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    1. Dyson and a duet in a garden

      by , 09-20-2014 at 08:32 PM
      England in the 1940s or so, I'm disembodied and watching a man and a woman singing a duet in a garden. Both of them are thinking about a man named Dyson. They were friends when they were younger, but he left the country years ago and they haven't heard from him since; in their memories, he's a sort of ideal. I'm thinking how disappointed they would be if they were to see him now.

      When their song's over, they talk with the people who'd been listening. The woman who'd been singing is speaking to a particular man, very wealthy, and hinting that she's expecting him to invite her along to a particular event. But although they clearly have some kind of history, he finds this suggestion laughable - he hardly even thinks of her as a woman. I'm surprised, since I'd just been thinking about how beautiful she is - the dream image had zoomed in on her profile as she was talking to him, and I'd been admiring the curve of her nose, the softness of her hair. Very beautiful. But the man walks off with most of the others - they're heading back toward the house. The man she'd been singing with comes up to her and says he saw her talking to that wealthy guy, and how they seem to get along well. She says, "Sure do."

      My POV turns around, not following them - I'm focusing on the opposite direction. On a hill overlooking the garden, there's a man who'd been hiding among the trees and bushes, watching them. This is Dyson.
    2. The power behind the throne

      by , 04-20-2014 at 07:26 PM
      A setting based on the early 1900s. I'm sitting at a dinner table, with my POV character's mother sitting somewhere to my right, and a woman who I'm having an intense argument with to my left, at the foot of the table. We argue frequently, I enjoy it; and I realize that although we're stating how much we hate each other, we're using words usually associated with passion or love.

      Dinner's over, the woman is gone, but my mother and I are still in the same room, standing now. I'm talking about breaking my engagement to someone else. I've never met the girl I'm engaged to - she lives in (either New York or Boston, can't remember which - I thought of it as far away), and our fathers had arranged it between themselves, before my father died. My mother is warning me about possible consequences. She describes the girl's father as "the power behind the throne."
    3. Knotted cords

      by , 03-24-2014 at 10:46 PM
      A couple who've been married for about a year are traveling together through another country in a vaguely historical-inspired setting. The husband, who's in the military, suspects his wife is unfaithful. He comes back to their room at the inn with a gift for her: a set of cords for her to use to make knotted ornaments, to hang from the wooden cases he travels with. They both behave as if this is a sincere gift, but he gave it to her to convey something unpleasant: normally, a newlywed couple would have made such things months ago, when they were first married.
    4. A collection of memories disguised as history

      by , 12-20-2013 at 10:51 PM
      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.
    5. Various dreams from the past week

      by , 11-18-2013 at 01:56 AM
      Monday: Forced into playing some game in order to save my father's life, using mandrake led to victory. People raiding a house, breaking things or stripping things from the walls and carrying them away. The words "los soņos del amos." A dance performance featuring various actors - Biehn, Paxton, Goldstein (as Diamondback), Henriksen showing up later offstage - arranged by a woman trying to use this performance to prove her worth; an old money type applauds the performance, technically a success, but succeeding here just means she's got the chance to fork over even more money than she already has, she's being used.

      Tuesday: A young girl who'd been in some kind of trouble runs into a reporter named Nicholas who promises to help her, but when she sees him in sunlight his eyes resemble a snake's. He tells her that if she succeeds in becoming human, he'll lose interest in her struggles, and then he'd probably kill her. A religion based on Alice 19th. A woman arrives from another world; I've seen this play out before, but in that version of events there was a man with her, this time she's alone; knowing what's coming, I kneel before her, ask her to spare my life, which doesn't seem likely to work until I point out how little she knows about this world, and promise to guide her to the halls of power; she relents and accepts. Elijah speaking to Rebekah, telling her he has plans to meet someone in a dream at sun-up, which amuses him since he's just now become capable of walking in the light and yet is going to spend the time sleeping anyway.

