Carabas

I'm being told a story. There's a man, a shapeshifter who can seem to be anyone, but when he smiles you see the shards of glass filling his mouth, grotesquely. I see the moment he'd died, falling from a horse and landing on a glass bottle full of something he'd been carrying, shattering it.

The story shifts to the woman he'd loved when he was alive. She was called a witch, and a mob took her and chained her to a tree in the forest, with a circle of some kind of wooden pegs placed in the ground to prevent the body from leaving that spot after death. Her body's left there without her head. I 'hear' the body briefly feel a dim sort of awareness of the presence of something familiar and loved nearby.

Over time, the body comes loose from the chains as it decomposes, sinks into the ground and is covered by - I hear the word 'loam', but I'm seeing moss growing over the body. The arms separate from the rest and hang from the chains. At one point, a horse that had belonged to her while she was alive comes to the tree and noses at those decaying arms, and they reach out and pat it. At another time, the body rises up from the ground and seems to dance, with those arms dancing along as if they were still attached - slightly altering how my vision works, I can see dark strings which would be invisible, manipulating the body like a puppet. That man with the mouth full of glass shards is pulling the strings.

Later, a scene in which I'm using Mephisto as a pseudonym.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

On a ship after some incident in which several of the crew died, the captain came to me privately to ask a question. He's under the mistaken impression that I can see the future. I don't see the future, I just have more memories to draw on to recognize old patterns playing out again. The captain asks, essentially, whether any of those who died were important - he uses the word 'cheap.' I say to him, "No life is cheap." He acknowledges that this was poor phrasing, but "I need to know-"

As he speaks, I see a go board. The point is made that certain moves will have a drastic impact on the outcome of the game, and others won't. The captain needs to know if any of the people we lost would have been necessary for this journey to succeed, in ways he can't foresee himself.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm looking at paintings hanging on a wall, a series mostly depicting figures of the zodiac, with one in the center of a man labeled Dream.

I'm meeting with a man named Snow who'd initially tried to conceal his identity from me. He's disappointed to find I recognized him immediately. The persona he'd put on for me was this sort of affable type; the real Snow is - well, he gives the impression of being intimidating but I'm not personally intimidated, I'm just enjoying watching how complete his transformation is.

The majority of the scene after that reveal consists of a tango, during which he leads - which is different, but I find I have no difficulty following. Great fun. He's proposing some kind of deal - there's something about him recognizing the way I've been challenging myself, and how working for him would be beneficial for both of us, something about working for a greater cause, a sense of direction - but when the tango's over and he wants an answer, I just start laughing. Man, have you got the wrong guy. I'm thoroughly enjoying every aspect of his presentation - the intimidating attitude, the seriousness of the deal he's proposing, the song and dance, his whole look - it's all incredibly appealing, but I have no intention of taking it seriously.

I'm a passenger in a woman's car. She's a friend, but now I'm discovering she's tricked me. She stops the car in an unfamiliar driveway - not where I thought we were going - and there's a man in the yard, tall, heavyset, long hair, in need of a shave. I don't know him, but I recognize that he's one of the species that my species is designed to hunt. I resent my friend for tricking me into this - I'd quit hunting them. My friend disagrees with me quitting, so she's forced me into this situation. The man sees me and recognizes what species I am; he runs away, and I automatically chase him without thinking about it.

He ran inside the house. I stop at the door - I'm not sure whether I followed him in order to kill him or to explain that I'm not going to kill him. Since I can't see him running now, that gives me a second to think instead of acting automatically. I decide I'm not going to kill him, I'm just going to explain that and go. Through the door he's shouting that he's called the police. I respond that that was pointless, since I'm already here. I hadn't meant that to sound as threatening as it did, just as an observation - I really need to think before I talk. But I hear him running away from the door and going out a side window.

I see him running for the trees at the edge of the property, and I say out loud, "Why do they always go for the fucking woods?" I follow him again, and this time the thought process - such as it is - is definitely about hunting rather than explaining. It's the familiarity of going for the woods that tipped the scales - old habits are hard to break. I hear something moving in the branches, jump up to grab him, pull him back to the ground - and discover it's not him, it's a human. I've never seen this guy before. What was he doing up in the trees, watching us? Also, I seem to have injured his throat where I grabbed him.

