Amurehna

I am in the water, off of a dock. My friend has left his...watercraft with the keys in the ignition out in the middle of the bay. I kept calling it a boat, but it wasn't really. Sort of like a jet ski, but you stood on it instead. It had a dashboard with controls, handles, and then a flat area to stand on. I watch a few people swim up to it, and I'm worried someone will steal it. I've never used one so I don't want to move it. Instead, I swim over, like it belongs to me, and remove the keys from the ignition. I hop over to a tiny walkway hugging a wall, and sidle along until I make it back to the dock which is painted dark, dull red. His apartment is across from mine. In the dream he was familiar to me, someone I care about, but he has become indistinct like many of my dream characters. I'd probably call him a mixture of Ruadh and my ex, considering the people in the apartment.

Anyway, I go in through the open door and navigate through all the people, asking if anyone has seen him. They direct me to the kitchen, I find him there with one of my ex's friends, Amanda who was mostly nice but a little condescending to me.
I walk directly to him and drop my eyes while I explain that he left his damn boat on the bay with the keys in the ignition. I drop the keys into his waiting hand. He thanks me in a distant way and says he'll be right back, I assume he's going to move the boat. I stand there a little too long and Amanda asks me in a condescending way, "What are you doing here, sweetheart?" and plucks a dust bunny from my sleeve.
I frown a little. "Doing him the favor of returning his keys." I say. I know I wasn't invited. I leave without saying anything, knowing no one will notice or miss me.

I walk across the way to my own apartment. It's has a curious layout. A front room with a tiny kitchen off to the right, and straight back is the bedroom, to the left of the bedroom is the bathroom, with another door leading into the living room. People follow me into my apartment, I don't know any of them. I try to shut the door to my bedroom, it's a heavy sliding metal door with a weird crossbar for a lock. It won't latch and people follow me into my room. I wander out through the bathroom and find a co-worker of mine in the living room. Startled, I realize my apartment has two entrances and he came in through the second one. He tells me he was just returning something to me? My cat got out. (I don't have a cat).
I realize with a guilty start that I have forgotten to feed my cat. He's a very thin long-hair tabby. I wonder how long its been since I fed him? I cast about for his food and water bowl which are, embarrassingly full of cobwebs and dead flies. I gather them up and try to hide their disgraceful state from my co-worker as I rush into the kitchen to wash them out. How could I have forgotten?

You know, this is the third or fourth time I've dreamt about forgetting to feed my cat, when I don't even have a cat. =/

It ends with a terrible storm and strangers huddled in my apartment. I'm stuck at the front door, struggling to hold it closed. It won't latch and the flood water from the bay keeps rushing in through the cracks despite my efforts to hold it shut.

The sky looms heavy with storm clouds, the ocean roars in seething restlessness below. I am standing at the edge of

the city, which is situated in cluttered layers. The lowest layer is one diamond patterned metal grate secured by chains. I overhear someone saying that there is another hurricane vortex forming at the base of the city and they are worried it will grow. Curiously, cautiously, I move to the edge of the grate and peer over the side. I see a swirling vortex a few hundred feet below, with each moment , the center deepens and the eye widens. I back away, suddenly the ocean rises to the underside of the grate, slapping at my feet. I grab a plastic bag that has a pair of rain boots and my cellphone as I hurry away, climbing up up to the next layer of yellow concrete. I run a few steps but feel like I'm forgetting something, so I turn to look and realize that the bag I keep my dream journal in is still down there. The roar of the water is tremendous, I drop back down and grab the bag by the strap, but it was caught underneath so when I tug on it the bag spills open. Cursing, I stuff the contents inside...and my phone slips out of the plastic bag.
I throw the strap diagonal across my chest and bend down to grab my phone, the water immediately absorbing the platform. With a surge of panicky triumph I throw myself up three more layers before the water gets me.

Here I am on the edge of lucidity, somehow the way I move my body, and the way I have my arm extended

overhead, keeps me from being submerged, I manage to surge with each new wave and stay above surface. The ocean consumes everything in great cross-hatching fluctuation. There is one extremely tall central yellow building and I progress toward it, I'm lucky enough that the water leads me to the mid-building entrance. I see it's a hotel, and many people have fled here as the roof may be the only high ground. I run up the stairs and pass by a hall with 8 elevator doors and go straight to some sort of check-in table. I kneel down in front of it and put on my boots, stuffing my phone into my satchel. I wonder if I should bother taking it with me, my journal is ruined now. I stay there for a long time, falling into a kind of distracted lull.

"What the hell am I doing?!" I think, surging to my feet, I have to get to the roof before the whole building is submerged.

I see my boyfriend swept away by a crowd of people, all headed for the elevators, a woman and her small son are at the tail of the group, all trying to press themselves into the only open elevator. I step to another one and push the button quickly several times. The doors slide open and I throw myself inside, punching the button that will take me to the roof. The elevator rises but water begins to filter in through every seam.

"Oh, of course!" I think sarcastically.

I am spat out onto the roof which is waist deep in water, there is no one else on the roof. I start swimming, noting the many ships out on the water exploding or simply sinking, then turning into dark blotches in the water. I paddle past one boat as it is bursting violently into flames and I'm worried that the oil in the water will catch fire and I'll be burned to a crisp.
I realize that I have separated from my body and am watching myself from high in the sky, and that I can choose to be above instead of in the water. So I do. My escape is that easy. I sail onward with effortless speed, the wind roaring in my ears.There are two boats not sinking, one is speeding out of view over the horizon and looks like a clipper ship. The other is a little motor boat pulling up to a fenced cliff's edge that survived the watery cataclysm. I direct myself toward it, a familiar Japanese man extends his arm to me, I reach down to take his hand and he guides me soundly to the deck.

"You're alright!" I cry, happy to see him again. With sweet amazement I realize that his boys are with him, part of me knows that

they died years ago in an accident but somehow this event has returned them to his care. Though they are extremely pale and a little grey. The youngest is three, there is a middle boy of about fourteen, and a nineteen year old. They all look so familiar but I can't figure out why. The two other boys greet me like a long lost family friend, and take turns giving me a hug before climbing to the other side of the fence with their father. He leans on the top board and tells me that the return of his boys was meant to be, then earnestly asks after my boyfriend.

"I don't know, I saw him on the sixth floor before I got in the elevator, but no one else was on the roof." I start to say that I

think he is dead, but there's a painful wrenching in my chest and I can't get the words out before I cover my face and cry.

"Maybe it wasn't meant to be?" The man asks me. I don't want to believe that though, I want him to have escaped.
"Maybe he made it to that other ship..."
"Sure, maybe." He smiles at me.

I look out over the water and on either side of it, like the banks of a river, there are great water-logged expanses of land. He explains that the waves overtook that too, but immediately began seeping away after stripping all the trees bare.

There's something about seeing many people crammed into a small space and getting ready to go on or are returning from a hunting trip, and ordering fast food. I wonder how long the stores of easy, familiar food will last and what these people will do when it runs out.

*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.

Lucid
((The parts where I see him as Liam and become Saja feel different, like I'm on the edge of being lucid, but I don't make any choices. I just have clarity.))