      Wednesday: A large wolf in the woods, my cat cuddling up to it. A very small man is sent to pick a fight with a woman at a bar. He fails miserably. She talks to him about his daughter, says she couldn't believe what had happened, when the girl had turned out to be a witch after all and was snatched away by her mother - a 'good witch', who uses a different variety of magic than these two at the bar. It's implied the daughter's been taken to be used as a tool. She offers her help for a rescue mission, but he suspects she'd like to use his daughter as a tool, too.

      Thursday: A young woman and a friend, trapped in a maze of rooms cluttered with objects - statues, tapestries, things you'd expect in a museum - searching for one that holds a specific design which is her only means of escape, but it's a needle in a haystack situation. She picks up a statue and reminisces about when her mother used to fill her home with things like this - as she thinks that, she finally spots the design she's looking for, a tile set into the floor. The mirror above it ripples, and she's aware that she'll be leaving her friend behind here, but she doesn't have time to wait for him, she escapes through the mirror, back into the real world. Once on the other side, the mirror breaks. She says to someone on the other side that her friend is still trapped there, but this person tells her "Abby, all your life there's been no one there" - no one else in the real world has any memories of that person she believed to have been her lifelong friend.

      Friday: Meeting Olivia Atta Clemens for the first time at a party in Rome. NBC's version of Dracula is having an argument with someone referred to as his master, regarding the use of the phrase "your majesty," and people going missing.

      Saturday: Nightmare in which some creature embodying darkness is crouched above me, dispelled with Apollo trick, after which the dream ceased being a nightmare but I become concerned that the creature had simply moved on to the nearest target. I'm chasing someone and run into a cop along the way, and at first ask for his help but then decide there's no point, we're in a country where cops don't carry guns. A guy explaining Kaballah annoys me by making cryptic comments about me and fallen angels.

      Today:

      I'm stowing some papers in a hiding place on the roof; I'm thinking that Lydia (mental connotations of an odd mentor/student relationship with her) will pass through here later, and I'm positioning the papers where she'll be sure to see them, but trapping them in such a way that she won't be able to retrieve them in the little time she'll have up here. A scene with Lydia and I entering a small room where I've been holding Boone, her husband, captive; I sit down while she talks to him, take off my hat and smooth down my hair - I've got blond hair here. A scene with Lydia in a room crowded with empty picture frames, which used to hold pictures of her - she's aware they belong to (either my character or her husband, I can't remember which).

      A setting based on ancient Rome, I've been having a dispute with someone over a slave, one of my charioteers, and I'm thinking about this dispute as I watch the race. Something about one of the chariots or racers catches my eye, seems odd - then there's an 'accident.' Afterwards, I'm standing over a slave who broke several bones in that accident.

      A series of underground tunnels, and a group of vampire hunters. I've found a dead-end tunnel directly underneath their current camp, and I'm crouching on the ceiling, listening to them. One, I believe he's the leader, has been threatening one of the others, but the one being threatened has just walked away from the argument, and from the camp, saying he's going off to eat. I'm slightly concerned that he'll come down into this tunnel - since it's a dead end, there would be no way to avoid meeting him - but I don't think it's very likely. The ones who stayed are still talking about him, and from what they're saying I realize that he also eats people, but that he's in some sense still human. The others are concerned that they may have to kill him one day.
    6. Fragments

      by , 09-15-2013 at 07:09 PM
      I'm standing in a clearing filled with men in armor and horses, near some trees. The guy I'm talking to is psyching himself up, saying he can't get excited about fighting unless it's (the particular people we're about to fight) - with anyone else, why bother? I refer to Alexander, the man we're following, as "the undiminished king."

      A woman in a modern setting believes she's being punished, looking up at the sky and addressing her father the storm god, "What have I done?" - but what she saw as a punishment was meant as a message, about a friend who she's separated from.

      1st person, as a wolf, a woman stroking my jaw and debating out loud whether to leave me in that form.

      A teenage boy having guilt-induced hallucinations about a man he'd hurt, seeing him with a face burnt black and empty holes for eyes, I can see the wall behind him through the holes.