Then there's a flashlight shining on us, and a cop telling me not to move. The man I'd been hunting is behind the cop. I'm exasperated by this - taking advantage of our human appearances to hide behind real humans, it really irritates me. It's understandable, given that the alternative for him was death; but it still irritates me.

A concerned-looking woman and a businesslike man are checking in on a man who's recently been dug up from a grave - not his original one; someone else had decided to lock him up for a while. They'd been able to find him and retrieve him, but he'd needed some time to recover. The man he's staying with stops them at the door and says, "I don't know if he's ready for this yet." The businesslike man says something to the effect of "ready or not" and comes inside anyway. It's very pleasant inside - an open plan, wood paneling, lots of plants, dim lights with a slightly orange tint. There's a phonograph playing an old string quartet at a ridiculously loud volume. This is a modern setting, so the phonograph and the choice of music indicate the man who'd been buried is trying to calm himself down by turning to things from his past. The volume, as if he's trying to drown something out, implies it's not going well.

The man who'd tried to stop them at the door backs up so he's sort of standing guard in front of the door to the bedroom, but before the guests can force the issue, the man who'd been buried comes out on his own. Superficially looking completely recovered, friendly and open, neatly and formally dressed as usual - though as a disembodied observer, my first thought on seeing him was along the lines of, Was my hair really that short? What was wrong with me? Anyway, though he seems composed, he gives me the impression that it's just an act - that he's trying too hard to be his usual self.

The guests are surprised, wary, to see him seemingly doing so well, and he explains to them that so often when he's gone into the ground, he'd miss out on years, decades, centuries, and he'd expected the same thing to happen again. "Tonight I am an immortal," he says, by which he means the experience of having 'died' and returned without having missed anything, with his old life and identity still in place, "and I intend to remain that way. So I've had to squash some of my plans." The implication is that he'd spent his time buried coming up with revenge fantasies - but since it turns out he's only missed a few days, he's not going to destroy the identity and life he's constructed here just to carry that out.

Hellblazer, I/Constantine had been working with this teenage girl in the previous scene; now she's gone alone to a hospital to see her kid brother. He's in a ward with a lot of beds, and he's kneeling up on the end of his bed to talk to her. He's saying, "Is it possible that Grace is only after Constantine?" Grace is a surname - the Grace in question is a middle-aged man. And when the kid says Constantine, 'uncle' is implied. "Because he's not exactly a... us anymore." 'Us' meaning a person, a human being. I'd made one deal too many. Which has made it possible for me to be summoned up and controlled, used as a tool - that's what they suspect Grace is after.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After an unsuccessful night looking for blood, I have to rely on Elsa, a sort of servant. Last resort. We use transfusion tubes to draw out the blood, to avoid any unwanted side effects on her, and I alter her mind to make it pleasant for her. I compliment her on the quality, she's changed her diet since the last time we had to do this. I'm speaking German-accented English.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm climbing up a stairwell, climbing up through years. As I pass the platform that will lead to the 1990s, getting close to home, I hear voices up ahead. I come across a man and a woman leaning against the wall; the woman's saying, "No, it's 203. They changed the calendar - finally. I was starting to lose track."

Further up, another group having a conversation, talking about the cracks in the walls. A woman's saying, "They're glitching so bad a man could get in."

I reach my door, present day. But just beside my door, the cracks in the walls are so severe that they've formed a sort of second door - I think I could walk right through. The black sort of skittering motion that appears in all the cracks is more visible here. But the scene just before I entered the stairwell had involved accidentally intruding in a place where I shouldn't be, disrespectfully, and trying to make up for that. I decide against stepping through the cracks. I take the door to the present day.