The beginning is a little hazy. I was a member of an archeological dig in the desert. A man from the government came in to

find a missing woman and debunk our findings. He was being an irritating, arrogant ass, who kept ignoring facts and wouldn't listen to me.
There's a tent pitched alongside a wall, the wall looks like it belongs to the outside of the house I grew up in in MA. Out of the corner of my eye I see a dirt floor and observe all the 7x10 photographs tagged to the canvas. The government agent, Jack, is speaking to a blond woman who pins another photo up and then exits the tent. It annoys me that he's still following the evidence this way, because he's ignoring the danger. He has his back to me, he's wearing a black suit, white shirt, with a thin black tie. He considers the line of photographs, hands on his hips.

I can't help myself. "Still refusing to follow the facts, I see." I say to him. He turns around and drops his eyes to the floor, smiling

a little.

"Oh. Hello again, Brenna." ((I've never been a Brenna before. Huh.)) He ignores my jab and looks after the blond woman

as she makes her way down the narrow canvas hall. "I was sad to see that she had dyed her hair."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I have a particular weakness for women with black hair." He gives me a significant look, it's almost playful. He's giving me the

option to ignore it. It's only then I realize that I'm Saja. My hair is waist length, black and wavy. I'm even wearing one of her dresses, the hem falls mid-calf, it's a spring green-yellow with a white apron. I draw my hair over one shoulder and smile. He walks over to stand beside me and examines another line of photographs. As he crosses the floor, the wind snaps the canvas overhead creating gaps for the sunlight to stream in. Where it shines on his hair, it makes it look less brown and more red. The longer I look at him the more red there is. He suddenly reminds me of Liam. It's only when he's standing next to me that I realize he's the right height, too. Before I had seen him as my enemy and would not allow myself to find him physically appealing, but he's opened a door and I can't ignore it. Because he looks like Liam.

I turn to face the wall of photographs. They all look the same to me. It's dimly lit snow with a faded splash of blood.

"Well. As long as we're sharing. I can't help but notice how much red you have in your hair...and I have a certain fondness for

redheads." I stare at his profile while he looks at the pictures, and see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

I fix my gaze on the pictures, pretending to look at them, knowing that as I turned away he looked over to study my profile.
"Look at us. Being civil. Can't have that, can we?" He comments wryly. "Why did you come here?"
"I want to try one more time to help you see the truth, Jack."
"Brenna." his tone is sharp, warning. His expression turns cold. "I don't have time to listen to your tripe."
"TRIPE?" I exclaim, suddenly outraged. "Oh YES. Why bother with facts when you can make up whatever story you like!"
"You were falsifying your findings and when you needed proof that these 'creatures' exist, you murdered a young girl to fit your story."
"You are so incredibly wrong. How can anyone stand to be around you?"
"Well, naturally I'm offended by deception. Honest people get along with me nicely."
"Oh, I'm sure." I snap sarcastically.

There's a lapse. It's after dark. I'm fleeing the tent because I've stolen evidence. Jack caught me at it and is pursuing me with ill

intent. I also overhead him talking about the undercover agent in our unit that was meant to disrupt the core stability of our group, to try to suss out who exactly the murderer is. The landscape looks like the yard outside the house in MA. Where there is a small hill leading down into the neighbor's yard, the lawn fades into sand and the landscape becomes a desert.
I'm barefoot and I can feel the cool sand under my feet. I get a brief bird's eye view of his pursuit. I'm shouting over my shoulder as I run.

"How can you be so willfully blind? When all the evidence is right in front of you!" The dune to my left is, I know, actually a

sphinx that has been swallowed by the desert. I run my hand along the front paw, clearing it of sand. There's some sort of creature nesting between its front legs, close to its chest. I eye the thing and hope it hasn't noticed me. A little ways further there's a stone wall and a line of open doorways. I think I've lost him for now. I jog up the next dune and at the bottom of the following valley is our research and living trailer.
I'm inside now. I pass a guy who looks exactly like Sendhil Ramamurthy. I ask him where Nate and the new girl went off to and he says to the kitchen.

"Will you get them for me, I just found something interesting." He says.

Attachment 4750 I suck at describing this crap, so I made another layout. I cross the living room and go to hall, the door to the kitchen is slightly open and Nate has his back to the door and the new girl, who is Jack's undercover agent. She doesn't feel right somehow, she is raising a large kitchen knife.

"HEY." I say loudly. They both turn around, she drops the knife and looks a little embarrassed. "Looks like we found something.

You wanna follow me?"

They follow me back to Sendhil. We act like I didn't just find the new girl about to murder Nate. Sendhil talks about how he

just found some proof that our group had been infiltrated, but we won't know by who until we can get all the hands together in the morning. The new girl looks extremely awkward, I wonder why I'm not saying anything.

"Jack is on his way here."
"We can meet him outside if you need some time." The girl offers.
I grin at her a little, her cheeks flush. "Sure. Whatever you like."

There's a lapse. Sendhil is trying to show me something, it's a really confusing image. We're looking at something like a mirror

or a tv screen. There a thin metal frame around it and it glows a dim blue. He's sitting right behind me, chin on my shoulder, urging me to look and see for myself.
I see my own face, and his. I can't really remember what happens here. I notice the shape of my eyes, and the curve of my jaw.

There's another confusing moment after another lapse, he says he's going to meet Jack outside. I say I'm going to follow but

when I pass the mirror in the living room I'm a fat young man with pale green eyes and cork-screw curly hair. Then I try to put on my shoes but I forget my socks, and my shoes are shaped all funny. They look more like a walking cast. I don't want to get sand in them when I go outside. So I take them off and try to find socks...

There's another lapse and the story picks back up. I have traveled to a snowy place up north, I have tipped Jack off, telling him

that if he follows me there he will find the proof I've tried to convince him exists. That the woman he thinks I've murdered is actually here and alive. I meet him outside the house, he's huddled next to the wall. I sit down across from him.

"Oh, I didn't realize you'd be here." He says.
I let him pretend I wasn't the one who gave him the tip, and remain silent.
"He said he'll come get me. The girl wakes up every morning at the same time, like clockwork."
"I'm glad you're here." I whisper.
"Are you? Well. There's that at least." he pauses. "We're on different sides."

He looks so much like Liam that I forget he's Jack. "LIAM." I say, leaning forward so my nose is almost touching his. "Do you really think I care about that?"
He doesn't look startled or confused that I used the wrong name. He meets my eyes squarely and shakes his head once, just a little. I can feel my name on his lips. I want him to say it. He's never used my name in the dream.
I will him to call me Saja.
He opens his mouth like he's going to speak and then closes it.

"At least put your arms around me, then?" I say, disappointed.
"I..."
"It's cold."
"I can't."
I want to kiss him on the cheek but I don't. "Fine."
"I'll...see how things play out."
"As you wish."

He smiles a little but he looks sad. We hear the front door of the weathered shack open and we go inside. The girl we have come here to see, lost her fiance out in the snow. They thought she would die. Physically she recovered, but once she woke she would just do nonsensical things and spout gibberish.

"Can we speak with her?" Jack asks.
"You can try." Says her grandfather. "I'll give you ten minutes." He leaves the house and we proceed in trying to talk to her.

I don't remember any of what she says, but she goes over to this small round table by the door.

"You might want to be car---" she deliberately runs into it. "Yes. That's right, keep running into the table."

She and picks up the lamp, "You might want to not---" she then leans forward and knocks her head against it. Hard. "Okay, sure. Knock yourself out."
Jack kind of rolls his eyes at my sarcasm.

"I don't think we'll get anything useful from her, do you?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna talk to the grandfather again."

