Carabas

Recent dreams included an appearance from Inanna and Dumuzi.

Today's:

Avoiding direct sunlight, I made my way into a bar where I'm surprised to find a certain man - I'll refer to him as my friend. That's a lie, but it entertains me and disturbs him when I adopt a friendly attitude. I sit down and address him by name, and say, "I thought you were going back to Australia."

"This is Australia," he says.

That explains a lot. My aim is terrible, but at least I've got him to serve as a guide now. But to my surprise, he's not at all impressed by seeing me here. I'd really expected more of a reaction. We talk at cross purposes for a while, until he says that he'd thought I'd disappeared with yadda yadda event - I realize he believes he's talking with the hallucinatory version of me who'd been with him for a while. I'm surprised that lasted so long, it wasn't intended to. I explain to my friend that I'm not his hallucination, I'm the real thing. He doesn't seem to believe me.

I sit down at the bar and wait for him to come around, and watch the sun go down through the window. A woman comes over and sits down next to me - on the bar itself, not a stool. We explain pleasantries, and she says a few things that don't make much sense to me until I recognize this as the opening moves of a mating ritual. I start to tell her that I appreciate the intention but our species aren't compatible in that way - and now my friend's hurrying me out the door. Oh good, it seems he's accepted that other people can see me.

In the parking lot outside the bar, I stop and stare at the stars. I'm absolutely in awe of them. I call my friend by name, and ask him, "What am I looking at?" Seeing them in this unfamiliar arrangement is astonishing. He doesn't seem impressed by them, and I can't figure out why - this arrangement must be the one he grew up with, the one he spent so much time trying to get back to, so he should appreciate it. Seeing them through an atmosphere creates such an amazing effect. There are a few wisps of cloud adding to the view - and for a moment a patch of stars appears to be moving, but then I realize there's a children's toy floating above our heads in the shape of a translucent butterfly, distorting the view. I look down at the kids - they're looking at the toy, not the stars. My friend is trying to hurry me along through the parking lot, and I try to impress upon him how moving this is. "Do you know how long it's been since I've been down to earth? Any earth?" He remembers, he was there, and he is not interested in reminiscing.

Short note from an earlier dream today: reading a description of "laurel leaves, called apollon," in which the author acknowledges that they cause strife but states that it's merely like the rebelliousness of an adolescent, and that they are indisputably sacred to Apollo.

Julia's walking with this teenage girl, maybe ten years younger than Julia. They're talking about concepts of 'home,' and the girl's first association is the one night she spent on the couch in Julia and Jamie's apartment. This bothers Julia a lot. The girl says something about her parents who'd died when she was young, and mimes a salute - her father had been a soldier. Julia hadn't known that before - she wonders if that was part of why the kid sort of latched onto Jamie as a father figure, and part of her reaction to his death. Disembodied, at that reference to how Jamie's death stirred up the kid's old issues, I'm thinking about how Julia's managed to bring me back from the dead just to give me something new to feel guilty about. The tone of the thought is fond, though.

A couple brief images of Jamie and the kid like snapshots - I'm in Jamie's POV. She'd been part of this group of kids I was working with, and she intimidated most of the people around her, generally angry at the world. She reminded me of somebody.

At the McKittrick Hotel, I ran an errand for Hecate, and in return she's granting me access to a certain flight of stairs. I hand her written note to this effect to the doorman, and he removes the rope blocking off the stairs. He looks bored. He warns me that the things I'll see up there are just ghosts, so don't take any of it too seriously. I tell him I know. I'm still looking forward to seeing something new.

At the top of the stairs, everything is airy and bright, and there's the dead body of a soldier in dress uniform sitting against the railing that overlooks the ballroom, arms spread and head dangling forward in a way that reminds me of a scarecrow. His name's Jeremy. A woman in white walks up to him - there's something careless about her. Jeremy gets up from the railing, and they begin to dance through the rooms of the hotel. There's no music.

