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    1. A curse in a pot

      by , 07-30-2015 at 06:25 PM
      From a disembodied perspective, I'm watching my IRL self. He's looking for something in this room, currently looking at an illustration of Loki hanging on a wall. The disembodied version of me is curious about the IRL version of me, and I've set up this space in order to observe his reactions. There'd been some previous incident where he'd taken on a sort of ritualized trickster role and unintentionally drawn my interest; he's not aware of me. (Though trickster's not the word I would have used in the dream and it kind of irritates me to use it now, but it's the best way to put it - a sense of something in common between the Loki illustration, the devil statue, my disembodied perspective, and the role my IRL self had played.) I've just now come to the conclusion that the thing that originally grabbed my interest had to do with taking on different roles rather than something inherent to him. This doesn't make me any less curious, but it alters the situation. He's now looking at a small black and white sculpture of the devil, and I switch to his perspective while he's holding it.

      As my IRL self, I'm interrupted by the arrival of several IRL people. Eventually I wind up standing over a large pot with one of the women, and she's stirring whatever's in it. She calls me by the wrong name, and I correct her, annoyed. She repeats my real name, and makes a promise involving it, talking about dire consequences for anyone who violates this promise. Afterwards she describes the pot as holding the curse she's just spoken.

      Updated 07-30-2015 at 07:01 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    2. Isfael and the Lady's smile

      by , 06-11-2015 at 07:20 PM
      I'm coming out of a mine with a box a man gave me. Sitting down at a table across from a woman I know who's eating lunch, I open up the box and we have a look at the books inside. There's a two-volume set on healing magic that catches my attention; I've seen the first one before but the second is completely new to me, I'm very pleased. The woman asks me for a demonstration, and I laugh, saying I've barely got any understanding of it - it's not something you can learn from books, they're just for pointing you in the right direction, it takes time and work to actually put into practice. She's disappointed and leaves. As I look through the book, I call up a blue healing light that plays around my hand. Reading, the book is saying that it's impossible to progress further without "the Lady's smile."

      I see an image of said Lady, a woman in a void. She's aware of my attention, though her eyes don't focus on me; she talks as if this is a visit from an old friend, sounding surprised and pleased, saying that I've come earlier this week than expected, and calls me by a name that starts "Shari-" But she cuts off partway through that name, and gives the impression of focusing on me, though still not with her eyes. She says then, "Isfael? Is that you?"

      The observer side of me splits off, recognizing that this Lady and Shari-whoever are figures that often appear in stories together under various identities. When she correctly called me Isfael, I realized that Isfael is one of those identities, a specific young version of Shari-whoever without knowledge of his older self.
    3. Scarecrows and warnings

      by , 09-03-2014 at 08:51 PM
      A dream ends with my mother's death by self-inflicted head wound, in a scene comparing her to a woman who'd shot others in order to protect the family; this is followed by several false awakenings in which my IRL sisters and I realize we've all had that same dream and argue over whether to go check on her - S. was against waking her. (There was also a room behind S. that I recognized as out of place, though I rationalized it away.) In the last false awakening we finally do check on her, and the head wound turns out to have been a metaphor for a stroke she experienced in the night; I go to call 911, only to have her stop me and explain that the stroke is also a metaphor - she removed something from her mouth which had been distorting her speech and features.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm in a field looking at scarecrows tied in place with gold that shines in the sunlight. I've just been hearing a story about how they got here - they were people once. Dead now. There's a mist starting to come down from between the mountains at the far end of the field, as it always does at this time of day though I've never been here to see it before, and I'm watching it make spiraling patterns in the sky. It's very beautiful.

      As Spike, I'm sitting in a classroom that Buffy's gang is using to talk about an apocalyptic threat - something involving a demon from another dimension - I'm annoyed at how blasé they are about it. I'm aware this is normal for them, but it's something that shouldn't be normal for anyone. It's as if they're not taking a warning seriously.
    4. New home divination and vampire priest

      by , 08-30-2014 at 09:59 PM
      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.
    5. Glitch, foxfire, Satan, Judas

      by , 06-07-2014 at 06:32 PM
      I'm lying on the ground next to the road beside the IRL swamp near where I grew up. Down the road, a truck reaches the peak of a small hill and then seems to continue rising into the air until it disappears into the sky. I think that's odd and that it must be some odd optical illusion, and I watch to see if it happens again so I can figure out what's causing the illusion. I turn to comment on this to my IRL sister, S.

