Carabas

Escaped from my IRL home onto my IRL street and went lucid when I crossed that boundary line. Started flying, admired some views of Christmas lights, getting less and less realistic as I went on, culminating in a castle with turrets completely covered in white lights.

Memory gap, crossed a lake by a natural rock bridge and entered a cavern on the other side, memory gap again, and then I'm semi-lucid again in a room with three sleeping people I recognize, including Julia. I try to leave without disturbing any of them, fail in this. Mary Jane wakes up, the closest to the exit, and we speak for a while; although we seem to know each other, I'm aware that Mary Jane is wholly imaginary, and that's the point of her in this scene, that she's imaginary. Julia is in the bed across from hers, and eventually wakes up - that's what I wanted to avoid most. I can feel the sensation of pressure from her hand, which stands out - it's the first time I've used that sense in tonight's dreams. Her face has started to resemble Mary Jane's, which is sad but not a surprise; but I think "her name is still her own," which is a surprise and a relief. (This whole scene is about mental associations.)

Two women are speaking. One of them, the only human in this dream, has made a deal to trade places with someone. But it's being explained to her now that the person she's traded places with was fated to die at a certain age; they were to be what's referred to as the tithe to hell. That's now her job. At 24, she's already past that age.

The woman explaining this to her sounds amused at her situation, but she resents the tithe to hell itself - doesn't like having to submit to someplace else's authority. The human picks up on this resentment, and makes a suggestion. She believes that as a human, she can access the place they refer to as hell in a way that this woman can't; there's something stored there that allows that place to hold authority here. If she could reach it, there'd be no need for the tithe. It's unlikely to work, but still an intriguing offer.

Scene change. The human's standing at the back of a line passing through a small gate in a rock tunnel. The other people here are goblin-like creatures, and she's wearing the same type of clothes as theirs for a disguise, along with an eyepatch - the eyepatch is important because the people here all bear wounds proudly. Although the guard at the gate is familiar with most of the people passing through, talking like they're old friends, he apparently isn't bothered by a stranger's presence; he waves her through without a second look.

Listening to a song with the line, "I ran away from my vows."

I've broken into a building for a specific purpose, but it's not been going well. I killed someone while trying to stop him from raising the alarm, I hadn't intended that. Still standing over him, to my right there's a room with three men in 19th century dress uniform speaking. They're the reason I came here, and I'm certain I won't be able to finish what I came here to do now that they've seen this - but they're not reacting. On further examination, there's some manner of barrier between that room and this one, invisible from this side but seemingly solid from theirs. I lean through for a moment while those men are facing the other way, feeling no resistance, and find that from their side, it looks as if I'm leaning through a mirrored wall. Interesting setup; I'm thinking about why the owner of this home would need such a thing.

Then I focus on the men speaking on the other side, the reason I'm here. One is saying, "What do we do about Shaw?" Another replies, "Escaping-"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Revisiting that one-way-mirror setup, there's a vivid yellow tint to the air on this side of the mirror, and I'm looking at an image of a white rabbit hanging from a noose held in a man's hand. I'm hearing a man I think of as some kind of instructor saying to me, "...exists in the past."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man I recognize from a previous dream leading a group of people out of some tunnels onto the surface. There's only a narrow ledge to stand on here, the top of a cliff, and it's raining, windy. Last time I'd described him as pale; this time there's something wrong with his skin, but I'm not focusing on it. I'm looking at his eyes; there's a red ring filling the outer half of his iris, that's new. Someone's saying in response to a question he just asked, "Perhaps we could talk on the way there," like they're in a hurry to get away from here.

Earlier, he'd been having a conversation with another man in those tunnels, taller, with white hair that's mostly fallen out. This man's arguing against him leaving with that group of people and going back to civilization, saying that either he'll spread corruption like a disease, or else he won't but he'll be blamed for doing so anyway. Previously, they'd unknowingly allowed some kind of corruption to spread before their own symptoms started to show, not realizing they were the cause.

I'm coming out of a mine with a box a man gave me. Sitting down at a table across from a woman I know who's eating lunch, I open up the box and we have a look at the books inside. There's a two-volume set on healing magic that catches my attention; I've seen the first one before but the second is completely new to me, I'm very pleased. The woman asks me for a demonstration, and I laugh, saying I've barely got any understanding of it - it's not something you can learn from books, they're just for pointing you in the right direction, it takes time and work to actually put into practice. She's disappointed and leaves. As I look through the book, I call up a blue healing light that plays around my hand. Reading, the book is saying that it's impossible to progress further without "the Lady's smile."

