Visions in the Dark

I am young than I look now and wearing a grey and red poncho. I am in some sort of museum or cultural center focusing on North American Aborigonal Societies. I am there to participate in a vision quest and arrive late in the afternoon to recieve instruction on what to do. I am told by some Elders that this vision quest is more like a savenger hunt because I have to obtain seven various items from safes that are hidden around the facility. The safes are locked with complex systems that require finding the right item to open them, and not all of the items are plain keys, which are also hidden from plain view.

I see that there are several other young people in the meeting room, some I know in real life and some I know in the dream. They have already completed their vision quests and are just visiting the facility. One of the coditions of the vision quest is that I must find and do everything alone and cannot ask for help from anyone. I go over and say hello to some of the people I know but many of them outright ignore me or are reluctant to talk to me.

Evening comes and many people leave but I want to stay as late as I can and get as much of my vision quest done as I can. I walk through the facility and looks along all the walls and corners for hidden safes. I find one but it is locked and I do not yet have the key to open it. At first I am closely observed by some Elders who follow me around and take notes on my progress and discuss it amoungst themselves, but I lose track of them at some point and left to explore on my own.

I find by self on the second floor of the building and come to an area that is open to the floors below and is crisscrossed with wooded suspention bridges. The only way to the other side is across the bridges and as I start to cross I notice two Tolkien inspired elves standing in the middle of one, observing my movements and loudly discussing me. One elf looks like Peter Jackson's version of Elrond and the other is a dark haired elf with a stern look on his face.

I cross the bridge and explore some of the rooms that have many indegenous artifacts on display and see two of my friends who are First Nations peoples. One of them I know completed their vision quest years before and the other says that he is just starting his, which confuses me because I thought I was the only one. It dawn on me that this is now a race because if he obstains the items before I do than I will obviously be unable to collect those items. I do not tell him that I am also on my vision quest. They move on and I continue searching the display cases until I find a gold token, which I hope can be used to open a safe.

Finding nothing more of unterest in the remaining rooms of that area I head back towards the wooden suspension bridges where the two elves are there and still watching me. They are having an argument about something and as I cross the bridge and walk past them, the Elrond looking elf grabs my arm, leans in and tells me tells me where to find the next safe and how to open it. I pull away, plug my ears and run because I am not supposed to recieve help from others and I don't want to get in trouble.

Back on the ground floor though I go straight to the safe he told me about but it will not open. Nearby in a potted plant I find another gold token. I wander around some more and find an arts and crafts room that has a safe sitting on a table. Down the hall from this room is a women's bathroom and another safe. The safe on the table contains a coin operated locking system but which I put my two gold coins in, they are immediately spit out. Ayoung boy working on a craft in the room tells me that I need three tokens to open that safe and the the item and key inside will open the safe down the hall.

Just then my friend who is also doing his vision quest walks in the room and inserts his three gold tokens into the safe which pops open and reveals a green jadestone medallion and another key. He then uses that key to open the safe down the hall and loudly declares that he has completed his vision quest. Several Elders and other people enter the room and congradulate him and they all walk out to celebrate somewhere. Just then the public announcment system plays a message that the facility is closing. I watch everyone in the building leave via the main exit, but I am crushed by my failure of the vision quest and I hide in a women's washroom that contains a lounge and cry.

I suddenly have a backpack with me and I open it and find several key chains with lots of keys on it, some stones and shells, a picture of my first cat and various other random crap that seems pointless and meaningless to me because they would not have helped me on my quest anyway. Many hours pass and a cleaning man discovers me sleeping in the bathroom and alerts security. A friendly brown haired security man wakes me up and offers to drive me home. We hop into is light blue 1956 Ford pickup and drive through the country. I don't talk to him because I am very despondant and depressed. We approach some train tracks and despite the warning lights that a train is coming the security man just keeps on driving. I fear that we will be hit by the train but cross just before it does and it misses the truck by just a few feet.

Dream starts off with my dad and myself at a giant church which is also a busy tourist destination, though the denomination is not clear. The building is square and seems identical on each side, and it five several stories tall. The outside of the church has bricked pathways that encircle the building and each each side (compass direction) of the building is painted different bright, solid colours. I cannot remember all of them but recall that the south side of the building was painted dark blues and either dark purples or greens. The crowds are made up of many people of different backgrounds, as well as non-humans. There are alien like creature that look like they just stepped out of a science fiction film like Star Wars, while others are antropormorpic animals, dressed in human clothing. No one is bothered by the wide range of non-human creatures, as this is quite normal in this dream world and though I am not bothered by it, I do take note of it because in the dream I have never encountered non-human civilians before.

