Recent DJ Posts

While guiding a woman through a certain demon's territory, I make a deal with him for safe passage. I offer him what appears as a glass paperweight in the shape of a globe. It represents a world that's about to die, though the inhabitants aren't aware of that yet. Neither was the demon.

He's sorry to hear it, he'd enjoyed that world - hence why I'm offering him my rights to it. It's the same sort of emotional tone you'd use for a game that's coming to an end. I'd hoped it would end differently, but it failed, which means now it's just another piece of territory for us to use as bargaining chips. He takes the deal.

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.

I'm wading through icy water, tracking someone down. It's dark, the water looks black, and there's this mist in the air, I can't see very far. There's bodies floating in the water, wrapped in cloth. There's another man here with me, he calls me by the name of Logan. I'm focused on the dampness in the air - it caused problems earlier when we couldn't get a fire to catch.

Thinking about fire makes me see another time, standing in a large stone hall, standing off to the left of the woman presiding over some ceremony, having to remain still throughout her speech, wearing armor, uncomfortable. There were rows of people arranged in front of us, and as she called each of them up she'd hand them a lit candle, symbolic, but I was looking at those candles and thinking of them as never enough to hold off the chill.

Back in the icy water, we've found the person we were looking for in a little area surrounded by bare trees. He's standing off to one side and watching an old woman perform some kind of ceremony, something like a funeral for the old ruler here - I have a vague impression of something strung up among the trees, either the last ruler's bones themselves or at least something representing them. She knows who we are. She tells me that just because I've killed the old ruler, that doesn't make this place mine. The territory is passed down through the blood, and there's still someone with the elf blood to inherit it - the man we've been tracking down. He's not related to the old ruler, and he's more human than anything else, as is she, but that doesn't matter; this territory will remain in the hands of his people, not mine.

The man in question objects to this - this is a situation being forced on him. He tells me he's sorry. The guy who'd tracked him down with me makes some sarcastic comment, telling him to quit the humble act; but I believe him, this isn't something he'd wanted. Nonetheless, the old woman's in the right; there's nothing I can do here, we've lost. I tell him it's all right. It's only when I speak and hear the tone in my voice that I (the dreamer side of me) realize he and I (the character side of me) had been sleeping together; we're most likely going to have to end that now.

The old woman resumes her ceremony, now involving him. It doesn't take long, just a few words. There's a wreath of pale yellow flowers which he accepts from her; as soon as the ceremony's done he drops it and it falls apart in the water. I'm thinking of the moment I first met him, when he'd been locked up in a cell.

There's a secret meeting going on in the basement of a whorehouse; the woman who runs this place and her girls give us shelter on a regular basis. One long table, only two actual chairs which are taken by the leader of one of the larger camps and myself (which seems like a waste since I wind up spending most of this scene on my feet), everyone else makes do without. The last of us has just arrived, and I've started to show a video I recorded earlier, a conversation between me and another man - one of my own kind, unlike the humans at this meeting. I walk around the room as the video plays, narrating here and there but for the most part it speaks for itself. I'm using this video as evidence to convince them to take some action against the other man in the video. When the video's done, the meeting breaks up for a bit. People talk privately.

As I walk around the room, I come across someone sitting against the wall who becomes very agitated as I approach. I remember him - I'd once done something thoughtlessly cruel to someone or something he cared about. I apologize to him now, and I genuinely mean it - I tell him I don't expect him to forgive me, but for whatever it's worth, I want him to know that I am sorry I did it. I'm not at all sure he understands what I'm saying. There's someone with him who's very protective of him - I leave them alone.

On the other side of the room, as I'm taking down the video equipment and thinking about the convenient access to electricity here, a woman named Carol approaches me. She's one of the camp leaders, I admire her greatly - we'd been part of the same territory once, but she and her people broke away from me. To my surprise, she's come to call a truce. She doesn't want the personal grudge between us to influence her people, since we're on the same side for the moment. But she reminds me that she's keeping an eye on me, she has people planted in my territory, she doesn't trust me. I remind her that I could say the same to her - I have eyes in her camp, and she's not exactly universally loved by her people, they could easily be convinced to remove her. I say to her, amused, "It's not exactly one-sided."