      But I'm distracted when I catch sight of a ball of blue flame hovering nearby in the swamp. I think of this as foxfire. It happens sometimes. I'm thinking about how foxfire works, and how it's usually safe, with some exceptions. The foxfire then turns from blue to the usual red/orange fire in reaction to our presence - that's the exception I was just thinking about. It approaches us, and we have to run to avoid getting burned.

      When we get inside, we're no longer me and S., we're two young brothers. I, the older brother, realize that the foxfire's too close behind us, and so when my brother escapes into the inner room, I close the door behind him, allowing the fire to catch me but keeping him safe. When the foxfire catches me, it takes on my form, so that for a moment there are two of us.

      Fragmentary memory for a bit. Next clear scene - I'm Satan, using that older brother's form and talking to the younger brother. The kid's fully aware that I'm not his real brother. I've just now been able to return to earth after being sealed away for a long time, and I'm curious about all the new things here. I'm looking at an instrument in the kid's room; I'm mentally comparing it to a harp, but it's a stringed instrument that lies flat on the ground when you play it, like a koto. It's something kids are required to learn in school, so the kid's not very interested in it, but I fiddle around with it until I get the hang of it - it really is a lot like a harp, just turned on its side - and I improvise a pretty little tune. I'm vaguely hoping the kid will get the idea that the instrument can be used for more than just the dull melodies he learns in school, but he doesn't seem interested - it's a dull instrument to him, and that is that. I then go and look through his movies, picking up one written in a pictographic alphabet - birds, reeds. I recognize it as Arabic, and I'm delighted by the changes in this form of writing since I've been gone. The movie involves the issue of unity and diversity - people questioning whether it's better to preserve the cultures of individual tribes or to think of themselves as a single nation, and whether it's possible to do both.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a small fishing village. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking of everyone here as an analogue for someone else in the distant past or another world or something along those lines. There are two in particular who I think of as analogues for "the prince" and "the Judas figure." At the moment, the prince's girlfriend (who doesn't appear to have an analogue, or at least I wasn't thinking about one for her) is talking to the Judas figure, trying to convince him to give her a ride somewhere, but not wanting to tell him why she needs that ride - the prince is involved somehow. She names somewhere else nearby as her destination instead, but he's not fooled at all. He suggests she just tell him where she really wants to go, it'll save time for both of them. As he's saying this, I as a disembodied observer am focusing on a long, thin scar slanting to the right, down the back of the woman's neck.

      False awakening, during which I tried to write down that dream on my skin, for lack of anything else to write on.
    6. A window over water

      by , 04-08-2014 at 06:03 PM
      I went semi-lucid during a nightmare - a scene involving IRL characters - and wanted to change the scene in order to get away from the nightmare. I had a false awakening - possibly two, memory's vague on this point - either way, I eventually wound up in my IRL bedroom, lucid (now unsure on whether or not I lost lucidity in between).

      The room's dark, and I'm frustrated, feeling trapped. I've got the impression I'm stuck in some in-between state, not dreaming properly (whatever that means) and not able to wake myself up, and I'm trying to escape this state. I'm thinking about lack of control, and I look at an object in my hand and turn it into a sword, thinking of this as somewhat pointless, and thinking something about the way the dim light affects this. I find myself moving along the ceiling, as if I'm held up there against my will. There are two windows, and I manage to claw my way over to one while avoiding being pulled toward the other. I slide it open and tear out the screen (I was thinking something I can't recall in detail, something about the way the window responds to my actions by opening or not opening due to it being a part of a dream rather than a physical window), and with great effort manage to crawl through the window.

      On the other side, I'm floating over water, surrounded by cliffs and hills covered in snow. It's night. There are wooden buildings and people outside, dressed in clothes from at least a few centuries ago. My perspective is moving, but I'm still partway in the window; when I look behind me, I can see the window hovering in midair. I'm moving toward the town center, and I can hear people talking - not a language I understand, but from some of the words I catch I believe it to be German, or some variant of it. There's some event about to take place, I believe it's something religious, some ritual.

