• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    Carabas

    1. Fragments

      by , 09-05-2015 at 05:16 PM
      I'm on a lake. In the lake, there's a small island; there's an enormous tree whose roots cover almost the entire island; at the base of the tree, there's a standing mirror, silver in color this time; and in front of the mirror, there are two steel bars. There's a steel vine covered in thorns that's wrapped around the bars in an arch, serving as a lock. I unwind the thorny vine and remove it. The mirror's open now.

      Traveling through the basement of a ruined mansion, where the walls have crumbled so much there's a sense of open air and greenery, there's a painting of Joan of Arc commissioned by the woman who used to own this estate, and I'm pleased to see she had it painted so that Joan resembles the commissioner herself. This would be considered disrespectful, which is why it was hidden away in the basement.

      I'm in an open, airy, bright library where some event is going on, some new release that's drawn in a lot of upper class, scholarly types. It's interrupted by a woman who's some kind of monster I'm familiar with, delivering a hostile message to me and leaving again. She frightened most of the people into backing away. I'm thinking, although these things are hostile and my automatic reaction to them is equally hostile, they only exist because of my "tainted blood," which was what originally created her kind, generations back; thinking about that, there's a shift in attitude, I start to pity them. They're essentially my responsibility, though they're not aware of it.
    2. A gold mural on a cave wall

      by , 03-27-2015 at 12:53 AM
      In a cave, a young modern couple were confronted by two women, guards of something sacred who'd been hunting this man down. They fought, and now those two sacred guards are lying on the ground, one unconscious.

      The man rises to float slightly in the air, and the guard who's still conscious believes this is a sign he's about to kill her - but he just scoops up the woman he's with, carrying her in his arms, floats over where that guard is lying, and keeps going. He says to the guard, "Seriously, go away."

      Then he phases through the cave wall, where a mural is painted in gold. As he passes through the wall, the guard momentarily sees a different face overlaying his, someone she recognizes and greatly respects - either a religious authority who's recently died, or a god, or both.
    3. The man in the glass, Hightower, chain of command

      by , 03-15-2015 at 08:42 PM
      There's a human woman who, when looking at a particular vampire through a mirror, would see a reflection of him that no one else could see - or rather a sort of different version of him, seen far off and from a distance, performing different actions. She's never been sure exactly what this means. He believes that she's been seeing something like his soul, or another side of him - he saw it as something like a hope for salvation. Right now, though, he's leaving town; he's loading luggage into a car, and both he and his sister are dressed in a drastically different, more formal style than she's ever seen them wear before - she thinks of it as out of character. But it only seems that way to her because they're destroying the personas they've been using with these particular identities and creating new ones, and she's never seen them do that before.

      She's standing on the sidewalk, talking to his sister, and she's saying, but what about those visions of "the man in the glass" - how can the two of them just leave her without finding out what her visions meant? The sister says those visions were just illusions that he's ready to move on from.

      I'm in a fortress that's been evacuated, watching a woman who's been advising me as she treats this survivor we'd found lying unconscious in the hall. Now that she's conscious again, my advisor comes to me and says we're in luck; the woman's the head of a noble house and she considers her loyalty as being to the throne itself, not to any particular claimant, so she's willing to pledge her sword to me. I'm aware that there was some previous meeting that had declared me the legitimate claimant to the throne, and that's what's determining this woman's decision, not that we've saved her life; if the meeting had declared in favor of someone else, she'd be supporting that person instead.

      The character side of me is surprised by this statement about pledging her sword; I say to my advisor, what, again? I'd had to find three noble houses to declare their swords to me, I'd managed it, there'd been a ceremony - that part's done now, isn't it? My advisor can't believe I'd say such a thing; exasperated (rightfully so, the observer side of me thinks), she explains that I need all the swords I can get, especially now as we're making for Hightower - I have a mental image of entering a military encampment and seeing the top of a round tower of brown stones in the distance. I see her point now that she's said it, and I think about the route between here and Hightower, and all the noble households located along that route. I hope we don't have to repeat the actual ceremony each time.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm part of a group of people protesting some issue, focusing on a sort of police force in a particular community but with broader implications. Trying to figure out how best to handle this, I enter the mind of the man in charge of the police force, trying to see what would sway him, what approach he would listen to. I find that the problem isn't our approach, it's that nothing coming from this source is going to sway him - even if my group convinced every last person in the community to unite and speak up, this man sees our community as a problem to be solved, a situation to be managed. If the police force is going to change, it needs pressure from someone else.