I see an image of said Lady, a woman in a void. She's aware of my attention, though her eyes don't focus on me; she talks as if this is a visit from an old friend, sounding surprised and pleased, saying that I've come earlier this week than expected, and calls me by a name that starts "Shari-" But she cuts off partway through that name, and gives the impression of focusing on me, though still not with her eyes. She says then, "Isfael? Is that you?"

The observer side of me splits off, recognizing that this Lady and Shari-whoever are figures that often appear in stories together under various identities. When she correctly called me Isfael, I realized that Isfael is one of those identities, a specific young version of Shari-whoever without knowledge of his older self.

There's a woman who is retrieving a certain object for me, while I watch in third person. The object is in a cave, in the possession of this large, strange creature who she's speaking to now - she's got two or three people with her. He's willing to make a deal. But after discussing terms for a while, the woman ultimately refuses; she isn't willing to agree to his terms. He accepts this, clearly believing she'll be back eventually - she has no other choice, she needs that object.

She and the others start to leave, but one of the others evidently has their own plan - another woman starts playing a strange kind of music that puts the creature into a kind of trance. She encourages the leader of their group to simply take the object. The leader is conflicted, so the woman with the music does it herself. The creature's trance is deep enough to allow her to get close to the object, but it snaps out of it once it recognizes that they're stealing from it. They run.

The cave is in the center of a sort of maze of tunnels, but although it looks confusing, the tunnels are all interconnected; as long as they keep running in the same general direction, it doesn't matter which tunnel they choose, they'll get out eventually.

They come out of the tunnels into a place that I think of as a certain type of dream, a sort of desert-like place, barren brown rock, with various dreamers here and there like landmarks. In one dream, there's a family in a yard where grapevines are growing; two heavyset old men who are brothers, and two grandchildren playing a little distance away. One brother leans in to say something to the other in a language I don't recognize, and the eyes of the one listening turn all black, which I recognize as an outward sign of the usual effect of staying in this particular type of dream too long. He's the dreamer here, these others are illusions. They see the group passing near the edges of the dream and just watch them.

The group comes across a dreamer they know, a man who the leader of this group is in love with. The others hang back on a ledge overlooking his dream, but she approaches him. He's sitting in front of the ruins of a small house - it's meant to be their house, his and hers, though they've never actually lived together outside of this dream. There's dead bodies lying around outside, things he killed, but too late to save this place from them. When he sees her there, he says, "I tried," with a sort of smile, as if this was inevitable and the only surprising thing was that he tried to save this place at all.

Then he sees the object she's stolen, and there's a shift - he stops paying attention to the storyline of the dream he's in. He asks her why she went to all the trouble of finding that thing, when there's no guarantee that the man she got it for will be grateful for it. There's an association here with trying to help a scorpion - the story of the scorpion and the frog, doing what's in your nature rather than what's in your best interest. She agrees with him, there's no guarantee that this will have the result she wants, but she wants to help the 'scorpion' anyway. She makes a joke about having a weakness for older men - lifetimes older, in this case. Her man doesn't find this funny.

In a cave, a young modern couple were confronted by two women, guards of something sacred who'd been hunting this man down. They fought, and now those two sacred guards are lying on the ground, one unconscious.

The man rises to float slightly in the air, and the guard who's still conscious believes this is a sign he's about to kill her - but he just scoops up the woman he's with, carrying her in his arms, floats over where that guard is lying, and keeps going. He says to the guard, "Seriously, go away."

Then he phases through the cave wall, where a mural is painted in gold. As he passes through the wall, the guard momentarily sees a different face overlaying his, someone she recognizes and greatly respects - either a religious authority who's recently died, or a god, or both.

I'm standing in a cave with a group of people, discussing a man who came through here just ahead of us, someone we need to seal away - this is something he'd requested but now he's running. Our time is limited. A woman is suggesting that we use a certain box - it fits in the palm of your hand - that her husband had originally designed to seal himself in case of an emergency. She believes that her husband is no longer a threat so the box can be turned to a different purpose, and I can see her joy in that. But I refuse. No matter how safe her husband seems now, we need to save that option for him.

Following the man we need to seal, we come out of the cave into the open. There's a group of people living here who view him as a god; we avoid encountering them directly. Two of us get into a discussion on the nature of worship, talking about projecting the way your own perspective works onto a macro level, with a powerful leader to control things and a drastically overvalued role of consciousness. I make a comparison to a machine that can feel every impact of cogs and gears.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fragmentary scenes with that woman who led the pilgrimage through the mountains earlier:

I'm sitting at a large round wooden table, eating a snack, while she's saying to me something about "would you bear hope" or would I be "a bearer of hope." I'm a little taken off-guard by this conversation, and I'm annoying her by not giving what she's saying serious consideration.

I'm surrounded by wolves, or something like wolves - they've got faces that seem built for snarling, I think of them as someone's nightmare of wolves. I can feel them as they each brush against me, rubbing closely against my legs. They're mine now apparently. I can't believe that worked, this is wonderful. I look over to that woman, standing a short distance away - I want to see her reaction. She has this sort of "you have got to be kidding me" expression. The wolves had started out attacking us, and she seems more exasperated by this turn of events than anything else.

We're standing on a snow-covered mountain, the ground here at a steep angle, with some threat above us, and I'm saying to her, "-here. I would rather stand and fight being a single person. And you, we'll-"

FMA. I/Mustang left the military a while ago; right now I'm looking out a door at the rain. I see a memory of similarly looking out another doorway at the rain, standing at the door to a balcony on a tall tower, and then retreating back inside to adjust my plans. In the present, I put on a hat with a wide, floppy brim and head out into the rain.

As I'm walking up a mountain road in that rain, I pass an old man driving his truck down the road. We wave to each other like we do every day. I'm thinking, as a soldier who was for all intents and purposes an embodiment of fire, I was useless in the rain, so it held a different significance. But as a person - I'm thinking of both me and the old man in the truck - you just put on a hat and go to work, rain or not.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in the same mountain range from yesterday, traveling alone at the moment, standing just inside the entrance to a cave. I've come to a very old friend to ask him for his help. He's not happy to see me. He's sitting in a sort of stone throne and saying slowly, emphasizing every word, "I am not well."

I can see that. He wears this silver circlet that sort of glows, a contrast to his dark hair and coat; looking at how faint that glow is, I'm thinking that there's barely anything left of him. Nonetheless, there's enough of him left to do what I need done.

I'm flying over a river, and although I don't remember what I was flying on, in effect it's essentially a flying carpet - a small, flat surface carrying several people. Someone else is 'driving' it, I'm just along for the ride. We're taken over a waterfall, with several clouds beneath us, and among the clouds I see a huge gate hanging in the air, supported by pillars on either end. It turns out to be the first in a series of three gates, the entrance to a country - the first is very modern, with images like a billboard; the second somewhat less modern; and the third is very old and very beautiful, more like a decorative lattice made of stone and covered in moss, as tall as maybe a three-story building. I turn back to look at it as we pass overhead. On the other side, we land. I find that I'm excited, much more so than I'd expected to be, about traveling somewhere new. Less jaded than I thought apparently.

I'm surprised - although we've just entered a new country, there don't seem to be any customs to pass through, no guards. We've landed outside of a building, and I understand there are some procedures to be gone through inside; but there isn't anyone around out here, no one to stop us from just wandering off into the country. I intend to go inside, I just took note of it as something odd. There's what seems to be a giant bell planted in the ground, although it's so covered with moss it's hard to tell what's underneath. As I and the other people from the 'carpet' walk around outside, I notice several stone statues. There's a plaque underneath one of them that I read - this is part of the entrance procedure. We're meant to pay our respects by bowing before each of these statues. I do so, pointing this out to one of the other people from the 'carpet' to give them a heads up. The first three statues I come to are divine figures and legendary heroes, I bow before each of them; but then the fourth statue I find is an odd creature in a mask, labeled as a nightmare called Home Eater. I don't see why I should have to bow before my own kind.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was a scene in which someone was causing plants to grow rapidly among some stone ruins in a cave, and someone else saying to them, horrified, "What have you done?"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Lost Boys, as David I'm watching Michael drop out of the tree and run away from the killing. This was not the plan. He was supposed to kill someone, not run away. I don't like giving the new ones too much time to think - just do it, make a clean break, then explain what's happened to them. It's easier that way.

Back in the cave with Star, I'm standing off to one side and watching her. She's standing in front of a bunch of pots for plants covering a table. Most of them look empty, although I know she's planted seeds in each of them, and she's been trying to do something with them. But the one she's holding her hands over now is growing right before our eyes, responding to her somehow, like magic. Whatever she's been trying to do, it's working on this one. The other boys come back then, they all exclaim over what Star's doing, gathering around the plant and looking as excited about this as she is - except Michael. He's hanging back and looking at Star with this expression - not exactly betrayal, but close; like he'd thought she was someone he could trust, and now he believes he was wrong about that.

Three boys at a boarding school have smuggled in a canister containing what they think is going to be a harmless prank. They're wrong. They're in much more serious trouble than they expected, and one of the three boys immediately runs from the room, cluing the authorities in to their guilt. The other two try to explain that they're not at fault, they didn't mean to hurt anyone, it's the person who gave them the canister who caused this, and the third boy's gone off to fetch something that will prove it - but he'll be too late, that evidence will be gone.

Two guys have shown up at my IRL home with a dead girl in the backseat of their car. She won't stay in the ground. They're telling me she needs to be put to rest. I say yeah, she sure does - but not in my yard. Get her out of here. I go back to bed.

After going through a portal, I'm briefly disoriented, looking at this immense black hole in front of me - then I realize I'm still in the void, the portal I just went through only shifted my position within it. I'm floating before this vast swirling dark mass. It's something like a cloud if a cloud had long spines that curl and move, and something like a great tornado seen from above with a black eye at its center, and something like a nest framed with this curling mass of spines. It's unimaginably vast. The hole at the center is many, many times my height, and it's only like the pupil in a great eye; I can't begin to describe the size of the thing itself. I try to look to my left, to get my bearings in the void, but when I try to look away from the thing, static noise fills my head, getting worse the farther away I turn. I swim through the air to that black hole.

On the other side, I'm disoriented again - I'm underwater and I have a hard time figuring out which way is up, and there's too many colors after the void. I eventually work out I'm in the cabin of a sunken ship, tipped so the prow's pointing straight down - I quickly make my way out and shoot right up to the surface. I'm in a great cave filled with several such shipwrecks, with sun shining in through holes far above.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are two women, lovers, relaxing in a small pool surrounded by Greek-looking ruins in a green field, with plants around the pool for privacy. This planet has been uninhabited for a long time, people only visit it now as a place to relax. An older, beautiful woman approaches the pool. The others dislike the interruption and the loss of their privacy, but it can't be helped; everyone's friendly and polite, and the women in the pool shift over to make room for her.

The scene changes: one of those two women is sobbing on the shoulder of a friend. Her lover's dead - that older woman killed her.

Two middle-aged spinsters are visiting Rumpelstiltskin/Gold just before attending some event, but he's busy with a delivery of some sort. The room where they wait for him holds a collection of various objects behind glass, and as they look around, one of them says, "Richer than the (some family name beginning with A) brothers!" The objects behind the glass are personal mementos from over the centuries, arranged and displayed in such a way as to look like a collection of history - playbills and tickets, a photo from a political protest that changed history, old forms of currency, all neatly labeled with places and dates and short descriptions. But I'm looking at the objects as a disembodied observer with Rumpelstiltskin's mindset, with fond memories of the actress depicted on that playbill, and a woman at that protest, and the profit I made when that country changed currencies. (Although I'm thinking of it as a collection of memories that stretches back centuries, the oldest items I actually see are only from the 1800s.) I think to myself, 'and I could sell it, if I chose.' As if convincing myself that I could part with it all, if I had to.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fragments - someone involved in some industry that's often glamorized in movies, intelligence or organized crime, mentally contrasting his actual day to day life with the ridiculous movies. A rich and powerful woman who's sleeping with the hired killer who works for her. Overdue library books, a trilogy by an author who's written 156 books, these ones with covers showing caves with stalactites that remind me of fangs. Rumpelstiltskin again, spending a summer at a country estate belonging to a brother and sister he knows, looking out the window and feeling someone's suffering, the potential for a deal; following it, and finding someone in the garden, reading a journal that had belonged to Belle.

Me and Erana (of QFG) are in a cave we believe to be the entrance to hell. I'm looking at something in a glass case near the entrance, she's looking at things hanging on the walls. We found this place by chance; we were supposed to be heading somewhere else, but I believe that other place would have wound up being a dead end, and this cave is our best bet. There are these blue butterflies that live here that are known for flying against the wind. The opening that we believe to be the entrance to hell is unreachable for us due to the wind, but these butterflies can go right in, and as I watch them, I'm planning out how we can use that.