There is a a small castle or fortress to the north of the church, that is much bigger and made of plain grey bricks. The whole place is set upon a cliff and a tan brick wall keeps people from falling off the edge into a churning ocean. Between the pathways and buildings are elaborate and beautiful gardens filled with many fragrant flowers. It is forbidden by law to touch or damage the flowers and benches are provided all along the cobbled pathways so that people can sit and admire them.

Along the pathways themselves are many sculptures, both abstract and figurative, that seem to have nothing to do with religion, made in a variety of different media. My dad and I are between the north end of the church and the fortress, looking at a brown (bronze?) sculpture. My dad asks me "Do you see him?" and points up. There is a little figure of a burly, bearded man dressed as a lumber jack and carrying a large axe over his shoulder. The rest of the statue itself looks like a crude replica of the Eiffel Tower. My dad is reading a plaque on the side of the statue about what it represents. I leave him to have a quick look around and encircle the church (and thus discover its different coloured sides) before I find my dad on the east side looking at some plastic, light blue and white triangular peices that are slightly curled, that I think are supposed to represent waves of water or something.

I am feeling impatient because I want to leave the crowded pathways and look inside the church, for that is I thought we had come there for. Eventually we do made our way inside, through the south entrance (as that is the only one open, the others are sealed). The inside seems warm and inviting, everything is made of wood and it looks like a simple cottage with a long hall down the middle. To the immediate right there is a small dining room where several (Christian) nuns sit around a dining table in front of empty plates and glasses made of fine porceline. They are dressed casually (wool sweaters, cotton skirts, slippers) and their nun headresses are grey, not black. They at first ignore us and the stready flow of people coming in and out of the entrance. I notice, and point out to my dad, burning embers on the dark brown wooded floor of the dining room, which the nuns have not seen or simply ignore.

We begin to stamp the embers out, as some of them are quite large and could possibly cause a fire, and only then does one elderly nun take notice of what we are doing and joins us in our stamping. When the embers are out she provides no possible explaination of what could have caused it but takes us on a personal tour which ends at a cramped but homely kitchen at the end of the hall. Many of the rooms along the way are sealed with heavy wooden doors and I cannot see inside them, while others are open, though windowless and dark and look mearly like the inside of a chapel with rows of pews and alters filled with candles, some burning and some not. Despite this there are not religious icons or statues anywhere and the only indictation that the building is a church so far is the casually dressed nuns walking the halls.

The elderly nun (who looks like the mother from James Cameron's Titanic) takes us to the second floor which is a special priviledge that the rest of the tourists are not afforded apparently, and it is much different in style the the main floor. Monks in brown cloaks wander the halls silently and avoid making eye contact with anyone and go out of their way to walk around. The walls and floors are made of plain grey bricks and there are many twisting passageways along the hall that go either up or down, yet do not contain stairs and hare been paved smooth and flat.

I ask the nun why this is so and she merely responds that it is to accomadate the many tourists in wheelchairs or those pushing strollers. She also mentions that the basement levels can only be reached by these twisting passages. At the end of one hall there is a large bay window and to the left of that there is a large red curtain from which silent monks enter and leave. A black man with a white turban, dressed in a dark blue robe decorated with silver five pointed stars and crescent moons, stares silently out of the window with a very sad expression on his face. He glances over his shoulder briefly and makes eye contact with me, before quickly looking away and returning his sad gaze out the window. I have a strong desire to speak with him, as I sense he holds much wisdom, but I do not because he seems so sad and unapproachable.

To the right of the bay window, there are two of the twisting passages, one going up and one going down. From the windowless passage going down an eerie green glow eminates. The passage going up has a single wooden frame window with a vase of daisies and seems more welcoming.