      I travel to the mind of that man's superior, a political position. He's more sympathetic to the issue in the community, but he won't act just based on sympathy; it's important to him that he make "impartial" decisions about where to focus his limited time and resources. If public opinion among the area he serves as a whole was pressuring him to focus on this issue, or particularly influential groups or political powers, then he would focus on it. He considers this the most responsible approach.

      Following the trail of political influence, I eventually come to the ruler of the country. He would be surprised to be asked about this issue at all; he considers it outside of his jurisdiction. This is the church's responsibility.

      I come to the leader of the church, the equivalent of a pope. She also believes this isn't up to her; this is an issue for each nation to decide.
    4. Desertion in the making

      by , 03-12-2015 at 07:50 PM
      I'm disembodied, following a man as he walks out of a stone fortress through a side door. He's upset. I'm trying to mentally push him into making a choice that he doesn't see yet - there's a group of people staying at this fortress, and when they leave, I want him to leave with them. I need him working with them, and he'll be much happier as well. It only hasn't occurred to him yet because that would be desertion, which I think of as a minor nuisance. He's in a position of command in this semi-military, semi-religious order, a position he'd never wanted, and I've been mentally pushing him to focus on all the ways he feels trapped here.

      The fortress is surrounded by an evergreen forest, and there's a little snow here and there. He stops right outside the door, believing that he's just getting some air. He's thinking about that group traveling through that I want him to leave with, and thinking about how his order can't show emotion, contrasting it with that group. He's looking at something on the ground that I can't see, and he's thinking that he'd be crying right now if he was capable of it.

      I push him to walk further from the door - he thinks of it as walking aimlessly, but I have a direction in mind. There's several tables set up from something going on here during the day, mostly empty now. He looks over the devices assembled on one of them - he doesn't understand how any of them work, but he feels like he's spent all day protecting this stuff from overly curious onlookers, and managing the nobility, and running errands for the great and the good - it seems completely ridiculous to him that this is his life. It's the opposite of where he ever expected to be.

      He keeps walking. I make sure he focuses on the little pool of blood on the stone ground here, a dozen or so dead crows around it, deliberately placed in a certain formation. One of his men had called it "a battlefield for crows" earlier. He has absolutely no idea what this disgusting thing is for, it's just one more thing he's had to keep people away from today. As he's looking at it, he sees someone standing at the edge of the woods. He's startled; at first glance, it looks like the man who used to be in command here, who'd moved on a few months ago and left him in charge. He feels relieved - and by feeling the extent of that relief, he's just now become really aware of just how much weight's been on his shoulders since that man left. But then the person moves and breaks the illusion. It's not him.
    5. Unusual moral standards, Thomas the Rhymer

      by , 03-10-2015 at 11:12 PM
      After having to kill an animal and making sure to make it as painless as possible - essentially reaching into its mind and turning it off - I've wound up in an argument, arguing against the raising and slaughtering of pigs for meat. (Dream me and waking me have very different opinions on this.) I find it incomprehensible, especially contrasted to the concept of pets - including pigs kept as pets. I talk about the distribution of souls, how bizarre it seems that this one will be raised to be pampered and the next one raised to be meat, with no obvious difference between them except how they're treated.

      I'm speaking with a woman from some religious order, talking about an orphan boy; with me is a man I'm close with who runs a clinic, which is where I met the boy. I've asked her to guide the kid to some local official or guard or something along those lines, to get him placed in a (word that means both orphanage and workhouse - I'm thinking of it as a place where he'll be cared for, the best place for him). She's telling me she can hardly be expected to keep an eye on some street kid who wants to run, especially when there's so many orphaned refugee kids coming into the city - many of whom would jump on this chance that he's trying to get away from. If he wants to disappear among them, he will. Even if she and the official keep him in line until he gets to the orphanage/workhouse, he doesn't want to be there; he'll just run off and disappear again. The observer side of me thinks she's right, I can't force the kid to stick around someplace he doesn't want to be just because I think I know what's best for him, this is pointless; but the character side of me is thinking, so much for the supposed compassion and charity of her order.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm watching a man sleep and trying to work out a way around a problem, thinking of ballads like Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, thinking of warnings about people who stumble into something they shouldn't and wind up obsessed. I'm trying to avoid that in this case. This is a man who's abandoned some responsibility - nothing to do with me, this was before I met him, but I need him to take that responsibility up again. I'm trying to think up a dream I can give him to push him in that direction, but I'm concerned that if I interfere too directly, I'll just end up leading him further away from the path I want him to take.