I step out into what's meant to be an apartment where I live, distorted in a sort of cartoonish representation of hallucination, like you might see in an old music video; it seems to be underwater. Then my field of vision pulls back - now I'm looking at a screen containing an image of this room. It's labeled as a game preview. I'm aware that if I'd stepped through the cracks, the scene still wouldn't have lasted for much longer, since this is only a preview - but that's where the real storyline would begin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've taken my clockwork heart out of my chest to work on it. I have a mental association with the Snow Queen. I'm in my workshop, full of various clockwork devices, and I'm carrying on a conversation with my apprentice. The image changes to show the subject of our conversation - a bird whose flight over the desert is taking it over a pair of dark horses at the moment. I'm saying, "It doesn't matter if the bird is clockwork or flesh and blood." Either way, it'll fly the same repetitive pattern every year.

I'm looking at a man lying on the floor, bound in ropes, while a woman talks to me about him. He doesn't have a shirt and the ropes are cutting into his skin, I can smell blood, though he's otherwise unhurt. I can't see his face. The woman's saying, "We would walk a (something) of this guy. (Something long) lest he move-" I'm thinking that this situation reminds me of something I did under Charlemagne's rule.

FK, catching up with Janette. She's shocked to learn I haven't turned anyone since we separated in 1683 - it's been a century or two since then. She finds it impossible to imagine spending all that time without your own kind.

On the subject of writing, the man I'm speaking with is arguing that using a gateway to hell as a plot device is trite. The gateway to hell should be the book itself, not a device.

Walking aimlessly down the halls of the McKittrick Hotel, I was considering passing the time at Hecate's replica bar - she'll be out for a while yet but it's always possible someone interesting will stop in. But I heard the beautiful sound of a piano coming from the room just beyond the bar's entrance, and followed it, and met a classical composer who I could not convince to give me his name.

I'm trying to hold a conversation with a giant. He's holding an ax, the blade of which is currently buried in the roof of a building, and there are a few terrified people running away - they're being very loud and making it difficult for me to continue our conversation. But the giant's just thanked me for something, and I respond in disbelief, "You thanked a jinxed magician." That's something you shouldn't do, very bad luck.

It's some holiday to do with romance, and Bai Suzhen's sitting in a field beside a small river, psyching herself up. Xiaoqing's to her right, encouraging her. As part of her training, Bai Suzhen's been sort of playing celestial matchmaker. She's set up various marriage possibilities for Xu Xian, putting in a great deal of time and effort, and she intends to bring it to a finish today, on this holiday. Of course, as a disembodied observer I'm aware this won't work out the way she planned - today's the day she'll meet Xu Xian in physical form for the first time, and their usual story will proceed from there.

In a scene involving a giant globe and the phrase, "You were being extremely literal about wanting to travel the globe, huh," 23-26 degrees longitude is highlighted.

I walk through a portal that takes me up to this stone island floating in the air. Mostly it's this pillar of rough stone but the top, where I'm standing, is level. I walk around the tree in the center and through a second portal - this one takes me back down to the surface, just a few feet away from where I started. Superficially, it doesn't really seem like I'm doing anything aside from walking around - but the act of someone passing through the portals in sequence is leaving a mark, setting something up. I think of stitching a thread through fabric.

To get to the next portal I have to swim across a river. As I'm swimming, I think briefly about growing gills and just walking across the bottom, it might have been more pleasant. I decide to stick with what I've got.

The next portal takes me to an almost identical stone island, except this time there are five portals up here. I step through the first one, and it takes me only a few feet away, in front of the next portal. I'm exasperated by this setup, but I go with it, passing through each portal in sequence. But before I step through the last portal that should take me back to the surface, I step to the edge of the rock and look down, curious about where I am exactly.

Far below, I can see a mountain range. There are two rows cut into the side of the mountain, one on top of the other, with closely-spaced openings for doorways carved into the side of the rock. There are rooms inside - I walked along those paths on my way here. I remember looking up and seeing these two floating islands, and wondering how to get up there. But something occurs to me - I look around for the other floating island, the one I was on just before, and confirm it. Yes - it's still floating upside-down, with the flat surface and the tree on the bottom instead of the top, like an Escher sketch. When I was standing over there, I must have also been standing upside down, at least relative to here. I feel dizzy.

Someone I was traveling with has been possessed and physically transformed by the thing possessing them. I'd left them alone in the motel room where I thought they'd be safe while me and the other person we're traveling with, a young woman, were out.

