Carabas

I'm looking after a little girl and a little boy. My IRL father's recently married their mother. At the moment we're heading for the car, and the little girl asks to stop by our parents' new house. I say sure, we can swing by and take a look if you want - it has pretty steps, doesn't it? She says that's not it, she wants to go inside. I tell them we can't do that yet. The little girl doesn't understand why not - she says the divination's already been done. I hadn't been aware of that. The results of the divination must have been bad. I see an image of something being driven into the ground outside the house with a hammer - if it's blocked by anything, if it doesn't sink completely into the ground in one blow, then it's a sign of misfortune and they'll have to clear the misfortune before anyone can enter. I see my IRL father walking away from that divination and getting into a car, and I think about the traditions associated with the place our families come from.

Transition to that place - it's a small New England town. I'm walking down main street - well, 'walking'; I think I was disembodied at this point - and I overhear snatches of conversations with words like "dreams" (a girl pointing to a phrase in her friend's book) and "luck" (a goth girl talking on her cell phone about her boss). I pass by a church where the window is covered by cardboard. People are milling around outside, just left a service, and someone's commenting on how the priest here never gives any blessings and never reads from the Bible. Someone who works for the church is insisting, offended, that the priest is not a vampire - he's just unwell.

Transition to see that priest - he's giving a speech to a group of graduating students on an overcast day. He's making a point to appear in public during the daytime, to prove that he can. It's a small graduating class, maybe thirty or so people, and they're standing around him in a circle, very casual. The priest looks like he's in his 80s or 90s, slightly hunched, and he's got Nosferatu teeth. As he's speaking, the clouds are beginning to thin - the sun will be out soon. I'm mentally trying to get the priest to notice this, but he doesn't. Eventually one of the students comments on it, and the priest finally looks up. He finishes his speech and leaves in a hurry.

There's a human boy who grew up with something not human and eventually fell in love, and now the nonhuman one is gradually becoming human. This is something he always wanted, but he's surprised because he expected it to be like flipping a switch, all or nothing; instead, human traits will appear for a while and gradually fade away again. Right now, the two of them are having a conversation about a friend of the human, named Michael, who the human's considering approaching - they have an open relationship, since they both believe it's important for the human to be close with other humans.

Two men, at least one a detective, are on the rooftop of a building in a city, talking about that Michael. They have some kind of personal grudge against that couple, and they have some plan to use Michael against them. One of them is assuring the other that the plan will work, they can trust Michael and he'll come through for them; they mention something about 11 o'clock. The human boy appears on top of the wall at the edge of the rooftop, looking a few years older than in the previous scene, and he tells them that he's "already taken the precaution of" killing Michael, in order to prevent Michael from killing him. Someone (I can't remember whether it was the boy or the detective; both sides agree on this point) makes a comment about how "before all of this," before Michael got involved with them, Michael would have been peacefully studying at this time of night.

As a disembodied observer, I get lost in a train of thought starting with that comment about studying and ending up thinking about disappearing cultural institutions, and then thinking about divination by lottery. With that last thought, I find myself at a shrine in the POV of the human boy from the previous scene. I intend to take a long trip, alone, but I needed to stop here first. There's a woman who works at the shrine performing divination by lottery, where there are small white balls containing messages from the deity of the shrine. The message she produces for me is "please do not go." I'm not surprised by this, and intend to leave anyway, regretfully; I only came here to say goodbye, though I intend to return someday. As the part of me in the mindset of the character is thinking all this, the observer side of me realizes that the deity of the shrine is the same nonhuman character from the earlier scenes.

I'm reading cards for an off-duty cop or detective - it's about his case, and it's not official. The Hermit - that's the criminal. The Emperor - that's him. And then a minor card that indicates cooperation between the two of them, and things going smoothly.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm talking to this alien I'm traveling with and my first instinct is to call her Red - she's red from head to toe - but I stop and think about how nicknames work in alien cultures. Best case scenario, everyone's going to wind up calling me Pink, not sure I'm up for that. Me and another alien head outside on some errand, crossing this huge field, and as we're walking I ask him about nicknames. He says, "You don't want to say my name?", and I don't know how to interpret his tone - maybe bewildered, maybe hurt, maybe I've just accidentally proposed marriage, I don't know. We're still crossing the field, but we've wound up walking on top of/sliding down a pile of giant, motionless serpents.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are these people trapped in a cabin on a mountain by a group of killers, and they're wondering if their two friends who left earlier made it off the mountain okay. The scene changes to a group of people standing around a car parked near the base of the mountain, across a field of tall grass - the killers, a 'family.'

I switch to the POV of the father figure of the group, and I'm looking at the two young boys with us who are new to the family, keeping an eye on them. Not too worried though. Someone spots a figure moving out of the forest and into the field - the figure shouts to us when she sees us, waves her arms to get our attention. I'm thinking, huh, we missed one. We'd found a guy in the forest earlier, I hadn't realized there was still another one out there. That was sloppy.

Me and those two boys go to meet her, and she starts talking about how she needs a lift. Walking her back towards the car, we get to the part of the field near the road where the tall grass is all flattened down from what we'd done earlier, and there are a few things, plastic bags and such, scattered around on the ground. She's looking at the things on the ground and looking a little uncomfortable, she asks what we were doing out here. Having a picnic, one of the boys says. The rest of us laugh. It's technically true.