I'm disembodied and watching this woman who I think of as "the princess." She's standing on a cliff at night, looking out into the distance - I'm facing the opposite direction, and I wonder what she can see out there; she seems to be looking at something specific. She's with this big buff friend/guard. I'm hearing music, though I'm aware the music isn't part of the scene on the cliff that I'm watching. A mezzo-soprano singing, starting with a line that reminds me of the start of the Commendatore's song - "Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti" - very similar sequence of notes, but in no language I recognize. The princess has come here to make some kind of self-sacrifice.

As I watch, this dark grey crystal-like structure forms on her right temple, up into her hairline. Smaller, similar structures appear elsewhere on her bare skin where it's visible, but they quickly fade away - I think of snow landing on the skin and instantly melting. But the larger ones on her temple stay. The princess sways as if she's about to pass out, and her friend/guard catches her, but she's all right after just a moment. Her friend finds this scene, her actions, incredibly painful. So do I. I admire her.

Those 'crystals' are things of the same nature I am - they're alive, in a sense, or similar enough to life; they're not capable of complex communication like I am, but they have awareness of a sort. And the princess has willingly made herself their host. Though she and her friend see this as self-sacrifice, I'd call it more of a deal. There's something that she wanted, and this will give her the power to see it accomplished - but she's giving up something too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Skyping with Julie, who turns out to live only an hour or two away, and feeling foolish for not reaching out to her before.

A scene involving using a spinning wheel for what both is and isn't the first time, having Rumpelstiltskin's mental associations but without actually being him in this scene; finding it soothing to watch the wheel spin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was this angel who'd taken on physical form to help me, and when we were done I betrayed it, sold it or traded it to this woman. Now I've gone to see her, and I'm seeing what she's done with the angel. It's chained up against a wall, its feet off the ground, and its severed wings on display above its head. When it sees me, it puts its head against the wall and says without looking at me, "You're safe now, brother. I can't be out." By which it means it has no intention of trying to get free of its chains. Now that its wings have been removed, it's fallen; it doesn't want to see what would happen without the chains to impose some restraint.

Yesterday's dreams included using abandoned tunnels running beneath a lake as a hiding place to sleep in during the day. There's one place that leads to a glass dome where you can look up and see the lake above you.

Today's: I'm trying to prevent some disaster, and I'm running out of time. At the moment I'm standing on a rooftop, watching several people in a field far below us. Along with me there's two people, a woman who I think of as my partner - she's on the other side of the roof at the moment, busy with her own efforts - and then this man. He has the power to make anything he says come true, but for his own safety and everyone else's, I made him forget about this power. This is an emergency. I force him to remember, and then I have him use that power to say that there's an earthquake. We all hold onto the roof and watch a crack open up in the field where those people are. The ground's still shaking, the people are scattering, but I don't think this will be enough. We should just bury this place beneath the sea, that ought to do it.

The place is covered in white mist now, blocking out everything below the roof we're standing on, and it's quiet, no more sounds of people below us. I'm walking back toward my partner on the other side of the roof, and I believe submerging this place and all the people in it has managed to avert the disaster. But then this dark spire rises up out of the fog directly in front of me, and keeps rising up into the sky.

It's this huge, gothic tower, a single immense spire composed of smaller ones, spire upon spire upon spire, all jagged edges. I think of a cathedral, but there's no religious imagery, just a sense of awe and horror; I think of a clock tower, but there's no face. It keeps rising higher and higher, I can no longer see the top of it. Flooding this place was a wasted effort.

And as I hang onto the edge of the roof and watch the spire rise, I hear an old man's voice in my head. "Here to keep your ledge, little boy, who once rared-"

My brother's killed and drained a number of people in some public building in the desert, a rest stop or similar, but he has no memory of doing so. In fact when he saw the bodies he assumed they were my work - which would normally be a reasonable assumption, but since it's not true in this case, and since it seems there's something wrong with him, we've been having a very frustrating conversation. We left in a hurry and now he's assuring me that there's no need for me to make excuses, he's always understood that occasional lapses in self-control are an unavoidable part of my nature, none of them blame me for it. Thanks for that note, but that's really not the issue here.

Meanwhile, back in that building in the desert, my brother's leftovers have woken up and managed to find their way outside. They're huddled together, not really aware of their surroundings, barely able to move - more like zombies really. Torn clothes, bloodstains, visibly dead. There was a woman just outside the building when they found their way out the door, and the one in front managed to grab her and drink her despite her struggles, and once he's had his fill he passes her back over his head, one-handed, to the next.

