Carabas

I'm disembodied and watching this woman who I think of as "the princess." She's standing on a cliff at night, looking out into the distance - I'm facing the opposite direction, and I wonder what she can see out there; she seems to be looking at something specific. She's with this big buff friend/guard. I'm hearing music, though I'm aware the music isn't part of the scene on the cliff that I'm watching. A mezzo-soprano singing, starting with a line that reminds me of the start of the Commendatore's song - "Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti" - very similar sequence of notes, but in no language I recognize. The princess has come here to make some kind of self-sacrifice.

As I watch, this dark grey crystal-like structure forms on her right temple, up into her hairline. Smaller, similar structures appear elsewhere on her bare skin where it's visible, but they quickly fade away - I think of snow landing on the skin and instantly melting. But the larger ones on her temple stay. The princess sways as if she's about to pass out, and her friend/guard catches her, but she's all right after just a moment. Her friend finds this scene, her actions, incredibly painful. So do I. I admire her.

Those 'crystals' are things of the same nature I am - they're alive, in a sense, or similar enough to life; they're not capable of complex communication like I am, but they have awareness of a sort. And the princess has willingly made herself their host. Though she and her friend see this as self-sacrifice, I'd call it more of a deal. There's something that she wanted, and this will give her the power to see it accomplished - but she's giving up something too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Skyping with Julie, who turns out to live only an hour or two away, and feeling foolish for not reaching out to her before.

A scene involving using a spinning wheel for what both is and isn't the first time, having Rumpelstiltskin's mental associations but without actually being him in this scene; finding it soothing to watch the wheel spin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was this angel who'd taken on physical form to help me, and when we were done I betrayed it, sold it or traded it to this woman. Now I've gone to see her, and I'm seeing what she's done with the angel. It's chained up against a wall, its feet off the ground, and its severed wings on display above its head. When it sees me, it puts its head against the wall and says without looking at me, "You're safe now, brother. I can't be out." By which it means it has no intention of trying to get free of its chains. Now that its wings have been removed, it's fallen; it doesn't want to see what would happen without the chains to impose some restraint.