Carabas

Setting loosely based on China some centuries ago, vaguely Ming dynasty. Two men have been speaking to a human woman about a book, but they're interrupted by a human man who is a friend of hers, of sorts - he offers to join their expedition. He has some manner of expertise to do with this book they're looking for, and if he comes along, the woman's presence would be unnecessary. The leader of the two at first is ready to agree, this would be much preferable.

But the human man then says, why should his cut be only 10%? Make it 100% - he'll keep the book himself, but translate it for them. To his mind, this would be a better deal for all of them, he expects this to be accepted. But the leader of the two is offended by his presumption and kills him, abandoning his human appearance in the process - his eyes are covered by a cloudy grey film, his teeth are fangs on both upper and lower jaws. I'm remembering a year earlier, when that human man had been doing something in a place where many books were stored, directly above where this man had been sleeping in the ground for a long time. The human woman, watching him kill her friend, blames herself - she was involved in something that happened in a market a year ago, when this man woke up.

Belle is in the kitchen of someone else's house, someplace that has servant quarters, and she's found a jar of a certain weed that's been spilled - it's not something that should be used for cooking, it's dangerous, causes disfigurement. The implication in finding it spilled across the counter is that a servant was carelessly exposed to it. It's said that it only affects those who say rude/cruel/insulting things while holding it - a physical disfigurement to reflect a disfigurement of the soul. She calls Rumplestiltskin to dispose of it safely, and to look into what it was doing there.

As he removes it, he looks around the building and sees old photos and negatives of him and Belle among various trophies that the owner of the house has collected - there's a sense that these photos are things that were stolen from him. He looks at one in particular, a moment when he'd stopped Belle from saying that she loved him. He regrets this, and says he would listen now. She says, "I would have meant it then." And wouldn't now, is the implication. But she stops him from moving away from her by grabbing him roughly by the hair.

She tells him her plan is to find her ideal world this time, with the money that Regina left her, and with him, as they're stuck together due to a previous deal. He reminds her that he's no longer capable of appearing human, which will cause difficulties in many other worlds. "I'll work with it," she says. A previous deal requires him to leave at least a piece of himself in this current world, and I see an image of his hand chained to the sand, in the surf.

I'm in an in-between place - shallow pools of water, tall dark cliffs with broken statues and bronze mirrors, and a single whole statue: a hooded figure in a position that reminds me of Mary in the Pieta. One of the bronze mirrors I think of as still working after all - it shows an image of a woman from the turn of the century, and her image moves and looks at me. There's an association with 'a mother' here, though I'm not thinking of her as my mother. I can use her functioning mirror to escape. But first, there's a small vial here of brilliantly white light that I associate with 'love' in some way, which is needed for later, for something after I've escaped; it's the reason I came here.

There's a house at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, very pleasant, and with a forge attached. A friend of mine is working in the forge right now, helping out the man who lives here, a man who is brilliant at designing certain things but who can't work in the forge himself. Because of him, there's a sword of sorts that's been reforged - there's an association here with a legend about light, and the sword itself is yellow and semi-transparent - and I'm about to take it to a woman named Iliona. But I'm concerned about my friend working in the forge. The designer has just told me that the spirits have already released my friend from his vows to the hold - there's no need for him to help the designer with the forge anymore. But my friend says to me, "I took his brother from him. I can do this much."

Iliona lives in a small town, and as I'm walking down the hill into town, I'm openly carrying her sword in my hand. I'm met by a man who knows me well and his wife, Iliona's daughter, and they block my path, not trusting that I really am who I appear to be. I break the weapon that he's raised to me, and speak to him so that he sees I'm still myself. They let me through; they don't like it, but they defer to Iliona.

I watch the magician enter a building. Unusually, he's dressed in modern clothing and wearing round glasses with very thick lenses, and I make a point of remembering to write that detail down after I wake up. As I'm thinking about it, I wonder what dream interpretation would make of those glasses. The assumption here is that interpretation is the wrong way to go about it and will lead to mistaken conclusions.

When he returns, he's ridiculously tall and wearing armor I associate with the temple of Mythal - less about Mythal, more about the temple - which is also unusual but in the opposite direction from before; the mental association is that he's dropped a disguise I'm used to seeing, though this one isn't exactly not a disguise. He asks me about various things I don't remember, and I answer as if I'm providing a status report. He's troubled by my responses.

He tells me to wait for the sparrow. There's a sense that this is a reference to folklore or a fairy tale.

There's a very earnest-looking young man scaling the tower of a magician's castle, trying to reach the window where a woman is sitting. He incorrectly believes her to be held captive against her will and is trying to rescue her. She only notices him when he falls. Sounding bewildered, she calls down to him, telling him there's an easier way to get in on the other side of the castle; if he can't find it, just watch the rabbits, follow them. The man walks off.