      I enter a building. Memory goes spotty here again, but eventually I wound up speaking with an old woman who gave an impression of beauty and power. To her left was a woman sitting asleep in a throne, dressed in a costume that could have been straight from the LotR movie elves - I specifically compared it to a costume while I was looking at her. I wondered if she was Julia. (It's unusual that it's something I wondered about, as opposed to just knowing.) The old woman was telling me about her plans, including something she was going to discard, and I requested that she give me that thing. She was surprised but amused and granted my request, but afterward I thought of this as a missed opportunity - I became distracted by the thing she gave me, I should have just listened and followed along with her.
    7. Looking for elves in underhill

      by , 03-01-2014 at 09:58 PM
      As Louis, I'm standing next to Lestat and looking down into the hold of a ship. It seems very dark, and I'm remembering a previous incident where he left me trapped somewhere. I tell him, "I've learned," and we're not going to go through that again. He acts exasperated, like I'm being ridiculous, and of course he wouldn't do that to me again, that was centuries ago, don't be so paranoid.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      After trouble trying to talk to my IRL father on the phone - I couldn't hear him clearly, but I also couldn't make the phone disconnect - I'm now meeting him at some event. I'm trying to save four or five seats, but that causes trouble with the people next to me; I get the seats I wanted, but the group of teenage guys sitting next to us are annoyed with me now. The one right next to me puts his feet up on the row of seats in front of us at an angle, crowding into my space, until he's practically in my lap. I call him a gay slur, then immediately wonder why I said that; meanwhile, he backs off and looks hurt. One of the other guys with him starts getting into my face, and at one point he suggests that maybe everyone here is dead - "I'm dead, you're dead, we're all dead," in a sing-song tone. I say to him, sure. Land of the dead, dreams, Underhill, it's all the same thing. Everyone around me has a rather unpleasant look on their face after that, and I think it's because I mentioned that this is a dream; then I think that this only happened because I picked up that expectation from other lucid dreamers. In any case, I get up and walk out of the room into the hall.

      Thinking about that Underhill reference, I think it's important that I find elves - they're much preferable to the people who think they're dead - and I look for a door, but this building is built on an open sort of plan, with rooms opening onto each other at strange angles, not easy for me to control. I eventually come around to the back of the building and walk out a door, trying to use the door as a portal and thinking about elves, but feeling like I had only limited success. The door opens onto a stable, and there's a car parked here, and a woman in a ballgown getting into the car with a man who's wearing a uniform indicating he works here. On a closer look, he looks rather elfish. I think about hitching a ride.


      Bit of a fragmented memory after that - I don't wind up getting into the car, but me and that guy walked out of that stable and into the woods, where we had some encounter with someone else. False awakening after that: waking up in an unfamiliar bedroom, I get my journal out of my backpack beside the bed and start writing down a dream about a (nonexistent) vampire movie involving that woman in the ballgown; as I was writing I believed it to be based on a real movie.

      Updated 03-01-2014 at 10:04 PM by 64691

      Categories
      false awakening , lucid , non-lucid
    8. An angel at a college, and keeping up appearances

      by , 02-04-2014 at 12:16 AM
      I'm flying down the center of a stairwell.

      At the bottom of the stairs, I switch to 3rd person. This is a college, and classes are letting out. There's this incredibly beautiful androgynous person who stops a guy in the hall and talks to him, then s/he gives him this piece of paper with a small square smear of something dark green on it. This color will alter the guy's personality. The guy takes it, and he refers to them as boss and generally acts friendly and cheerful, but he's careful not to actually touch the color. S/he tells him to find a place without any people.

      The guy heads up the stairs to the second floor, and I switch to his POV. Most of the classrooms have a few people in them even though they're between classes, but I find one where the chairs have been stacked up on the tables, I figure no one's going to be using this classroom for the rest of the night, and I call the boss over. S/he gives me some more of those papers, with different colors on them and labels giving an idea of their effects, and tells me to distribute them to some of the other students here. I go to do so, but then realize I've mixed up the one s/he gave me with the others. It was clear when s/he was talking to me in the empty classroom that s/he expected me to have already taken it, and now I'm worried about making them mad. When I can't find it again, I wind up taking a different one instead, a slightly lighter colored green, the closest match I could find. Immediately after, I find the one I was looking for, and I wonder whether it's safe to take two. I take it anyway.

      I'm talking to someone against the boss's wishes. I consider myself loyal to the boss, but s/he's got a self-destructive streak that I have no problem acting against. Those papers would have prevented me from doing so, but taking two of them sort of cancelled each other out, the changes they caused didn't stick. This guy I'm talking to is a detective or something similar, and I'm telling him a woman's name. He has others working for him and he has them ask after the woman.