He walks into the desert, away from the little horde, looking slightly more aware now, and he walks straight up to the mangled body of another vampire lying in the dirt, trying to pull himself together and looking rather pitiful. This one actually is my work. Leftover asks mangled body what he (leftover) is. Mangled body informs him he's a vampire.

The leftover says, "I'm a what? Oh, fuck." Utter disgust at the ridiculousness of this. Disembodied, I'm thinking how much I love the modern reaction.

As Hemlock Grove's Roman, me and Peter have just entered this old abandoned tower, and I'm showing off some of the tricks I've picked up since the last time we saw each other. I turn myself into a cloud of bats, thinking of this as something I'd learned from that one previous dream, and I come out of it high on the wall, looking down at Peter watching me, able to hold myself up against the vertical wall just by gripping with my hands - it's not completely effortless, but it's still easy. It's a rush. I'm having so much fun showing off with Peter, I want to laugh. This makes me start thinking something about connections with people, and then there's a memory gap.

The next scene I remember is in a different part of the same building, the memory gap only lasted for about one or two changes of scene. I'd climbed up into the metal rafters and I've been heading up in a spiral, and I've just come across a closed door; but I'm not playing around anymore, I'm in a hurry, either chasing or being chased by something. The door has no handle on this side, so I hammer on it and shout, "Open the door. Open the door, mom!" (I was thinking of someone specific by 'mom', but whoever she was, it wasn't my IRL mother or the mother of the character I'd started the scene as - I'm not sure I'm still playing his role by this point.) Door still doesn't open, and I'm not surprised. I step back and look at it. There's no way to open it from this side, just a keyhole big enough to look through - I can see some light through it, and I have the feeling I'm meant to look through it, and that thought pisses me off. I grip the side of the door, forcing my fingers into the gap between the door and the frame, and I wrench it open.

The other side of the door leads to somewhere else completely, unconnected to the building I was just in. It's incredibly vivid, nothing like the dream I'd been having up until this point - which hadn't seemed un-vivid in any way, but I'm thinking of this as a completely different way of seeing things. I'm in a stone hallway, brownish-yellowish stones, filled with many doors, all of them wooden, arched, narrow, dull red. I still have that sense of being in a hurry, and I immediately go to open the first door to my left. But as I do, I hear a woman's voice - the mother I'd referred to before - shouting this strangled "No!" and I hear the sound of a door closing, and footsteps in a hurry. And then I'm awake.

(Really awake, none of the usual transition, just footsteps and "No!" and suddenly in my bed with my eyes open. Was convinced I'd been woken up by the actual front door and actual footsteps - which is not unusual, I sleep while other people are up - but no, just the dream. Back to sleep.)

As Constantine (rhymes with turpentine), I've been in a police interrogation room for a while now when they let in this elegant older woman to see me, calling her "Mrs. Constantine." She's supposed to be my mother, which is a lie of course, my mother being long dead, but I instantly play along with the act. Memory gap, and then I'm being put in a holding cell, and I try to convince someone I pass along the way to have the police find that woman and pick her up, quick. Not sure I made myself clear, though, I'd been passing out, having a hard time staying conscious. I can see the brown smoke of her spell wrapping around me. Blacked out.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I had a classroom scene, so I went lucid and walked out. I didn't have any particular destination in mind aside from getting out of the school, and the first door that I reached for took me into the kitchens - still meant to be part of the school. The next door I can find is a refrigerator door, and I give that a shot - no good, I open it and find food inside. I think to myself that this is probably too strong an association to bother trying again, so I remove the refrigerator from the wall. There's a white wooden door behind it. This one opens onto a satisfyingly different scene - rolling green hills and a mountain in the distance that I mentally compare to Mt. Fuji from its size and the way it dominates the landscape, though otherwise they don't look alike.