Eventually, the woman comes outside to look for him. She finds him pinned between the wall and a black wolf with a white pattern around his eyes and chest. The wolf isn't doing anything particularly threatening. I'm aware that the wolf is the magician, though the man doesn't realize this, and the woman only suspects. The wolf starts acting like he's completely ignoring the man pinned against the wall and walks over to her, and she holds out her hand for him to sniff as if he were a dog. He ignores the hand and instead bumps his shoulder against her as he passes, and walks into the castle.

Inside, she sits the man down at the table with something to eat, and he says something that makes her laugh and twirl around. She's under the mistaken impression that he's looking for the magician, so she's treating him like a guest. She's treating the wolf the same way, and asks him which room he'd like to stay in until the magician returns. He bumps his head against the locked door of his own room, and she laughs and says sorry, no, that's quite impossible - even though she's fairly certain who he is at this point, she won't have him on the furniture in that shape.

Disembodied, I'm standing on the second floor, looking over a railing down at the main hall of this three-floor antebellum mansion filled with women waltzing to Que Sera, Sera. There's men here too, but they might as well be props, they're not what I'm here to see. A fire breaks out with no apparent cause, and I recognize what moment in time this must be; the fire here is a reflection of what's happening in reality in the place where they're sleeping. One of the women is caught in the fire and starts screaming. And then the fire's gone, and she's fine, and they go back to dancing. Though they're not aware of it, the end of the fire signified the end of their connection with reality; their sleeping bodies have died, and they won't be able to leave this dream world.

From a disembodied perspective, I'm watching my IRL self. He's looking for something in this room, currently looking at an illustration of Loki hanging on a wall. The disembodied version of me is curious about the IRL version of me, and I've set up this space in order to observe his reactions. There'd been some previous incident where he'd taken on a sort of ritualized trickster role and unintentionally drawn my interest; he's not aware of me. (Though trickster's not the word I would have used in the dream and it kind of irritates me to use it now, but it's the best way to put it - a sense of something in common between the Loki illustration, the devil statue, my disembodied perspective, and the role my IRL self had played.) I've just now come to the conclusion that the thing that originally grabbed my interest had to do with taking on different roles rather than something inherent to him. This doesn't make me any less curious, but it alters the situation. He's now looking at a small black and white sculpture of the devil, and I switch to his perspective while he's holding it.

As my IRL self, I'm interrupted by the arrival of several IRL people. Eventually I wind up standing over a large pot with one of the women, and she's stirring whatever's in it. She calls me by the wrong name, and I correct her, annoyed. She repeats my real name, and makes a promise involving it, talking about dire consequences for anyone who violates this promise. Afterwards she describes the pot as holding the curse she's just spoken.

I'd been looking at a map showing three islands that had been conquered by someone else; I'm unconcerned about the islands themselves but am considering their influence over the surrounding sea routes.

Now standing on the deck of a ship, I'm speaking to a military leader from another ship, part of the group that conquered those islands - he's a passenger, not the ship's captain. He addresses me as Enchanter, which amuses me. I express my surprise that he's willing to deal with me if he recognizes what I am - I was under the impression that his people thought of my kind as demons. Isn't he worried that he's risking corruption with this conversation?

He indicates that many of his attitudes have changed since coming to this region. He describes how he'd arrived with four of my kind sealed on his ship; while on the central island, they'd broken free and in doing so, as he puts it, "bound themselves to the chains of ghosts." It's a reference to the past of that island - once they were no longer sealed away, they became entangled with local legends, automatically embodying the locals' beliefs. The way this man sees it, they are no longer themselves - by breaking free of their seals and into this world, they've trapped themselves in these roles, living out ancient history. He sees this as a negative thing. I don't. It's the way we work.

Two women are speaking. One of them, the only human in this dream, has made a deal to trade places with someone. But it's being explained to her now that the person she's traded places with was fated to die at a certain age; they were to be what's referred to as the tithe to hell. That's now her job. At 24, she's already past that age.

The woman explaining this to her sounds amused at her situation, but she resents the tithe to hell itself - doesn't like having to submit to someplace else's authority. The human picks up on this resentment, and makes a suggestion. She believes that as a human, she can access the place they refer to as hell in a way that this woman can't; there's something stored there that allows that place to hold authority here. If she could reach it, there'd be no need for the tithe. It's unlikely to work, but still an intriguing offer.

Scene change. The human's standing at the back of a line passing through a small gate in a rock tunnel. The other people here are goblin-like creatures, and she's wearing the same type of clothes as theirs for a disguise, along with an eyepatch - the eyepatch is important because the people here all bear wounds proudly. Although the guard at the gate is familiar with most of the people passing through, talking like they're old friends, he apparently isn't bothered by a stranger's presence; he waves her through without a second look.

