Carabas

I'm walking along a hall filled with exhibits - first, fragments of stones covered with hieroglyphics; then statues of Dumuzi; then a small section filled with art based on myths from various old African and Middle Eastern cultures, done by artists from the current African and Middle Eastern cultures - a reclaiming sort of thing. A painting of Eve holds my attention. Here I meet a very influential man and a woman who he has some claim on, but who seems mentally elsewhere - she speaks only nonsense. I feel protective of her, and I follow her out to a field where she gathers flowers and speaks nonsense at me for a while, but eventually that influential man and his followers come outside and she has to return. She hands me the flowers she's gathered and indicates I should eat them. Heather, foxglove, peony and violet. I put down a plank for her to walk across to return to him, and she hands me the traditional few coins for her passage.

A scene involving statues who came to life ends with a man speculating about whether it's possible for something carved in stone to change its role. He thinks it's possible, within limits. He speaks in a manner that's difficult for the people around him to understand - they say he speaks in riddles, but that's not intentional.

As I'm listening to him speak, the scene transitions; I'm in a dark stone room, listening to someone else speak to himself. I've lost track of what he was actually talking about, too busy focusing on his mannerisms and speech patterns, because I/Rumpelstiltskin recognize this scene - this is the man who I'll steal some of my more showy mannerisms and speech patterns from. Eventually he says a phrase that he uses very often, and recognizing it, I join in with him word for word. I've got his tone down very well, though my voice echoes, an effect of the spell I'm using to stay hidden - helps distort the location. He startles when he hears me, and I say, "Chilling, isn't it?" The similarity in our voices, I mean.

He looks around to try to find me, unsuccessfully, but he looks deeply unimpressed. "Expressing affection?" he asks.

"Precisely. But as an aside-" I drop the spell and step into the light as I speak.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Me and Jules are meeting as strangers - a man led us down to a room displaying various things that were important to each of us in the past. He wants us to go over our own displays to make sure there's nothing that needs to be changed. When we take a break, however, I wander over to some of the objects that are on the wall. There's a statue of a golden lion - something Jules made. He explains that it was based on an ancient model, but it's difficult when you can't be exactly sure of the symbolism each detail had to that ancient culture. I sympathize - I'd once studied the original pair of lion statues he based this one off of.

After several scenes on the streets of New York, I wander off into some hills, go lucid, and start to fly. Once I gain some altitude, I come across a river with several boats making their way downstream. I'm aware that if I follow the river downstream, it'll lead me back into the city; upstream, elsewhere. I'm torn, but then a large boat on the river draws my attention. Marie Antoinette's leaning on the railing, drinking an immense glass of pink champagne, and generally looking very inviting. I land on the boat and we go inside. Unfortunately, although I hear her meaning instead of her actual words, she complains that she can't understand what I'm saying - she's hearing the actual English words. I have to deliberately switch to speaking French - she can understand me well enough now, but my vocabulary's limited. I join her husband at a buffet table where he explains the various delicacies to me - they all sound fascinating, though I'm not eating. I leave him to go remove my overcoat; I meet a handsome guest and we enjoy some extremely unsubtle flirting. Eventually he leaves to rejoin his boyfriend, and as I'm admiring the pair of them I have a false awakening.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a witch sorting through various moments of time from her past. The first one she selects isn't the one she's looking for - it's the moment when she was taken to the castle, associated with a sense of pain, before she became a witch. She puts that moment back.

The second moment she selects - her daughter's choice between death or banishment. I think of Sleeping Beauty, converting a curse into something that's still a curse, but survivable. The daughter herself would have chosen death - young romantic type, I think of Romeo and Juliet - but her mother the witch says, "I gave him the terms quickly." By him, she means me/Rumpelstiltskin. She struck a deal with me to get her daughter away safely, before the daughter could choose a 'noble' death. The scene changes - I'm standing in the shadows at the very edge of a forest, looking at the castle on the hill in the distance. Despite the various fairy tale references in this scene, this castle's no fairy tale confection; it's a squat, practical thing. The daughter was somewhere inside at this moment in time.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After uncovering a secret lab leaking some kind of contamination that was killing the rats in the neighboring building, and making a quick escape out a second floor window and over a series of rooftops, I've wound up coincidentally coming across a scientist from that same lab and having a civil conversation on the subject of traveling through portals. We passed through one without her realizing it, and I'm baffled as to how she could not have noticed, but also baffled as to how to explain that moment of transition to her - I compare it to a change in air pressure, something you feel rather than something visible that you can point to.

She's excited about having found someone to talk to about this, someone who's used to traveling between worlds, and she asks me a variety of questions. But her expectations are so wildly different from my experiences that we're having trouble communicating - she seems to have a worldview straight out of Lovecraft. She asks me first about Old Ones, and I had no idea what she was talking about - the ancient beings that created the world, she explains. She describes them very specifically. That's something I've never come across, sorry. So then she asks about some other creature I've never heard of, and this one she explains as the demon lords that currently run the world now that the Old Ones are gone. This is hilarious. Again, sorry, no - if there are any demon lords running the world, I have yet to meet them. I start wondering if this story is actually a misinterpretation of some of my own past actions.