Carabas

A woman's landing a griffon. People come to meet her, and as she talks to one of them she's going to her bag and attending to her armor, getting out gloves and a helmet that weren't practical to wear while she was riding. She's talking about the things that need doing, acknowledging that some of them might be impossible at a small outpost like this, without the easy access to resources you get in the cities. And there's an animal strapped to the back of the griffon, restrained to keep it from hurting itself during the ride, in need of medical attention. They're next to the stables, but the griffon's too large for that - once everything's unloaded, it curls up on the ground like a cat, beside a tall fence.

That woman and the man she'd been talking to are walking past me into a circle of armed enemies. Someone in the crowd says, "It is the corruption against the corruption." They sound surprised. I'm ostensibly on the crowd's side, but I arranged to bring these two here tonight, and I expect them to kill the man who leads this little group, currently sitting on a kind of throne. Although I say nothing, I see him watching me and I can tell he understands my intention - or more likely he's imagining some grand paranoid plan; but my plan here is very straightforward, just his death. I'm aware he and I are a minor nuisance for these people I've brought here, just something to be dealt with on their way to something else - I have a vague association with the moon - not at all the grand schemes he's been imagining.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a city and taking the opportunity to meet with an old friend who was reassigned here recently, a promotion. She works in a form of law enforcement. She's talking about the changes on the island where we last saw each other, talking about the ongoing conflict there. She says the forest has been burned down, so they'll have no more place to hide. There's no more way to get past the patrols skating over the water - I have a mental image of a ring, a platform floating on the water, encircling the whole island, with the port itself as the only opening.

She describes all this as if they're good things. Time was, she'd be helping me get my people out of places like that. She's met the man who leads the people in that forest - his people aren't mine, but their situation is nearly identical. But I'm thinking, I shouldn't be surprised - the last time she helped me, something happened that frightened her. It's why she stopped working with me. My people weren't at fault, but I'm not surprised that she'd take that fear out on them. But listening to her now, talking as if my people should be locked up, it's like she's forgotten I'm one of them.

As Constantine, I'm strapped to a chair again while a man in a suit - a different one from last time, older - is loading a film strip into a projector. When he turns it on, it shows an external shot of Ravenscar. I remember this moment in time, this guy with the projector - this is when I was sealed off from magic. It wound up only being temporary, but the observer side of me is terrified of getting caught in the start of that without being able to stick around long enough to come out the other side. I don't want those mental associations getting into my head. I bail out of Constantine's perspective.

I'm on a small boat, the size of a rowboat but moving under its own power, taking me and several others in their own boats across a lake. It's surrounded by walls, artificially made, rounded so that the lake as a whole is circular - I associate this with the moon. The walls are composed of several giant slabs of pale stone, many of them carved with some message in hieroglyphics. Once I notice this, I have the boat back up to the first stone with carvings on it. It starts with the name of the artist and a short line in praise of the king who commissioned this work. The next panel includes two jackals, along with a lot of hieroglyphics I can't read, and I wonder whether the jackals are Wepwawet or someone else - there's nothing that looks like a name or a title, even among the hieroglyphics I can't read. In fact, I'm not sure I should call them hieroglyphics at all - aside from that first panel with the artist's name, the rest of this represents concepts, not words. The symbols I can recognize on the third panel include two rattles and a woman kneeling. This represents music and dance. It becomes clear to me that this entire series of symbols is depicting a prayer ritual - not just depicting it; the walls themselves are a prayer given physical form.