Now the girl is laying on the table, cuddling with the lamp, her head hanging off the edge. Her skin has an unhealthy blue cast and her eyes look strange.

"Odd are the hours that meet us at the gate." She says. I frown at her.
"What gates?"
"The ones on the edges. IT lives beyond the gates. Follows every grain."

She's really freaking me out and I get the sense that she actually did die out in the snow and whatever THIS is, is no longer human. She's changing into something else. Her lips look blue. She reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt. I tear it out of her grasp and join Jack outside. I'm am done with this creepiness.
He gives the grandfather his best and we start to leave.

"I guess that settles it. You didn't murder her."
"Someone sure did."

He stops me and gestures at my shirt. There's a splash of luminescent blue on the front. Just beyond him I see two tonberry trundle out from the darkness, carrying their lamps and stylized blue knives. There's a glowing blue orb on the ground, they're attracted to it. One of them starts to come toward me. Jack pivots and sees the tonberry.
"Uh oh."
We watch as the second tonberry viciously stabs the blue orb and absorbs its energy. The other one stops in front of me and makes a weird keening noise. I take off across the snow.
"What are you doing?" Jack hisses after me.
"I'm running ya moron. I'll be fine."
The tonberry follows me to the edge of the lake. Running is fluid, so easy. I dive in, and hear a splash as it moves out into the water. Swimming is even easier, I glide effortlessly through the water until I reach the other side and leap to the bank. There's a large snowdrift there, and on the other side I know is the road. I climb over the drift and fall into the snow on the far side startling three strange turkey-peacock creatures into flight. There are three giant zebras in the road. They are the size of draft horses, I know they are extremely aggressive. I grab a handful of snow and pelt the zebra stallion's flank hard, and then dive into a snow drift to hide.
A second later the tonberry bursts through the snow hill I climbed over, the stallion is offended, thinking that the tonberry hit it with a snowball...so the zebra tramples the hell out of it.

Gleefully triumphant that my plan worked, I wake up.

Fragment 1: Creepy
I'm on the edge of sleep. I feel heavy and the room feels off like there's someone in it with me.
"I hope she isn't here again." I think. So of course when I drift off I see a picture of a girl with chin length dark hair. At the time I didn't think she looked familiar, but she looks a little like Sailor Saturn. ((Completely freakin' random, but whatever. It's less random than strangling a bear and harvesting happy clams from it..)) She's standing in some version of my room, she's got a long-handle mace, it looks like bone and there's an evil grinning face painted on it with blood.
NOPE I think and force myself awake, but begin to drift immediately. When I fall back asleep she isn't there.

Sharks
I'm an eleven year old boy with pale skin and dark hair. I'm in the water with my older brother, he's only a couple of years my senior. We're clinging to some sort of wreckage. The water feels enclosed like a lake, but is behaving like the ocean. I get the feeling it's supposed to be part of a resort but all I ever see is the water. We never intended to be out this far. Something has happened that forced us into the middle of the lake. We look around for other people, over by the side of a boat there's another boy, that one is younger. Seven maybe. I grab at my brother's shoulder as I try to catch my breath.
"Do you see that kid over there?"
"Yeah--"
"We have to help him!"
We see movement in the water and see a dull nose bump the body, searching. It's a shark. It's...nibbling, searching, until it finds one of the boy's feet.
"Adam." I say, my brother just watches, horrified. "ADAM."
"Why are there SHARKS here? Why would they do that?"
I shake my head in frustration and I let go of the wreckage and swim furiously toward the little boy and the shark. Somehow my movement startles the shark and he lets go. I get a hold on him and kick to the surface. Someone leans out of the boat and gestures to me.
"Hand him up!"

There's a lapse and I'm treading water where I rescued the boy. I'd been unconscious. My head hurts. I feel something bump against the small of my back, then my shoulder.
no, no, no I think, trying to right myself so I can figure out what's going on. Teeth start to close around my hand and I jerk my hand free. If I keep moving it won't be able to grab me. A wave smacks me hard, rolling me under the water. I get a terrifying visual of the shark's head and jagged teeth through the hazy water.
Then Adam is there and pulling me to the surface. An old man leans out of the boat and drags me onto the deck before giving Adam a hand. I lay there and quiver violently. There are patches of skin missing where the shark had nibbled at me, and the flesh on my hand is a mess but to my immense relief I can still move my fingers and it doesn't even hurt too much.
"You're lucky, that other boy lost his foot." Adam says.
The old man grimaces and hobbles away. I see that all that remains of his feet are the heel and he's put metal caps over the bones so he can walk. Other people have similar injuries. One woman is missing her whole left arm.

Fragment 2
In a narrow kitchen. Everything looks like a dim yellow. A short, hunch-shoulder Mexican man, hands in his hoodie pockets. At first he looks normal, he casts a frightened look over his shoulder. I approach him. When I get a little closer he drops his head and grins a little. The expression is really unsettling.
I'm tired of being creeped out, I swat his shoulder.
"STOP THAT."
He looks startled, then afraid.
"Sorry." but he can't help it. He does it again and I force myself awake, roll over.

Fragment 3:
Sitting in a booth in a diner. There's someone across from me but I can't remember his face. It was like we were on a date.

I was going to give you some back story on Saja and Liam, but it seemed incredibly stupid when I typed it out. I often become Saja and almost every time I have a lucid dream I go looking for Liam.
Lucid
Non-Lucid
False Awakening

The layout of my house is huge. It also seems to share something of the more important houses I have lived

in. It is also, in part, Lowe's. I'm making my way down a wide hallway with cream-yellow walls and dark walnut trim and flooring. This part looks a little like my house in MA. I take a right at the end of the hall, the next one has a heavy dark walnut door with little lanterns on either side. I open the door and outside is the Lowe's parking lot. There are racks of flowers on either side, and then standing placidly between them is a team of horses hitched to a small wagon. It's a string of six. Well, I guess they're ponies. They are all paints, and only one of them is black and white, with black flecks all across his coat. I look at that one fondly. All the others are variations of chestnut and white.

I decide I want to ride one. I almost choose the last one in the train but he's tethered at the back of the others,

so I pass him by and walk to the less pretty first horse. This one is mostly chestnut and has very little white aside from a diamond marking and some white in his mane. The top of their heads are even with mine, making them fairly small.
I'm pleased by how small they are because I'm short, and I can climb onto his back without standing on something. I straddle the pony and grip his mane. He starts walking forward. The dream feels more vivid here, like before I was just on the edge of lucidity and now I've found it. I start experimenting with control, using my mind to change his path since I don't have any kind of reins. The parking lot is cold, there's some snow on the ground, and few cars. I lead the horse back toward the door and slide to the ground. I pat his neck. Something startles me, and I can't actually remember what. I run inside and slam the door, then take off down the hallway. Hoping that they didn't see me, and that if they did I'll be too far into the house for them to know where I've gone.

There's a lapse, I'm in the same building but this time it looks more like Lowe's. The aisle is also open

to the outdoors. A co-worker is talking to me. I stare at the wall behind him trying to figure out what's different about it. What's there that shouldn't be?

"....Did they put a bathroom here?" I ask, a little incredulous. This is one of my aisles after all.

"Why yes, it looks like they did." He says. I stare at the blue wall, which is just like the stalls in the bathroom. I can see the

seams now.

"There's no handle on the door, must not be finished."

