Carabas

Earlier, was just lucid enough to deliberately fly upward with the intent of getting a wider view, instead lost visuals and wound up in a completely different scene, losing lucidity.

Standing on a ladder outside a suburban home, the wind shifts, hot and dry, a sense of the desert that's going to claim this place and incorporate it into my people's territory. I'm the one who led them to this place, but I feel conflicted now. I excuse myself to the man who'd been holding the ladder, and go inside to take care of some loose ends. There are too many signs of how personal an interest I've taken in this world, learning their language, getting much too attached; I should dispose of that evidence.

Elsewhere, among the troops, I'm speaking to one of them on behalf of a man in this world, Adam, trying to make sure they take care when they process him. I say I've never seen a dreamer with power like his before. Which is true, but I'm also being careful to phrase it in practical terms, downplaying any personal attachment. I have to stress the importance of him as a resource not to be wasted. The man I'm speaking to agrees that they'll be careful, but I don't think he's really paying attention, just brushing me off. I end the scene flying back to that suburban house, desperately searching for Adam.

The following scene focuses on a brother figure chiding me for hanging onto a ghost.

A woman's just rescued two men and they're currently escaping through a series of underground tunnels. She's just shoved one of them up a ladder, to a manhole leading out of this tunnel, but apparently that's her limit - she collapses onto the floor, which is a sort of metal grate over water. I can see blood on her face. The other man says, teasing about the way she's been telling him to just let her handle things this whole time, "This is your plan? To lie here and bleed to death?"

She says, "See, I knew you wouldn't be down with the plan."

He picks her up and carries her up the ladder. I switch to first person, from the POV of the man she'd shoved up the ladder before; we've climbed up to the level of the subway tunnels that are currently in use. We walk along the tracks for a while, and just as we reach a platform - currently empty, though I'm aware people could show up at any moment - we hear a train in the distance. I have to help both of them up onto the platform, he's so tired from carrying her, and I'm thinking about how we each keep exhausting ourselves to pull the other two up. I climb up after them, and collapse on the stairs, exhausted, listening to the train.