      I'm a different character in that same college setting. There are police or military or something surrounding an angel - which looks nothing at all like a human, I mostly have an impression of a vast white face like a mask or a doll, twice the height of a man, alien and hostile. I'm thinking to myself that I can't die, it's impossible, like I'm trying to convince myself, but seeing that angel shook me - something about seeing something that old, something that existed before I was created. The disembodied observer side of me is thinking that although the character side of me isn't aware of it, there's some connection between me-the-character and that angel.

      As the same character, I'm talking to a woman, and ask her to lend me some money. I don't need a lot, just something to get me into a game, I'm confident as long as I have some money to start with I can easily multiply it. She's disgusted, says it's always the same with me. She gave me a business (I have some mental association here with both religion and gambling) and she expected me to run it, so why am I still doing this? I find this ridiculous of her. I had absolutely no interest in the business she gave me.

      I'm talking to someone about characters from Buffy - but all but one of us here are aware that I'm just using them as metaphors to talk about us. The one who isn't aware, who thinks I'm just talking about fictional characters, gets bored and leaves, but I keep using the metaphor. I'm saying, no, Giles's problem was that he knew exactly what his - and more importantly, Buffy's - destiny was supposed to be, and he knew it wasn't going to happen. Hence his downward spiral; he knew what they should be doing, and yet there was nothing he could do. I'm looking at a woman who I equate with Buffy as I say this.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I've just driven to my IRL mother's house from a lake, and decided I'm too tired to drive back to the lake tonight, I'll spend the night. Mom gets me a coffee, there's chunks of chocolate floating on the top, I'm thinking about how much I appreciate her thinking to provide comfort food like that. The coffee's too bitter for my taste. I'm thinking that's odd, since I usually drink black coffee. We talk about how tired I've been, and she says it's due to the work I've been doing. I think that's strange, since the job I've been doing is easy, but she says anything you're not used to will tire you out, and relates it to her own similar experience.

      Regina is surrounded by people she resents and is saying "Get me my advisor. Now!" As a disembodied observer, I'm pleased to hear this - the advisor she's referring to is Rumpelstiltskin, and earlier someone used a similar phrasing and tone to ask for their father, so I take this parallel as an indication that she's viewing Rumpelstiltskin as a father figure, which was something I wanted.

      As Rumpelstiltskin, I've been recently de-cursed but have made sure no one else realizes that. I'm looking through a cabinet for an object related to the situation Regina's currently in. I find it: a small statue of a man in armor standing beside a stone pillar with what looks like Chinese characters on it. I pick up the pillar, removing it from the rest of the statue. I'm talking to myself as I do this, saying "You're here, but are-" I hear Regina's soldiers arriving outside, come to fetch me. I've been expecting them. I immediately pocket the pillar and statue and adopt a pose appropriate for my old cursed self, irritating my bad knee for a moment but making sure no one else will be able to tell it's bothering me, adopting a mindset and mannerisms as if I were putting on a costume and mask, though it takes effort to mimic what used to come naturally - that manic delight and curiosity and energy and attention focused in a million different directions at once. I'm getting used to faking this, though, and am more worried about whether that trinket I'm carrying will work.

      Updated 02-04-2014 at 12:21 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    9. Fake lucidity

      by , 01-18-2014 at 10:17 PM
      My IRL father and I are having a conversation. We're both aware this is a dream. (But I'm not really lucid, or at least not very - 'this is a dream' is just part of the plot.) We're talking about recurring dreams I've been having of falling. (IRL, I can't remember ever having dreamed of falling.) He's concerned about it, doesn't like the idea of me repeatedly splattering myself on the ground. I assure him that I hardly ever splatter on the ground.

      As we're talking, the scene shifts, and now I'm falling from a great height - but I land lightly on my feet on the ground, demonstrating my point. I've landed somewhere near an airport. Near where I've landed, there's what I think of as another version of myself from another fall - but rather than being me, it's a woman with long red hair, lying on the ground, bending backwards at an awkward but not fatal angle, and motionless, because she's not really here, she's just an image, like a three-dimensional photograph. Looking at her, I remember various dreams where I watched other characters fall and was unable to stop them, and I acknowledge my father's point, that sometimes the falls don't go so well.

