• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    1. Horns

      by , 12-16-2015 at 10:42 PM
      A high-ranking mortal man is reminiscing about a woman he'd been involved with - the queen from the other night's dream, now in a modern setting, and not a queen here though I'm going to keep calling her that for lack of something better. This man had a sort of fixation on images of people with horns like demons. She had encouraged this, and gave him the idea of having scars where the horns should be; she'd helped him in scarring himself.

      She's looking up at a statue of a bull with a human face, like a lamassu with horns. It's a religious statue, but this isn't somewhere religious - it's an important government building. As she watches, it becomes animated and begins to speak with her fondly. It refers to her as putting things in order - I think of Ma'at.
    2. Dark, the emperor, and the queen

      by , 12-13-2015 at 09:33 PM
      I gave an old woman a recipe which includes a poisonous flower. She later turns up dead by the effects of that poison - but I suspect her son took advantage of that situation to kill her himself, knowing that it would be dismissed as an error in dosage. There's an inheritance involved.

      Disembodied, I'm 'standing' at the edge of the ring of a gladiatorial circus, observing a man who's now lying on the ground looking half-dead, but he's nonetheless victorious and a crowd-pleaser. I'm bored. These games have been going on for days now and it's gotten repetitive, I'm impatient for him to move on.

      I shift my perspective, finding the emperor in a large private room attached to the circus. A man in armor is talking to him about the man who's won the games, and the emperor is incredulous - why should the emperor fear or make concessions? That man fears him, the emperor - the proof of that is in the way he travels from place to place and uses the name he does. (His name is a word literally meaning "dark," but associated with low, dirty things.) The man in armor raises the issue of Dark's rumored connection to the queen.

      The queen's present in the room, tall and dark and with green-tinted hair, hair mostly covered by a black veil. She's legendary for her beauty and suggested to be not entirely human; there's a rumor that Dark is one of her kind, and looking for her. It's close to the truth, but not quite it - in actuality, he's a survivor of the court of her previous husband. She's unaware of this. She only survived that massacre because the emperor refused to give her up, treated her as a prize.

      She joins in the conversation, teases the emperor, saying that if she ever sees this Dark, she might recognize one of her own kin and turn on the emperor. Her voice is nasally. She then speculates more seriously about what would happen if she ever really did meet one of her sisters - "Lure her to her death."

      The emperor is irritated with this line of conversation, and tells the two of them that this is enough talk, focus on the tribute instead.

      Later. Dark is standing in front of an open shrine, holding an antique sword in poor physical condition but with great symbolic meaning. He's telling the spirits that if he enters the dream with this weapon, with all that meaning attached, it will become something miraculous. He's lying. But in actuality, it will lead him to a cross buried in the ground - I see the cross glowing dull red - and then to a bow which will infect him with hatred for a time.

      I have a body now. I'm standing in a temple somewhere bright, talking to a woman who's explaining to me that she won't leave this building. She took a demon into herself, made herself its prison. She describes how she'd been fighting someone, and when it was over, a part of herself that should have been restoring was draining instead, and she hasn't been able to stop it - she can feel herself flaking away, and if this continues, there'll be nothing left of her in a mere few thousands of years.
    3. Kind and cuddly demon summoning

      by , 12-12-2015 at 07:37 PM
      In the 1940s, I'm watching three expensively-dressed women being transported from a large building to a long black car with the top down. They're speaking Spanish.

      My partner says to me, if those women take this opportunity to escape, their guards will be killed in their place. She disapproves of this idea.

      I say, she can't be sure of that. We haven't met their boss, so how can we know how he'll react?

      She says, you don't summon up demon soldiers because you're such a kind and cuddly person.
    4. Jules in Bangladesh

      by , 12-01-2015 at 07:39 PM
      There's a party full of drunk and pretty people I've gotten caught up in; it's being held in the honor of someone I don't really know, and when a group splits off for the private party, I go with them. The door closes behind me and Jules. Jules is dead sober - I'm not - and he doesn't look amused.

      I'm talking to him about the person I've been trying to meet up with, a guy who's meant to be part of this group of party people somewhere; I'd first met him in a cell in Bangladesh, where I'd been trying to track down a particular object. I'm trying to stir Jules' memory of that time, but he just nods, goes yeah, yeah - he's annoyed.

      He says, "Was I shot?" in a tone that suggests this happens frequently, and is probably my fault.

      "In the left arm," I tell him.

      He looks at the fingers of that arm, and I see a mental image of the neck of a stringed instrument. The implication is that getting shot affected his ability to play. Jules says, less annoyed now, "I do remember that one."
    5. Adam and the desert

      by , 11-26-2015 at 08:55 PM
      Earlier, was just lucid enough to deliberately fly upward with the intent of getting a wider view, instead lost visuals and wound up in a completely different scene, losing lucidity.

