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    1. The artist in the arena

      by , 01-11-2017 at 08:41 AM
      I'm talking to a man, a great inventor or artist of some kind, who's been given an arena to work in. The structure is very white and the sky is very wide and very blue, and the arena's filled with shadowy figures he's been given to work for him, something like automatons, not alive. Human-shaped, but when I focus on them they look a bit like something that's been burned to charcoal, flaking at the edges, except for their teeth, which are white and sharp; inactive right now.

      Until this moment I had a lot of contempt for this man. But he's saying to me, "I'm not an idiot," and that he knows he's already made his last great work. Though he's currently working on a project, and though his masters who gave him this arena have great expectations of him, he doesn't expect to live to complete it. His bitterness makes me think a little more highly of him.

      Working for these things was a mistake. I don't say this to him out loud. There are a couple floating hooded figures with white masks in the arena, and we're both putting on something of an act for them. They're not his bosses, or guards, exactly, but they are effectively monitoring him at the moment. Something more like citizens, as opposed to slaves like him, however honored a slave he might be. He turns off the music he's been listening to while he works, and he's trying to give the impression that he's simply stopping work for now and going to bed as usual, that there's nothing wrong.
    2. Iliona

      by , 08-19-2015 at 05:16 PM
      I'm in an in-between place - shallow pools of water, tall dark cliffs with broken statues and bronze mirrors, and a single whole statue: a hooded figure in a position that reminds me of Mary in the Pieta. One of the bronze mirrors I think of as still working after all - it shows an image of a woman from the turn of the century, and her image moves and looks at me. There's an association with 'a mother' here, though I'm not thinking of her as my mother. I can use her functioning mirror to escape. But first, there's a small vial here of brilliantly white light that I associate with 'love' in some way, which is needed for later, for something after I've escaped; it's the reason I came here.

      There's a house at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, very pleasant, and with a forge attached. A friend of mine is working in the forge right now, helping out the man who lives here, a man who is brilliant at designing certain things but who can't work in the forge himself. Because of him, there's a sword of sorts that's been reforged - there's an association here with a legend about light, and the sword itself is yellow and semi-transparent - and I'm about to take it to a woman named Iliona. But I'm concerned about my friend working in the forge. The designer has just told me that the spirits have already released my friend from his vows to the hold - there's no need for him to help the designer with the forge anymore. But my friend says to me, "I took his brother from him. I can do this much."

      Iliona lives in a small town, and as I'm walking down the hill into town, I'm openly carrying her sword in my hand. I'm met by a man who knows me well and his wife, Iliona's daughter, and they block my path, not trusting that I really am who I appear to be. I break the weapon that he's raised to me, and speak to him so that he sees I'm still myself. They let me through; they don't like it, but they defer to Iliona.
    3. Unnecessary show-off, missing words

      by , 12-22-2014 at 11:03 PM
      As Rumpelstiltskin, disembodied, I'm watching a woman lead a prisoner, a teenage boy, into a dungeon. She's complaining about how tired she is of hunting people down and dragging them back here across worlds. We're standing (well, 'standing' in my case, lacking a body at the moment) in a stone hallway, at the top of a staircase blocked by a door of iron bars. She locks that door behind the prisoner, and when she leaves he just sits down right there at the top of the stairs rather than going further down. He looks very confused. I'm aware he's not the only person in the dungeon, there's several people down at the base of those stairs, some of whom I feel personally responsible for, and I wonder for a moment if they've been fed today. I sometimes forget how often my guests need to eat. Then I remind myself that right now, it's not my responsibility to keep them fed - the people who took them prisoner will take care of that, they need their hostages alive. There's someone in that dungeon I want to take back, but I've got a few other things to see to first, while I'm disembodied.

