Carabas

I'm a passenger in a woman's car. She's a friend, but now I'm discovering she's tricked me. She stops the car in an unfamiliar driveway - not where I thought we were going - and there's a man in the yard, tall, heavyset, long hair, in need of a shave. I don't know him, but I recognize that he's one of the species that my species is designed to hunt. I resent my friend for tricking me into this - I'd quit hunting them. My friend disagrees with me quitting, so she's forced me into this situation. The man sees me and recognizes what species I am; he runs away, and I automatically chase him without thinking about it.

He ran inside the house. I stop at the door - I'm not sure whether I followed him in order to kill him or to explain that I'm not going to kill him. Since I can't see him running now, that gives me a second to think instead of acting automatically. I decide I'm not going to kill him, I'm just going to explain that and go. Through the door he's shouting that he's called the police. I respond that that was pointless, since I'm already here. I hadn't meant that to sound as threatening as it did, just as an observation - I really need to think before I talk. But I hear him running away from the door and going out a side window.

I see him running for the trees at the edge of the property, and I say out loud, "Why do they always go for the fucking woods?" I follow him again, and this time the thought process - such as it is - is definitely about hunting rather than explaining. It's the familiarity of going for the woods that tipped the scales - old habits are hard to break. I hear something moving in the branches, jump up to grab him, pull him back to the ground - and discover it's not him, it's a human. I've never seen this guy before. What was he doing up in the trees, watching us? Also, I seem to have injured his throat where I grabbed him.

Then there's a flashlight shining on us, and a cop telling me not to move. The man I'd been hunting is behind the cop. I'm exasperated by this - taking advantage of our human appearances to hide behind real humans, it really irritates me. It's understandable, given that the alternative for him was death; but it still irritates me.

Previous scene had been on the subject of breaking through layers - in a futuristic setting, there'd previously been a big struggle to break through (something, either the earth or a ship - either way, the important part is that it's the ground we stand on), and we'd thought that was the end of it; now we're discovering there's another layer to break through.

In that same setting, I'm part of a team of people in uniforms, rounding up some wild animals. But most of the scene is spent in disembodied 3rd person, following one of my partners. She's watching a boar - huge thing, at least twice my height - and a voice is saying to her through some communications device, "If (something), think how much could be got from a boar of that size under good conditions."

She asks, "Are these good conditions?" She's referring to the boar's behavior.

"Best I've ever seen," is the answer.

She's nervous, but she activates this sort of mechanical set of wings she's wearing; they glow green as they lift her into the air, and she starts rounding up the boar - chasing it down, frightening it, until finally a great green light bursts from inside the boar, creating this swirling transparent sphere around it, fragments rising and dispersing in the air. The light's invisible to the animal itself. She lands on it, clings to its side and uses a vial to collect that light. It's a kind of energy we use, given off by these creatures' heightened emotions - it's the same thing that's powering the weapons we're using to hunt them.

Talking to someone about "the 40." They're a group of heroes in Scotland, technically real historical figures but their story's become more like a legend, involved in a conflict with the English. Although they're regarded as heroes, I'm thinking that their story was crucial in creating a bad future for Scotland.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm digging through a drawer filled with various small objects and papers, searching for something. I'm talking to myself out loud, saying "She'll turn this too into one of her charms." Charm as in talisman. There's a woman - the owner of the things I'm searching through - who suffered some setback, as a result of which some object that belongs to her is temporarily in my hands. I meant that she was going to turn that separation itself into her advantage. As I search through the drawer, I uncover a small skeleton of a creature with sharp teeth, no larger than my thumbnail. Another one of her charms. I'm thinking she was likely told this was some wondrous creature - it isn't.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in a mountain forest with Dieter. He's holding some large dark-furred animal he's killed - we've caught three of them in a row - and we're talking about the quality of the hunting here since the humans abandoned their village. You'd think that would only improve the hunting, but there's something I'm worried about. When we mention the village I see an image of it, on a hillside with a large body of water in the distance, and I think about something that's been bothering me ever since a conversation I'd had with someone in that village. I say to Dieter now, times have changed - we haven't changed with them. We should. I should have set him free centuries ago and set him up with whatever he wanted. I've been selfish, not thinking. He ignores this and tries to steer me back onto the topic of hunting.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Semi-lucid - aware this is a dream but not enough to affect my actions - I'm approaching a certain building by a narrow path between two hedges out back by the gardens. There's somewhere else I was heading, but a little boy intercepts me and tells me there's some message for me in the house.

(A memory gap.)

On the grounds of that same estate, right at a tall hedge that serves as an important border between here and the next place, there's a little girl crouching on the ground and a woman next to her. The woman's plain and tired-looking, with brown hair that looks darker because it hasn't been washed. The little girl is blonde and sort of bossing the woman around in some game they're playing. She wants to join in on something going on beyond the hedge, but she's not allowed, so she's playing here and waiting for her chance. I immediately recognize the girl as Julia's daughter, she resembles her so closely, and I ask the woman some questions to try to confirm that hunch without asking about Julia directly. The woman says to something I ask about the girl's mother, "You don't have to tell me that," mistaking my question for rhetorical and irritated about it, irritated at the mother's behavior. This makes me realize that while yes, the girl's mother is Julia, this woman is also the girl's mother - she's Julia's wife. I'd assumed she was a nursemaid, I'm deeply embarrassed.

A man's telling me something about Alice in Wonderland when he's attacked and killed by these enormous crows. We're in his apartment. One of the crows lands on my shoulder and looks at me, and I'm feeling very exasperated with it.

I'm the same man I was in the previous scene but now with a head like a crow - which I definitely didn't have in the previous scene - and I'm standing in front of an older crow-headed man who's sitting on the floor in these elaborate robes. He's telling me he can't help me, and says something about "the 40 visions."

(And this last one is one from two weeks ago that I didn't bother to write out properly. The pen & paper dream journal fell open to it just now and the Alice in Wonderland theme caught my eye.) There's a scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is trapped inside the mouth of a crocodile. A boy pulls its tail to make it open its mouth, and she runs out. Now someone's tried to recreate that scene, but the girl playing the role of Alice was too scared and wouldn't move. I shove my way through the kids to get her out, and somebody gets their arm bitten off. (I wrote down who, but I can't read my own writing.)