Listening to a song with the line, "I ran away from my vows."

I've broken into a building for a specific purpose, but it's not been going well. I killed someone while trying to stop him from raising the alarm, I hadn't intended that. Still standing over him, to my right there's a room with three men in 19th century dress uniform speaking. They're the reason I came here, and I'm certain I won't be able to finish what I came here to do now that they've seen this - but they're not reacting. On further examination, there's some manner of barrier between that room and this one, invisible from this side but seemingly solid from theirs. I lean through for a moment while those men are facing the other way, feeling no resistance, and find that from their side, it looks as if I'm leaning through a mirrored wall. Interesting setup; I'm thinking about why the owner of this home would need such a thing.

Then I focus on the men speaking on the other side, the reason I'm here. One is saying, "What do we do about Shaw?" Another replies, "Escaping-"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Revisiting that one-way-mirror setup, there's a vivid yellow tint to the air on this side of the mirror, and I'm looking at an image of a white rabbit hanging from a noose held in a man's hand. I'm hearing a man I think of as some kind of instructor saying to me, "...exists in the past."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man I recognize from a previous dream leading a group of people out of some tunnels onto the surface. There's only a narrow ledge to stand on here, the top of a cliff, and it's raining, windy. Last time I'd described him as pale; this time there's something wrong with his skin, but I'm not focusing on it. I'm looking at his eyes; there's a red ring filling the outer half of his iris, that's new. Someone's saying in response to a question he just asked, "Perhaps we could talk on the way there," like they're in a hurry to get away from here.

Earlier, he'd been having a conversation with another man in those tunnels, taller, with white hair that's mostly fallen out. This man's arguing against him leaving with that group of people and going back to civilization, saying that either he'll spread corruption like a disease, or else he won't but he'll be blamed for doing so anyway. Previously, they'd unknowingly allowed some kind of corruption to spread before their own symptoms started to show, not realizing they were the cause.

I'm coming out of a mine with a box a man gave me. Sitting down at a table across from a woman I know who's eating lunch, I open up the box and we have a look at the books inside. There's a two-volume set on healing magic that catches my attention; I've seen the first one before but the second is completely new to me, I'm very pleased. The woman asks me for a demonstration, and I laugh, saying I've barely got any understanding of it - it's not something you can learn from books, they're just for pointing you in the right direction, it takes time and work to actually put into practice. She's disappointed and leaves. As I look through the book, I call up a blue healing light that plays around my hand. Reading, the book is saying that it's impossible to progress further without "the Lady's smile."

I see an image of said Lady, a woman in a void. She's aware of my attention, though her eyes don't focus on me; she talks as if this is a visit from an old friend, sounding surprised and pleased, saying that I've come earlier this week than expected, and calls me by a name that starts "Shari-" But she cuts off partway through that name, and gives the impression of focusing on me, though still not with her eyes. She says then, "Isfael? Is that you?"

The observer side of me splits off, recognizing that this Lady and Shari-whoever are figures that often appear in stories together under various identities. When she correctly called me Isfael, I realized that Isfael is one of those identities, a specific young version of Shari-whoever without knowledge of his older self.

I've convinced a man to throw himself on the king's mercy. A friend had been offering to get him to safety, he knew some people who could help with that, and the man had been considering it; but I'd spoken to the king and I promised him it would work out, so he stayed.

But now that we're actually standing before the throne, the king decides to have him executed. This was not the deal. This brat, spoiling things on a whim; part of me is furious, but part of me just finds this whole situation ridiculous, that these humans allow themselves to be ruled by a man like him. I imagine speaking out, see an image of it, but in reality I say nothing, just wait for the audience to end. Now I'll have to try to sneak the man out. I should have just let him run while he could.

Talking with others, there's something we need from the palace which we haven't been able to locate. Someone points out that there's a private wing that contains the royal suite, but also other rooms of unknown purpose - process of elimination, what we need must be there. We agree to make that private wing our destination for now, and someone makes a joke about how we can wave at the timeline of our original plan as it passes us by, we've gotten so far off course.

A woman's coming out of my workroom, which she'd stepped into to give herself some space, taking a break from our conversation. The things I've been telling her have been disturbing her. There's another man here who'd tried to get me to tone it down, break it to her more gently if at all, he didn't understand why I was pushing her like this; but I'd ignored him.