I walk along a paved road leading towards that mountain. At one point I come across a house, and the road divides so that one path leads up a slope to that building and down again to rejoin the main road on the other side, and I'm admiring the organic shape of both the road and the house. It's a white one-story building composed of several rounded rooms, with a reddish-brown shingled roof with little spires over each rounded room. There were quite a few plants that I was admiring, and gardening tools, but I knew this was going to be too much detail for me to remember, and a lot of it didn't have any IRL comparisons I could easily make, to make it easier to remember. I focus on a couple woven baskets lying on a bench, with lids with little spires like the ones on the roof, the last thing I focus on as the path leads me back down to the main road.

The path leads me into a town, or a small city maybe, starting in a little square with two clocks standing on black iron poles. Both of them show the same time, 3:00, with the second hand pointing down at the 6; a bell tolls, and then they both run backwards, until every hand points to the top, midnight exactly.

The path leads on to another square, this one with a big brass bell. There are a fair number of people in the streets around me now, but I'm only paying attention to one - a man standing beneath that bell. He calls me over. He's this older man, and I mentally compare him to Mister Rogers, that sort of friendly and wise and harmless impression. His speech is slurred and very deliberate, as if he has a hard time forming English words. He says quite a few things about me heading for the mountain, and preparing for that, and he mentions K., an old IRL friend who I haven't gotten in touch with for a long time. I'm a little frustrated by knowing I'm not going to be able to remember all these details when I wake up, and I'm having a hard time picking and choosing which parts to focus on, but I hold up a hand to stop him and ask about K., ask him to clarify - is he saying I need K. with me at the mountain, that I can't do it alone? He's surprised by the question. He says, no, you can go on alone. And he compares me to "a dry martini: high in the hand, but hard to keep it." Okay, that's suitably convoluted phrasing that I'm definitely not going to remember that unless I wake up now. I choose to wake up so I can remember at least some of what he's said. I regret this decision almost instantly.

As Rumpelstiltskin, disembodied, I'm watching a woman lead a prisoner, a teenage boy, into a dungeon. She's complaining about how tired she is of hunting people down and dragging them back here across worlds. We're standing (well, 'standing' in my case, lacking a body at the moment) in a stone hallway, at the top of a staircase blocked by a door of iron bars. She locks that door behind the prisoner, and when she leaves he just sits down right there at the top of the stairs rather than going further down. He looks very confused. I'm aware he's not the only person in the dungeon, there's several people down at the base of those stairs, some of whom I feel personally responsible for, and I wonder for a moment if they've been fed today. I sometimes forget how often my guests need to eat. Then I remind myself that right now, it's not my responsibility to keep them fed - the people who took them prisoner will take care of that, they need their hostages alive. There's someone in that dungeon I want to take back, but I've got a few other things to see to first, while I'm disembodied.

The scene skips ahead in time - no memory gap, just a shift to the bottom of the stairs and an awareness that this is meant to be later. A guard's come to feed the prisoners, and when no one comes to the top of the stairs when he calls, he opens the door to bring the food down himself and check on the prisoners. But when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he finds me sitting in the wooden chair in the center of the dirt floor. I'm wearing a hood that hides my face, but I always do. There's two kids beside me, royalty held hostage - one of them's my granddaughter, biologically but not officially, though she isn't aware of that and neither were the people who took her. But they should have been aware that I've always looked after her family. I wait until he's seen me, and until the look on his face shows that he knows who I am, and then I create a ball of fire in my hand. I enjoy this.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm returning to a tent in a military camp in some cold, snow-covered place, and there's this man who bows to me two or three times when he sees me, obsequious manner, irritating. I hear a voice as if I'm reading a line in a book: "This was the worst of ___'s nature, he told himself - a ___ who didn't know how to ___." (The blanks aren't things that I forgot after waking up - during the dream, the voice just cut out during those words. The first blank was meant to be the name of my POV character here; the other two had no mental associations.)