      The scene skips ahead in time - no memory gap, just a shift to the bottom of the stairs and an awareness that this is meant to be later. A guard's come to feed the prisoners, and when no one comes to the top of the stairs when he calls, he opens the door to bring the food down himself and check on the prisoners. But when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he finds me sitting in the wooden chair in the center of the dirt floor. I'm wearing a hood that hides my face, but I always do. There's two kids beside me, royalty held hostage - one of them's my granddaughter, biologically but not officially, though she isn't aware of that and neither were the people who took her. But they should have been aware that I've always looked after her family. I wait until he's seen me, and until the look on his face shows that he knows who I am, and then I create a ball of fire in my hand. I enjoy this.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm returning to a tent in a military camp in some cold, snow-covered place, and there's this man who bows to me two or three times when he sees me, obsequious manner, irritating. I hear a voice as if I'm reading a line in a book: "This was the worst of ___'s nature, he told himself - a ___ who didn't know how to ___." (The blanks aren't things that I forgot after waking up - during the dream, the voice just cut out during those words. The first blank was meant to be the name of my POV character here; the other two had no mental associations.)

      Updated 12-22-2014 at 11:06 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    4. Taking the long way around, and Las Vegas

      by , 05-24-2014 at 09:12 PM
      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.)
    5. Semi-lucid chase scene

      by , 05-16-2014 at 07:57 PM
      Kuroshitsuji-based. I'm looking at a sort of frozen image of two people - as a disembodied observer, I can move around and look at this scene from different angles, but time isn't moving. Two figures in heavy fur-lined coats that cover them completely. I can't see their faces, but I'm aware the tall one in black is Sebastian, and the small one in white that he's carrying is Ciel and also myself. I'm focusing on the hood of Ciel/my coat - the opening for the face is completely in shadow, and something about the deepness and the blackness of that opening and the fact that the face can't be seen makes me feel sure he's a demon.

      I'm about to enter a temple, together with three or four friends and family. We're standing around an outdoor sink where you wash your hands before entering the temple, and I'm looking around and thinking about the beauty of the entrance. Over to the left there's a separate building that's also part of the temple compound, but not sacred, and when I realize the others haven't been there before, I insist we go see it first. There's a line to purchase entrance - which is very expensive - and they don't understand what this other place is, so I explain it to them while we're waiting in line. This building, the McKittrick, was built by an eccentric rich man who filled it with all manner of strange collections over his life. After he died, it was bought by a woman who- (My memory's vague about what I said that woman did, but it was something to do with folklore. Elves were specifically mentioned, prompting a scene change.)

      Third person, outside that building, it's night now. Three strange-looking figures that I think of as elves are standing around, agitated about something, waiting to execute some plan.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A friend of mine introduces me to a woman he's in love with - who turns out to be a living weapon sent to kill me. But she herself hadn't realized that; she was a sleeper agent, some kind of machine, programmed to become a weapon again the moment she saw me. It's painful to watch her personality disappear. I'm angry at the people who created her, and also blaming myself for involving both her and my friend. I try to take care of the situation without my friend finding out what's happening.

      This ultimately ends in a chase scene where I'm running from that friend. I go semi-lucid while flying to avoid him. There's a small stand of trees at the edge of the property, and as I reach them, I decide to change scenes; I stop among the trees and focus on the feel of the branches around me, trying to change the scene to a dense forest. When I stop focusing on the feel and look around again, I'm not in a forest, but the grass is much taller and the buildings around have vanished, and the friend I was running from flies over my head without seeing me.
    6. Zachary, Williams, and Tin Man

      by , 01-30-2014 at 10:48 PM
      An old man and a young man have just gone through a portal to another world, chasing someone who's stolen something. The old man asks around after him, but the description he gives, which would have been very unique in the world they're coming from, is almost useless in this one: they're looking for a man about 6 feet tall, dressed "like a warrior." The majority of the men they're talking to here are wearing armor, so that's not very helpful. Bit of a memory gap then, something involving a woman they know and the young man getting into trouble.

      The young man's in jail, where another man from another world - not the one they were looking for - is being kept separate, a big blond Viking-looking guy in a large cell full of straw, who seems a little lost and confused. He's being questioned by the jailer, who's talking about that woman who came up earlier; she has a very long series of names, ending with Williams. She's married to someone very respectable, and she's denied that she knows the man in the cell. The jailer is telling him this to try to get him to admit that his story about knowing her was a lie and confess what's really going on, but the man in the cell is completely bewildered. The young man, on the other hand, is aware that there are three versions of Williams, the one that belongs to this world, the one from his, and the one that loves this man in the cell.