Somehow I know this is the Women's stall, and there's a Men's room a couple aisles over. My co-worker wanders off outside and again I feel like I'm on the edge of lucidity, then pushing into it. It's a beautiful day out, and suddenly I wonder what the exterior of the building looks like. I run outside, feeling unnaturally fast. This section is actually a second floor, set higher than the main part of the building. The concrete is new and yellow-white. I run along, rushing past my co-worker who says something I can't remember. I fling the door open and run inside...

Another lapse and I'm in a hospital-like section. I'm here for tests? I think? I need to go to the bathroom

first. I walk down a long, wide hallway. It feels deserted. At the end is a bathroom. I can't figure out what's weird about it, despite the fact that there aren't stalls and there are just chairs by the sink. At first I think the chairs are toilets, until I sit down on one and realize it is, in fact, a chair. The cushion is yellow, wider at the front lip and more narrow by the back of the chair. I frown at it, I really need to go.
The room is kind of C or [ shaped. I go further inside, it's all white-pink tile with pale pink stalls. Finally!
The bottom of the stall panels are tall enough for me to duck under. I go into the first stall and am disgusted to see flecks of urine on the seat. I hear someone else come into the bathroom, and I'm suddenly embarrassed. Even as I'm doing it I wonder why. I duck under the wall and go into the next stall. And then into the next one. Which...puts me in a kind of mail room. It's dimly lit and there are bags as tall as my hips full of mail, with people rushing in and out. An old man with white hair is directing them.

"Trying to find the bathroom?" he asks.

"Yeah.."

Behind him I notice the wall is the side of a stall. He gestures to it. I smile and duck underneath. It puts me on the far side of a

string of stalls. When I turn the corner I'm walking with a tallish black girl, wearing a green t-shirt, her hair is pulled back into a fluffy bun. I feel a moment of vertigo. I hear myself say that I'm Saja and that 'd been looking for her everywhere. What had I just been doing? Something odd happens here, my vision doubles and I'm standing a couple feet from the black girl and a slightly taller willowy woman with long brown hair. I've separated from the woman, like I'd just been inside her. I can see the back of my head, the wavy black hair. I've become Saja.

"Hey!" I call after them. The girl in the green didn't hear me, but the other woman tenses and when I call

after her again she glances at me, whip quick. Then pretends I don't exist.

"Hey, I KNOW you!" I say. She looks extremely uncomfortable and leaves as quickly as she can without breaking into a run.

The girl in the green looks startled, and suddenly I become real to her. The woman had been pretending to be me.

"Who are you? What just happened?"
"I am Saja."
"Do you know her?"

"Yeah..." I say something I can't remember. I look up at her. I'm little next to her, she's almost a head taller than me.

We walk out of the bathroom, next to it is a kind of study with a long table. It's dim and cozy, dark red walls, a banked fire, bookshelves lining the walls.
"

Can you use magic?" She asks me curiously.

I smile a little, walking over the threshold behind the girl. "I am magic."
There are people gathered around the table. A male dc sitting across from us is trying to influence the dream by telling them all 'my' story.

"How do you know anything about her? Your family is broken, disgraceful. Thieves and murderers, all. Why, your father could

come in here right now and murder us all--slit our throats where we sit." I can feel the others start to believe him, but what's the benefit of being lucid if I can't change anything.

"That sure would be a trick, wouldn't it? Considering he's dead." The man is staring hard at me, and it takes me a minute to

realize that I'm lying. "I killed him myself, murdered the bastard in his sleep."
Another moment of vertigo, the man is smirking at me, like he wanted me to say all that. "No wait." I amend. "That isn't my story at all. You want to hear my story? All of it?" He rolls his eyes and leaves the table. The green t-shirt girl and a few others sit down. I remain standing.

"Have you ever heard of the Serpent?"

The all give me blank looks.

"Alright then, I'll tell you about It." I try to decide where to start. I try to tell them about Ru-em, the province I'm from in

the Midlands, and how our culture developed, how we learned to plant and harvest. Then I shake my head, trying to clear it. That's not where I want to start. "There is a creature, on the edge of existence. It moves from world to world, consuming all in its path." Someone rolls their eyes at me, bored. The girl in the green t-shirt is rapt.

"It's massive, as big as the sky." I can see it, the purple-black scar against a clear blue sky. How the world shook. "Ancient.

It crashed through our reality and into the earth, and down into the Spirit of our world. Which it would eat until nothing remained."
I move around the table, to a smaller one in the corner. The girl and a couple others follow me. I sit down and they take the seats across the table. There's a small spiral notebook.

"It wasn't really serpent-like." I pick up a pen and begin to draw. "More...like a--" I think a slug, but decide not to say that out

loud. "Like a whale and a manta-ray and--"

"And a worm?"
"Kind of like that, yes."

She stares down at my small drawing, the ridges by the tail fin. "It looks scary."

"It is." I pause, thinking that no one wants that horror to visit their door. I look down at the paper and decide I want to write

something down. I open a pen and write "Saja is magic."
It's clearly legible, actual words. The ink is a little thin, but I can't have everything.
I tug at the cap of a marker and worry for a second that this effort is going to wake me up. The dream wavers as I pull off the cap and settles again when I set marker tip to paper.
"Liam is alive." Instead of black, the words come out pale translucent green. The tip has split so the letters, while I know what they are, blur together.
I try to write it again, but the tip is still messed up. I stare at the notebook and smile. What am I doing here, playing these little games? I could be off looking for Liam. I leave the table and then the room, when I reach the hall I start to call out for him.

"Liam! Liiiiiaaaam? Are you here?" I call out several variations and my eyes are drawn to a window. For some reason the blinds

are on the outside. 1" aluminum blinds. I see blue eyes and then a smile through the slats. My heart pounds with excitement. It's never been so easy to find him! The man opens the window and I rush to meet him. I pull up short as he's trying to dip inside. It's not Liam. Not even close.
He's scrawny, medium-height, with gray-brown hair and sharp blue eyes. His teeth are crooked and yellow, he's dressed all in black. Skull-cap, jacket, jeans. All black. I frown at him.

"Who are you? Where's Liam?"
"What d'ya mean 'where's Liam', Liam's dead."
Panic grips me for a second but I refuse to believe him. "You're lying, he can't be dead. I would know."
"Wooould you?" He has an accent, faintly Scottish. "From all the way over here?"
"I would."
"I don't know what to tell you, swee-heart. He's definitely dead. Been dead a long time."
"Stop saying that!" I yell, twisting my hand into a fist in his jacket. "He isn't dead!"
"Suit yerself. Don't say I didn't warn ye." He laughs at me, I hate how amused he is at my expense.

I'm in my bed. I can hear talking in the other room, thinking my boyfriend is watching something on his computer. I get up, decide to ask him if he wants something to eat. The voices get a little louder and I distinctly remember hearing them on the episode of Revenge I watched before laying down. I approach his door, which is cracked open. I wonder if he's watching Revenge, something he never watches. I go inside. His bed doesn't look right, it's all gold and red. There's a woman wearing blue striped shorts and a white tank top curled up along his legs near the foot of the bed.
What? I frown at the form huddled under the blankets. He turns restlessly and it's not my boyfriend at all.

"God damn it, I'm still dreaming." I say, surprised. The man blinks awake and startles into a sitting position.
"What are you doing in here?"

Before he can even finish the sentence I glance to the wall behind me. It has a wide window, I recognize it as one of the rooms from the building. I grin and run to it, open it and shove the screen out. I throw myself out and land in the hallway down below.