I've hidden a human girl in my room, and I'm trying to distract my "sister" so the human will have a chance to escape. It's not difficult - we don't get along at all, so it's easy to pick a fight. We both look and act like and possibly really are teenagers. I walk away from her, giving the impression that I want her to leave me alone, knowing that's the easiest way to make sure she'll follow me. Looking for a drink, I walk into a room where my "sister's" left a human girl lying semi-conscious on the floor. I hate her parties - I hate living here in general; it's like living in a frat house. That's part of why I want to help that human escape - I know she's been investigating us but I don't care, I really, really dislike these people. I haven't been here long, maybe a week, and I'm hoping my "father" will decide to move again soon. I pick up a nearly-empty bottle, take a drink - alcohol. I spit it out and pick up another bottle. I ask the semi-conscious girl, hey, is this my sister's drink? She doesn't answer me, and I wasn't really expecting her to. I drink it anyway. Yes, this one's my "sister's." I hate the taste of bottled blood, but it's what I'm used to. Keeping the bottle, I walk outside.

The yard out back is huge, and ends in a fence with barbed and electric wires running along the top. As I'm walking along the edge of that fence, I come across a padlocked gate. It opens directly onto a dirt road, and on the other side of the road there's another gate - no locks on this one - opening onto a trail leading into the woods. There's something intensely familiar about this - it bothers me. I have the feeling I've seen this a long time ago, like some childhood memory. I say something about this to my "sister," but she doesn't see why that would bother me. As I'm trying to explain the odd feeling, I'm distracted by a sound from the other side of the fence, way off to our right.

On the side of the fence opening directly onto the woods, there's two people who look like hikers trying to climb the fence and look inside. They're talking to each other cheerfully, wondering what they've come across and what the barbed wire's for - to keep something out or in? It's to keep you out, I tell him as I lean over the wires, grab him and smash his head against the wooden part of the fence. It's to keep them out for their own protection, otherwise this happens. My "sister" has taken the woman he was with. Then I hear voices from the woods - they weren't alone. While my "sister's" still busy with hers, I jump over the fence and run down the other three hikers. I find myself humming as I do so - when I've finished, I realize I'm thinking of the tune as an old drinking song from the 1800s. That's odd - I wasn't alive then, where do I know that song from? I have a vague impression of enjoying myself while singing that song in a situation much like this. I look at the hiker I'm still holding, and I think, just a little while ago I was having a conversation with someone killing a rabbit, and I'd said that it wasn't the death I objected to, it was the attitude behind it, the lack of respect. What a hypocrite I am.

I'm sitting at the foot of the banquet table at the McKittrick as the Macbeths come down the stairs. They're drunk. Lady Macbeth's laughing, leaning against her husband. There may or may not be others sitting around the banquet table with me - I have a vague impression of shapes in the chairs, but they're insubstantial. I'm not sure how visible I am, for that matter.

Macbeth picks up his lady and carries her to the dais with her legs wrapped around his waist. He takes her to a chair set against the wall, not at the table, and as he lets her go he says something into her ear, much too quietly for me to hear. As he walks away she says, suddenly serious, "I doubt it." He comes to stand over the banquet table, clumsy movements, overconfident attitude. I'm enjoying watching him, and the sense of anticipation.

Scotland sometime in the 1700s, I'm in the stables brushing a horse and speaking with a young man I've just been riding with. He's about to inherit some position from his father and he's extremely uncomfortable about it, particularly about how little education he's had - less for its own sake, and more to do with how others will see him. The conversation's wandered around a bit on the subject of education, and I've just mentioned Jim, a servant I grew up with in the American colonies who's devoted to learning, more so than anyone I ever knew. Brilliant man. The man I'm talking to asks how much schooling he'd had - none. I feel vaguely ashamed about that, for my home and for myself for not thinking about this when we were younger - Jim certainly would have wanted to go to school and it had never occurred to me to think about that. If he'd been white, he'd almost certainly have gone to a college.

Two dull scenes I'm noting for the character who appears in both - at the end of the previous scene I went to sleep and "dreamed" of a long-haired old man who was a teacher in a modern classroom, who said that the two times are only nine steps apart, so it's silly to make such a fuss. At this point I was fully aware the classroom scene was a dream and had modern memories, but didn't believe the Scotland scene was a dream - I considered the classroom dream a way of communicating with this man while I was in the past. Woke up (really), went back to sleep, and some scenes later I was forging a series of swords - masterpieces. The same old man appeared, this time as the master of the forge, and was so impressed that he insisted I destroy one of them by peeling back layers of metal so he could see the core, see what I'd done.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm reading a letter from an old friend. She's telling me she's spent the last six years in Vienna, and that she's devoting this lifetime (meaning however long this particular identity lasts her) to the study of music. She uses a word that specifically means playing instruments rather than singing, and she says she's giving her voice a break after "those swan songs" in Canada. She's studying the piano, which reminds her of me - she asks if I remember the old spinet I used to play for them.