      Williams arrives in the jail then - the young man believes she's the version from his world. She refers to the young man as Zachary, and she's carrying a fox - when I look at the fox, I'm aware that Zachary is a shapeshifter, and there's some connection to this particular fox. Williams goes to the man in the cell and she calls him "Tin Man," which is a sort of code name, and she's using it to reassure him of who she is and that she really knows him. Zachary believes that the Williams from his world has been posing as the version from this other guy's world in order to get some information out of him. She has him let out of the cell, and when he goes to her, their eyes - the fox's as well - start glowing green, and I have the feeling this means they're about to move between worlds. She looks to Zachary and says something apologetic, and he suddenly realizes that this is both his Williams and the one this guy loves, and that the fox is him - he's looking at their future.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Just fragments for the rest of the day:

      An intelligent species of birds that are dying out after losing all their females to some disaster, giving some other species advice in the hopes of avoiding that same disaster.

      Walking down a street, four dancers appear in front of us, concealing an assassin among them.

      Something to do with prison and hooded figures "finding their own way."

      Describing the story of the King in Yellow to someone.
    7. Mostly fragments, mostly fiction-based

      by , 01-22-2014 at 11:32 PM
      Several fragments based on Tolkien, involving hooded figures, the statement that "No (name of hooded figures) will survive Aragorn" which has some vague association with atheism, and a few scenes in which Aragorn is either fighting the hooded figures alongside one or two other humans, or calmly talking to them, and either way shown to be in complete control.

      As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm stopping by the door of one of the storerooms. Belle's inside, talking. The room's mostly filled with straw, but it also holds a mirror, and she's using it to speak with the image of an old woman sitting in a chair and knitting, a woman I know. The woman's giving her advice. I'm pleased - partially at seeing the two of them get along well, but mostly at seeing Belle making use of my magic. They stop talking and Belle turns around and sees me watching them, and I feign disinterest.

      As FK's Nick, I'm stretched out on the floor of my apartment, talking to someone and using a laptop on a low table to search for something; the side of me that's a disembodied observer associates this with the semi-lucid search techniques used in other recent dreams.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A vampire watching a woman turn, which at this stage mostly consists of becoming more physical, much like the old movies - not sexual specifically, just more aware of the senses. He's saying something about how there's no need to believe in a divine plan to explain the way they find each other again and again.

      Mina and Grayson are talking in a train car; she says she loves him, and the moment she does, he's flung by some invisible force out of the car, into the next, which is filling rapidly with water, up to the ceiling. He's thinking something regretful about Lucy.
    8. Rumi poetry, castles of graves and illusions, alchemy, and a search of an underground library

      by , 01-20-2014 at 02:29 AM
      There's a set of boxes which, when arranged properly, will display a poem by Rumi; it's a game, a puzzle. Each box is engraved with a few lines, the trick is in figuring out the proper order, and there are hints, such as do not separate the loved ones, send the child to school, don't leave him to wander the shore with the mermaid and her knife. The last part is easy enough - one box ends with a line about water spirits, another box starts with a line about a child, I'll just be sure not to connect those two; but there are quite a few different lines that could be interpreted as 'loved ones.'

      A woman is sending a message to her employers, as a result of which the building she's in will be locked down and everyone inside will be killed, including herself and her two assistants. Her assistants are artificially-created humans, and display no emotion, but I'm thinking that the loss of their lives is just as important as any other life.

      A woman has just been teleported into a castle, somewhere very dangerous, by someone named Anna, and she's very annoyed about this. Although Anna isn't here, the woman yells about it anyway, on the assumption that Anna will be watching her with magic. It's not just the danger that's upset her; at any other time she would have killed to be able to get into this castle, but right now, she'd been in the middle of something urgent, and she really needs to get back to it, so she looks for the way out. A hooded figure appears and reveals a passage to her, a passage that seems to violate the laws of physics and which is filled with a seemingly endless line of graves, and he tries to speak to her, to guide her into that passage, but she ignores him - she's spotted the main doors. As she walks away from the graves and towards the exit, she passes a box with some marking on it that makes her think about dragons, thinking of them as the product of elemental spirits that gathered together and festered.

      There's a crowd of people leaving a castle - although the castle looks historical/fantasy-ish, the clothes the people are wearing are futuristic, as is the glass-enclosed walkway they're leaving through. A woman who works for the castle as a kind of hostess is escorting a small group of people at the head of the crowd, congratulating them for winning a spot on some vessel, and then she says to the rest of the people following them, "Good luck in the race!" By which she means - these people are following the winners because they intend to take their spots by force, and the moment they're beyond the castle's protection it'll be every man for himself.