I can see a woman I think of as Morgana watching us through the mirror - she's very beautiful, but thin to the point of starved, hunching over, tangled hair, filthy. The girl I'm traveling with immediately assumes the possession is Morgana's work. I'm not surprised she thinks that - from the little she's seen of Morgana, it would make sense for her to think we're enemies. But I can see what caused this, and it's not Morgana. One of the markings I put in place around the room to keep the kid safe has been destroyed. It must have happened when the girl fell earlier. This is my fault - I'd tried to protect her by keeping her ignorant of the details. If I'd explained things to her, she would have known the significance of that marking. Morgana's never been my enemy, not really; she's here to help - but I don't want her variety of help.

I'm arguing with Morgana over which one of us is going to handle this. Her voice is harsh, raw - partially from the situation and the tone she's using, but I also have the impression she just doesn't use her voice very often. She's just pointed out - correctly - that if the creature comes into direct contact with me, the corrupting effect I'd have on it would likely just make things worse. I'm saying, "I don't know what I'll do to it, but you don't know what it'll do to you." She takes corruption into herself, sealing it away and making it safe for everyone except herself. That's why she's communicating through the mirror instead of here in the flesh - she arranged to have herself sealed away a long time ago. She's been altered so much already, I don't want to see her do this again.

In response, she says, "I know I betrayed you. I'll prove to you I'm useful. Prove to me-"

From Buffy, I/Spike am meeting Dru for the first time. Found her lying in an alley, looking unfocused. In this version of the story, the William the Bloody nickname doesn't come from poetry. Scene changes to present-day, transitioning with Dru describing that last scene, clearly fond of the memory; she says she liked seeing that sort of initiative in the living. She's putting it in terms that are disturbing the woman she's talking to.

Nearby, I'm also reminiscing about Dru to someone else. We used to play this game with the people who'd hunt us. Scene changes to show the game - I'm running into a churchyard, holding a cross or something like it in one hand and some weapon in the other, run up to the hunter all wide-eyed. Make like I'm volunteering to join his hunt, country kid all full of admiration, or like the monster's right behind me - either way, the point's just to get in close. Not challenging enough to be called a game maybe, but we still thought it was fun.

The first run-through of the scene, I 'won' the game easily, but then I'm remembering a second one with this weathered old woman who was suspicious of me right from the start, didn't buy the act. Circling around her, I wound up climbing further into the hills covered in graves, and as I climb I transition partially out of the Spike character. I'm hearing voices up here among the graves, not from the graves themselves but still tied to this place - three men who were here a long time ago and moved on, people I've been looking for traces of for a long time. I can't hold on to what they're saying.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

From Hellblazer, I/Constantine am walking out a back door into a narrow courtyard and out a large gate, then turn back to look at the building I've just left. Ravenscar. The image is distorted - I'm looking at a long wall with a gate in the center, one tower visible over it, and a few windows opening onto that courtyard, letting you see a little more of the building, and that's all fine enough; except it looks impossibly tall, and at strange slanted angles, and the views through those windows are showing me more than should be possible as I look up and up and up. I catch glimpses of the moon through those windows sometimes. In a stunning lack of lucidity, I think of this as "the place that haunts my dreams."

Scene changes. I'm still looking up at that extreme angle, but I'm looking at a different place, focusing on this life-sized stone statue of a woman high above me in the moonlight. I have a sense of something religious about it, like she's meant to be praying, though there's nothing about her position to suggest it, or like she's meant to be an angel, though there's no wings. I think something along the lines of, "Of course, it would be her," with a sense of resignation.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man begging me for something, and I'm tired of this, bored. I tell him, life, death, pick one, plead your case, make it convincing, you've got one minute, go. It takes him a moment to process this, but then he starts singing.

I recognize the song from a theatre show I enjoy about Lucifer, but can't place the scene immediately - at first I think it's Lilith's song. I'm amused - you think reminding me of her will make me more sympathetic to you too? I like the inspired emotional manipulation, but that's not going to work - she moved me, he didn't. But then I recognize the actual song. It's from the story of a woman who had to choose between love and advancing her career as a dancer - she chose dance. The song is about her calling herself foolish for causing pain to them both, her and the boy she loves, but ultimately defending her choice as a valid one.

There's a secret meeting going on in the basement of a whorehouse; the woman who runs this place and her girls give us shelter on a regular basis. One long table, only two actual chairs which are taken by the leader of one of the larger camps and myself (which seems like a waste since I wind up spending most of this scene on my feet), everyone else makes do without. The last of us has just arrived, and I've started to show a video I recorded earlier, a conversation between me and another man - one of my own kind, unlike the humans at this meeting. I walk around the room as the video plays, narrating here and there but for the most part it speaks for itself. I'm using this video as evidence to convince them to take some action against the other man in the video. When the video's done, the meeting breaks up for a bit. People talk privately.

As I walk around the room, I come across someone sitting against the wall who becomes very agitated as I approach. I remember him - I'd once done something thoughtlessly cruel to someone or something he cared about. I apologize to him now, and I genuinely mean it - I tell him I don't expect him to forgive me, but for whatever it's worth, I want him to know that I am sorry I did it. I'm not at all sure he understands what I'm saying. There's someone with him who's very protective of him - I leave them alone.

On the other side of the room, as I'm taking down the video equipment and thinking about the convenient access to electricity here, a woman named Carol approaches me. She's one of the camp leaders, I admire her greatly - we'd been part of the same territory once, but she and her people broke away from me. To my surprise, she's come to call a truce. She doesn't want the personal grudge between us to influence her people, since we're on the same side for the moment. But she reminds me that she's keeping an eye on me, she has people planted in my territory, she doesn't trust me. I remind her that I could say the same to her - I have eyes in her camp, and she's not exactly universally loved by her people, they could easily be convinced to remove her. I say to her, amused, "It's not exactly one-sided."

I'm flying over a river, and although I don't remember what I was flying on, in effect it's essentially a flying carpet - a small, flat surface carrying several people. Someone else is 'driving' it, I'm just along for the ride. We're taken over a waterfall, with several clouds beneath us, and among the clouds I see a huge gate hanging in the air, supported by pillars on either end. It turns out to be the first in a series of three gates, the entrance to a country - the first is very modern, with images like a billboard; the second somewhat less modern; and the third is very old and very beautiful, more like a decorative lattice made of stone and covered in moss, as tall as maybe a three-story building. I turn back to look at it as we pass overhead. On the other side, we land. I find that I'm excited, much more so than I'd expected to be, about traveling somewhere new. Less jaded than I thought apparently.

I'm surprised - although we've just entered a new country, there don't seem to be any customs to pass through, no guards. We've landed outside of a building, and I understand there are some procedures to be gone through inside; but there isn't anyone around out here, no one to stop us from just wandering off into the country. I intend to go inside, I just took note of it as something odd. There's what seems to be a giant bell planted in the ground, although it's so covered with moss it's hard to tell what's underneath. As I and the other people from the 'carpet' walk around outside, I notice several stone statues. There's a plaque underneath one of them that I read - this is part of the entrance procedure. We're meant to pay our respects by bowing before each of these statues. I do so, pointing this out to one of the other people from the 'carpet' to give them a heads up. The first three statues I come to are divine figures and legendary heroes, I bow before each of them; but then the fourth statue I find is an odd creature in a mask, labeled as a nightmare called Home Eater. I don't see why I should have to bow before my own kind.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was a scene in which someone was causing plants to grow rapidly among some stone ruins in a cave, and someone else saying to them, horrified, "What have you done?"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Lost Boys, as David I'm watching Michael drop out of the tree and run away from the killing. This was not the plan. He was supposed to kill someone, not run away. I don't like giving the new ones too much time to think - just do it, make a clean break, then explain what's happened to them. It's easier that way.

Back in the cave with Star, I'm standing off to one side and watching her. She's standing in front of a bunch of pots for plants covering a table. Most of them look empty, although I know she's planted seeds in each of them, and she's been trying to do something with them. But the one she's holding her hands over now is growing right before our eyes, responding to her somehow, like magic. Whatever she's been trying to do, it's working on this one. The other boys come back then, they all exclaim over what Star's doing, gathering around the plant and looking as excited about this as she is - except Michael. He's hanging back and looking at Star with this expression - not exactly betrayal, but close; like he'd thought she was someone he could trust, and now he believes he was wrong about that.

