Amurehna

I liked that the twists were surprises. I usually have a tiny thread of lucidity that makes me meta the hell out of my dreams.

Anyway. My starting point was a little confusing. First I see a wounded Damon Salvatore, on the phone with Elena. It's night, he's crusted with blood and looks ten kinds of awful. The camera pans over and I see a white figure standing at the corner of the frame. I' m worried because the thing looks like a threat. But then Damon says something about running into a Sarvati (the white figure, now wringing his hands). Elena asks if he's alright, because apparently Sarvati are dangerous.
"It's fine." Damon says with his trademark smirk. "I persuaded him to help." he pauses. "What about you?"
"Getting a little help of my own. Maybe." She says, and I finally see her. She's in a barn, the moonlight shining through the open door. "I have a plan, I'll let you know if it works." She seemed hurt, too, but it isn't apparent how. Hanging up the phone, opens her mouth wide and lifts her wrist. I assume she's going to feed on herself to heal...and I'm doubtful that would even work.
The camera pans out and I recognize the setting.

In this version of the story, Stefan became like Michael and only fed on vampires. Also being a ripper meant he hurt many people before his friends were able to subdue him. Weary of fighting his hunger, he allowed himself to desiccate and made a deal: he would sleep until they found a cure.
There he lay, under a bare foot of soil, in a weathered wooden crate. Elena meant to feed Stefan. Of course.
For a moment I am irrationally angry with Elena. They had promised him! And here she was, at the first sign of trouble, waking Stefan to his torment. It seems so selfish and, only for a moment, I hate her.

They will need him, though. He is a definite ally in a sea of mistrust. There's a new creature in Mystic Falls. They are vampire/zombie hybrids. In the early days of their Turning they drink the blood of humans, but then require flesh to survive. They can walk in the daylight and may subsist on human food for a time, if they are disciplined. Though the first was the result of a spell cast by a powerful sorcerer, it could be spread via saliva. So, naturally, the first Turned would be a whore of a football player.
A girl named Sandra who looked like the actress Annalynne Mccord is the only one who really notices that the school is slowly slipping into chaos. The faculty are nowhere to be found and sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, certain people have ashen skin. She used to be a cheerleader but has since lost her taste for it. No one knows that the hiatus she took from school wasn't a vacation, she actually went to a care facility for anorexia. There are students milling around, crowding the halls, and debris on the floor. Sandra walks into the locker room, uncertain, arms crossed over her abdomen. She spots Stacy who looks gray, talking to a chubby, blond, blue-eyed Davina Claire. Stacy asks her if she's thrown in her lot for the party food, that they were thinking about ordering pizza, but she has a better idea. In her hands is an advertisement for a company known as Meal A day. Sandra knows it well. Upon release from the hospital, Meal A Day had delivered healthy meals to her door three times a day, she checked her progress after every meal and they took the plates. Each seemed a small victory over the illness.
"So have you signed yet?" Stacy asks.
"You know me." Davina says, "Always hungry."
Sandra intuits that Davina is bulimic. She isn't sure if she can trust a near stranger with her secret, but it would be worth the risk if she could help.
The students don't realize that they are signing up to be the food and their dietary preferences will determine who will be consuming them.
Their hunger is a quiet, fervent energy, a slowly building frenzy. They are cunning in their design.
"I put a spell on you. You're mine now." A male voice says.

I return to the barn where Stefan shakes dirt from his hair. His eyes are an unnatural golden brown, he wipes Elena's blood from his mouth. Still disoriented, he asks how long it has been.
I loathe Elena's sheepish look, wishing she'd just left him alone.
"You've been down for a little over a day."
His expression twists in wry amusement, tinged with pain. "What's happened now?" He asks as she helps him stand.
"I'll explain on the way, we don't have a lot of time." Elena replies. She hopes Damon won't be too angry, he wanted to honor Stefan's wishes.
"I'm assuming you didn't bring a car?" He says this with an air of contained amusement that is achingly familiar. She smiles, casting her eyes to the dirt floor and dipping her head. He grins suddenly. "You always did love to run."
They had always loved to run together.
Yet, this is not a reunion of lovers, just friends who were lovers once upon a time. Their love has since mellowed into fondness. They exit the barn into the soft summer night. Lucidity here is a sweet thread that pulls me through Elena and then back out to observe. They are so happy to be together. Their hasty separation, though it seemed longer to him, had worn on them. This reunion is like the giddy absence of pain amidst torture. For a time, they don't think about what they will face when they arrive at town, or that Stefan will return to the ground when this new threat is stamped out, only that they are here again, running together.