      At the end of the glass walkway, the hostess leaves them, and the people pass through some barrier. The people in the walkway had seemed, not necessarily good-looking, but like people who put a lot of effort into their appearance: well-dressed, well-groomed. Once they pass through the barrier, this changes: they're naked, they look like they haven't bathed or shaved in months, more fat, less muscle. The castle was a kind of retreat, but everything it provided was an illusion; now that they've left, the illusions disappear. The people's reactions vary - most of them are shocked, but there's an old man who seems to have expected this with a sort of I-told-you-so attitude about it. There's a teenage boy with a bad knee who's particularly horrified, as he'd believed his knee had been fixed by the castle; he's complaining to his parents that they might as well have stayed home, at least at home they had servants. The castle had its guests doing a variety of chores, citing the spiritual benefits; now it's clear that was a scam.

      A woman's saying, "It must not have been a good reality for Vanessa and Vilya." 'Vanessa' is an alternate version of herself. As she's speaking, I see the two people she's talking about, sitting before a very large fireplace. Vilya suddenly leaps up, as if he's just been hit by some stroke of inspiration, and he rushes to a table set up with a variety of alchemical instruments.

      Three people in an underground room, grey stone walls lined with bookshelves. A woman and an old man who she's close to, and a young-looking man who made some kind of deal with them - I'm a disembodied observer, but I recognize him from my most recent lucid dream, as the 'future version of myself' who doesn't actually resemble me at all and who looks more like he's from the past. They've barred the doors in the hopes of giving themselves a little more time before someone arrives to stop them - guards or police or military, something along those lines, they're expecting some specific group and they know it's just a matter of time. But they've come to this room to find something specific, and there are hundreds or thousands of books here and no obvious organization to them. The woman's saying "Wherever (something) it'll take us forever to find it." The young-looking man had been sitting down with his eyes closed; now he opens them. They're glowing yellow, which startles the woman. He says, "I have found it. He has used the Britannica articles-" He continues talking, but I've become distracted by curiosity about that locating technique he just used; I associate it with a search technique I'd used in yesterday's dream.
    9. Hooded figure in the mirror, angels and vampires who fell

      by , 01-14-2014 at 12:47 AM
      I'm standing in front of a row of elevators with reflective gold-colored doors, and in a sort of voiceover I'm hearing what sounds like an article about a scientific study of reflections. There's a lot of information that sounded reasonable at the time but didn't actually translate to waking life - for example, your eyes perceive this angle of motion and expect an impact that never comes, causing tension, and resulting in your attention focusing on this or that minor detail. As I get into the elevator, the article is saying something about there being two different ways to think of reflections which both carry different benefits, and it goes on to explain the two ways. I find this interesting and decide to experiment with switching to the other way of thinking, which is viewing your reflection as a separate person, even expecting it to talk. Acting on the article's advice, I address my reflection on the mirrored elevator wall. My reflection's a great deal taller than me, and completely covered by a hooded cloak. I find I like him - or it - a great deal.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Some vague fragment involving briefly passing through an exhibit to do with planets, and something about Artemis.

      There's a woman who's determined to hold onto the hand of some monstrously deformed figure who keeps trying to shy away. She's thinking about how she's been through some kinds of transformations in the past herself, so it takes more than some monstrous appearance to frighten her off. The monstrous one's thinking something about Cain, and something about two angels, one in favor of allowing the other's creations - humans - to develop variations of themselves (which is to say, to have children); the one who created them was opposed; and now he's found his downfall in a relationship with a human, which wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for that decision, allowing the humans to develop into new variations.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a man who's been running through the halls of a house and now reaches a dead end, a study with a portrait, which I briefly thought was a mirror. A man who's been following him at a walking pace comes into the room and starts talking about the portrait, and about the history of the man in the painting, who was - is? - a vampire. He says, "They forgive him the very thing he (something)," and then something about "fell." Meanwhile the man who'd been running is stumbling around the room with his hand over his stomach like he's been injured, saying "Please!" There's a resemblance between him and the portrait.

      Updated 01-14-2014 at 12:51 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid