Carabas

That pilgrimage again, but sometime before we reached that mountain range. We're camped out somewhere green. I'm walking through the camp with that woman leading the pilgrimage, and although it's her visions they're following, no one pays her any particular attention as we're walking around. We come to the top of a cliff with a long series of wooden stairs leading to the bottom, crossing back and forth. Far below, two of our people are fighting, sort of - a soldier and a man I recognize, it's clear she's training him. I wonder why he'd want to do that - he's really not suited to fighting. The soldier sees us watching them and they both stop.

Time skip over all those stairs; we get to the bottom, and they're both sprawled out on the ground. She's asking him to list the three things he's learned. He goes um, ah, "Give me a minute. I just had it." She does give him a few moments, and then she gives him this expectant look. He seems surprised she didn't just drop it. He says, "I'm finished," and laughs.

An enormous raven, three times the size of any I've seen, lands on a fence post nearby; then it's a very elegant woman leaning against that fence post instead. I'm thinking, that would have been much more convenient than walking down all those stairs.

I'm standing in a cave with a group of people, discussing a man who came through here just ahead of us, someone we need to seal away - this is something he'd requested but now he's running. Our time is limited. A woman is suggesting that we use a certain box - it fits in the palm of your hand - that her husband had originally designed to seal himself in case of an emergency. She believes that her husband is no longer a threat so the box can be turned to a different purpose, and I can see her joy in that. But I refuse. No matter how safe her husband seems now, we need to save that option for him.

Following the man we need to seal, we come out of the cave into the open. There's a group of people living here who view him as a god; we avoid encountering them directly. Two of us get into a discussion on the nature of worship, talking about projecting the way your own perspective works onto a macro level, with a powerful leader to control things and a drastically overvalued role of consciousness. I make a comparison to a machine that can feel every impact of cogs and gears.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fragmentary scenes with that woman who led the pilgrimage through the mountains earlier:

I'm sitting at a large round wooden table, eating a snack, while she's saying to me something about "would you bear hope" or would I be "a bearer of hope." I'm a little taken off-guard by this conversation, and I'm annoying her by not giving what she's saying serious consideration.

I'm surrounded by wolves, or something like wolves - they've got faces that seem built for snarling, I think of them as someone's nightmare of wolves. I can feel them as they each brush against me, rubbing closely against my legs. They're mine now apparently. I can't believe that worked, this is wonderful. I look over to that woman, standing a short distance away - I want to see her reaction. She has this sort of "you have got to be kidding me" expression. The wolves had started out attacking us, and she seems more exasperated by this turn of events than anything else.

We're standing on a snow-covered mountain, the ground here at a steep angle, with some threat above us, and I'm saying to her, "-here. I would rather stand and fight being a single person. And you, we'll-"

I'm traveling with a woman who most recently has been climbing these giant stairs cut into the mountains, leading a very large group of people, guided by her visions and signs. Now she's reached an old shrine that's of great personal importance to her. But that's not what she was looking for - she thought her visions were guiding her to a place where all these people could be safe. Now it seems it was just something personal. She believes she's led them all this way for nothing.

I'm extremely frustrated by all this, because the place I've been trying to guide her to with those visions I've sent her is still further on - I wanted her to see this shrine first for personal reasons, because I like her and I thought she deserved to know this part of her past, but it's not our final destination. Unfortunately, the stairs end here; there's no easy path after this point. How am I going to convince her to keep going now that she's doubting the visions? I'm almost tempted to just suggest scouting ahead myself and then conveniently 'finding' the place - but I need her to be the one to discover it, not me. I'll think of something, but I need to talk to her privately, and there haven't been many opportunities for that on this pilgrimage.

Right now she's busy talking with a priest I dislike - I'm not fond of priests on general principle, but this one in particular irritates me. She's apologizing. She's saying she shouldn't have rejected the idea of divine guidance - maybe if she'd believed, she wouldn't have gotten them lost like this. The priest reassures her, saying, "You delivered what would not be prayerful."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Still in that same mountain range, but this time I'm working separately from the main group, it's just me and a couple of her soldiers. I'm talking with a slave trader - he's got a group of people I've been looking for and I need him to release them. He says he can't possibly do that, they're an extremely sought-after species. He shows me a cage with a human man and woman instead, and a falcon that comes with the woman, and says that he'll give me one of them as a sign of good faith - he'll even trade me all three, the two humans and the falcon, if I'd be willing to give him one of my soldiers. He has a buyer who likes that specific shade of skin. Incredulous, I tell him this isn't a negotiation. He's going to release the people I came for, I'm not going to give him anything, and I don't care about his humans or whatever else he's selling.

But then he takes the hood off the human woman - white hair and a young face. I know her. I'm shocked, and she looks just as shocked to see me - I'd thought she was dead. Last time I saw her, she'd sacrificed me to her people's gods. It didn't work obviously, I can't die that way, but there was no way she could have known that. When my 'death' didn't stick, her people reacted very badly. I'd seen them holding a funeral for her later, but I'd been watching from a distance - they must have held the ceremony without a body. I'd just assumed they'd killed her. I'd liked her a great deal, sacrifice aside.