Scene changes when I think about when and where that had been. There's an image of a little room, dark for just a second, then lit up with this golden light in shapes created by a lantern - this incredibly intricate fantasy scene, silhouettes of people and leaves, and an impression of bars, as if inside a birdcage.

Speaking with Jareth, I end a sentence with "god!" A general exclamation, but that's not how he takes it. He replies, entirely serious, "Don't call me that." I didn't, but good to know your arrogance has some limits.

I'm singing the title role of Don Giovanni, wearing a mask that covers my entire face, even my mouth. Reminds me of the McKittrick. While on stage, I switch places with someone else, identically dressed.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm swimming in a pool with a woman who's offered to grant me a wish. To do so, she tells me I must go to Thailand and walk into the jungle in a certain place until I reach an abandoned building. Here, I must draw one of two specific symbols in the dirt. It doesn't matter which one I choose, what matters is the reasoning behind my choice. Whichever I choose, she'll draw the other. She'll stand at my back, using those two symbols in some way, during which time I must not turn to look at her or communicate with her in any way. Success depends on her understanding why I made the choice I did.

A young man runs out of a house, pursued by several women wearing black and red. Shortly afterward, inside that building, I come across three young men, and I ask, "Which one of you sprinted out of here looking like Orpheus with the Bacchae on his heels?"

I'm looking over some photos of the new cast at the McKittrick. (Side note - last time I dreamed of Orpheus, he was in the McKittrick-as-underworld.) A new storyline has been added in. The photo I'm looking at now shows the woman at the center of that new storyline, sitting on a stool at a diner counter - sad expression, short wavy blonde wig, purple dress, purple purse on the counter. The character's female but always played by a male actor. In the background behind her, there's a man in a suit slouched in one of the booths, watching her. He's a sort of sycophant character, sleazy, untrustworthy, but entirely loyal to her in his own way.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Edwardian England, there's a heavyset, motherly woman gently pushing a sick young woman back down into her bed, over the young woman's protests - she's feeling much better but she's having a hard time thinking straight enough to make herself understood. At this point she's just saying, "No, no." The light from the window is hurting her head, it's much too bright. I'm sympathetic about that, but mostly I'm relieved to be able to see her like this at all, relieved that she's all right and that the connection that lets us see what the other's doing is now working. I haven't seen her in some time.

I see images representing all the other people I have those connections with, with an image representing this woman now added to the end of the line. There are maybe two dozen images here, older connections as I look back farther. The most recent image, aside from that Edwardian scene, represents someone I just saw recently in person, pleasant feelings. As I look farther back, there's one image that instantly brings up feelings of irritation - we don't keep in touch, we've never been able to understand each other, and just this brief visual reminder of her brings up that old frustration. There's a few places where an image should be there but isn't - the woman whose death I dreamed of recently, the roses that turned to ash. And at the other end of the line, the very first two: the first, a woman with a long red braid, a sword in her hand, standing in a snow-covered forest. The second, a more symbolic image - a variety of colorful butterflies hanging in the air against a dark background, two trees just barely visible in the darkness. And a little bit apart from the last of those images, a simple black image to represent me.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm lying on my back in a field hospital in 20th century China. There's a young woman treating me, wearing a uniform, with her hair tied up in two braids. I've been enjoying speaking with her. I haven't been enjoying whatever's in that IV. I'm thinking about the woman mentioned in that previous scene, with the roses turning to ash.

Still in China, I'm in a small boat that a middle-aged man is steering by pole. I've hired him to take me and an old woman back to her hometown, though it's been flooded and abandoned for a very long time. The old woman doesn't live in the present anymore. Her hometown is the place where I last saw that woman with the roses, though that was a long time ago and I don't know if I'll be able to find anything useful there. I haven't been back to this part of the world since before this area was flooded. I focus on the ruins of a building I recognize, as the boat passes underneath.

