non-lucid

I've just started working in a shop run by two hara, training dogs, and I've been talking over a problem with the owner. The other har is someone the owner purchased, but I'm thinking you wouldn't get that impression from seeing the two of them interact; I think of him as aloof and 'leonine' and that he's 'best left to his own devices.'

There's two close friends who made some archaeological discovery many years ago, as a result of which, the choices they respectively made caused them to drift further and further apart. Now a girl's delivering a message to one of them, who has become a demon, informing him that the other is on his deathbed. He has only a mild response.

There's a woman looking at a 'falling star demon' - a spirit of a star which would have been considered simply a spirit when it was in its place in the sky, but a demon when it falls - and she refers to it as her assassin. The falling star is a sign of her own fate. I'm thinking about whether there are any choices to be made here, or which could be made at an earlier point in the timeline; any options other than her dying here and now.

Various non-lucid scenes: two immortals discussing faith and religion while rummaging around one's kitchen; the owner of the kitchen and her mother are both christian, and I'm surprised and intrigued since I hadn't found that to be very compatible with physical immortality. Rose and Martha meeting all the past incarnations of the Doctor in the TARDIS. There's some fantastical mystery involving spirits, and I was tasked with demonstrating the rational, physical origins of the events - the drama with the spirits is still considered real, but as a sort of reflection of the physical world, not actually physically present there - however, now that I believe it's all been solved and wrapped up, I'm asked a series of questions that force me to go through and reevaluate all my conclusions, suggesting there may be another answer. IWTV references, thinking about Lestat's life-has-no-more-meaning-what-if-i-could-give-you-a-new-life speech, resulting in a bit of an IWTV-themed power trip. That ended in an unpleasant party, which I left and returned to my IRL home.

In my home, looking out the window I've noticed various construction or roadwork or similar workers out in the street, and one of them's walking up the driveway. I move away from the windows since I need to go put some proper clothes on, but before I can do anything more than that I hear two of them inside the house, just in the next room. I'm aware that when I deliberately moved away from the windows, they'd mistakenly believed there was no one home and came inside. So I step into sight now and ask them wtf. They're surprised to see someone home. They talk briefly to each other. One of them says, "He's not going to forget. How do you want to do this?" After that, the two of them raise tools as if they're weapons - one of them's holding a hammer, the other a mallet - and although I'm aware this is a dream (I'm thinking as if I knew it all along but felt no need to act on that knowledge before now), I have difficulty defeating them or removing them. In that case, I decide to summon up something to remove them for me - I think of a dragon. One doesn't appear, but instead, as a direct result of that thought, I have a feeling that I think of as "a part of me that hasn't been fed," and with a voice much deeper than my own I say "Get the fuck out of my home," after which I see fire. Then I'm looking at the fire from a distance - I'm somewhere outside, and neither the burning cottage I'm looking at nor the scenery has any resemblance to my IRL home, I've completely changed scenes. Despite this, I believe that I've succeeded in removing those two from the house and feel satisfied.

False awakening. I'm in a bed - not one I'm familiar with IRL, though I believed it was in a relative's house - and I reach for my dream journal. I can't find an empty page to write in, and I realize this is an old journal, one I'd already filled up. A few pages have been torn out.

There's a kid who's gone down to the docks and started talking to a homeless woman there. He's already seen the events that are about to happen, and he wants be sure he's near her at a certain moment. She's fishing with a stick with a string tied to the end of it. She says to the kid she's "not fishing, just putting out bait."

There's a private party, all women, that's rented out the restaurant at an inn. There's some drama going on and the cook got stressed out and overwhelmed, he took a break in the garden out back and someone else, the former cook, is filling in. He's not human; he's something large, bulbous, vaguely frog-like. At the moment, the human girl acting as a waitress is standing in front of him saying "Um... um... um..." and he suggests what she's trying to say - that the other cook's just about recovered, so it's okay for him to go now - and when she nods gratefully, he takes off his apron and lumbers off. The boss, an elfish creature, walks over to him. In the boss's POV now, I say to him, "You knew staying here would change the way she sees things." That is, the illusions that make the humans see us as human were bound to eventually stop working on her. "Why didn't you say something to her before now?" He sort of grunts.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a little girl who's seen a glimpse of a woman in her house that no one else saw. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking she reminds me of the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home, although this one's not particularly old, and she may or may not have a face. I like her. Now the girl's in the bed that she shares with her sister, both of them under the covers, except for her hand. She feels a touch on her hand, snatches it away under the covers, and asks her sister if that was her. The answer is no. The girl peeks out from under the covers and sees that there's no one there. But the moment she puts her head out from under the covers to look around, the rest of the covers are ripped off the bed, and the woman, who was standing by the head of the bed out of sight, says "Finally."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man's holding a vial of some kind of virus. He's meant to add a second vial holding some blue liquid to it for some plan that's about to be carried out, but there's something wrong - this isn't the fake that had been prepared, it's the real virus. What happened to the fake? The scene changes briefly to show it back at the lab, where the real virus should be. I switch to the POV of that man with the vial and decide we're going to have to go ahead with the plan, it just means that what we're about to do is less of a bluff than I'd like. I add the blue substance to the vial. Something red like blood forms on the top as the two substances mix.