      Standing on a ladder outside a suburban home, the wind shifts, hot and dry, a sense of the desert that's going to claim this place and incorporate it into my people's territory. I'm the one who led them to this place, but I feel conflicted now. I excuse myself to the man who'd been holding the ladder, and go inside to take care of some loose ends. There are too many signs of how personal an interest I've taken in this world, learning their language, getting much too attached; I should dispose of that evidence.

      Elsewhere, among the troops, I'm speaking to one of them on behalf of a man in this world, Adam, trying to make sure they take care when they process him. I say I've never seen a dreamer with power like his before. Which is true, but I'm also being careful to phrase it in practical terms, downplaying any personal attachment. I have to stress the importance of him as a resource not to be wasted. The man I'm speaking to agrees that they'll be careful, but I don't think he's really paying attention, just brushing me off. I end the scene flying back to that suburban house, desperately searching for Adam.

      The following scene focuses on a brother figure chiding me for hanging onto a ghost.
    6. Fortune telling

      by , 11-16-2015 at 10:05 PM
      There's a grand performance starting, but I've seen it all before, so I ignore the main plot, move past the crowds and deeper into the building where it's being staged, watching the parade of characters emerging to take their places. The very last to emerge is the witch queen, behind her two enchanted attendants. Since I'm the only audience member here, she takes me aside to tell me my fortune.

      As she talks, it becomes clear that she's mistaken me for a woman, and that she might not have taken me aside if she knew otherwise. When she pauses to give me a chance to respond, I keep my mouth shut to avoid spoiling the illusion; she's clearly not pleased with my silence but she goes with it. She takes a needle and draws lines of thread through the skin on the back of my hand, talks with thees and thous, and pronounces 'clan' like 'clin.' She asks whether I'll play the role of part of her 'clin', and I agree, which requires a verbal answer. Her attendants take out instruments to arrange the ends of the threads.
    7. Ivan and Koschei, or the Firebird, depending.

      by , 11-05-2015 at 10:25 PM
      I'm sitting on the edge of a bed in a small rented room, wood panel walls, watching a man kneel and lace up the boots he's just given me. I'm thinking that a chase without consequences lacks interest - we've caught each other several times now but neither of us has actually killed the other, which should be the natural conclusion here. Makes me feel tired. I think I'll stop hunting him after today. The boots belonged to a dead Nazi, and I'm wronging people by wearing them; that's the reason he's giving them to me.

      Later the same day, we're standing in a very small graveyard on a green hill, and now he's giving me a green hat that I think of as going with the boots, though it doesn't resemble a military uniform. I recognize both it and the boots as part of a costume signifying Ivan, which would make him Koschei. He disagrees with this observation, says he'd rather be the Firebird. I'm thinking that he's greatly misinterpreted our story.

      Updated 11-05-2015 at 10:28 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    8. Snakes and a water-themed in-between place

      by , 10-28-2015 at 10:06 PM
      In the previous scene, I'd been doing shots with a man who drinks live snakes, one every day. The bartender gives me a dead one, since it's my first time; it'll go down easier. Now I'm walking around half-submerged ruins where I've been before. There's meant to be a door here, though I hadn't seen it the first time around. Now that I'm searching, though, I spot the fold in reality that's hidden it, pull it through so that it becomes solid. It's set in the base of what had been an empty stone arch.

      The other side of the door is an in-between place, and I go slightly lucid in order to pause and enjoy the view. It's a stone bridge hanging in space, pale stone, low and sloping walls on either side, and something like coral growing over it in patches. This space has the quality of light seen from underwater, and floating above there's some enormous, amorphous, diaphanous shape, jellyfish-like. It's all very pleasant.

      Along the bridge I run into two women with the tails of snakes, mermaid-like, who are frozen in place, and whose verbal words don't match the meanings I hear - the verbal words are friendly, the underlying meaning is to get me to come close enough and stay long enough for them to kill and eat me. I find them pleasant, too; I can't blame them for being hungry, this place sees so little traffic, and I don't intend to stay long enough for them to kill me, so they're effectively harmless.

      When I leave the in-between place, it takes me to a scene where an Egyptian woman with a clipboard is consulting a guest list. I have to wait in line behind some snake-haired triplets while a dead human woman talks to the woman with the clipboard, trying to justify why she belongs inside, citing the royal status of her lover.

      Updated 10-28-2015 at 10:10 PM by 64691

      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid
    9. An invitation

      by , 10-16-2015 at 08:39 PM
      After going just slightly lucid, I try to travel through a particular door, but it resisted; it warped instead of opening. I gave it a mental push and found that I didn't have access to the dream on the other side; I need the dreamer to invite me in.