(Woke up. Went back to sleep.)

In some small city. Erana was killed, but she reappeared in the form of a child and grew up within a few hours. This happened twice, and we think it's a result of the time she died and I retrieved her soul from hell - now hell won't take her. I'm not sure it'll take me, either, but I'm not in a hurry to test that. Sitting in our hotel room after the second time it happened, I'm trying to think up a way to use that child form to our advantage, but this annoys her.

We're in a series of tunnels, and we split up to try to work out the correct answer to some kind of game that involves finding the right combination of drinks, or in another room, the right meal. We're meeting back up in the main tunnel to compare notes - Erana's solved the drinks room, I'm still working on mine. I mention that it reminds me of kumiko, meaning that it's partially a guessing game and the solution involves rather poetic references, which amuses me; it's kind of nostalgic, even though I'm frustrated. There's a voice in the distance and I say something about how it must be the guardian of this place. I spot him standing on a balcony over a gate we've been trying to get through, a guard with a head or helmet shaped like Anubis.

I'm walking up the steps to a graveyard. I'm a teenager or young man who lives and/or works in a temple or shrine or similar attached to this graveyard. In the previous dream scene I'd been talking to friends at the foot of the stairs to the temple about hard times their families had been through, and I'd been thinking that I couldn't really relate, my family never having been through anything like that, and I'd removed myself from the conversation - but now I'm thinking about the hard things in my life I couldn't tell them, specifically I'm thinking about an old man buried here whose death I couldn't tell them about. I float over to his grave.

But there's a guy here waiting for me. He attacks me - though I just float away from that - while blaming me for causing that man's death by convincing him to expose us to the media. He'd been one of something secret, supernatural or not quite human. But it wasn't like that - I hadn't been the one to convince him at all, and I'm frustrated by this mistaken rumor; it had been some pretty girl who'd talked him into it, I'd been completely against it, and I'd hated that he could throw away a lifelong belief in secrecy so quickly.

I'm sitting outside what looks like a very small cave entrance, too small for a person to get through, and I'm talking with several very small spirits, and a much larger, much older one in the cave. We're having a disagreement about a course of action, and finally the spirit inside the cave decides to force the issue by possessing me and taking control of my body. In doing so, he forces out the much smaller, relatively harmless spirit that usually possesses me, and it's quite shocked by this; it tries to get back in, but there's this glowing blue crescent on my forehead, like a closed eye, which acts like a lock.

I'm standing on a city street near a warehouse, surrounded by government vehicles, and talking to my boss, who works for the FBI. He wants me to see what's going on inside the warehouse, but I can't do that. I'm tired. The thing possessing me doesn't understand why this is an issue, takes over and answers easily - his answer has something to do with drugs - he speaks using his own accent, very different from mine, some variety of English, but if the boss notices he chooses to ignore it.

Hypnagogia: A woman's voice saying "Run!" over and over again. Disconcerting. Woke myself right back up.

Nightmare: I'm in a dark cave full of dangerous creatures. So I decide to summon up a pterosaur to kill them for me. I hide behind a door against the wall and listen to it move around; it won't be able to reach into that narrow space, so I'll be fine. Except I start doubting whether the space is small enough, and become aware that I'm not in a narrow space, I'm in the much more open space of my bed.

(Woke up at 5:30 am, half an hour after bed. Back to sleep.)

A connection between the Palin family and a family of actors, a law that makes it possible to win an election without gaining a majority of votes, and a great deal of anger at both these things, though I don't much mind myself.

Birds flying overhead in V formation above my IRL home, thinking about luring them down.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm the Doctor, the ninth, traveling with Rose, and trying to get into a building which is apparently strictly for the upper class and we don't look the part. The guard at the door stops us at first, then lets us in after I wave the psychic paper at him. After we're inside - looks like a casino - Rose asks if the paper made him see us as someone else, or in nicer clothes. I tell her it doesn't change the things people see, just the way they interpret them.

(Woke up. Suspect that last scene was inspired by the 'Run!' hypnagogia. Back to sleep.)

A little dark-haired girl, a relative, who hides behind the furniture and speaks quietly, tells me I should have listened to my visions. I'd just agreed to something, and I probably shouldn't have.