      A woman I seem to know very well is waiting for me when I walk away from the airport, and we go to meet back up with my father and his girlfriend. (No resemblance to his IRL one.) We come to a street where we'd meant to meet with them, but we don't see them. I call out "Dad! Ada!" but there's no response. There's a bit of a crowd, people talking to each other, one guy handing out flyers, I get the impression there's a festival going on somewhere nearby. The end of this street is a dream boundary; if we cross it, the dream will change. But the festival is on the other side, and we're wondering if my father went on ahead, through the boundary. The character version of me starts to head for the boundary, but the part of me that's a disembodied observer zooms out and takes a look around, and spots my father and his girlfriend sitting on a bench under an overhang. They'd been blocked from my view by the crowd around the guy handing out flyers. So I cause the character version of me to have doubts about crossing the boundary, reminding him that it'll be hard to get back to this same scene if I'm wrong about my father going on ahead. Character!me turns around.

      I tell the woman I'm with that I want to take one last look around, and I go and find a bench to sit down on. I hold my palm up in front of me, and speak to it as if to a computer, "Run search." Two glowing screens appear above my palm, one vertical, one horizontal - I think of it as a way I've created to execute dream programs. I give it more commands to run a scan of the area and locate my father and his girlfriend. Meanwhile, as a disembodied observer, I find this a neat trick, and make a note to try it sometime when I'm actually lucid; I'm wondering if it would still work. The dream scan finishes and has successfully located them, very close to the bench where I'm sitting.

      I walk over to them. They seem a little out of it, as if they're high. Apparently they'd heard me calling, but it didn't occur to him that by 'Dad', I meant him. I say to him, "What did you expect me to call you? Paul?" (His name isn't Paul.) Some passerby who's clearly enjoying the festival overhears this and sticks out his hand to my father to introduce himself, saying "Hi, Paul!" My father and I tell him to buzz off, which his girlfriend objects to, as the random passerby seemed nice. By nice, she means good-looking.
    10. Mountain climbing, parasites and escape routes

      by , 01-16-2014 at 10:11 PM
      Started out based on the Mulan musical that played in Tokyo a few years back, but the storyline started following the general, who no longer looks anything like the actress who played him, and now the dream has lost any theatre aspect. Now the general is the emperor's son, and has a name which translates to "divine," and has been summoned before the emperor. The emperor is blind, and from his eye sockets there are two strange things - flat, rectangular, worm-like things, something parasitic or symbiotic. Each has a small, white circle with a mark in the shape of ᛣ, and the general is aware that those marks can open and extend something that latches onto eyeballs and rips them from their sockets, he's seen it done before. The dream had been in 3rd person ever since I lost track of the theatre framing, but as I examined the things I shift to 1st person, the pov of the general, who is disgusted and afraid of the things.

      When his father dismisses him, he indicates that he should leave through a door beside the throne instead of the way he came. It's a small opening, extremely low to the ground, so that a man would have to crawl to get through it; it's designed to shame people, to stress rank and obedience. The general gets down on his knees before it, then hesitates and says "Father" - at which the emperor lurches forward, placing the parasite-things close to the general's face. It's not a threat, just an attempt to get a 'look' at him using the parasite's senses, which 'taste' the air, but it's an inhuman-looking motion, and the general drops whatever he was going to say in favor of getting away as quickly as possible. But he/I have a difficult time moving through the door as quickly as I'd like, and I realize it's because I'm becoming aware of my body lying motionless in bed.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm leading some team climbing a mountain covered in snow, explorers, the first to climb this mountain in history. But the men keep seeing something, some shadow figure, and insist there's someone already here. I dismiss this as nonsense. But now that the peak itself is in sight, I can clearly see there's somebody up there.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      For the past few dream scenes, I've been in a car with my IRL sister S. and two women, a couple, witches; and we've been lost. We were lost on the road, we were lost driving through water, we were lost and mistakenly in the wrong house, we were lost and running from that house's owner, and now we're lost and we've stumbled across a street where every house seems to be having a party, spilling out into the street, blocking our way. They invite us to join the party, and while I want to just get back to the road, the others want to stay. I spot someone in the crowd, some minor celebrity, and I'm intrigued enough to agree, we check out the party. I talk to the minor celebrity briefly and find him disappointing.

      Later, inside one of the houses where the party's going on, not much liking the company and wanting to get a move on, I've been cornered by some guy who's much taller and larger than I am and who seems to have mistaken me for a woman. He asks me if I believe in promises, and starts hinting very strongly that he believes we knew each other in a past life and are destined to be together. Yikes. I manage to shake him off and go find my sister in the kitchen, tell her that it's time we leave; the witch couple we were driving with join us and say "Um, we should go. Now." The lady of the house is in the kitchen with us and at this point she probably thinks we stole the silver, but we get out of there - through a window that opens onto the porch on the side of the house, rather than going back through that party to get to the door. As we're climbing out the window, one of the witches says something explaining to me and my sister why we've got to leave in such a hurry, something involving some guy who'd introduced himself as 'Psych', and I suspect it's that same creep.