      I've drawn the attention of two children on the other side of the glass door. One of them is the dreamer, older than her current dream form. I talk to her, trying to get her to invite me in so I can pass through her dream, get to where I want to go. Not being lucid, this child version of her instead goes off to tell her parents. Irritating. The other child stays, but its invitation would be useless so I ignore it. She doesn't come back.
      Categories
      lucid
    10. Short note on taste

      by , 09-28-2015 at 10:58 PM
      Generally food while lucid tastes pretty bland for me, but tonight's managed to produce realistic raspberry, lemon, and salt flavors. That hadn't been a particular goal; but I wound up in a kitchen with bite-sized pastries and salted nuts around and was trying to figure out what they tasted like, thinking about how poor my sense of taste tends to be in lucid dreams, and then found the flavors became stronger when I had another. I thought of it as needing to train the tongue, or the mental sense of a tongue anyway.
      Tags: food, taste
      Categories
      lucid
    11. Fuel

      by , 09-17-2015 at 06:28 PM
      I'm observing a time period when humanity's living on only one planet. Everywhere else has grown too cold to support them. I'm watching one man chase another into space, and he's thinking something about fuel. I'm thinking about my own choice of focus, a little amused - in a time period like this, I'd expect my focus to be on someone's epic struggle to save humanity or something to that effect. But that doesn't interest me here; this last world is going to fail regardless. I'm interested in this man's more personal struggle.
      Categories
      non-lucid
    12. Injustice, Mazikeen

      by , 09-06-2015 at 06:35 PM
      As mostly my IRL self, I'm following a news story about a court case. The girl on trial is a minor, but the people involved in the case keep talking about her as if she's an adult; there's racial connotations. Her outlook is not good. As not-exactly-my-IRL-self, I'm thinking this is an injustice. I've allowed them long enough to work this out themselves, they've had their chance; I'm going to step in and remove her from this ridiculous trial. There's a connotation here that this means dropping everything going on in my life. I'm nearly out the door when IRL-self stops to wonder exactly what I think I can do.

      I'm standing in a dimly-lit, brown-toned library where I'm meeting Mazikeen for the first time in a long time. The dreamer part of me is critiquing the way the dream is representing her half-alive half-dead status; the parts of her without skin are tinged green, and it crosses over her body, so that her left arm and right leg are dead. I think of this as a clumsy representation of the life/death mix. The character part of me is remembering seeing her a long time ago, when she'd just been made immortal and she'd been elated about it, saying that she'll be able to continue to serve as long as I need her. I'm wondering whether she'll think what I'm doing now is worth serving - or rather, what I'm not doing now; I've abandoned certain ambitions.

      Updated 09-06-2015 at 06:37 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    13. 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.
    14. Heartless

      by , 09-03-2015 at 07:19 PM
      Transitioning from a scene where I'd been holding a sword, thinking about the danger of carrying a sword without a sheath, fully aware this wasn't about literal swords.

      Three siblings meet on a road after a long time apart. One of the brothers is wearing armor and leading a small group of people fighting for some cause in his name; there's less than a hundred of them. The other brother and sister have just appeared hovering in the air, having traveled a vast distance in moments. The brother, I think of as a young version of myself; he's dressed in black, and says nothing throughout the scene, and there's a bloody vertical line over his heart, which I associate both with the heartless motif and with the sword in the previous scene. The sister is dressed in vibrant green, and I think of her as a witch. I'm thinking how much they've all changed since the last time they saw each other.

      The brother with the small army asks his sister if he could move like they do. She says he could, but he'd have to start wearing higher collars. It's a reference to the scar over the other brother's heart, who looks uncomfortable at the mention; the implication of her words is that this isn't something to enter into casually.

      I'm looking at the army traveling with him, and thinking about how much they've changed as well; I remember them with paint on their faces, thinking of them then as closer to a family rather than a lord and his followers, and I'm thinking that they've lost their identity, changing to suit the land they're traveling through. I'm thinking they were better off before they took up this cause.
      Categories
      non-lucid
    15. A private elevator

      by , 08-31-2015 at 08:07 PM
      I'm occupying someone else's body, and I-the-character am not entirely clear on the body's identity. A woman greets me in Korean, and following her expectations, I enter an elevator. I-the-dreamer am aware that the body I'm occupying owns this building, he's the president of a company, and this is his private elevator to his penthouse suite. There are no buttons inside the elevator; I-the-dreamer am aware it uses facial recognition, I-the-character am surprised when it starts to move.

      The elevator opens onto his suite. There are a number of people in the bed, clearly after a party; the body's owner recognizes one of these people, the rest are strangers. I order everyone out; only that one exception stays. He's sitting up against the headboard, wearing an animal's pelt draped over his head, a wolf or a coyote. (It occurs to me after waking up that we were both wearing something else's skin.)

      Another man appears, and he grips this man by the throat. I recognize him; he's the reason I-the-character occupied this particular body, in order to meet with him. He speaks to me, believing he's speaking to the body's owner. I-the-dreamer switch to third person because I want to see the expressions of me-the-character.

      Speaking in English so that we won't be understood by the man with the animal pelt, I-the-character chide him for being "so eager to sink your teeth."

      He says, "Not the only thing I'm good at. But surely we'll still eat this-"
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