      A book with an illustration of a red circle covered in black markings has gotten soaked and the markings are washing away, and the boy who damaged it is apologizing, but the girl who owns it is saying it wasn't the real deal after all, if it would run.
    7. Hera in a maze and Hemlock Grove

      by , 09-03-2013 at 08:48 PM
      I'm in a maze full of doors that lead to other worlds. The people with me have decided to take a door that leads out onto a snow-covered wasteland, they think this is going to lead them to our ultimate destination, but I have my doubts. I'm sure they're just going to wind up back here with a lot of wasted effort. So I let them go while I stay in the maze. After the door's shut behind them, I open it again, just to get another look, and while I can see them, the dream briefly switches to their perspective, showing that they can't see me or the doorway; our realities are out of sync.

      In the maze, I try to take a path roughly in line with the path they're taking through the wasteland, so that we can meet up again when they inevitably wind up back here. I check through doors once in a while to make sure we're still going the same way. But eventually I run across other people in the maze, and I discover people are gravitating towards a set of locked double doors with two keyholes to either side. This is the door my group's been looking for. But we don't have a key, and neither do any of the people clustered around. Hera approaches me in the form of an incredibly tall and slightly muscular woman, with long red hair and a peacock blue dress that clings to her body. She's looking for something too, but not a key, and she asks me why I'm looking for one. I explain to her that like the others I'd joined up with, I'd simply woken up alone in a vast, seemingly empty room, so big I couldn't see the walls or the ceiling, and eventually I'd worked my way here. As we're talking I realize that she's Roman, not Greek. She tells me she can get me through the door.

      As we go through the door I'm starting to focus on how attractive she is, and I hear a warning, something I think of as a quote, about the risk for dealing with gods "to become not ascension but craving." I acknowledge this but decide to go with craving anyway, she's very attractive. On the other side of the door we're in my IRL home. However, although I didn't notice anything odd at the time, once I took her out of the maze setting the DC stopped showing any personality; I carried her to the couch, but when we sat down she disappeared entirely. The dream storyline switched to a visit from my IRL father who starts 'getting the trees ready for winter' which involves ropes and makes me feel lazy for not doing it myself, and a sitcom involving two elderly men teasing their sullen young relative about just ignoring what you don't want to hear.

      (Woke up. Felt like those last scenes, my father and the sitcom, were both about me making the wrong decision with Hera. Back to sleep.)

      I'm Roman from Hemlock Grove. Olivia's lying on the stairs and I've had a taste of her blood, and it's put me in something of a trance. I'm thinking about the difference between love and lust. Peter knocking at the door snaps me out of it, but I watch Olivia stand up and walk up the stairs before I answer the door. I make tea, though he doesn't want any. He's picked up one of Olivia's shoes off the rack by the door and is fiddling with it, pacing around the kitchen.

      Fragments:

      I'm a teenage boy who gets into fights too often, trying to explain to a girl the reason why.

      I'm in a setting that looks based on the 1800's, getting into my uncle's carriage, although my uncle's surprised I want to come and warns me against it - I lie about the reason I want a ride, saying something about the walking path along the way. He accepts the lie and offers me a bulb of garlic.
    8. Crime and punishment in ancient Rome

      by , 09-01-2013 at 08:45 PM
      A setting based on ancient Rome, I'm looking up at several criminals being punished. This is my fault; I encouraged them to break a rule I thought of as minor, without thinking about what the consequences might be for them. One of them is praying, and a man with me, a foreigner, catches a variation on the word 'august' in the prayer, and he asks me in his own language, "'Augustina' - means honored, right?" He's quite enchanted by the lady Augustina, a mutual acquaintance. The man praying is being offered a deal - 30 years of imprisonment, in other words the rest of his life, but this torture will end. As this is being explained to him, I go to the others being tortured and try to convince them of a better option. Let them break your legs, then wander the world for 7 years, and at the end of this time you will be permitted to return and be forgiven.