As I sit there and contemplate which passage I would like to take, the one going up (consciousness, the easy path) or the one going down (unconsciousness, the harder path) a tour group emerges from the passage going down. It seems to be a group of children lead by a middle aged man but they are all wearing radioactive protective suits that cover there whole bodies and trudge with great weariness as if their trek has been long and arduous. The sight of them needed such protection to explore the lower realm kind of scares me into impulsively running for the passage leading up. I quickly look over my shoulder and notice that dad is gone, as is the man at the window, and the hall is empty of monks, but the nun remains and smiles warmly at me, but she says nothing. Despite her reassuring glance, I scramble up the ascending path with no thoughts or expectations in my mind, like a scared animal being chased by something unseen.

The dream changes. I am suddenly in the castle north of the church, in a grand passageway that while still twisting upwards, is decorated with artworks and elegance befitting of a royal building. It is also much wider, does not slant so steeply and is lighted by large windows bordered by elaborate tapestries. People still wander the halls, but instead of nuns and monks, are woman and men dressed richly in Renaissance fashions of courtiers and aristocrats. A few of them saunter by me and sneer as they do so. I am not dressed as finely as they and instead have on a simple brown dress with a grey undershirt and light grey apron. I have read hair and know immediately that I have transformed into my deam incarnet, Kalima. I look out one of the large windows and can see the square, multicoloured church still surrounded by gardens and sculpures, though the cobblestone pathways are empty of modern-looking tourists and filled with merchants and vendors, peasants and aristocrats, human and non-human alike, bustling around in a budy medieval townscape.

I cannot consciously recall the previous part of the dream now and though I can sense that I do not belong here, and feel out of place, the farmiliarity of everything I am seeing makes me think that I have always been here. I unconsciously grasp at something hidden underneath my collar: a small silk bag containing a polished peice of jade hangs around my neck on a thin strap of leather. I keep it hidden because I feel that if anyone saw it, they would believe that I had stolen it, as it would seem too expensive for a mere peasant as myself to own such a thing. Beyound sentimental and material value, this peice of jade is magical and allows me to see beyond the constraints of the physical world, as well as grant me some minor magical powers. Through the Jade I can see the Truth at all times, and if someone were to discover it and take it away, I fear that I would be rendered powerless and blind.

Touching the Jade, I can feel its power, which pulsates with a warm but sharp electrical current, even through the rough cotton of my shirt and the thick silk bag that contains it. It jars my consciousness and I suddenly remember what I am supposed to be doing, though the sudden awareness is fragmented: Meeting friends. Finding and freeing a captive lion. Saving a King. I cannot compel the peice of Jade which, while still apart of me, is like an entity all unto its own, to show me more and I know that it reveals only what I need to know and it is up to me to figure out the rest.

I decend the winding passageway down to the main floor of the castle and meet a group of people whom I know are my friends. We came here out of curiousity at first, to see the castle, though later for an important task revealed to me through the Jade. My friends, who are all older than me by a few years, know of my power, and trust and protect me with great care. They are all humans except for one, who is a small antropormorphic ant like creature (about two inches tall) who is very wise and acts as our teacher and guide. He usually rides on someone's shoulder, since he is much too small to keep up with us walking on his own, and he greatly fears being crushed to death by being stepped on. All of us are orphans and outcasts and we have no one else in the world save for each other.

We find a lion in a cage and release it before the guards and discover us. We make are way through the lower parts of the castle and it is confusing and maze like. We are captured by some guards and brought before the King. My peice of Jade suddenly sends me a message about the King's life being in danger. I try to tell him so but he doesn't believe me. The lion captors have some how recaptured the lion and now use it as a weapon, making the poor creature attack and kill anyone it comes across, and beating it severely if it does not comply. The captors are just outside of the throne room when a soldier comes and tells the king what is happening. He finally believes me that his life is in danger and I use my magic peice of Jade to create and illusion so that my friends, the King and I can escape. We follow a secret passage revealed by the King behind the throne and it leads to the outside of the castle, but over the ocean and we have to jump into the water.

When I get out of the water I am seperated from my friends in the crowds of people outside the castle and for some reason my peice of Jade transformed me into a lion. I am immediately captured by the cruel lion tamers, who take my peice of Jade without which I cannot revert back. The King meanwhile regroups what soldiers he has left and surrounds and captures the would be assassins. I discover that I am able to revert back to human form under my own power and so not need the Jade. My friends and I are rewarded and we are no longer poor peasants. My friends take up residence in the castle, but I feel out of place because I vaguely remember my dad looking at the art outside of the castle and I leave to "find my way back home."


The dream ends there.