Now that she's back, I see she's taken something from my workroom, two long dull knives which are smeared with a kind of colorless substance. I'm alarmed. I assume she must know what they are or she wouldn't have taken them, but I can't believe she'd be holding them like that if she really understood - I tell her, "This is the substance you - the real you - uses to mark her new bodies, don't-"

She uses the substance to mark the skin of her forearms. She's saying something about why she's doing this, some kind of statement of defiance, but I'm not really listening - I'm horrified, I got to my feet and grabbed her by the shoulders as if I could stop her, but that's pointless; I just need to make her understand this thing that she's done, trapping herself in a single body, how wrong and unnatural this is. The body still won't age, but someday it will fail, and she'll still be tied to it, and she'll die - not just this small version of her who doesn't remember what she is, but the real her will die, something that should never have happened. The death of something that should have existed always. I can't begin to explain to her how horrific this is, the shock and sense of loss; in the end I'm just repeating, "This will kill you, this will kill you, you will die from this," as though if I just emphasize it enough she'll understand the significance of it. She doesn't understand, but she's beginning to see just how horrified I am.

Mazikeen's picking up a crow for me, telling it that it's not going to get out of our deal. There's always an excuse.

"What excuse?" says the crow. "I'm not trying anything. I'm just pointing out I've got mouths to feed."

Many people do. But she counts the children in the nest, six of them. She initially seems not to care, saying something about distributing its belongings; but then she says something about giving them time to "grow into it." The crow's got one more year.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A group of people sitting around a round table, while I'm standing. There's a woman who is composed of three women superimposed over each other, two living, one dead and decayed but still conscious due to her connection to the other two. I'm speaking to one of the living ones, Lily, the one who belongs to this reality, and offering a way to separate her from the other two. She has doubts. The other two are in favor of it. They ultimately agree.

Later, I'm reading an account of the deaths of that group who'd been sitting around the table, a kind of organization I'd led. I'd made a deal on behalf of those three women, and to hold up my end of the deal, I was away for a long time; I think of this as abandoning that group. There was a fire. I'm reading a note to the effect that the group itself will reappear in some form or another, but the people I'd abandoned are dead.

A man flies into a church in a hurry, and runs across an old friend he hasn't seen for a long time. He's excited to see his friend's still alive, but concerned to see he's not wearing his armor - he's in jeans and a t-shirt, and there's a sense that this means he's rejected a role, walked away from something. And there's a small scar by the corner of his mouth, that's new.

Unfortunately, there's no time to talk, he's running from something - he asks his friend for help, and his friend agrees, opening a portal for him. As he's about to pass through it, however, a group of people fly into the room, wearing armor like the kind his old friend used to have, shouting for him to stop - they're acting like both the portal and his old friend are a threat. From my 3rd person perspective's location, I can't see where that portal would lead.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm fighting someone, but I've stolen his weapons and made them my own - his cloud of mist, his glowing light. I feel a snap. I'm surprised to find he dies as easily as anyone else without his toys. Three of us who'd been fighting him together drive off, leaving someone behind to clean up.

I apologize to the man driving the car, someone I've been with for years now. That whole situation had been my fault - I'm saying I couldn't just follow instructions when I should have, and "Let it get too loud." He says, "And then it didn't anymore."

A woman's landing a griffon. People come to meet her, and as she talks to one of them she's going to her bag and attending to her armor, getting out gloves and a helmet that weren't practical to wear while she was riding. She's talking about the things that need doing, acknowledging that some of them might be impossible at a small outpost like this, without the easy access to resources you get in the cities. And there's an animal strapped to the back of the griffon, restrained to keep it from hurting itself during the ride, in need of medical attention. They're next to the stables, but the griffon's too large for that - once everything's unloaded, it curls up on the ground like a cat, beside a tall fence.

That woman and the man she'd been talking to are walking past me into a circle of armed enemies. Someone in the crowd says, "It is the corruption against the corruption." They sound surprised. I'm ostensibly on the crowd's side, but I arranged to bring these two here tonight, and I expect them to kill the man who leads this little group, currently sitting on a kind of throne. Although I say nothing, I see him watching me and I can tell he understands my intention - or more likely he's imagining some grand paranoid plan; but my plan here is very straightforward, just his death. I'm aware he and I are a minor nuisance for these people I've brought here, just something to be dealt with on their way to something else - I have a vague association with the moon - not at all the grand schemes he's been imagining.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a city and taking the opportunity to meet with an old friend who was reassigned here recently, a promotion. She works in a form of law enforcement. She's talking about the changes on the island where we last saw each other, talking about the ongoing conflict there. She says the forest has been burned down, so they'll have no more place to hide. There's no more way to get past the patrols skating over the water - I have a mental image of a ring, a platform floating on the water, encircling the whole island, with the port itself as the only opening.

She describes all this as if they're good things. Time was, she'd be helping me get my people out of places like that. She's met the man who leads the people in that forest - his people aren't mine, but their situation is nearly identical. But I'm thinking, I shouldn't be surprised - the last time she helped me, something happened that frightened her. It's why she stopped working with me. My people weren't at fault, but I'm not surprised that she'd take that fear out on them. But listening to her now, talking as if my people should be locked up, it's like she's forgotten I'm one of them.