Carabas

I'm disembodied, following a man as he walks out of a stone fortress through a side door. He's upset. I'm trying to mentally push him into making a choice that he doesn't see yet - there's a group of people staying at this fortress, and when they leave, I want him to leave with them. I need him working with them, and he'll be much happier as well. It only hasn't occurred to him yet because that would be desertion, which I think of as a minor nuisance. He's in a position of command in this semi-military, semi-religious order, a position he'd never wanted, and I've been mentally pushing him to focus on all the ways he feels trapped here.

The fortress is surrounded by an evergreen forest, and there's a little snow here and there. He stops right outside the door, believing that he's just getting some air. He's thinking about that group traveling through that I want him to leave with, and thinking about how his order can't show emotion, contrasting it with that group. He's looking at something on the ground that I can't see, and he's thinking that he'd be crying right now if he was capable of it.

I push him to walk further from the door - he thinks of it as walking aimlessly, but I have a direction in mind. There's several tables set up from something going on here during the day, mostly empty now. He looks over the devices assembled on one of them - he doesn't understand how any of them work, but he feels like he's spent all day protecting this stuff from overly curious onlookers, and managing the nobility, and running errands for the great and the good - it seems completely ridiculous to him that this is his life. It's the opposite of where he ever expected to be.

He keeps walking. I make sure he focuses on the little pool of blood on the stone ground here, a dozen or so dead crows around it, deliberately placed in a certain formation. One of his men had called it "a battlefield for crows" earlier. He has absolutely no idea what this disgusting thing is for, it's just one more thing he's had to keep people away from today. As he's looking at it, he sees someone standing at the edge of the woods. He's startled; at first glance, it looks like the man who used to be in command here, who'd moved on a few months ago and left him in charge. He feels relieved - and by feeling the extent of that relief, he's just now become really aware of just how much weight's been on his shoulders since that man left. But then the person moves and breaks the illusion. It's not him.

I'm listening to a man die while I remain in hiding. I'm thinking that maybe I should have moved sooner and saved him, even though I'd have risked being seen - but I don't have any particular emotion about this, except maybe a little irritation at myself. I've been sent into this old stone ruin of a fortress, and I'd intended for only five particular men to be spared. Now I'm down to four. It's not ideal, but I'll have to live with it.

I couldn't hear her very clearly from my hiding place under their bed, but the woman who stabbed him said something to the effect that he should have recognized her. Some personal revenge thing - none of my business. Now I'm seeing the sort of smoke haze of colors passing before my eyes that I associate with life leaving a body. I watch it dissipate in the air, and I'm irritated at the waste. Waiting around is pointless now - and the woman should be directly above me. I stab up through the mattress.

When she dies, my perspective shifts. I'm floating in the void, with this massive black slab of a door in front of me, as wide as it is tall, some kind of geometric symbol across it. It's standing on this sort of grid far below, like a chess board where all the squares are black, with the door as a line across the center of the board. There's a few gravestones occupying some of the squares of the grid - that's new. I realize immediately they represent the previous targets the door sent me after - one of them must represent that woman whose death brought me back here. The door's saying something in my head about bringing it wisdom for the dead.

I'm walking through a desert at night, heading south. I was traveling with someone before, and we're meant to be meeting up again later, but she's driving and I'm on foot, and there's a lot of territory between here and where we're going. We've been heading south along the west coast, and I'm thinking of the area I'm in now as Butte County, and also the northern edge of the desert in California. This desert is incredibly beautiful by night, and there are walkways cutting through it, no roads. I come to the top of a little hill and see a large city in the distance; the walkway splits to run north and south around the edge of the city. There are a few other people walking here, and I'm putting serious thought into just walking along these paths forever. (Similar theme came up in an earlier dream this week - a girl impatiently waiting for me to wander the world on foot with her, me pointing out the reasons I couldn't just drop everything and start walking this instant.)

Yeo-Wool's blindfolded herself with this white cloth I think of as a veil - it's transparent, but it's folded over and over so she can't see through it. She's sworn to wear this until (a certain thing I can't remember is accomplished). She and some guy she travels with are stopping at this fortress, and in the halls they meet a man, someone important. Kang Chi's with the important man - Yeo-Wool, blindfolded, isn't aware he's here. Without letting her know it's him, one or the other of them (can't remember which) says something to establish that it's still not time to take the veil off yet, much as they'd like to. He's smiling as he watches her - the majority of the dream just consisted of me, 3rd person, looking at her. I wondered something about the school - it was clear she wasn't associated with it at the moment - and the dream switched over to show Gon eating in his room at the school, which he's inherited from her father.