There's a woman who's been running from a very powerful man, and I've agreed to bring her back to him. But the powerful man isn't the one I'm doing this for - the woman's uncle is the one who made a deal with me. For the sake of the rest of his family, he needs to stay in that powerful man's good graces. Now that woman's standing on some platform above me, I'm on the ladder below. She's pointing to two objects on that platform just out of my line of sight, saying, "This is that gun you've been waving around, and this-" But I don't stop to hear the second part - I reach up and knock that gun off the platform, out of both of our reach. She tries to stop me, holding a knife, but she reacts too slowly, the gun's already gone. She shouldn't have wasted time trying to talk with me. We struggle over the knife for a bit, and I manage to turn it so it winds up embedded in the wooden platform instead of in me, but she recovers from that and quickly escapes before I can climb up the ladder.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

My partner and I are breaking a group of men out of a jail or dungeon or something similar. The men insist on taking the time to steal water from this place before they leave - they don't believe me when I tell them the place we're going will have plenty of water. It's faster to let them do it than to try to convince them - but for crying out loud, could you at least stick to the relatively sanitary stuff? Finally we get them moving, and we head up a flight of stairs, my partner leading them, me hanging behind to make sure we're not followed. I wind up falling further behind than I intended; at the top of the flight of stairs, we cross a long hallway with paintings on the walls, and then head down another flight of stairs. By this point I've fallen so far behind that I've lost them.

At the bottom of the flight of stairs, I'm in a place that's something like an airport lounge for travel between worlds, a transportation hub. The people here are speaking French, and I talk to one of them to confirm that I've arrived in the location we'd intended. Through a floor-to-ceiling glass window, there's a great view of the ocean and several green islands. It also overlooks several other glass corridors running through this place, and I see my partner leading the men from the jailbreak through one of them. They look completely bewildered. One of them sees me and gestures, clearly wondering how I managed to get over there. I should join them, but honestly, no one's chasing us, my partner's got the babysitting side of things covered, and that ocean looks really inviting.

After flying over the ocean for a while enjoying the view, I come across an area where a few people are swimming. I drop down into the water and join them. The further I go, the more crowded it becomes - it's beginning to get irritating. I try to talk with someone who seems interesting, but there's a woman right next to us showing off some kind of athletic feat who's talking constantly and difficult to hear over. I comment, "She's very loud, isn't she?" She immediately gets louder, ridiculously loud, and I remember that narrative versus command thing I'd been thinking about yesterday. Whoops. "Be quiet, please," I tell her, and while that's a command, she immediately goes back to a normal volume. Deciding to use the narrative to clear a little more space, I close my eyes, lose visuals, and describe the space clearing out - but while it does feel like I've got a little more space to move, when I open my eyes again, I find I'm opening my real ones.

From Buffy, I/Spike am meeting Dru for the first time. Found her lying in an alley, looking unfocused. In this version of the story, the William the Bloody nickname doesn't come from poetry. Scene changes to present-day, transitioning with Dru describing that last scene, clearly fond of the memory; she says she liked seeing that sort of initiative in the living. She's putting it in terms that are disturbing the woman she's talking to.

Nearby, I'm also reminiscing about Dru to someone else. We used to play this game with the people who'd hunt us. Scene changes to show the game - I'm running into a churchyard, holding a cross or something like it in one hand and some weapon in the other, run up to the hunter all wide-eyed. Make like I'm volunteering to join his hunt, country kid all full of admiration, or like the monster's right behind me - either way, the point's just to get in close. Not challenging enough to be called a game maybe, but we still thought it was fun.

The first run-through of the scene, I 'won' the game easily, but then I'm remembering a second one with this weathered old woman who was suspicious of me right from the start, didn't buy the act. Circling around her, I wound up climbing further into the hills covered in graves, and as I climb I transition partially out of the Spike character. I'm hearing voices up here among the graves, not from the graves themselves but still tied to this place - three men who were here a long time ago and moved on, people I've been looking for traces of for a long time. I can't hold on to what they're saying.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

From Hellblazer, I/Constantine am walking out a back door into a narrow courtyard and out a large gate, then turn back to look at the building I've just left. Ravenscar. The image is distorted - I'm looking at a long wall with a gate in the center, one tower visible over it, and a few windows opening onto that courtyard, letting you see a little more of the building, and that's all fine enough; except it looks impossibly tall, and at strange slanted angles, and the views through those windows are showing me more than should be possible as I look up and up and up. I catch glimpses of the moon through those windows sometimes. In a stunning lack of lucidity, I think of this as "the place that haunts my dreams."