The moon's cloak of clouds pulls apart to reveal swathes of landscape. The grass is deep blue-green, knee high and soft against my legs and bare feet, Elena is wearing a flowered dress. They run almost human slow. Then I am her, smiling as he draws up next to me. His silhouette is immensely comforting. I trip, tumbling into the sweet grass. I fall and roll, we laugh at my clumsiness. And like a dance, he is there to take my arm and help me up. I have been explaining the threat. This fits seamlessly with the male voice speaking at the end of the last segment. Elena tells him about what the sorcerer said.
"He didn't." Stefan says, smiling.
"He didn't even get it!" Elena laughs, then they share a joke, singing "I put a spell on you, and now you're mine." and express their disbelief that their new villain said it in all seriousness. I separate from Elena and pull back as they reach the river and leap across, as graceful as deer.

*sigh* I'm getting a little sick of the undead theme. Seriously.

First, a few fragments.
Fragment 1: Toes
I'm looking at my big toe, it looks like there's dead skin or something around the nail. So I pull at it and it rips off a couple layers of skin.

Fragment 2: Bugs
I walk into my kitchen and where the trash can is supposed to be, there are 5 small beetles and one large, green scarab beetle. By large, I mean it's larger than the other ones. It's not, say, the size of a cat. I lean forward to examine them, wondering why there are beetles in my kitchen. The scarab chitters its mandibles at me and chases me into the living room. I'm more startled than scared.
"Aggressive little bastard..."

Fragment 3: Hair
I'm looking in the mirror trying to fix my hair. Except I have bangs. I brush them out and am surprised that they look alright. I haven't had bangs like that since I was a kid.

Fragment 4: Infected
The infected have taken over our cities. There's a girl with short blond hair who has the innate ability to use telekinesis. She's in a room with a wide mahogany table, they're trying to draw out a plan of action. An older woman with red brown hair gives them a dismissive wave.
"Annaleigh," She begins, addressing the blond. "These plans are all well and good, be we all know how we're really meant to win this. The rest of us have to start learning the things you can do. Can you teach us?"
Anna responds with a resolute nod.
I see a coastal city at sunset, it's all narrow cobblestone streets and low flat buildings. There are undead everywhere. A man realizes that the zombies have cut off the larger group's escape route. He knows that blood will draw them. So he raises his hand in farewell, and the next time I see him his throat is slit and the knife hilt is sticking out the side of his neck.

Vampires
I'm a man in my early twenties. I'm of average height with deathly pale skin and short black hair, black-brown eyes. Half a year ago something happened to me, it left me in an unfortunate state of undeath. I'm not a zombie, I don't rot. I'm not a ghost, I'm definitely solid and other people can see me. I'm not a vampire, I don't crave blood and I can go out in the sun. I would not entertain such fantastic explanations, except for the fact that my skin is extremely pale, cold to the touch, and I don't have a pulse. Only my friend Simon knows my secret. I don't often go out, and he's the only real friend I have left.
Simon has a friend who is throwing a party, they used to be my friend too. I decide I'm going to go. I see the restaurant from outside, there's a wide wooden staircase leading to a deck, and a sliding glass door. I go inside and Simon freezes in shock. He comes to stand by me as I settle in next to two other people in a large booth seat.
"Are you sure you should be doing this?" He asks, pretending to smile. He's worried.
"Yes, It'll be fine."
"If you say so." He wanders off, but I can tell he's going to keep an eye on me. I smile and shake my head.
There's a sort of magician or storyteller. We all know the routine so well that we shout along with key points in the story. I catch Simon's attention and roll my eyes, wondering why we even bother to hire the guys if we already know the story.