I land at the foot of a concrete staircase. At the top is a door with a sign above it saying who is broadcasting inside and has radio station numbers.
I can hear them through a speaker by the door. "Just like Jack and Ron except, me, obviously like Jack, doesn't have a problem clearing the saliva from my throat." It makes his voice sound less thick. A man comes outside and notices me listening, he tips his hat to me but my eyes kind of slide around him. He's tall, wearing a black ball cap a dark green t-shirt and black knee length shorts.
A tv screen on the wall at the top of the stairs flickers to life. It features a short blonde woman who looks vaguely like Amanda Bynes, wearing a bring pink uniform and hat, standing under a spotlight in a black room. She is trying to act out their radio show and is getting mixed reactions.
I frown, what am I doing? I was looking for Liam. I find I'm standing in front of the tv, I head back down the stairs. The hall there ends in a glass door with a metal bar across the middle. I push it open and rush outside, calling for him. The dream feels brittle, like it's about to fall apart. The walls are...papery. Thin. A man on a motorcycle rushes past me and stops. He flips up the visor and for a second he looks exactly like Liam. I rush to him and him to me. He pulls of the helmet. The closer he gets the less he looks like Liam. It takes me a second to realize it though.

"Are you him?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. My heart sinks a little when I realize he's a stranger. "No, you're not, are you."
He smiles apologetically.
Wouldn't he be here if he were alive? Maybe he really is dead. The man from earlier moves up beside me.

"I told ya."
"Stop it." I snap.
"Tried to warn ya." He says. The buildings to either side of me are beginning to break apart, like sand in the wind.

I realize I am close to waking and I try to focus to hold it together a little longer.I ignore him. Even from here I can see muddy black waves crash through a line of structures, tearing them to shreds and beginning to flood the parking lot from 3 sides. I stand and observe.

"What do you think will happen if I let it have me?" I ask, I feel a little hopeless and wrung out. What's the point of anything if

Liam is dead?

"Likely you'll die."

I stare at the water. It's consuming the building closest to me.

"Here, step on that." The man shuffles a large thin piece of blue foam board at me. "Fat lot of good it'll do you."

He then escapes back the way we came. The water lifts the foam board, it starts to float away under a black truck. I step onto the corner, and it rises with the water. Water takes the path behind me, it's too late to run now. The board won't last me long, there's no way it can stand up to the raging water. Cool air blows the hair back from my face. The board is swept from under me and I remain in the air. I flap my arms like a bird and rise above the water, deciding I'm not quite ready to die. People beside the front of the Lowe's/Hospital/House are pointing up at me in awe. The water is receding, leaking away from the parking lot. I see a small group beside what looks like a...firetruck shaped like a four wheeler. I direct myself toward it, the police officer there is tall and fair skinned. He has bright blue eyes and I can see a little red under his hat. He holds his hand out to receive me as I alight on the top of the ladder extending from the top of the four wheeler. He helps me down. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder. He looks strikingly like Liam but I know it isn't him, this man is only an echo. He knows exactly who I am though.

"You look just like him, you know."

He takes it as a compliment and smiles a little. "Thank you."
The police officer/Liam Echo turns away from me and speaks to the small group of survivors.

"Let's head inside where they are waiting to treat any injuries." He touches the brim of his hat when he glances at me, and then

his eyes rest on a legless woman in a wheel-chair with an IV drip. He says it's a miracle she survived. Given her health problems, the quality of her existence, I wonder if it might not be kinder if she had died. I'm not mean enough to say it though. He leads them inside, there's an emergency room bay just over the threshold.
Beside the door is a table. I walk to it. I notice there's an egg sitting in the middle of it. I pick it up and it slips from my hand, cracking against the table. It makes a noise like breaking, like it's boiled, but when I shake it I can hear the yolk. I test it between my hands and cracks spider out from the palms of my hands.
Now I'm curious. I throw it at the ground and the shell breaks away, but the yolk remains egg-shaped. Tough but still obviously a liquid. I begin to laugh, the revelation hitting me like a stone. I'm extremely delighted.
Of course, this is the message my subconscious wanted to send. Though the egg looked fragile, it could never actually have been broken.
I pick up the yolk, thinking to show the police officer. He seemed like he would enjoy a neat epiphany like this.

"Hey! Check this out!" He turns to face me and I throw the yolk. He isn't expecting it so he misses entirely and it breaks in

the most awkward spot. The crotch of his pants.

"Oh...I am so sorry! I just....wanted...to show you the egg!" I start laughing again, he looks a little amused and bewildered

and embarrassed. I leave, my last view of him is him trying to brush away the yolk. I decide it's time to wake up.

Non-lucid
Lucid

I'm in the back seat of a blue van that belongs to my sister. Instead of a trunk space, the seats are pressed against the end of the vehicle, and there's a dash under the back windshield. She's driving. A child that is supposed to be her son but looks like a combination of my brother's little boy and hers is laying on the dash behind me.
We're almost ready to leave, parked on curved driveway in front of the rock house we grew up in. The van starts to roll forward.
"You alright back there, kid?"
He giggles and joyfully smiles at me. I lightly pinch his cheek and he giggles some more. I smile and turn my attention to my dog, Caspian who is laying across my lap. He twists to expose his belly so I'll pet him. I do.
I notice, for some reason, his fur is getting increasingly more soft and his ribcage smaller. I look down at him and he's now a kitten with the same coloring. He's a bluetick beagle. The Caspian-kitten yawns and and grabs at my hand with his little paws, claws out. I start to play with one of his claws. My boyfriend walks up beside the van and it stops rolling. My window is down a little. I can't recall what he says to me. I hand him the Caspian-kitten who stretches languorously across my hands. My boyfriend smiles and takes him, Caspian clings to his teal button-up.
We finally leave the driveway. Something about my nephew's changeable face and the fact that my dog just turned into a cat has given me the choice to become lucid. I'm looking toward the front of the van, and the dream would have me continue doing so. I have a choice. I worry that the dream will distort and fall apart if I take initiative.
I decide to risk it and am pleased when everything remains normal. In fact it becomes more vivid. The early morning light swells and becomes impossibly sweet and warm against my face. The road we're taking hugs a cliff, it's narrow with no guardrail. We reach a red, arched metal bridge. The curve before the bridge is such that she speeds around the corner and almost hits a blockade made of cars. Everything slows down. I make the van fly over the blockade and hear my sister make a surprised, amazed noise. The van lands hard near the other side of the bridge, and the back wheels skid close to the edge where the beams have broken. I get out feeling awesomely smug and look outside curiously.
The road is a mess, it's the aftermath of an attack, the men assaulting the road have gathered near my end of the bridge, awaiting orders.
A thin man in a black suit with long black hair looks surprised to see me. Then he grins. I hear a strange sliding noise and turn to find my sister, nephew, and the van gone. Fear grips me, I notice a tall blonde man dressed in a striped red and black shirt and black slacks climbing down to a rough red-stone ledge that juts out from underneath the bridge. He tosses his jacket down and jumps into the water after my family. Without a second thought, I dive. I feel the wind on my face and the cool water closing around me. Everything is a delicious deep blue, far ahead of me I can see the man reaching my sister at the bottom of the lake. Both her and my nephew sank like stones, and float at the lake floor, he's in front of her, her arm draped over his shoulder down his chest. I see that the man has them, one on either side of him. I wait for him on a rock ledge. As he passes he nods to me, I push hard off the floor and slide my arms around his waist, adding my momentum to his.
The closer we get to the surface the easier it becomes. I foolishly think it's because I'm still lucid. He beings to break apart, becoming empty clothes. When I break the water, he's just a shirt in my arms. My sister and nephew are gone. Where are there? What happened to them? Are they still at the bottom of the lake? Someone calls to me but I ignore them and dive again. I get to the halfway point and do not see anyone down there. I swim around looking for them. For a second I'm worried about not having enough air, then I realize I'm already breathing, cool water along with air, in through my nose.
Then my boyfriend is there, he tugs on my arm and gestures to the surface. I shake my head, I don't want to go yet. He pulls me along after him anyway. We pass a ledge with treasure on it, a faded mahogany box with a gold circle with a Greek maze design engraved in a gold metal circle, it has one of these circles on each side. I want to see what's inside, but instead I follow him. When we climb out of the water, he tells me he has some idea where we can start to look for them. He makes it sound like they've been abducted.