Scene changes. I'm still looking up at that extreme angle, but I'm looking at a different place, focusing on this life-sized stone statue of a woman high above me in the moonlight. I have a sense of something religious about it, like she's meant to be praying, though there's nothing about her position to suggest it, or like she's meant to be an angel, though there's no wings. I think something along the lines of, "Of course, it would be her," with a sense of resignation.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man begging me for something, and I'm tired of this, bored. I tell him, life, death, pick one, plead your case, make it convincing, you've got one minute, go. It takes him a moment to process this, but then he starts singing.

I recognize the song from a theatre show I enjoy about Lucifer, but can't place the scene immediately - at first I think it's Lilith's song. I'm amused - you think reminding me of her will make me more sympathetic to you too? I like the inspired emotional manipulation, but that's not going to work - she moved me, he didn't. But then I recognize the actual song. It's from the story of a woman who had to choose between love and advancing her career as a dancer - she chose dance. The song is about her calling herself foolish for causing pain to them both, her and the boy she loves, but ultimately defending her choice as a valid one.

As Kang Chi in modern times, I meet Yeo Wool. She remembers me. We're both shocked. I have a false awakening in which I try to tell IRL friend S. about that dream, and then go on to a few IRL-based scenes - trying to find a place to park in NYC, and trying to form words out of a jumble of letters.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

In the past. Kang Chi and Yeo Wool are meeting up in this hut in the mountains outside of town. They have to separate, and they're being very loudly upset about it. It's just before dawn, and as a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking they must be waking people up in town, they're so loud.

Kang Chi's lying on his back in that town at night, looking up at the full moon. It looks massive, taking up most of my field of vision. He's meant to be meeting Yeo Wool soon and traveling somewhere together, but he's convinced himself she won't come anyway - there's something that's happened between them or something she's involved in that's on his mind, but he's not thinking about it directly. He's talking to himself out loud, convincing himself that she won't come and he should just leave on his own.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Kang Chi's delirious, standing outside somewhere on the edge of that same town and calling for someone he calls brother - not a literal brother. Yeo Wool's trying to get him to move, but as he starts talking like this, she remembers a time in the past when they were in trouble in this same place and Wol Ryung had helped them. He and Kang Chi had called each other brother sometimes - it's partially a reference to being the same species, and partially acknowledging each other as close while sidestepping the complicated family issue. So she realizes that, delirious, Kang Chi's calling Wol Ryung for help. Wol Ryung's dead.

Kang Chi and Yeo Wool are traveling together in a very distant place. Yeo Wool's wearing modern clothes - no one else is. They're surrounded by soldiers carrying spears and a froglike nobleman on horseback - not a human being. The two of them raise daggers to their own throats, threatening to kill themselves rather than let the froglike man capture them alive.

As Kang Chi, I'm outside and looking through a window at Yeo Wool. There's a luna moth on the window.

And then two IRL-based scenes - catching and releasing an insect, and a visit from an IRL sister's friend.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

In modern times, Kang Chi's at a studio where they're filming a movie or a show, and a woman is talking to him, sounding very irritated. Without naming any names, she makes it clear there's been rumors going around about someone who works here being viewed as violent, potentially dangerous. Kang Chi's thinking this is about Yeo Wool - she's recently become nonhuman, and the adjustment period can be rough. Which makes this his responsibility. Without specifically naming names, Kang Chi tries to get the woman to confirm that it's Yeo Wool she's talking about. But Yeo Wool's just appeared at the end of the hall, and the woman says to ask her himself and stalks off.

And then an IRL-based scene involving studying Agamemnon.