I'm not sure what happens here. Someone sees me and I feel a shock of recognition though they are a stranger. I climb over the back of the booth and thrust the door open, I make for the stairs but my pursuer somehow beats me there, so I jump up onto the wide flat rail and run past them. They yell something at me. I know that they are a vampire. It feels like it shouldn't be possible.

There's a lapse and I'm standing in a dim stairwell. There's a girl with pail skin, bright red lips and chin length black hair, her bangs hang into her eyes. She's crumpled against one wall. She looks delirious and afraid. I go to help her. And so I learn her story, and the mystery of what happened to me six months ago.
She was attacked outside a bar and fought back, killing her assailant. She became sick and only just made it back to her apartment. She slept for three days straight and woke up ravenously hungry, but when she tried to leave the sun burned her. She came to the rather obvious conclusion that she's a vampire.
It sounds similar to my own story, except I was never certain of the fate of my assailant. She was sure she had killed hers. I only knew that I had wounded him. I realize that this is how vampires are made, you kill a vampire to become one. Since the vampire I wounded survived, I got stuck somehow.

There's another lapse. The vampires have found that two of their children were killed. They threaten the city, saying that anyone who knows of me and the girl should catch us and turn us over.
I decide differently. I need to finish what I started 6 months ago.
There's a wide, open courtyard, all concrete. It's sundown. In the far corner is a swirling gold and magenta portal. Standing in front of it are tall pale, elaborately dressed figures. They all wear gold and magenta. It's hard to describe, the women's dresses have long bell-shaped sleeves. The dress is all magenta with thick gold veins running from neckline to hem. Their hair is twisted around a kind of...y shaped headdress. They all have amber colored hair.
Their leader shouts an absurd challenge that a week ago I wouldn't have countered. Now I enter the courtyard directly into their fenced off area. They say they'll kill me. I laugh.
One of the women steps forward and draws a large thorn shaped weapon covered in the gold veining with hints of magenta underneath. She throws it at me. I snatch it out of the air, rush her and stab her in the chest. With her death my strength grows, she falls to the ground and I rush the next one. I take out five more this way before my alarm wakes me up.

*Note* I don't think about Dave and Patrick often. In fact, the only time I think about them is after I've had a dream with them in it. I don't understand why they keep coming back, since I haven't seen them in almost 8 years. At one time I thought they were my friends. I don't like to think about that period in my life because it is just a sharp, painful reminder of how stupid I can be.
Dave and Patrick were in a band, I used to go see them play and hang out at their practices. They didn't care at all when I stopped coming by. That is how little of an impact I made. Fantastic.


Lowe's
I'm at work. Just like IWL, other stores have lent us their associates to help us cope with the extra business the tornado may bring us. One of them is a woman I used to work with at another store.
A department manager expresses his frustration to me, that all our extra help keeps leaving early with the excuse that there is nothing to do, and then our people end up staying late to get things done.
I can see my former co-worker making that excuse and I agree that it's ridiculous.

"They say we haven't had any sales, but they're wrong! There are things they could be downstocking!" He says.
"Yeah!" I agree, "A guy and his son came through here and bought a ton of fishing gear."

((because apparently Lowe's sells fishing gear...))
I see a scene where the man is taking an armful of fishing rods over to an H cart and dropping them.

Dave and Patrick
The setting is a little confusing. The back end of the building is Lowe's. The front is a bar. The Lowe's part is currently closed, all the lights are off.
My phone rings ad an unfamiliar number pops up. Usually I don't answer, this time I do, with a politely questioning "Hello?"

"Julie? It's Dave."
"Dave! How are you?"

He says something about life being too short to leave people behind. He says that his fiance was diagnosed with cancer and judging by how badly his voice is shaking, she has recently died. He asks if I'll meet with him and he apologizes for never contacting me.
I tell him where I'm at and he asks if he can drop by.
A little bit later he shows up.
He's 5'7", wiry, black hair. Always wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up, black jeans and black square-toed boots. [I]((note: in hindsight it's not so strange that I wanted to spend time with them. I'm seeing a trend. You wanna guess what Patrick looked like? If you're thinking he's a tall red-head, you'd be right. Aside from their hair color and body types, they are absolutely nothing like Liam and Jack. What is wrong with me?))