      Updated 03-10-2015 at 11:22 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    6. Janette veiled again

      by , 02-26-2015 at 10:01 PM
      I'm in some manner of waiting room, talking with a priest - I'm hoping to get his opinion on a dilemma that's been on my mind. But as I describe it to him, he gets increasingly uncomfortable. Finally he seizes on something I've said that he can turn into a sort of keyword - along the same lines of "crisis of faith" or "act of god," some familiar phrase. When I agree that yes, you could think of it that way, he seems relieved. He launches into a sort of canned speech on that keyword. I'm disappointed. This isn't the conversation I'd hoped it would be.

      Janette arrives then, rescuing me, and I stand up to give her a quick kiss. The priest seems as relieved to be able to end the conversation politely as I am. It's been a while since I've met up with Janette, and she's dressed as a widow again, with a black veil over her eyes; I think this is the first time I've seen her in a veil since the 1950s. She's stunning as ever.

      As we leave she teases me about being disappointed by that priest, about always looking for answers in all the wrong places. The conversation drifts, and as we step out onto the sidewalk I'm saying to her, "No, no, no - unless you wanted him." She makes a face. I'm teasing - that priest wouldn't exactly be her first choice of meal, and neither of us have been hunting people at all lately. But now we're both thinking about blood.

      We head back to my place, and we immediately start up the stairs to the bedroom, but halfway up the stairs I leave her to go back down and take the phone off the hook, saying something about no distractions this time. The observer side of me remembers how this will turn out - when the woman I work with couldn't get through on the phone, she turned up at the door instead, and saw Janette wearing my robe. First time she'd seen Janette, and although it wasn't anything notable at the time, it eventually wound up raising unfortunate questions.
    7. Pilgrimage and slave trade in the mountains

      by , 02-09-2015 at 09:50 PM
      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.
    8. 500 archers, a falcon in a lake of stars

      by , 01-29-2015 at 10:36 PM
      As Louis, being seen as a vampire by someone who I didn't want to see that, fleeing the scene, and Lestat finding this much more funny than I think is appropriate.

      Discussing a military operation, looking at a map of what is essentially much of India and Southeast Asia, although at this point in time - meant to be 6th or 7th century or so - the countries and their borders are significantly different than in the present; we're primarily discussing a trade route at the moment, but I've also been having a disagreement with the man in charge about our manpower. While discussing the trade route, we receive word of 500 archers spotted approaching from the north, in addition to the army we're already facing. I am significantly less confident about our ability to handle this than the boss is.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      As some manner of religious authority, I'm performing a ritual to help a group of people, a sort of blessing or summoning, making something sacred. At the start of the ritual I have to offer up whatever spiritual virtue I possess as a sacrifice; this will leave me vulnerable until the ritual's complete, so I'm relying on the two people who asked for my help to accompany me. With the offering made, we step through a portal.

      This takes us to a dark and dusty room, a place I'm familiar with. I summon light into my hands, with an effect much like a dim flashlight. In the middle of the floor there's a large trunk full of false panels, something a stage magician might use; at the moment it's lying open so that all its tricks are clearly visible to anyone who might pass through. I didn't leave it like that. There are a few objects on the shelves of the room that weren't here the last time, indicating that someone other than me has indeed been using this place. This is something to worry about. I close the trunk properly, and we continue.

      A brief memory gap - after the dark room, we came out into a field at night with a river off to our right, and what we did here I can't remember; but then we came to the cliff at the opposite side of the field, and
      the view here was so fantastic that I briefly went fully lucid to enjoy it. I'm looking down on an immense lake so still that I can see stars reflected here and there. In the far distance, there's an immense grey statue of a falcon submerged in the lake so that only its head is above the water - but that small part of the statue above the water is at least the height of a two or three story building.

      Continuing the storyline, this is certainly the appropriate place to perform a sacred ritual, so I begin a prayer - something about the lake filling with stars. But before I get very far, that river off to our right rises in a flood. The two people with me are afraid, but I'm thinking this is convenient - we'll just ride that water down to the lake.