I walk through a door and come out in my IRL yard, thinking about how to get out of this situation (what that situation was, I no longer remember), when I remember this is a dream. I start flying, which I think of as a useful way of escaping that situation - my first instinct is to continue the dream storyline. Then I realize that since this is a dream, there's no reason for me to continue to deal with that situation at all. I'm looking up at a gibbous moon (it's in a different phase IRL. Also it was night in the dream; and there was no snow on the ground, though the trees were bare; and there was a bush that IRL was cut down years ago). Looking at that moon, I immediately (and accurately) remember two lucid goals that have to do with the moon, and I decide to fly up there. However, I get distracted thinking about those two different goals - the second one doesn't necessarily have to be done on the moon, and I wonder if trying to focus on both at once could throw me off.

Slight memory gap. While flying, I've somehow wound up getting entangled with some Christmas lights my IRL neighbor put up near the power lines - red, white and blue ones - and I've managed to damage the string of white lights. Although I'm still aware I'm dreaming and still intend to fly to the moon, I've lost some lucidity - I think I have to fix these lights first.

But after accomplishing that, I find something else that distracts me - a Bowie album called 'evil on sale' - and lose lucidity entirely.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a child who's the young, orphaned, lord of an estate. He's been asleep or unconscious for some days after some incident that put him in danger, and now that he's woken up he's found that his servants - one in particular, who's also a magician or something similar - have changed things about the house while he was unconscious. This house used to be full of secret, magical things - taking care of them was part of the duty of the lord of this particular estate - and now they've all been removed, for his own protection. The lord doesn't like this at all. He's run down to the cellars, where a locked door used to open onto a place where they kept a pair of unicorns, which are no longer there - that magician servant is here in the hall outside that locked door, up on a step ladder, dusting a lamp. The lord's talking to a young, blonde servant girl who'd been the one to inform him about the changes in the first place, he's desperately hoping that she'll tell him the unicorns are just outside in the fields, but he knows that won't be the case - they're gone.

Alice (of Wonderland) kneels down and waits. I can see movement behind her, something approaching, but I can't see it clearly from this angle, it's hidden behind Alice, until it gets close enough to be standing right behind her: a man and a woman, something off about their eyes. I'm aware they're here to take her to (Purgatory or the Underworld, something like that). I can hear music, a tune that reminds me of vaudeville.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Three people from a motorcycle gang, driving down an empty highway surrounded by fields of tall dry yellow grass, passing a billboard where the ad's been scraped off. I can only remember vague fragments of the previous scene, but it had been focused on the leader of these three, and he'd been trying to escape something - fate, his role in life, something like that. The transition to this scene means he's failed to escape. He's thinking something about a murder that happened in the past. There are police ahead of them, waiting for them.

POV switches to those 'police', although they look more like military. Weapons are being distributed, grenade launchers, and one of them exclaims over the model, he's very knowledgeable about it and excited to be using it - he says his father or uncle used this same model in a certain war. Another cop, one who'd been in that war himself, says something sarcastic, along the lines of "Did he? That's nice. Did he bring it home for you to play with?" The cop who'd been excited goes quiet, says "Well, no, but..." The cop who'd been in the war doesn't like hearing it talked about by people who weren't there, feels strongly about those memories being something you should keep apart, not bring home to your family. But he starts talking about it now - he says, "Good war, (he says a year). A single man could've turned the tide by pledging his country to one power or another. And even a warrior likes to hear that."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in the moon kingdom from PGSM. (One of my lucid goals is to travel to the moon - I suspect that inspired this non-lucid.) Chibiusa's here, she grew up here, and I'm thinking, wait, how can Usagi and Mamoru's daughter be living in this time period?

The scene changes with that thought. In the present, on earth, Mamoru's working as some kind of private security, wearing a suit, standing with other security around a limo that's stopped in the middle of the road, having some kind of confrontation. He's in trouble here, and he's aware Usagi's in trouble elsewhere and he won't be able to reach her to help her. He's holding something small and black, and he's remembering when it was given to him by a man who told him some words to memorize in order to use it, to transform. I'm thinking, the fact that he had to memorize the words indicates that he wasn't Endymion at all, he was simply playing Endymion's role, filling in for him; this was also indicated by the uniform that he transformed into, which resembled Endymion's but was much darker, almost black, unlike the real Endymion's much lighter blue. Now that he's trapped, he passes that black object along to one of the other men working security with him. He starts to tell that man the words he must memorize, but as he starts to say them, the man taking the black object finishes the words himself, he already knows them - indicating that, by chance or rather by fate, that black object has finally been passed on to its real owner. Endymion's true, light, uniform appears on him, and he leaves to find Usagi, flying through the air - which I have an incredibly bad feeling about. The real Endymion isn't necessarily a good person for Usagi to know.