I've been following something in the form of a child through a place that reminds me of the Flavian Amphitheatre, though I'm aware this isn't Rome or any other physical place; I'm climbing a spiraling staircase along the outer wall, with the arena far below to my left, and arches to my right looking out onto water, and I've just gone lucid in order to focus on remembering what I'm seeing through those arches. The sky is dazzlingly bright.

As I climb higher, the water is replaced by images of another place. I'm seeing an opera house sometime in the early 20th century, but at impossible angles - I see the audience in their boxes, a row of tables outside the theatre proper, a strip of grass and hedges from the little garden outside the building, all at the same time. The effect is something like looking through a faceted gem or a kaleidoscope, with images from different angles jammed right next to each other. Instead of seeing the walls, I see mirrors reflecting nothing, just bright, shining glass. I spot a man I think of as me, though he looks nothing like me - a young man with white hair, sitting at one of the tables outside the theatre proper and smoking. And as I continue climbing, my perspective moving along the audience, there's a woman in one of the boxes who catches my attention - a young black woman with her hair pulled back tight into a bun, in a pale purple gown. It strikes me as very important that I'm seeing her here in the audience, not on the stage.

I looked around for text in order to get some context, but while I found plenty of writing, it refused to cooperate, even swirling into spiraling shapes before my eyes. I don't normally have trouble reading while dreaming, lucid or not, so I thought of this as being deliberately evasive.

There's a man, some kind of ruler, lying in his sickbed, potentially his deathbed. He's speaking to two servants to either side of his bed. Circumstances are forcing him to return to a place he'd once tried to conquer many years ago, but had been forced to turn away from at the last minute. His servants think returning now will be a disaster, given his health. But he's inspired. He says that when he first marched on that place, he'd felt he was approaching the height of his power. As though if he'd reached that place, he also would have reached his dream of creating something that would change the world. I want to use the word 'technology' here, but that gives the impression of some new gadget - what the ruler is after is something as revolutionary as the invention of writing. His statement makes one of the servants focus on the symbol the ruler is wearing around his neck. It's a gold star with 14 rays, arranged much like a jack, the toy, or like a three-dimensional version of a compass rose. I, disembodied, think of alchemy.

There's a white horse and rider walking through a hall of the palace. An extremely agitated servant is trying to get them to leave, but the horse and rider brush him off. They walk through a pair of wooden double doors, into a room where the ruler who'd been in his sickbed is now up and in military uniform, going over maps. The setting looks significantly more modern than I'd thought in the previous scene, maybe as late as the 1800s.

The ruler reacts about as you'd expect when a stranger on a horse walks into your room. The rider asks, "Don't you recognize me?" And his face changes - now he's identical to the ruler. "Though when we last spoke, it was more..." And his face changes again, growing younger. Very little changes, really - skin's a bit tighter about the jawline, mostly. The rider reaches up to feel that jawline, and compliments the ruler on how well he's aged. Perhaps that's the result of easy living. This is sarcasm - an accusation. The rider says "we" expected greatness from the ruler - but what has he done with their gift in all this time?

The rider says, "We convene in the morning. I expect you there." And he leaves.

There's a woman being haunted by phantom images of a man who'd once hurt her in reality. (The dream reality, that is - no IRL-based characters here.) She's just started flailing around on her bed, surrounded by two or three images of him like white smoke, they merge and blend into each other. I rush in, expecting the phantom images to vanish when I touch them, but they don't. I hold her down to stop her from hurting herself, and I realize that since I'd been around when that man hurt her in reality and hadn't stopped him, of course she wouldn't see me as able to dispel his phantom now. But I persist, and gradually the phantoms disappear.

But she's still flailing around, thrashing her head from side to side. I realize it's my own presence she's reacting to now. Disturbed, I back off and call for one of the women in the house, and a woman in an apron immediately rushes in and holds her down. The moment I back away, those phantom images return. It doesn't seem to make much difference to the haunted woman either way.