We're in the bar.

He reminds me of the shows he used to put on and I see a different band playing. He waggles his eyebrows at me, suggesting that he'd steal the stage from them if I asked. maybe.
He ventures into the Lowe's section of the building and of all absurd things, he spots Patrick who used to the bassist in his band. I wonder what he's doing here, since I know he moved to another state. He looks different. He has a moustache, for one. And his clothes are a dirty grey. He looks like a homeless person, he's rifling through a bin on the floor.

"Patrick! what are you doing here?" Dave exclaims, looking askance at me as he crosses the sales floor.
"Decided to move back."

Patrick says. I wonder what he'll say to me, if he'll mention the e-mail I sent to him a couple of years ago or not. He completely ignores me. Of course. How depressing. I wander away. Dave follows me out to the front of the bar. There's a raised wooden patio. I climb onto it. Dave asks what they pay me. I tell him my hourly wage. It seems like he has fallen on hard times and the pay isn't bad, I'm tempted to tell him to apply. I reconsider though, knowing that he wouldn't want to work for a place like this. Music is his life. Besides, I wouldn't want him to feel obligated to work with me.

Pirate Ship
There are holes in this dream.
Dave has a pirate ship, I'm there with him. We are fleeing from his enemies.

"They're closing in." I say, frowning at the the pick-up trucks that are parked around us. We aren't even in water, we are stranded in the middle of a parking lot.
"I guess we have no choice."

We exchange an unhappy look. In the holding area below deck there are hundreds of small chests half submerged in water. At his say-so they burst open, light and water pouring out from inside.
At an earlier point there was some sort of time travel involved, that had kept him from sacrificing the innocents whose souls were in those chests. So I'm aghast when he gives the order.

"Call it insurance." He says, "When we did things over I...held some back."

I had thought he changed, obviously I was wrong.
The water from the chests floods out of the ship and begins to cover everything in sight. The trucks have a large empty plastic bottle tied to their bumpers.

"Are they stupid? How is that going to help?" I ask, leaning against the railing.
"Better than nothing, I guess." He replies. I don't really understand still.

There's a lapse. Dave is gone. There's an undead version of a guy I used to work with named Fernando. He's a shortish mexican man, portly with a shaved head. He isn't rotting, he is just extremely pale. When I see him I flee to a 4x4 cubby in the wall with a white-washed door and a black handle, and slam the door behind me. I turn and reach up to lock it, but as my hand is reaching the knob he is shoving it open. I throw my weight against it and try to twist the lock. He gives it another shove. I scramble away as the door explodes inward. He ducks inside and towers over me. I wonder where the hell Dave is.

"Seems like we've taken your ship."
"Seems like."
"You want to come outside? Give me your weapons?"
"Waaaaant?" I say, drawing the word out like I'm thinkin' about it. He clacks his teeth at me.
"Wouldn't want to have an accident, yeah? I could snap your pretty little fingers off with one chomp."

I scowl at him and he steps back so I can crawl out of the cubby. There are undead lined up along the sides of the ship. All just extremely pale.
This is stupid. I see a table nearby, there are knives all over it. I run to it and they don't stop me, because it's my dream and I do what I want. I grab three off the table. I sabotage myself by thinking about how they aren't balanced for throwing, since two of them are kitchen knives. I don't think to change them. I run to another level of deck and there is a strange, tiny creature with giant eyes and long hair perched in front of me. I throw the knives at it and miss with all three.

"Well, that went well." Dave says to me. I run over to him and just stop myself from grabbing his sleeve, it would be a terrible invasion of his space.
"Shut up. What are we going to do about the zombies?"
"You'll see." He smirks at me.