A phrase: "Catherine, and the first dream of a 2000 year-"

There had been a queen long ago named some variation on Selene - I admired her, and I've been looking after all the generations of her descendants ever since. In a few rare circumstances I'll even take one of her descendants in and raise them myself. Some resemble her a great deal, others don't - I think about bloodlines. Now one of her descendants is in love with me, and she's upset that I've told her I would be happy with a platonic relationship or otherwise, leaving the decision entirely up to her - she wants me to feel more strongly about it. She says if I would be happy with a platonic relationship, I can't really care about her. But I've been a presence and an influence in her life since she was born, and I foresaw this moment before she was born - I've had too much influence. I want to influence her as little as possible in this at least. It has to be entirely her decision.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've had too much to drink, and I'm making my way back to my hotel room with some woman, past the now-abandoned maypoles in the lobby, litter from the party on the floor. My vision's blurry, and I have this mental monologue about how I must be getting old if the drink's messing with my vision like this. She pushes me onto the bed, and my vision blurs more - through that blurred vision, her hair's much longer now. Also she has wings, white feathers. Fuck, I know this demon. There goes my night. She sits on the edge of the bed and tells me she wants what I promised her on the night I abandoned my child. I have a memory of taking him (? I think it was a him) to a border of some kind and making him cross, so that he'd be safely out of my reach. The demon's crawled onto the bed now, and when I tell her she's out of luck, the thing we got that night is already gone, she phases her hands through my chest, squeezes and twists something inside that shouldn't be squeezed or twisted.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Setting's a fantasy version of ancient China, a king in his bedroom talking to a priestess all in white via a vision in a mirror. He was telling her about people who will be coming her way, intending to use a sacred object in her care. But she's saying that what they want isn't possible - they've misunderstood its purpose. The portal it opens can't be used to take them to the divine realms. She says, "(something) and onyx must not overlap."

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.

Recent dreams included a brief appearance from Bai Suzhen, and some good scenery - a trek along a lake covered in snow, watching fireworks in an amusement park.

Today's:

Sometime in the 1700s. Two women talking, one sitting in a chair, the other kneeling in front of her and holding her hands. The walls seem covered in gold and mirrors, with double doors in glass and a row of large windows opening onto the hallway. The windows shatter when I walk down the hall towards the doors - I'd only meant for the doors themselves to break. A cautionary sign. The woman who'd been in the chair is standing when I walk through the space where the doors used to be, shielding the other woman. She calls me Conte.

Two kids, a girl and a boy, are playing a video game. The boy's character has just hit something in the throat with a lead pipe, and the boy has an odd sensation of experiencing the same thing - not pain, more like a memory of someone hitting him just like that, in the throat and then in the side. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking that's a pity - even after we finally managed to create a peaceful timeline, the deaths from the other timelines are still affecting them.

Me and a few others have been poking around this seemingly abandoned house, and I have a suspicion that I'm getting more and more certain of as we explore. I finally voice it: this is my house, or rather, this world's version of me; a female version apparently. I'm reasonably certain we can use this as a way to connect between the worlds, since neither version of me is in our original world right now. We'll test it by passing through some random object - I pick up what looks like a game piece, a notched wooden peg painted green. I'll go to sleep with it in my pocket, and it should pass over to her side while I'm asleep.

Time skip. One of the people I'm traveling with - earnest young blonde man, round glasses, dressed in robes that remind me of the Magician's - is setting up what looks like a summoning circle, directing the others. He fills me in on what happened while I was unconscious this time around: the people in the other world were able to deliver the third of the necessary artifacts to us. It goes unsaid, but the important part was less the specific artifact and more the fact that it was an object that had passed between worlds, though they also have to represent specific elements. We're going to use the artifacts to open up a portal we can all get through. I'm vaguely annoyed about having such a one-sided view of things, only being able to see the events unfolding in this one world, getting half the story; but it can't be helped, I have to be asleep for any communication between worlds to occur.