      Out on the porch, one of the witches looks behind us and gets a horrified look on her face. My sister asks what it is, and the other witch says oh, she just saw Ben - her ex, who's dead - don't look, just go, get off the porch, now. The porch is narrow enough that we have to go single file, I'm the last, and as each one gets off the porch and onto the street and looks back, they look increasingly horrified - Ben's a minor nuisance, their expressions indicate Ben was just a symptom of something more going on here. I feel something strange on my back, at the base of my spine, and my motions seem too slow; I become aware that it's because I'm waking up.

      Updated 01-17-2014 at 06:20 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    11. Redwall, immortals, doppelgangers, and porcupine quills

      by , 01-02-2014 at 11:51 PM
      I'm at my mother's house, and she's putting 9 red beans in the snow behind the house. I ask her why, and she's astonished that I don't know. "Beans for Martin," she says. It's a reference to Redwall, which isn't just a story but a legend, or a fairy tale, something with customs attached - specifically in this case, leaving out nine red beans. "Ever since I was a little girl, they've always had nine at Christmas."

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Fragment to do with immortals whose modern clothing preferences tend to gravitate towards those most similar to the eras they grew up in; and later, getting a blood snack from my boyfriend's fridge, talking about indulgence and temptation.

      My IRL neighbor momentarily mistook me for a ghost he was looking for. I'm out looking for my IRL cat, to bring her inside, but I see two identical cats and am not sure which is her. (Noteworthy: doppelgangers are a common nightmare theme for me, and this time it's not a nightmare.) I catch them both, and as I'm holding them and explaining the dilemma to my neighbor, I become sure that my cat's the one on the right. Even though they're identical there's a different 'feel.' I'm pleased I was able to recognize the difference. But my neighbor insists that my cat is actually the one on the left; even after I discover some difference between them, he continues to insist on the wrong choice.

      Belle and Rumpelstiltskin are having an argument. He's looking very small and confused; he'd been wearing a coat covered in sharp quills like a porcupine's, and while normally he likes it, right now he doesn't have the show-off body language needed for it; he's managed to stick himself with it, twice. She's saying that he's mistaken about why she's unhappy, and that for all the nice things at the castle, she'd opt for a plain thatched house with ordinary things, with someone who does ordinary things, "something that matters." She means blacksmiths or farmers and similar - someone who's part of the community. Rumpelstiltskin's annoyed by this. "Well, you got me."

      Fragments: IRL sister S. and her friend P. help me with car trouble; and I tell someone to find me based on the imagery in a dream I made for them.
    12. Dreaming about passing out and hospital trips, and then waking up to same.

      by , 11-04-2013 at 08:57 PM
      3rd person, I'm looking down at a wide stone staircase in a castle, and descending the stairs there's this woman wearing buckskin who I think of as some kind of hunter, she's talking with the king. She's saying the words "-get our answers."

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm taking my IRL youngest sister, L., to the sands to get her first dragon. (Relevant to upcoming IRL event today, sans dragons.) (Edit: Nevermind, the IRL event actually did wind up involving dragons. Or the word 'dragon', anyway.) I was talking with a few older relatives about the dragons, and L. kept trying to hurry us up, anxious about getting there in time to see the dragons hatch; but for the rest of us this is all old hat, so we wasted time talking, and now we're running late. We keep telling L. that it's fine, we'll make it on time, and even if we miss the hatching you've still got a window of a few hours after the dragons hatch to bond with them. But when we get down to the sand, the eggs are already gone. We have to catch up with the hatchlings in the barn instead.

      Before we leave for the barn, I see what I think of as a king cobra in the sand - it's huge, as wide as a person, which I think of as normal for king cobras. I pick L. up and there's a chase sequence that ends with me tossing the snake over a wall, but then I notice a scratch on my finger. It must have bit me.

      I can tell I'm starting to pass out. I go inside a house and find my IRL sister S. with a friend of hers, and I tell them about the snake bite and ask them to call the hospital or treat it somehow. The friend takes my hand with the bite and looks at the veins, which look broad and red and cloudy, like they've swollen or burst under the skin, and she gets me some cream to put on my skin. I recognize it as some ordinary skin cream that's not going to help, and I try to convince S. to take me to the hospital before I pass out.