Submarine
In the first part of the dream I'm in Lowe's ((Sigh...)), and a woman is showing me how to work in my new department. It all seems really complicated and I'm not sure I can understand it enough to do my job. She tells me that once I submit the estimate, I have to go over to Millwork and attach it to another one.
Right in front of the Millwork desk the concrete rises into a ramp, so that Building Materials is elevated from the rest of the store. Millwork is enclosed in a tent. We go inside. She says she has to handle something else real quick and leaves. There are two tall men with red blonde hair and a girl about my height. One of the men jacks with us by crowding really close to my left side and scooting us over to stand by the other man. I smack his arm.

"Would you quit that?"
He laughs. "I'm just messing with you."
"Yeah yeah...how am I supposed to look at this screen if you keep pushin' at me?"

He laughs again. I roll my eyes. He wanders away. I look up at the other red-haired man. Just like in every other dream with someone vaguely Liam's shape I am suddenly attracted to him. I bite my lip and he looks down at me.

"Hey, you're new here right?"
"Yep."
"You...are tiny."
"It's not my fault you're huge."

He grins a little. His shoulder is a couple of inches higher than my head. His biceps are about the size of my head. The more I look at him, the less attractive I find him. He's too buff for me. Like always, I start mentally subtracting features, running a mental comparison to Liam. Because I'm crazy.
He leaves and I follow. He's sliding backwards up the ramp singing some church hymn I find vaguely familiar. I decide he really isn't my type, and he disappears. I can still hear his voice though.
I walk up the ramp and slip near the top. It really is more like a slide. As I'm thinking that I trip and slide down the ramp on my knees. I feel like I'm going too fast and somehow direct myself into the Millwork tent.

There's a lapse and when I come to, I immediately understand that I'm in a kind of submarine, stationed under a lake. I know it's called the Hollow Pearl. I can't decide if the name is clever or stupid. Something shifts and I become lucid.
The world is slightly warped. I try to correct it by repeating the same action and focusing on how it should look. I have a little success, but feel like I'm wasting my time. I decide I want to do a front flip. ((God I'm so boring)) I run a couple of steps and throw myself into a flip. Kind of. I stumble and decide to try again. The next time I succeed, but can't stop flipping. Instead I wake myself up and go back to sleep, I very briefly rose into another dream where I was checking my phone. The screen taints the scene around me. I close my eyes and focus until it goes away.
I run out of the room. There's a long hallway full of doors.
I don't remember what happened there. More flipping probably.
Then I'm with my boyfriend, outside. Except he has black hair instead of blonde, just like his WL hair it's pulled back into a tail. I'm leading him to the Hollow Pearl. I gesture to the lake and think about how muddy the water is. There are people in the water, our enemies. He wades in and dives under. I follow after him but I'm afraid of the people in the water, so I walk back out.
He emerges, sputtering, choking. I panic and rush into the water to pull him out. I drag him to shore.
He no longer looks like my boyfriend, and isn't even wearing the same clothes.
He's wearing a light grey t-shirt, with a slightly darker grey neck and sleeves. I put my hand on his chest and lean over him.
He's got high cheek bones and a more narrow face. His eyes have turned a clear grey, his hair is waist-length and black. I remember how the water clung to his skin and eyelashes, how he choked and spat water.

"Are you okay?"

He manages to nod.

Dream
Real-life influence
WTF

At first I am just an observer. I walk up a flight of yellow carpeted stairs, a young woman's father is saying that due to the policy of the company, for her boyfriend to travel overseas with them, he must first take her as his wife. It's impromptu, and at first the boyfriend is worried that she won't want to, so he keeps coming up with reasons why it won't be terrible.
"Or, you know, it can only be on paper. We don't have to act married at all."
She doesn't say anything, though she seems pleased by the prospect of marrying. (I picked celebrities to be my dream characters. Katharine McPhee was the bride to be, and Jensen Ackles was the husband. I'm assuming I only picked them because I just finished watching Smash and Supernatural.)
I wake up and roll over.
In the next part I'm with some other women about to get my hair dyed. There are two women in front of me who have red hair and orange highlights. I think that there is no shame in copying them, then I just decide to dye my hair black. I tell one of them about the time where the black 28-wash out dye wouldn't wash out. They criticize my box dye. I try to defend myself, but then just accept their judgement. I don't actually end up getting my hair dyed. From there I start trying to find something to wear to my wedding. I'm myself as far as I can tell. I have to pick from what's in this room, because time is short. I choose a black skirt I own in real life, and cast about for a suitable shirt to go with it. I ignore a pile of black shirts, pick up a weird shirt on a hanger, it's a dusty dark pink and looks kind of like a coat cut in half. I wonder why anyone would wear it. I find the one I'm looking for, a cream shirt with small green flowers on it. I put it on, but don't know where the skirt is.