I follow him, a little uncertainly, into a bar. This is not the kind of place I would usually go. He doesn't really feel like my boyfriend, more like an acquaintance with his face. The place is narrow and drab, the bar is on the left as I walk in with backless stools bolted to the floor. On the right side are red cushioned benches running the length of the wall, leading up to a door with a frosted glass window. There's a man standing in front of the door.I don't remember seeing any tables.
"Wait here, I'll be back." He goes to the man and talks quietly with him.
The dishwasher has made his way out from the back to gather some glasses. He's a little rough looking, scarecrow thin with bright almost hectic blue eyes, missing teeth. His hair is dirty blonde and sticks up straight up from his skull. He's wearing a dark brown apron over a dirty white thermal shirt. He sees me and says something about how a pretty lady shouldn't come alone to a place like this.
"I'm not alone." I say, giving my boyfriend a significant look.
"Oh, of course."
He catches the attention of the waitress. She seems like she's humoring him, he creeps her out a little with his intensity but she knows he's harmless. He starts to tell us a story about a renegade that passed through a few years ago. I wonder absently if he's talking about Liam.
"The reddest hair I've ever seen, big guy! You know what I said to him, I said--"
The bartender, a handsome man with a shaved head gets the waitress's attention, effectively interrupting the dishwasher. I can tell from his expression that this happens to him often.
"Nevermind, no one was listening anyway." he starts to leave. I cut in, partially because I hate to see that happen to people, and partially because I want to hear the end of his story.
"I was listening!"
I move over to the row of cushioned benches, backing away but keeping eye contact so he knows I'm still listening. His expression brightens and he smiles, I see he's missing some teeth.
"What did you say to him?" I prompt.
"I said, sir, that beard ain't much of a disguise." When he says it he tugs on his own. "Besides, everyone knows who you are, hair like that there cain't be two of ya!" he laughs, amused by his own wit and daring, questioning a dangerous rebel.
I laugh with him, but not really because I think it's funny. He moves off into the back, waving goodbye to me. I setting back on the bench. After a minute, something strange catches the corner of my vision. I look over, to my left is an extremely large man dressed in a black suit. I don't mean to say he's fat. Even sitting down I can tell that he's at least 8 feet tall. His leg extends nearly halfway to the bar. He's the biggest person I've ever seen. Bald, ridiculously muscular, sharp blue eyes with pinpoint pupils in a grizzled face. He's not a particularly attractive man, but his size suddenly appeals to me. He smirks at me like he knows what I'm thinking. I glance away. My boyfriend sits down to my right.
"Did you find anything out?" I ask anxiously.
"Not yet, the man I came to see is in a meeting. When the time comes he'll only see me, alone. We just have to wait a little bit."

The next part looks like an SNES video game, a world map. We're following a trail and gold beads dot the ground in our wake. "Hehe, it looks like Mario." I think. A flashing dot appears in the spot we just left. I refuse to turn my quest into a marrior game. I focus and the avatar gains a little more definition, turning into a 16bit version of me and my boyfriend. The lack of detail annoys me. I focus, willing myself closer to the 'screen'. The dream starts to lose cohesion. My boyfriend has led me to a cliff.
"Where are we even going? How will this help me find my sister?"
"....these look a bit heavy to carry." he replies and points behind me. There are four chest-height empty boxes, they almost look like giant square mugs, tied together at the handle with a hot air balloon or parachute. They have angry bird face on them.
"We just have a little further to go." he says.

On my lunch today at work I decided to take a nap in my car. I honestly only remembered this because of the angle I tilted the seat back at, I had a moment of vertigo and deja vu. It's a dream fragment from last night.
I'm laying on a hard surface, my body feels so heavy. There are people nearby but I cannot move to show them I'm still alive. I struggle to open my eyes, but I cannot keep them open. My vision pans out to third person and I see the raft. The wood underneath me, the waves lapping at all sides. It's raining softly. I can see someone curled on his side, Liam approaches through the water. He grips the timber by my head and says something to me, pulling himself up so his shoulders are clear of the ocean.

I only ever see a part of the city I live in. It's huge, with wild swaths of forest around residential areas, and divided by a wide river. I follow Sam into his apartment, in the dream he's my co-worker but in the waking world I haven't seen him in years. We gather here after work sometimes, but this time I see many people I don't know. I round a corner and Sam is lifting pizzas from delivery boxes and laying them out on platters.
"There's enough for everyone." He says. For some reason I feel unwelcome. A narrow room runs alongside the kitchen, like it's the top bar in the letter T. I step into the kitchen feeling uncertain. The kitchen is dimly lit, with white tile floors and two short lengths of cabinets, all white. On the left is a set of cabinets with the sink, on the right is the stove.
There's a man in there, he reminds me vaguely of a guy I knew back when I knew Sam IRL. The resemblance does not please me at all. It's something in the shape of his nose and the way he speaks. He's dressed all in black too, just like Jason, but his hair is cut short.
"What are you doing?" He asks me rudely.
"Um...he said there's--"
"He didn't mean YOU." He shoves a serving tool into a plastic container with a couple inches of water, under a slice of pizza. It looks odd, like it's not fully baked and there are no toppings. He smears what looks like chocolate over the top. The whole thing grosses me out.
"I didn't realize..." I decide to leave, the food isn't appealing anyway. I brush past him out the door on the other side of the kitchen. Apparently he can't just let me leave, he has to follow me, all the while making comments.
"People like you, it's unbelievable! How you just worm your way in anywhere, no matter what anyone else thinks."
I walk a little more quickly but he keeps pace with me, and I don't want to actually run.
"This is a gathering for his CLOSE friends and family. His sister, and ME who is her fiance. Do you see where you fit in there?" He asks, chuckling meanly. "Because I don't." He pauses. "Really, I want to know."
I run the last few steps to the door, someone is on their way in so I pretend I'm trying to catch it before it swings shut. I do. I even almost make it out with my pride, but I turn to him and I do something. I can't even remember what it is, some sort of insult that sounded better in my head, a petty jibe, or a slap, maybe I shove the door at him. I don't know, but it makes me feel childish and unjustified.

