to admit that I'm now too awake for this.

Except it's a false awakening. I spend some time in that same hotel lobby, looking through my backpack, trying to find a pen with which to write down that dream, before waking up for real.

I'm in a store that sells various forms of blades, among other things, and my attention's caught by an iron mask with a strangely curved dagger set into it, removable. (After I woke up I realized the dagger's shape was inspired by F/SN.) The mask's face seems very narrow, but I believe that the mask's features will fit themselves to the wearer. The eyes are particularly narrow and I don't see any holes to look out of. There's a long and narrow stylized beard that reminds me of ancient Egyptian art, which would cover the wearer's neck, and the mouth is designed to look as if it's been sewn shut. I like it.

I'm distracted by the sound of more people arriving outside. There's a brief confrontation but they dismiss me and the people I'm with as not threatening, which irritates me. There's some debate over whether this post-apocalyptic, breakdown-of-society situation we're in will last, or whether things will return to normal in a few days.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are three astronauts who've said or done something that their bosses wouldn't approve of, and they've ceased broadcasting in a way that implies they're dead or soon will be. But when I talk to someone who wasn't watching their broadcast live, I find she's got a different impression of events, she believes everything's fine, and some reasonable-sounding excuse has been given for why the astronauts are no longer broadcasting. Their previous broadcast has been censored or changed.

I'm playing a piano, using sheet music for a jazz tune I'd never heard before. The sun's going down, and the light gradually darkens until I can't make out the sheet music in front of me.

Part of a castle has been blocked off to the public for a photoshoot I'm working on. There's a woman hanging around just outside the blocked off area, watching us; she's very pretty, with long red hair under a hat. It starts raining a little and we take a break, and I go over to smoke by the entrance. That woman comes over to me and we start talking. After a while, she tells me she's the daughter of someone I know, someone I watched die in hospital just yesterday. Thing is, in the present, that daughter is just a young child; I have a mental image of seeing her, as a child, in the hospital. There's something to do with timelines or the dead going on. I don't believe her. She tells me she's wanted to see me, and implies that in her own time, I'm dead. Some other people from the photoshoot come over then and distract me for a moment, and then the woman is no longer there.

I can't get a couple light switches to work, and realize this is a dream. (Noteworthy: that's a common dream sign for me, but up until now, it only happened if I went to sleep so early that it was still dark IRL, usually around 5 AM. This time I went to sleep at a normal hour, after sunrise.) I have a false awakening: I'm in my IRL bed, but am fairly sure I'm still dreaming. I wonder what to do with this - I look up at the ceiling and consider removing it and going flying. However, I'm distracted by the sound of a crash, and I see my computer (an old desktop model which I don't actually own IRL) has fallen over and broken. I forget about dreaming and get irrationally stressed about having to replace the computer. (I suspect there may have been an actual noise IRL that affected the dream.)

Based on F/SN, a bunch of photos showing the future of various timelines. I focus on one showing Saber in a park by a lake, with skyscrapers in the background, and it becomes the setting of the dream; someone who I at first mistake for Archer is teasing her, and he winds up falling in the lake. He's wearing some sort of uniform that I associate with the Mage's Association, and which I think of as being 'Saber's colors' (it's blue and gold), marking them as partners; then I realize he's an older Shirou, not a version of Archer.

I'm approaching a dance in the woods together with someone I know, and I recognize the song playing - Bottom of the River, Delta Rae. We walk over to three woman sitting around a fire, to speak with them. I think of the Fates and the Graces.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm Shirou, and Tohsaka's just walked away from those three women from the previous scene, and before I follow her, one of those women says to me, "Nothing like that to make your magic full of fear." I'm thinking that I have just enough awareness of Archer's memories to know there's something I don't want to remember; remembering it would cause me to repeat the same choices he made, and that's not what this timeline's for.

I'm reading an article about genius, stating that long-term caffeine use has disruptive effects on the brain.

I'm trying to buy something but I've upset the woman working the counter somehow and she's refusing to ring me up, or any of the other customers for that matter. She goes so far as to call the police. I literally offer her the shirt off my back - a basketball jersey, something that's worth something to her. We strike up a conversation, and she winds up being friendly.