      (Woke up with my hand hurting where the snake bit it - turns out I really do have a tiny scratch there IRL, might be a papercut. Just after I finished writing this down, I got a phone call from S, letting me know she'd been taken to the hospital on account of almost passing out from unknown causes. A few hours and a not-too-serious diagnosis later, I tried to get a little more sleep.)

      I'm lying in bed in some mansion, with a few of S's friends around bothering me until I get up and go somewhere with them. As I walk through a doorway into the hall, I realize this is a dream. It's not as vivid as I'd like - I can see everything fine, but it doesn't feel quite real, more like watching something on a screen - so I try a mantra to make it more vivid. Instead, everything disappears. (In retrospect, that seems obvious. I was focusing on the words instead of the surroundings.)

      Next scene I remember is a woman using the family name Gale, returning to a Spanish-style house on the west coast, overlooking the sea. She's lived here a few times over the years, and for a moment I see it in sepia tones and with flowers in the windows, as she's remembering an old photograph from when she'd first lived here with her two daughters, before she became immortal. She's thinking that even though she's coming back earlier than expected this time - something on her mind about trouble on the east coast - she was still gone long enough that she can pass herself off as her own cousin.

      Updated 11-08-2013 at 08:18 PM by 64691

      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid
    13. Unyielding witch, and returning a dog

      by , 10-24-2013 at 10:33 PM
      A teenage girl with long red hair is standing in a field at the foot of a mountain. The image changes to show her standing in this same field when she was younger, standing under a tree while her father spoke to her with his hands on her shoulders, while the rest of the family walked away into the woods and left her there. She was known as something like a witch. She shouts after her family not to leave her, and when she tries to calm herself down some sympathetic man - also present in the scenes where she's a teenager - tells her no, go ahead and shout that if it's what you feel, call what you see, refuse to be quiet, make it your power.

      She's older now, and as a disembodied observer I'm watching her walk across that field towards the mountain, watching her from behind and I'm struck by the vivid colors of her now compared to when she was younger - the red hair in a thick braid now and down to her legs, the vivid blue skirts. She's walking past a wooden house with something going on in the woods on her mind, something urgent, possibly dangerous, her thoughts feel very determined and she's intercepting a group of people walking across the field towards that house - I think of them as the Freyhella (name taken from Wraeththu, but the resemblance stops at the name). As she walks towards them she takes a knife and cuts off her hair, right to the scalp. "With shorn hair," she says to them, the first words of a ritualized phrase, citing her right to be heard as one of them, as their neighbor, and as a 'witness' - a reference to whatever it is that's going on in the woods that she was thinking about earlier, and that she needs their recognition for. She ends by saying "Turn, and you can't yield to this," and she gets this hard expression I fall in love with.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Her again, in the woods, walking a path around some people at a distance far enough that she won't be seen, forming a protective symbol around them.

      I'm walking along a road and find a dog walking around on its own, separated from its owner. I read the owner's name on the collar, and I bring the dog back into town with me, ask around after the owner and almost immediately find her apartment building. I ring the buzzer and ask her to come down.

      When she comes down, she gives me some water to carry. The plotline's changed: there's no dog, we're going somewhere together, two distinct groups traveling together, I'm in one group, she's in the other. I can feel the added weight of the water in my backpack and am annoyed at having to carry more than I'd originally packed. Some of the people in the other group stop to get some water from a stream, and most of the people in my group find this disgusting. My IRL sister L., with my group, says there's nothing wrong with it, running water is clean; the rest of us disagree with her, saying that's not exactly wrong but not exactly true either, and then saying that it's a matter of belief. IRL sister S. says that's why she and her friends have agreed to stop believing in anything, it affects too much.
    14. Canine creature and railway tracks

      by , 10-23-2013 at 10:02 PM
      There's this strange, vaguely canine creature with a head almost completely covered in bony ridges, giving the impression that it has a skull for a head. It changes shape, sometimes looking insect-like, a vast serpent thing with many legs, and very rarely, it takes the form of a woman. It serves a certain human man who found it on a cliff, and the first time it changes into a woman it freaks him out immensely - he's wondered if maybe the creature is actually a person under a curse, but he's not at all sure which is the true form. At the moment, he's thinking "(creature's name) is the answer" - the moment he thinks that, something else bursts into the room and the creature leaps up to fight it.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A narrator of a play saying "Young Romeo spies the young witch Barathia in the woods, but..."