I leave, feeling like I'm going to cry. The city is built in tiers, outside this level of the apartment is a wide pale cement walkway with a curved metal rail. Behind me the walk slopes downward. I'm heading toward the bridge though. Sam and several of my co-workers have followed me out, there are maybe 5 of them, including his sister who looks nothing like him. Sam has dark hair and eyes and olive-toned skin. He's wearing a grey t-shirt that has a smiley face on the front. His sister, is more pale and has shining blonde hair pulled back into a pony-tail.
It makes me happy that they cared enough to come after me. For a second I doubt that notion, I wonder: are they here to ask how or why I've upset Richard?
"Hey, you heading out?" He asks, it's not like me to leave without saying goodbye.
"Yeah, it's just..."
"We heard, we're going to have a talk with Rich about how he interacts with people." Sam says, glancing over his shoulder, hands on his hips.
"We just wanted to make sure you're okay." His sister says, smiling at me.
"Yes, thank you. I just wasn't prepared for other people to be there." I'm tempted to tell him his brother-in-law reminds me of Jason, but I don't want him to think (in any way whatsoever) that I spend any of my time thinking about him so I keep it to myself.
"We'll get together again later."
"Okay."
They go back to the apartment, I continue on my way to the bridge, feeling better.
The bridge descends, becoming a set of stairs. It lets out into a park of sorts, more like a plaza. There are many of these around the city. This level is a little closer to the water (though we are one above the bottom level), the plaza is filled with tables and benches where people have gathered to relax. There's a wall across from me with wavy metal bars from end to end. There are 8 sections of bars, none of the bars line up with the bars in the section to either side. There are places where they hug the wall closely, and others where they bow out. They're painted white, pink, and yellow. I see what the others are doing, storyline dictates that I've played the game before, I only have a moment where I don't remember how.
The wall sits at the center of the plaza, there are curved ramps on either side, connecting the bottom tier with the tables, to the top tier with benches sheltered by trees. Many people lean on this wall, the bars are a couple feet below the lip, though at each end (the starting points) the wave of the bars is level with it. I take a moment to enjoy the view. From here you can see an entire level of switch-back city. It's beautiful.
I climb over the top of the wall and drop down at the center of the bars. I can feel them under my hands. You have to dodge all the other people playing but you must move constantly, as much to keep up the rules as to avoid getting hit. There's a girl heading my way, I drop down a couple bars and sidle over a step. A man appears next to me, so I leap up a few bars as he's taking the spot I just occupied. I can actually feel my muscles, the bars under my shoes and in my hands, the air moving around me, and each breath of cool air I draw into my lungs. I make it to the left side without hitting anyone and start to make my way to the right.


There's a lapse, I become aware again, I'm laying on my side sandwiched between two people. I don't remember how I got here, and I'm afraid. Especially once I hear them talking. The man pressed to my front, the top of his head level with my chest, sounds like Spike from Buffy, I can even make out his leather trench coat and the peroxide blonde hair...he doesn't have a face though. His head is a blob with hair, given a little structure by his skull. He's talking to his wife, the woman pressed to my back. My arms are pinned to my sides, and their legs are twined through mine. I can't move.
"Darling, I think I'm turning." He says, sounding excited.
I get an image of the woman as she begins to speak, like I'm seeing one of his memories. She's standing in a doorway, wearing a sexy nurse costume complete with nurse hat, she's wearing her blonde hair in pigtails. I realize somehow that she is Sam's sister. She's like an ugly Harley Quinn without makeup. She kinda looks undead. There's bruising around her mouth and eyes, the inside of her mouth past her teeth looks dark and oily. Her skin has an unhealthy purplish cast.
"Good," she begins, in this image I see. They've had this conversation before. "You can turn, and then you'll turn me and I'll be healed!"
"Yes dear, but first, I have to feed."
"Well, we have your meal right here don't we?"
I struggle against them and they laugh. "Good, she's awake."
I have a frustrating moment where I know I'm dreaming but I don't think I can do anything about my situation, like there's no feasible way for me to break free so I can't implement my lucidity. He presses his featureless face to my throat, and somehow bites me, though he doesn't have a mouth. He seems to be having trouble. Before I can hurt him, he needs a face I think, and his face gains features. I somehow wrestle my arms free as he's shifting to get a better biting angle, and I box his ears as hard as I can. He screams in pain. The woman seems to be too undead to do anything to me.
As I'm fleeing from the bed, Spike sicks one of his friends on me. It's a cat about the size of a fox, it snarls at me. It looks vicious. It stands between me and the sliding door on the north wall. I run across the room, striding across the mattress to do it, and head for a railing that overlooks the tunnel. Each floor has one of these, where you can lean over and look down the stairway tunnel. I dive headlong over the polished wood rail. They had crafted this for easy traversing, there are polished wood bars running from the top floor to the bottom. Not all one bar, but sections of them. I right myself as I grab one of these bars and start sliding. The game I played earlier helps me here, it makes my instincts sharp. Before one bar can end I leap to another, and another.
"Well, GET HER!" I hear him yell.
I smirk to myself. The cat creature is catching up with me, it even tries to grab me by leaping from one side of the stair tunnel to the other, but I'm too fast. Instead of taking the bars on the last ten foot drop, I let go. I land in a crouch then make for the door. I run outside and slam the door in the cat's face, laughing just to rankle her. Since she's a cat, it's not like she can open it, she'll have to wait on the vampire to get it for her. I flee. I'm not really concerned, I know she's as vicious as they come, but I'm faster...and if she catches me, well, I'll just have to find a way to deal with it.

I'm on the top tier of the city. It's high enough that there are clouds drifting by. I hear the door open behind me. Oops, better get going. I look over the wall. There are trees that have grown so tall, their crowns press against the bottom of each layer, the branches grow toward the sun, hugging the wall. Well, I guess that's my way down. This next part is kind of a blur. I remember dropping over the side, and using the vines (I can feel the texture of them and the smooth coolness under my palms) and tree branches to descend. At one point I slip and fall, I'm caught in the arms of a massive cherry blossom tree. The limbs are about as wide as I am, with the tiny beginnings for flowers for the season. It creaks in the wind, but my weight is not enough to bother it. I can even smell the flowers. I consider trying to jump to the other massive branch to my right, and then realize just how high up I am. The wind is sweet, I hug the branch and relax a moment. The clouds clear and the river far below is hazy. Nope. I am NOT jumping.
You'll be fine. My subconscious whispers. Logic tells me I will not, so I climb back to the base of the tree.

