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    1. Bookselling, thrones

      by , 11-24-2014 at 09:18 PM
      There's a monk who needs to buy a certain rare, extremely expensive book, and he intends to raise the money by selling off a different rare book. He can't do this himself, so he sends a fox demon to take care of it. She can't read the script it's written in, but she compares the characters he wrote down for her with the characters written on the covers of his books, and she eventually finds the right one and takes it to a fair that's going on. There are many specialists here who'd give her a good price for the book, but she goes to a bookseller she recognizes, a place she's been to many times. This man doesn't know the values of things, so he gives her very little for it - it's the equivalent of buying a book for a dollar when it should be worth millions.

      The monk's disappointed - not in her, but because the book's gone and he'll have to start over in terms of raising the money. The fox demon gets annoyed at him for what she perceives as insulting the bookseller - she thinks the bookseller is a very good man, since he's sold her many novels for very little money. The monk is thinking about how much he looks forward to the end of his life, except that he's concerned about how she'll survive.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm speaking German with a man who'd promised to (acquire or translate or something similar) a certain book, but now he's fleeing and has to go back on his part of our deal. I don't really mind.

      Two paired images of people on thrones. The first is a blonde woman dressed in gold robes, surrounded by abstract shapes woven out of gold wires, on a balcony overlooking beautiful green fields, rivers, wide blue sky. She's saying, amused, that although she was meant to be associated with style and worldliness, instead "I'm merely back in the desert, healing women at an oasis."

      The second, a sad and tired-looking long-haired old man, first in a dark wooden room full of cabinets and herbs, then overlooking a mountain. A pair of ravens leave him and fly up the mountain over a trail, croaking - grey stone, grey skies.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Two fragments:

      I'm trying to convince the radio to put out an important broadcast to keep people out of the (either Dallas or Houston) area, it's an emergency, but they refuse to disrupt the normal services.

      A man saying to me, "You're afraid that this is the real world. It is. I trust you."
    2. 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.
    3. 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
    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. A bounty, a murder, and an imaginary gun

      by , 09-13-2013 at 06:46 PM
      Hypnagogia: A man's voice laughing, deeply unpleasant.

      A man and a woman in what looks like an interrogation room, although he is technically free to go at any time, and the organization this woman belongs to isn't exactly law enforcement. There's a woman, not human, something else, something dangerous, who's coming for this man - she's not a danger to him, but she is to everyone else - and the people here need to know his story before she gets there. He says to the human woman in the room with him, "And the bounty? P.Big's?" P.Big being the name of the larger of the two bounties he'd recently turned in - these people had confiscated his reward money, along with the rest of his belongings. That's the main reason he's still here. She says, "You can have it back. In exchange for the war story."

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A man waiting for a tow truck finally hears a vehicle pull up outside, goes to the window to look. There's a woman in a firefighter's uniform entering the house through the back door, without him noticing, and she watches as the man is killed by a wire around his throat. The two men who killed him pick up his body, standing right next to her but not looking at her or acknowledging her in any way.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a boy with an older woman - possibly his grandmother, though relatively young for it, someone who doesn't live with him but who stopped by today - he's crouching in a corner with a weapon, listening to what he believes is someone with a gun in his home. He's eager to face them. Footsteps approach the door, the door opens - it's the gardener/maid, and she's carrying a leaf blower, not a rifle. She makes the usual small talk and walks on. His grandmother says to him that she is not going to ask what he was thinking, she is not going to dignify this by discussing it, but she wants him to think about what just happened.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Last dream was just fragments, but had similar themes from the earlier dreams: something about a boy, an older woman who knows better than him, and a war.
    6. Bounty hunting, Buddha, and Lucifer.

      by , 08-16-2013 at 08:31 PM
      Bounty hunters, or at least people who do odd jobs including bounty hunting. A member of my team, Regina, comes back to the motel we're staying at to tell us she's got a job at a local bar, which solves our immediate money problem. She's been trying to talk us out of hunting down that bounty we've been focused on. There's another woman who left the team over this bounty, she wouldn't talk about it but it seems like she had some personal connection that none of us had known about until she left.

      Scene changes, that woman's come back, taken care of whatever business she needed to take care of. She's a beautiful, melancholy woman, and as we drive out of the city she's reflecting on all her memories, 'some bad, some good, but all worth having': her and her orphaned brother, the threat of war, their childhood determination to end war; a white Cadillac with fins, and the driver, a man who'd just struck it rich, tossing money into the air.

      A few fragments: a thief who became a Buddha, and how that story's changed over time. Lucifer going through a Bible and scribbling out words here and there.
    7. Witches, vampires, monsters, and divorce.

      by , 08-08-2013 at 08:44 PM
      3rd person. A wealthy household full of various factions is gathered by a very old tree to discuss their leader's potential divorce, and how they can use it to their advantage. But I wind up focusing on a group that's ignoring the family politics and telling a story about this old tree, something like a fairy tale or a ghost story. Two children were transformed by the ashes of a witch's bones. One transformed into the image of the witch herself, the other transformed into something monstrous and deformed, vaguely donkey-like, and this allowed them to 'walk in strange places.' On certain nights a parade of witches (both men and women) passes by this tree, and disguised with the witch's ashes, those children joined the parade.

      1st person. For political reasons, something to do with an organized crime group, I was briefly married to Julia, an extremely influential businesswoman and vampire. Now I've just about gotten things with that crime group settled and there's no real reason for us to keep up the sham marriage, and I'm surprised how conflicted I am about that. I'd gotten used to life as her husband far too easily. I'm thinking about how up until now I've been dealing with a 'tame' vampire, not the real deal. I'm looking over my shares in her businesses and thinking about selling. It'd be enough for me to live on for the rest of my life, if I do leave.
    8. 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?