      The river sweeps us over the cliff, which is great fun, and when I sink under the water of the lake I can see a group of hammerhead sharks swimming far below. They don't seem to care about us. Surfacing, although we've all separated, we're all making our separate ways toward that falcon statue.

      Along the way, however, I bump into a seal; it considers me and then swims on. And then into a shark; the same happens again. And another shark, and this one seems more interested in my presence; and another that I have to physically shove away;
      and so on; I'm not concerned about my safety - though I am worried about the other two - but I become so busy fending off sharks that I can't continue to the statue.
    9. 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."
    10. Fragment

      by , 10-05-2014 at 03:05 AM
      I'm a man traveling together with an old friend and several people I've met more recently - we're on a mountain road covered in snow, leading horses. A few red berries on the branch we're passing underneath caught my eye, everything else is bare. I'm thinking about the place we've just been turned away from, feeling annoyed. We were counting on this letter written by the head of a monastery to convince the master of some estate or something along those lines to let us stay there until the snow melts, but there was some trouble with the man the letter was addressed to. Right now I'm walking next to a blonde woman dressed in red who's worried about food. I cheer up as I talk to her, and I'm saying that food won't be a problem for tonight, "Dieter and I found a veritable mountain of-"
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Vampires, beheadings, and crows

      by , 11-29-2013 at 11:39 PM
      In a wild west-inspired setting, there's someone called 'the Kid', although he's a grown man with greying hair and wrinkles. I'm watching him ride a motorcycle out of town, and I'm thinking that although he may not be a Kid, it'd also be wrong to call him a man, since he's not human.

      There's a man and a woman in some kind of storage space, looks like an attic. She's asking if he's ever even tried moving to 'a real town' and setting up 'a real life,' the way she says other heroes have done. He's surprised she called him a hero and says she's got the wrong idea, and that he's not even human. As a third person observer, I'm thinking how cliche he is, the self-loathing vampire hero type. I focus on his appearance for the first time - a man in a red coat, with a face that reminds me of some actor but covered in scars and boils, and I'm thinking that at least this one's not pretty.

      There's a dead guy on the floor between the two of them, and now he wakes up. The guy in the red coat picks up this huge sword with a curve in the blade which I associate with beheading, and he says something about how what he really wants isn't 'a real life in a real town'; what he wants is this weapon, automated, on a massive scale. The dead guy says something about being grateful before his head's taken off.

      There are people arguing in the town square. The guy in the red coat gathered everyone here and is standing up on a wooden stage trying to talk to them. One person says, "You act like one of 'em, the game's won!" 'Them' meaning vampires, and 'won' meaning won by the vampires. The person he's arguing with says, "You resist 'em, the game's won!" Everyone seems to think it's hopeless. While the guy in the red coat is focused on them, he doesn't see the burned and headless body which is crawling out of town.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Dracula, a girl, and a priest/vampire slayer, in a field in daylight. Dracula's kneeling, and the priest's saying that He often seems to hear him and know what's needed. In response, black shapes fill the sky, blotting out the sun, which Dracula doesn't like at all. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about how this is an interesting switch; normally you'd think of darkness favoring vampires, but Dracula was fine with sunlight. The girl says something about sending him to hell, but she's got it backwards; the priest isn't in the business of damning souls. On closer look, the things blotting out the sun are crows; and then among them appear the souls of all those he'd turned.
    14. Variations on the theme of revisiting the past

      by , 10-06-2013 at 10:47 PM
      I'm inside a mental simulation of a memory from my past, allowing two people to go through the contents of my memory, a man and a woman. I'm lying down on the bed while the woman goes into the next room to look around.

      Will Graham standing in a room, alone, but with mental images of many people moving around, he's piecing together what happened here in the past. He's watching the phantom images move, but he's mostly thinking about Hannibal and the increasing inevitability of consulting him on this case. This whole image is replaced by written words in white: "The Kingdom".