      Fragments: stumbling across a Forever Knight tie-in novel with 'amber' in the title; and a visit from a people-shy cat who IRL died when I was a kid.
    9. Egypt, undergrads, True Blood, Julia, and valerian root.

      by , 08-22-2013 at 08:22 PM
      3rd person. Tradition dictates the pharaohs of this dynasty marry on the first day of the new year for symbolic purposes, but his intended bride is tired of waiting. She cuts her leg with a knife and lets the blood run down into the dirt, a ritual attempt to soothe the drought the land is going through with her own life; since she isn't yet royalty, this is all she can do. Her intended husband watches this and decides to break with tradition and hurry the wedding. However, there's an incident where the couple goes on a voyage with their servants and attendants, and a woman is seen waiting outside at night to meet a lover in secret - it may have been one of the servant girls, but a rumor starts that it was the intended queen.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm a student in a small class of maybe 10 undergrads, taught by Mr. G., a favorite IRL high school teacher, in a room based on the chapel building at that high school. We're giving presentations, and as I go back to my seat afterwards, I manage to knock over the display that holds up the TV monitor. I catch it and try to put it back to rights while the next person is talking but fail miserably, I think I broke something. One of the other students comes to help, this short geeky guy who does something very complex with the display, and I just stand back to watch. Turns out he's really, really good with his hands, I'm kind of into it. That was unexpected. I start talking to him and he mentions that he's got some hobby that involves building things, which seems pretty cool to me since I'm pretty much useless at anything practical, but he looks like I'm making him nervous so I back off.

      But when the scene changes to show me back at my apartment (doesn't resemble anywhere I've lived IRL - colorful and cluttered, deep blue walls, hanging plants and vines in every corner), he's come along with me and my friends, or roommates, I don't know who these DCs are meant to be but we're close. As we walk in the door, the short/geeky/unexpectedly hot DC is saying to one of them, this blonde girl with all these little braids in her hair, "You're not on the drain, are you?" which is apparently some kind of drug. "I would never," she says, acting all offended - waking me can't tell if she's serious or not, either way dream me thinks it's funny. We came back here to get high anyway.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'd been flying down through the levels of some mansion and heading outside, planning my night, weighing the appeal of being alone vs being seen, but when I fly out the door, True Blood's Ginger is at the gate. She wants to come back to work at the club. She'd taken maternity leave but lost the kid, and tried to come back to the club pretty much immediately afterward, but the boss told her to take the paid time off anyway - I don't know why she's so desperate to come back, she doesn't work for tips so the money's the same. But she convinces me to let her in, and she tells me where to find the key to the gate. I go get it, but it's got some kind of trap - when I uncover the key, a dart shoots out and hits Ginger.

      Flashback. First time I'd met Ginger, she'd been hysterical, claiming someone, a priest, had been kidnapped by these two guys I knew well and was being held in their barn. The guys tell me the priest was there, but perfectly fine. Giving a sermon, in fact.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      3rd person, following Julia. She's waiting by a statue at the gate to a city park, sometime around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and she works in a country estate as a maid or a nanny or a governess or something - anyway, she's just come into the city for the day. She's meant to be meeting one of the other servants there, but the woman she's meeting is late. Julia doesn't really mind, it's helped her make a decision actually. She's been thinking about how much fun she had on an earlier outing with me, just watching (??? something involving birds, seemed like a very ordinary everyday event for most people but something she hadn't done before), and thinking about the drab grey dress she's wearing, and always wears, covering her ankles, and generally thinking about taking chances and breaking out of her shell and so on. She stops waiting for her friend and, thinking about how much she's got to do and counting up how much money she has with her, she first goes to buy postage and mail a letter she'd already written but hadn't decided whether or not to send until now.

