Carabas

An earlier semi-lucid fragment - I'd been riding in a car someone else was driving, they took a turn much too fast and swung wildly into the next lane, and I was thinking to myself with some annoyance about how ridiculous dream driving can be sometimes.

There's two women locked up in a circular stone room with no apparent doors and a ceiling so high it can't be seen, like a well or a small tower. I get the impression they're a couple. They're both blonde, one with darker hair and wearing purple, the other with hair so light it's almost white. Hovering around the one in purple is this sort of little glowing gold ball; she's leaning towards the other one, who's unconscious, but who starts to softly glow when that glowing ball gets close to her. They're rescued by people who break through the wall - an old woman and several people I think of as Hunters who've been doing something with a fountain in the center of the room on the other side of the wall. The old woman looks at the hovering glowing ball and calls to the Hunters. "Got one more for you - two!" she adds when she sees that the unconscious woman is also glowing. As they get both the women free, the woman lifts this fancy white horn and says to the woman in purple, "It's yours." And then she quotes a riddle or poem or something similar that led them to this horn - "With the wit, the way." Wit turns out to have been a pun on wet, something to do with that fountain in the other room, and it's those two women locked up who'd figured it out.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man trapped inside something like an enormous hourglass, tied to a chair in the bottom half. It's slowly filling with this black liquid. I'm following this from the POV of a man outside the hourglass, watching. This is something like a form of brainwashing - the man in the hourglass is on the other side of some conflict, and a serious threat, and we're turning him to our side. But as a 3rd person observer, I'm aware this is going to backfire; we seriously underestimated how insane that man was to begin with, so making him loyal to us doesn't actually mean he won't still be a threat to us.

Still as that same character who'd been watching the hourglass, I leave the room and go to meet a woman I work with for lunch. But just before we start eating, someone bursts in and stops us - the food's been drugged, something connected to that man I'd left in the hourglass. We leave with that person who burst in, and as we walk he's saying, "We all talk about the war, but does anyone remember what it was about?" We don't. He explains something to do with Skins - the gold or silver markings on our skin that remind the 3rd person observer side of me a little of circuits. Mine are gold, the woman I'm working with has silver; in earlier times, we'd have been on opposite sides of the war. We find this an uncomfortable concept.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm a young man walking around our castle at night with a girl from a visiting family. We're supposed to get married sometime in the next year or so if negotiations keep going well. Neither of us are supposed to be out of bed right now, but we both were sneaking around on our own and happened to meet up. Right now we're hiding behind a door, watching the leaders of our families talking in the next room. I'm thinking that the colors they're wearing make them both look like they're part of the same family; my family's colors are red, gold and black, but right now our patriarch's only wearing black, except for the sword pin at his throat, which I think of as "hardly red at all" - a dark red, nearly black.

There are two women sneaking around a castle at night. They'd been intending to escape and then come back when the vampires are asleep and destroy them, but they've just now realized that the vampires never sleep; and on top of that, they've just realized that one of the vampire women here is the exact same woman written about in Quincey's journal. Reading this journal is the thing that made them realize their hosts were some kind of monsters - they don't know very much about vampires at all except what they've read in this journal. So it's a shock to discover that the women in this castle don't age or die, and the idea that the monster in Quincey's journal still exists makes them feel like they can't win. At some point Ephesia is mentioned, a woman's name, though I can't remember whose. One of them suggests giving up on their plan, since it seems hopeless, and tries to convince herself that becoming one of them wouldn't be so bad.

I've just arrived on the edge of a cliff, out of sight, and now I'm following a path through the trees into town. I'm shocked by the state of the place. Although visually, I-the-dreamer didn't actually see anything that looked unusual - it was night, the streets were empty, there wasn't much to see but it seemed like an ordinary small town - I had the impression that I-the-character was looking at foulness or decay, something along those lines. I hear a conversation like a voiceover, it's not part of this scene - I have the impression it's something said later, as if what I'm seeing is a flashback related to that conversation. In the conversation, I'm saying, "I saw-" and someone else cuts me off, saying "No. You didn't 'see.' You corrupted." They sound angry. That is to say, whatever's wrong with this town is due to my presence, or at least the person speaking believed so. Visually, I'm still walking through that town, and a woman appears in the street, shining or glowing, wearing white robes, and after a moment I recognize Erana. I'm very relieved and run to her; she's not looking at me, she's looking around at the town, looking like she's mourning.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

That same town, relatively early in the evening, when there are still people in the streets. I'm walking together with a married couple. I'm looking at two shops next to each other, and I'm remembering when the man I'm walking with praised this town to me, telling me I should come and visit him and his wife here, talking about the brightly colored buildings and the many-colored tiles on the roofs. I'm looking at the faded paint on these buildings and trying to convince myself that maybe it looks better in sunlight, but I don't think so. I mention this to him, and he brushes it off, vaguely implying that I'm misremembering what he'd said, or that he'd exaggerated, and that it's not important. I start to press the subject, asking his wife about the state of the town.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm walking on a dirt road just before dawn, sky's bright. The ground to my right drops off sharply into a valley which at the moment is filled with rising mist, and I'm stopping to enjoy the sight. It's very beautiful.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A mother and daughter in their library, the mother is standing over a book lying open on a stand, and the daughter is behind the stand, trying to get a look at the book. She holds up a candle to try to read, but her mother tells her you can't read it like this. The mother puts out her candle, and all the other lights, and when it's pitch black the book starts glowing. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking something about how this makes perfect sense for a book about darkness. The mother is focusing on the book and saying "I shan't flee from you around here, mortal." The light from the book flares up so brightly I can't see anything else.