There's another lapse. I'm almost to the bottom tier. The river is on a hill, the only way to get to the heart of the city is to swim or take a boat. I can hear the cat behind me, I know now that she's a shapeshifter. I slip into the water hoping that will deter her. She follows me without hesitation. I climb out on the slightly lower level and the people there gasp in horror at the creature. They have never seen one before.
"Stay in line beside me, she will not harm you. I'm her target."
The people line up by a wall. People ahead see what is happening where I am and they line up on either side. The streets, I notice, are cobbled.
Whispers meet me as I run, "She's here." they say, "She's leading the Beast.", "Make the way ready." I can see a stone archway, the people have made a human barrier, and before that there is an...obstruction. I'm not sure how to describe it. It's actually an offering, I know I'm supposed to walk on the top of it. The people take my hands and help me hop on top of it, since the thing is about chest high. The base is made of loose pink stone bricks, the top has pastries on plates. A woman, I know she's a tour guide for the city, hands me a piece of pastry as I walk. I pop it into my mouth.
Something strikes me, a think I know the people will see as very symbolic. As I reach the end of the walkway, I grab a raspberry and cream cheese pastry. I tear it in half, I wait until the Shapeshifter is at the end of the walkway, she sniffs at it but does not get onto it. She eyes me uncertainly. I hold out half of the pastry. When she takes it and eats it, I eat my half. She almost looks more dog-like, with a brown/black brindled coat, and narrow muzzle.
Together we pass under the arch into a tiny courtyard. There's a house wedged between all the other houses with a robin's egg blue door. I go inside, she follows.
Once she passes the threshold, she becomes human. I don't know if she's forced to, or if she has a choice. but I have not seen her yet.
"Of course you would lead me here."
"Of course." I agree.
"Why?"
"Why not? I need to know the story, from your lips. You've murdered people for your master, here we will determine your fate." I reply.
She looks a little smug as I turn to face her. She has some sort of white garment with big pockets all over it. Kittens leap down from several of them, I know they are her children. She removes the carrier. Kind of like a tabard. She's willowy, has a tiny frame, with long bronze-brown hair.
"So arrogant, all of you."
"Maybe, but I don't murder people."
"What exactly do you think they'll do to me once they've heard my story?"
"Prison, probably. We'll decide that once we know your...caliber."
"Fine. My husband and I have the ability to shift for a day each year. This year we spent as animals. He shifted first and said to me, 'let's have children', so I said 'why not' and followed suit. My master put us into service, keeping my husband and children hostage if we did not do his bidding. But I won't lie, mostly because I can't at the heart of the city, I enjoyed every moment of it. I'd kill you all if I thought I could get away with it."
Two people appear and lead her (and her children) through a bright red door at the back of the property...

AAAAAAND my phone rings, waking me up.

In the beginning of the dream I'm driving. The highway is pressed up against the foot of a cliff, we stop at a stoplight and the street sign overhead says "Disneyland". We talk about how they can't believe they built a park here, in the middle of nowhere, and wonder what it'll be like.

I'm running across a frozen beach, heading toward the water. I'm rushing to catch the boat to the amusement park. I have to wade through the water and it's ridiculously cold. There's a small lapse and I'm on the boat. The people running the boat don't seem human. There's a woman explaining to me that they live out on the ice, that it's so cold they can no longer keep their children. I see a crying blue baby left out by the water. They hope that someday the cruelty of the Northern Gods will allow them to return to the known world and once more have children.
I look past her and see a woman, I know she's a queen by her bearing, when I first see her she is finely dressed. I glance away and look at her again and she's wearing a crown. The others eye her distrustfully, she had picked up one of the babies from the ice and is holding it. They believe she's defying the will of the gods.

We reach the park. Like many dreams, this place feels like it's inside and outside at once. There are walls and a floor, but the sky is open. There are tables everywhere, and a wrought-iron fence bordering the activities area. I know I'm supposed to meet my family. I don't see dad anywhere, but he's the only one who doesn't know about my misfortune and I wanted to tell him before we all sat down to dinner. I go into the dining area and find my sister sitting at a table. I try to explain that I need to find dad but she's having trouble hearing me.


Mario and Peach(?)
I'm watching a scene from above. Mario (full-on cartoon Mario) walks around a corner, he's looking for his wife. Peach is standing there but she's a brunette and she's dressed all in red. As Mario walks his appearance changes, and becomes more like a real person. He's not Mario at all but a king, and his wife is the queen from the boat. She tells him she's pregnant but she's worried about his reaction because they haven't been intimate in a long time. She's afraid he'll think she's cheated.
Her worries are unfounded, he believes her immediately and supplies a new theory. Now they're standing in a cave etched with glyphs and lit by torches.
"Have you considered that maybe this is the will of the Northern Gods? You crossed their waters, and while they are cruel to the Ice Dwellers, they have always first been gods of fertility."

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.

This dream isn't recent, but I wanted to post this first because it's been on my mind lately. In the dream I cheat on my boyfriend with a stranger, and kill myself. I've never considered cheating, or killing myself. However, the dream came at a time when I was considering a break up. I look at the state of the water throughout the dream. The raging, relentless ocean. The running water. The tranquil pool.

I am traveling in a group of five. We set off across the world, seeking a way to keep it from ending. This world is winding down and the end is eminent. Our efforts are futile. Yet while I travel with them I find I can hope. We come to the ocean, it is vast and ceaselessly tumultuous. The waves tower and crash, and we walk between them, on rough stone platforms. I'm trailing behind the others, and I realize they wouldn't care one way or another if I left them. I do not speak a word, I just decide to leave. I turn around and make my way home.

I am approaching my house. The forest meets my back door, the smooth golden path transitioning prettily into a single stone step. The door stands open. I hesitate knowing that as soon as I go inside, I may not be able to leave. I considering trying to find those I have left to their quest and then decide that it is hopeless. How would I even know where to look?
Inside the house it is cool and dark. I feel a sharp stab of sadness, thinking that I will find the house empty and that my boyfriend has long since left. I notice that the floors are a white/grey tile, there's an L-shaped sectional in the middle of the room with blankets piled on it. There are dark brown curtains covering the far wall, to my right is a wall of glass blocks. I know the bathroom is on the other side. I keep thinking that I can hear water running. I walk to the end of the glass block wall and step into the long hall preceding the bathroom. There's a sink there full of water, and a maid who has been dusting the drapes walks up beside me. I think about how easy it would be to kill myself now before my boyfriend has discovered the depth of my betrayal, and with that thought I remember having sex with a stranger in an alleyway when we first realized the world would end. I think about slitting my wrists in warm water, and about asking the maid to draw it for me.
"I know what you are thinking. It is not as bad as that, is it?" she gestures behind me and I notice movement on the couch. There's a person under the blankets, he rolls over. It's my boyfriend. Tentatively I allow myself to believe that I do not have to tell him what I've done. I go to kneel in front of the couch. He refuses to look at me.
"Hey," I begin, "it isn't too late! I came home." my throat feels thick, like I'm about to cry. I worry that he knows what I have done to him, and doesn't want me anymore. "We can go anywhere, just you and me. We can watch and wait for the world to end, together."
He turns his back to me. I plead with him, but he has ceased to exist. There is now only a pile of blankets on the couch.

What now?
The maid has drawn back the drapes. The entire wall behind the drapes is glass, one panel slides back. I know what I will do, what is the point of drawing things out? My world has already ended anyway. My feet are bare and the floor is cool beneath them. I'm wearing a white sun-dress with large red flowers on it. I step to the edge of the tile. My house stands so high off the earth that even the titan trees on the ground below seem tiny.
"Yes." I think, and take a shaking breath. This is where I will find release from my grief. I stare out over the valley. Then I close my eyes, and I dive neatly out into the air.
I can actually feel the wind on my face, the longer I fall the more free I feel. The air streams past me. Intuitively I know that I will land in water, or that I must. I became aware then, that I am dreaming. My mind resisted the dream, telling me three separate times that I could choose to wake up, that hitting the ground would be the death of me.
"No." I thought, "I want to see how this ends."
So I fell, and fell, and fell. I could see the tree tops and directed myself toward it because I knew there would be water at its center. By then I am without all the pain that was with me when I jumped.

When my body hits the canopy my mind separates from it. I am crouching beside a tranquil pool when I see my body tumble like a rag doll through the trees and plunge into the water. I stand up and walk out to the body. I know it is me, but she no longer looks like me. I take her wrists in my hands and pull her from the water, dragging her beneath a tree and arrange her among the roots.

I leave her there and go to find the others in their quest to save the world.