The other people Mamoru was with have left the scene, Mamoru's now kneeling in the street, surrounded by cops with a misunderstanding, and a police detective is holding a sword to Mamoru's throat. One of the cops calls the detective away - there's some order over the radio that means both that they're needed elsewhere and that Mamoru isn't guilty of whatever it was they think he did and should be released. The detective is extremely reluctant to follow this order, he doesn't want to let Mamoru go. The cop relaying the orders from the radio phrases those orders in a way that praises the detective's work up until now and stresses how much he's needed, and finally the detective releases Mamoru and he and the cops all get into their cars and drive off, towards a bridge.

A nightmare from over the weekend:

I'm watching a TV show involving something supernatural, and the character in the show is looking at a TV screen with some monster/demon/spirit/etc on the other side of the screen, coming closer, intending to break through. It looks like a white-skinned (literal colorless white) woman with brilliantly red hair and this blazing sparking moving light where its eyes should be. I notice that I can see it not just on my TV but on all the reflective surfaces in the room, and I know it's really trying to break through into the real world. I try holding it back with various protective symbols and calling on various things (not Apollo, curiously, as that's been my go-to nightmare cure recently; possibly it's because this one's not on the theme of darkness like all the others were) but they're not very effective, I have the feeling it's only a matter of time. At the same time, the door at the far end of the hall is open - I came through it earlier - and through it I can see a woman laughing, different from the woman in the screen but I have the feeling they're related. Feeling like I don't have much time, I sprint across the hall, slam the door and lock it. The dream 'camera' zooms in on that image of the lock turning, and closely focuses on the feel of it - and then the scene isn't a nightmare anymore. The thing on the screen is gone, now it's showing the main character saying to his sister, "It's you and me, we're all we've got now."

At some point while I was watching the show (I can't remember whether it was before or after the nightmare part), I thought to myself that watching creepy things every week might impact your dreams.

(Woke up around 5:30, an hour after bed, with a high-pitched ringing in my ears that reminds me a little of TV static, so that was presumably the cause of this. Recall for the rest of the day was terrible.)

Tonight's dreams:

People living in tunnels who have to move due to some imminent danger.

I'm walking through this vast room, mostly filled with a pool of water, cranes are standing in it, and one of the people I'm with comments on the way one of the birds is holding its leg up out of the water, she says she bets it's pointing to something, we should investigate. I disagree, but investigate anyway just to prove the point. I float above the water, and pass various cranes pointing in different directions, meaningless. But at the far side of the room I meet a man, a traveler, who I start talking to and who decides to come with us; he's standing beside this curtained alcove, and through the white curtains I get a glimpse of this beautiful woman sitting on the stone floor in white robes, hair down to the floor, and at first I think she's wearing a mask, something representing the moon, and I think she must be a princess or a priestess. Then I realize that's not a mask, it's her face, beautiful and strange.

3rd person, that traveler and the man who I was in the previous scene are walking down a flight of stairs with a little boy running ahead of them. There's a festival, a sending on of spirits, which are these floating pale lights filling the room, sending them on involves covering them with cloth, and the boy reaches for one of them, but it's acting differently than the others. The traveler says that because this one had been killed, it would be wrong to send her on in that form. The light takes on the image of the little girl it had been, and starts talking to the little boy, calling him Koya, saying he's gotten older. He tells her he's not Koya, sounding frustrated, but one of the older men says quietly to him that she needs him to be the person she's waiting for.