      A person I know IRL is annoyed at me over a misunderstanding, and posting passive aggressive messages about it online. I wonder whether I should correct the misunderstanding or just leave it alone.

      I'm standing on a street corner with someone, waiting for the light to change, when I see two people walking towards us, including that IRL person from the previous scene. The light changes just then, and I know I should probably wait for her to catch up, but I hurry across the street instead. I follow the guy I'm walking with down onto the railway tracks, and there's something I really enjoy about walking along the tracks at night. A train goes past.

      Still walking with that same guy, we've reached the trailer where his mother lives. When he knocks on the door, this guy he dislikes answers, some bigot his mother's dated in the past, but last he knew it was over between them, he wasn't expecting him to be here. They say something to each other I can't hear, I can just tell the guy in the door looks angry, and then the guy I'd been walking with turns around and leaves. He's really upset. I tell him to come back with me, we can go spend the holiday at my mother's place, she'll like having us over. At one point he decides to go back and kick that guy out of his mother's house and I physically hold him back.
    15. Photos in Italy

      by , 10-12-2013 at 07:11 PM
      A brief nightmare - I'm at my mother's IRL house, the lights won't turn on, and this is dangerous. I consider whether this is a dream, but decide it isn't. I'm thinking that dreams and waking life feel different, and while dreams might feel real, you can't mistake waking life for a dream. So I don't do any reality checks. I do, however, do my anti-nightmare Apollo trick, but I feel a bit self-conscious about it, since I'm awake, and in my mother's home, and she'll be able to hear me. Afterwards I realize it was just one burned out light bulb, and there's no danger. Outside, it's incredibly bright, even though it's night - the sky is clouded over, and I wonder whether it's a full moon, but it seems too bright even for that. There are incredible gusts of wind, very inviting. My mother comes down to the front door where I'm standing and asks if something has flooded - there are occasional waves splashing over the wall at the edge of her yard. She says she used the incorrect settings on something, and it's caused things to get out of alignment, putting stress on the whole house that will eventually break it down. She needs to go outside and correct the settings. There's a ram standing in the street, looking at us; I point it out, and she says they always come in pairs. A herd walks down the street, from the same direction the waves came from.

      I'm online, reading a conversation between several people, with one of them promising to scan some information about Renfield.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm taking a train from Rome to Boston, going over a map and coordinating plans.

      There's a guy on his way home from a war, making what he thinks of as a 'deal' with whoever's listening, God or whatever else - he just wants his childhood neighborhood to have survived unscathed. If that place was bombed, what was the point to any of this?

      That same guy is at a party, there's talk about political factions, blaming the faction that 'has the princess's ear.' Although this guy doesn't realize it, the princess in question is there at the party, disguised.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A rich family is discussing inheritance issues after their father's death. His illegitimate daughter from one of his many affairs, a very sweet girl, is the source of a lot of jealousy.

      I'm walking down a street, and through the cracks in a fence I can see statues and ancient temples. I find a way through the fence and walk around, admiring them, wishing I had my camera with me; then I remember the camera on my phone and start taking pictures.

      I walk into a building with a walkway overlooking vast, dark spaces, and I take pictures of those, lighting them up, resulting in beautiful abstract images made up of points of light. One of the spaces overlooks an opera company rehearsing, and there are a few people sitting around here watching, they don't welcome my presence but they don't stop me from taking pictures either. Another space contains a field of snow, and there's a beautiful woman lying there, dead or unconscious, beside some broken wooden boards. As I'm taking photos of her, I say "Nostradamus" - the name of the opera being performed. A woman next to me, one of the ones who'd been watching the opera, asks me how I knew its name; I say I hadn't known until I said it. The woman lying in the snow wakes up, and climbs up onto the walkway. I offer her my arm if she needs it, she looks unsteady - I sound overeager to myself. She doesn't take my arm.

      Outside, the woman asks me how long I'll be staying in town. I'm thinking that I'm stuck here until I can find my portal home; out loud, I say it'll be a few days and I let her know what part of town I'm staying in. She reminds me of a promise I'd made to her, something involving her uncle, and she walks away.

      I go to see her uncle, walking through the streets of a city in Italy, old alleys where cars are off-limits. I want to find a place to stop and go through my phone, delete some photos, make room for more, but most places are closing at this time of day. Finally I find a bookstore that's still open and I sit down. On my phone, I'm looking at a menu for creating shortcuts on your phone, arranged in the shape of a stylized butterfly.

      Updated 10-12-2013 at 07:16 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid , nightmare
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