      I'm a man who's been doing research into my own unknown ancestry, and turned up some info that my father was a cult leader. And while my mother's still a mystery, I'm complaining to someone that at this rate she'll probably turn out to be a goat. It's a reference to an image of goat-headed Baphomet that was connected to the cult.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm watching three women try to recreate images from old photos of other people, dressing up like them and trying to copy their poses exactly, in order to figure out something that happened in the past, something about a girl with some sense of guilt towards another woman. Copying the photos requires one of the women to adopt some really uncomfortable looking poses, she's dressed up in a wedding gown and the angle she's holding her neck at looks like it should be fatal.

      There's this guy who killed someone, and I told him over the phone 'I'm not going to come for you' unless he does something about the body himself. When I get there, I look out the back window into his yard, and see a few of those big black trash bags full of fallen leaves, and I note that there are a couple more bags now than were there when I left. I note that he split it up into several bags instead of just one.

      I'm in the yard of some huge mansion with a few white tables and chairs set up for a party, abandoned now; I'm out at the very edge of the yard, near a river, standing over someone who's been shot, and I'm saying to Hannibal, "One person, you could have saved one person!" He says something disagreeing with me. I'm thinking about Abigail.

      I'm standing in my IRL shower, and there's a spider in here, well out of the way of the water; but I accidentally drip some on it and it slips down into the tub, gets caught in the water and washed down the drain before I can catch it. I feel guilt about that. I didn't want to drown it. But then an insect crawls up out of the drain - a huge winged ant, and then another one - and I feel sure the spider will be able to make it back up too.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm meeting some people in a dream. A woman and I have just arrived on a beach, bright sunny day, clear blue-green water, and we've got these dark fragments of void-stuff hanging around us from our arrival, dissipating like smoke. She's telling me about the guy she's going to introduce me to, who's supposed to guide me through something specific. He appears in a puff of darkness like we did, but standing on the water a little bit away, dark-haired guy wearing a suit, and he jogs across the water to meet us on the sand. He apologizes for taking so long to get here, and I'm thinking to myself that it only took him so long because he's accepting limitations that are unnecessary in a dream, not really a promising start. I expect him to say something else but he doesn't, they've both gone silent and stopped moving, and I realize that we've lost the connection and I'm waking up.
    15. Andromache, enchanted sleep, underground temple, morgue

      by , 10-01-2013 at 08:53 PM
      Someone who's just finished drawing a picture of 10 priests, then a picture of me, offers to draw a picture of Andromache; in the dream I believed that was the name of a goetic demon.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a witch I put under an enchanted sleep a long time ago, but a girl's come to warn me that she's started to wake up. There are rhymes and charms meant to keep her asleep, but when I see they're not going to work I run for the nearest doorway, to put a few realities between us. The doors I pass through repeatedly change the scene until I wind up in a tiny square room, just large enough for me, with only the one entrance; I get rid of the roof and start flying.

      I'm with a group of people in what looks like some underground stone temple, talking to a guy who emerged from a tunnel in the floor, and I'm noting that he looks just like his ancestor. We're returning his ancestor's sword to him, although now it's just a sword - there had been something else attached to it, something we used. As I'm thinking about this I notice that the tunnel has a carving of the Monkey King's head set above it.

      A cardinal arrives at the top of the stairs leading down to the temple, followed by attendants in red and gold brocade. He's been our enemy before, hunting us down, although that's been resolved; still, we're not exactly pleased to see him, and his attendants start to run forward to put themselves between him and us. But he holds up a hand to tell them to stay back. He's brought us a satchel full of papers granting us certain privileges in recognition of our service to (something or other) - none of the privileges granted are actually very useful, this is just a symbolic gesture. I mention to one of the guys with me that I'd rather have another of those papers claiming we were acting with his permission and authority.

      In what looks like a morgue, there's a live man lying down on a slab being examined by a guy in a wheelchair, along with a goon in a suit standing behind the chair, and a man in a white coat standing over the slab. The guy in the chair is looking for someone who's had plastic surgery, and he's thinking the guy on the slab might be him. He's wrong. He's also thinking about peeling back the skin of the face to get a look at the underlying bone structure. The guy on the slab has got the wrong idea about what's going on, he was brought here by the man in the white coat under false pretenses, and he's saying, "So you recognized me on account of my face?" The man in the wheelchair had been gripping him by the chin. Now he starts to reach toward the guy's bare chest, thinking about the heart, and the guy says "Hey, I thought you weren't gonna take anything too-" He looks at the guy in the white coat, who is looking up at the ceiling and moving his lips silently, maybe praying.
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