Carabas

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."

After having to kill an animal and making sure to make it as painless as possible - essentially reaching into its mind and turning it off - I've wound up in an argument, arguing against the raising and slaughtering of pigs for meat. (Dream me and waking me have very different opinions on this.) I find it incomprehensible, especially contrasted to the concept of pets - including pigs kept as pets. I talk about the distribution of souls, how bizarre it seems that this one will be raised to be pampered and the next one raised to be meat, with no obvious difference between them except how they're treated.

I'm speaking with a woman from some religious order, talking about an orphan boy; with me is a man I'm close with who runs a clinic, which is where I met the boy. I've asked her to guide the kid to some local official or guard or something along those lines, to get him placed in a (word that means both orphanage and workhouse - I'm thinking of it as a place where he'll be cared for, the best place for him). She's telling me she can hardly be expected to keep an eye on some street kid who wants to run, especially when there's so many orphaned refugee kids coming into the city - many of whom would jump on this chance that he's trying to get away from. If he wants to disappear among them, he will. Even if she and the official keep him in line until he gets to the orphanage/workhouse, he doesn't want to be there; he'll just run off and disappear again. The observer side of me thinks she's right, I can't force the kid to stick around someplace he doesn't want to be just because I think I know what's best for him, this is pointless; but the character side of me is thinking, so much for the supposed compassion and charity of her order.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm watching a man sleep and trying to work out a way around a problem, thinking of ballads like Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, thinking of warnings about people who stumble into something they shouldn't and wind up obsessed. I'm trying to avoid that in this case. This is a man who's abandoned some responsibility - nothing to do with me, this was before I met him, but I need him to take that responsibility up again. I'm trying to think up a dream I can give him to push him in that direction, but I'm concerned that if I interfere too directly, I'll just end up leading him further away from the path I want him to take.