      Her thoughts about money derail the storyline - a guy at the door of a restaurant convinces her to step inside and she finds unexpected fees piling up on her.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Just a fragment of dialogue (phone call woke me up): "-chance to take hold. Valerian root," in a male voice, possibly mine.
    10. Travel and misinterpretation

      by , 08-19-2013 at 11:10 PM
      I'm traveling, and attending this formal dinner. I'm seated next to this older guy who occupies some position I'm very respectful of, something to do with myth and ritual, and he asks me about what my legacy would be. I'm not a native speaker of whatever language we're using but I believe the word he used has a connotation to do with children, so I talk about being an uncle to my IRL sister's kids. (She doesn't actually have any yet.) He and the people around us seem disappointed by that answer - as if it's an acceptable answer to the question, but an indication that I'm not the kind of person they hoped I was. Then, unsure if I'm translating this accurately, I change my answer to "if the stories I tell are remembered." Now he seems much more approving.

      Fragments from earlier: Taking a bunch of tourists to see a show claiming to represent old Aztec traditions, stepping back from the show while they watch, and standing next to an ancient Aztec dead man, listening to him mock the show. 3rd person, a magician who traveled and was misinterpreted a certain way by the people he met became known as 'king of kings' (my first waking association with that was Ozymandias).
    11. Evading death

      by , 08-04-2013 at 10:59 PM
      3rd person dream following a character shortly after his mother's funeral. This man believes he's just been 'granted a power to evade death.' He's currently out riding with the woman he used to be engaged to and his closest friend, who is now pursuing that woman himself. Watching the two of them together, he decides there's nothing here for him and turns his horse away, thinking about traveling.

      Years later, the same character is white-haired and recording his memoirs, dictating them to a recording device. He's describing that 'power or curse of evading death' and his wife, who'd been listening, rolls her eyes. She's heard that story of his before. Losing interest, she leaves the room. In his dictation, he's just started describing the moment he was summoned to his mother's deathbed, to take the last of her life and inherit her power. As he speaks, his dead mother appears in the room. This is something he's used to, although he's the only one who can see her, and although she hasn't appeared very often recently. She dislikes watching him let himself grow old. But he's only allowing himself to age as long as his wife is alive, so they can grow old together; after she passes away, he intends to go back to feeding off other people's lives. Still dictating, he remembers the last words of advice his mother had given to him on her deathbed: 'In this life, do not just feed. Remember to dance.'
    12. Flashbacks and an octopus.

      by , 08-03-2013 at 09:22 PM
      A setting that looks like it's based on ancient China. I'm about to transport a prisoner, a high-ranking woman, but the focus of the dream is on the people I ran into guarding her cell, two men I'd known during what I think of as 'the bloodstained war.'

      The dream moves into a flashback to the war: I was some kind of government official, something to do with money. It kept me out of the fighting at a time when most men my age were soldiers, and I was conflicted about that, especially since my job required me to work closely with the military. Those two men guarding the cell had been soldiers who briefly acted as my guards while I was traveling through a dangerous area. During this flashback, we met a priest who I'd kept in contact with since, and I'm thinking about the major contrast between how earnest and naive he was then and how cynical he grew to be.

      (I woke up. I went back to sleep for one more hour.)

      Modern western setting, I'm playing the role of some teenage guy. I'd gone back to my hometown by the sea, thought I was just passing through but got into some kind of trouble and wound up stuck working as a camp counselor as some kind of community service. I'd resented it, wanted nothing more than to get out of town, but as I stuck around I've wound up being a lot fonder of the place than I expected, like some kind of cheesy family movie plot. Also my ex-girlfriend is working at the camp and maybe isn't an ex- anymore. And this is the last day of camp. So I'm in a good mood as I'm riding my bike back to camp after running an errand in town, getting stuff for the ice cream party at the cabin tonight, looking around at the streets and remembering dumb kid pranks and rivalries and shortcuts around here, when I happen across an octopus in the middle of the road.

      It's still alive, though it doesn't look too good, it's not moving much. We're just above the beach here, so I scoop it up and return it to the water, and it perks right up - and immediately crawls right back out of the water to cling to a rock. But at least it's not in the road anymore, and it can get back to the water if it wants. It left burns on my arm, like a jellyfish, which I think of as the normal result of picking up an octopus. When I get back to camp my maybe-not-an-ex sees the burns and goes "oh, you didn't," and yes, letting myself get burned was dumb, but what else was I supposed to do?