Besides, I have to shave my legs. I walk into the next room. There's a shower in there, but it's also the kitchen. I notice a room separator that I can pull across and latch to the other side of the room to give me privacy. I pull it across but a woman unhitches it and tells me she has to examine my razors. I hand them to her. They are pink.
"What do you intend to do with these?" she asks, like I could kill someone with them.
"I'm going to shave my legs? Before the wedding?"
"Okay. Fine. But stay where I can see you."
I walk over to the shower. The water is already on. I really wish I could close the divider, now there are more people in the kitchen. I don't want to get naked with them watching me, so I get into the shower clothed. I take my shoes off and drop them outside the tub. My shirt gets soaked, I pull it off. I wonder what I'll wear now. I start to shave my legs and realize I don't have any shaving cream, I keep going anyway thinking I'll just have to be careful.
The woman interrupts me, but I don't remember why.

I get out of the shower. My mother- and sister-in-law (DCs, not people I know) run up to me with fabric swatches. At the time I knew what they were for, but now I have no idea. She has 4, I only really see the white one with small blue flowers on it. I choose that one. They seem ecstatic about my choice, saying they knew I'd pick the blue. They rush off.
I realize that the wedding is going to be in a few hours, and that none of my family is there. I really want to call my dad, to see if he can make it. My friend Cel, and also L. I wonder what L will think. Will she be happy for me? Or will she just remind me of my doubts?
...do I have doubts? I then ask myself who I'm marrying. Since I can't remember, but can recall in the dream having the other dream, I assume I'm marrying my boyfriend and not a DC. Once inside the sanctuary where I know my boyfriend will be, I walk to the length of pews where he's sitting. I start to ask him if he knows when the wedding will start, but he shushes me. A priest (in full papal regalia...oh my god I just realized he was dressed like the guy from Princess Bride XD haha...except with lines of red down the front of his robe.) makes his way to me. He says he's there to bless me before the union. He doesn't seem concerned with blessing my boyfriend. He holds out his hand to me and at first I'm confused. I don't know what he wants me to do. Awkwardly I lean down and kiss his ring. He looks down his arm at me and smiles with yellowed teeth. He says something that I miss entirely, but I know there's another part of it. I'm supposed to kiss him. A little disgusted, I press my lips to his for a good 10 seconds. I really don't like the look on his face when I pull away.
The priest pronounces me blessed and then leaves.
My boyfriend seems amused. I wonder if it was some sort of prank...
"Anyway. Do you know when it'll start?"
"A few hours I guess...why?"
"I want to call my dad."
"Why?"
"Don't you think he'd want to be here?"
"Yeah, I guess."

I decide to call my dad anyway, the drive will take a couple hours. Maybe I can hold the ceremony until he arrives. It doesn't feel like I have that much time.
My mind wanders, and I start to wonder what it will be like for us once we're married. I wonder if we will echo Liam and Saja or if I'll create the echo myself just so I can live it again.

I wake up and roll over.

When I fall asleep I dream about zombies. I am one and I'm traveling on a boat with some other zombies. The boat is sinking and one of my zombie friends is stuck. I use a giant scythe to slice through the thing holding him. We start walking together. A weird dog/bird creature is following us. It looks a little like a furry emu with a terrier's head.
"That was cool." It says. That seems so absurd that I burst out laughing. The creature shoots me an accusing look. "What are you laughing at."
"I'm sorry." I giggle. "That wasn't funny." Then I laugh more because I realize I'm a zombie giggling at a talking bird creature.