In a scene I think of as "Five days in," a man is meeting up with someone named Hugh. Hugh's sitting on a dock with blood around his mouth, one arm slung casually over his dog, greets him with "Hey man," and generally is completely relaxed and sees nothing wrong. The man meeting him is bothered by seeing 'immortals so much older than me' losing control.

A fragment involving a city made out of pieces of every road built in the past century.

A scene ended with me getting into a car and driving away. While I'm driving, however, something goes wrong, I keep weaving into the other lane, and I wind up getting pulled over by a cop. I'm thinking, good thing this is just a dream. And I'd rather not stick around for this, so I go incorporeal and float through the roof, invisible. I look down at the cop being surprised by the car without a driver, and then I decide to bring the car with me: I turn it into water droplets, which collect in the palm of my hand.

There's a memory gap, but I doubt the semi-lucidity lasted long after that. Next scene I remember clearly is non-lucid: a woman is consulting a witch, asking her to do a spell or divination for her. When it's over, the witch asks the woman what that looked like from her end - meaning that during the course of the spell, the witch realized this woman's got some magic of her own. And the god this witch works for may or may not have an interest in this woman. The witch asks her a question, about why she's trying to (do something) when she's got too much on her plate already. The woman explains: there's a guy who loves her "pretty bad" - no mention of whether it's reciprocated - and she "can't hear him anymore," by which she means hear him in her head - it's a vampire thing - and she's worried about him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm temporarily working for a doctor with a small private practice, I'm in training. The doctor's showing me a patient's chart and is asking me if anything jumps out at me - I say the patient's lost 10 pounds, but I'm thinking, that could just be a diet. The doctor points out what she wanted me to see: this patient's been suffering from hallucinations, describing strange sights and sounds. But she lives in the city, and there are all sorts of strange things there; and on the date that she experienced these 'strange sights and sounds,' there was a parade. I'm doubtful. I say, "I don't know, it's pretty difficult to confuse a parade with a hallucination." The doctor admits this is true.

There was a scene where I went to talk with that patient, and by the end of that scene we've wound up talking casually in the waiting room, she's very pretty and very easy to talk to. Then a baby belonging to one of the other patients crawls up into her lap. It's got a dripping diaper. This eventually leads to an unpleasant confrontation with the mother, who denied that the baby was the cause of the mess; the mother becomes so outraged that she takes out a gun, points it at the ceiling and shoots.

I grab the woman's arm holding the gun. The other patients in the waiting room all run out the door, except the one I'd been talking to. I get the gun away from her before she can fire the other bullet - it's a two shot derringer - and I hand it to the other patient. As I do so I say something along the lines of "Hold this for me, honey." Then I think, wait a minute, she was my patient a minute ago, that's very unprofessional, I can't go around changing a DC's relationship to me mid-storyline just because we shared a nice conversation and a life-or-death situation. The woman has pulled out another gun, and I take it away from her and hand it to the patient again - there wind up being 4 guns total.

Alice (of Wonderland) kneels down and waits. I can see movement behind her, something approaching, but I can't see it clearly from this angle, it's hidden behind Alice, until it gets close enough to be standing right behind her: a man and a woman, something off about their eyes. I'm aware they're here to take her to (Purgatory or the Underworld, something like that). I can hear music, a tune that reminds me of vaudeville.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Three people from a motorcycle gang, driving down an empty highway surrounded by fields of tall dry yellow grass, passing a billboard where the ad's been scraped off. I can only remember vague fragments of the previous scene, but it had been focused on the leader of these three, and he'd been trying to escape something - fate, his role in life, something like that. The transition to this scene means he's failed to escape. He's thinking something about a murder that happened in the past. There are police ahead of them, waiting for them.

POV switches to those 'police', although they look more like military. Weapons are being distributed, grenade launchers, and one of them exclaims over the model, he's very knowledgeable about it and excited to be using it - he says his father or uncle used this same model in a certain war. Another cop, one who'd been in that war himself, says something sarcastic, along the lines of "Did he? That's nice. Did he bring it home for you to play with?" The cop who'd been excited goes quiet, says "Well, no, but..." The cop who'd been in the war doesn't like hearing it talked about by people who weren't there, feels strongly about those memories being something you should keep apart, not bring home to your family. But he starts talking about it now - he says, "Good war, (he says a year). A single man could've turned the tide by pledging his country to one power or another. And even a warrior likes to hear that."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in the moon kingdom from PGSM. (One of my lucid goals is to travel to the moon - I suspect that inspired this non-lucid.) Chibiusa's here, she grew up here, and I'm thinking, wait, how can Usagi and Mamoru's daughter be living in this time period?

The scene changes with that thought. In the present, on earth, Mamoru's working as some kind of private security, wearing a suit, standing with other security around a limo that's stopped in the middle of the road, having some kind of confrontation. He's in trouble here, and he's aware Usagi's in trouble elsewhere and he won't be able to reach her to help her. He's holding something small and black, and he's remembering when it was given to him by a man who told him some words to memorize in order to use it, to transform. I'm thinking, the fact that he had to memorize the words indicates that he wasn't Endymion at all, he was simply playing Endymion's role, filling in for him; this was also indicated by the uniform that he transformed into, which resembled Endymion's but was much darker, almost black, unlike the real Endymion's much lighter blue. Now that he's trapped, he passes that black object along to one of the other men working security with him. He starts to tell that man the words he must memorize, but as he starts to say them, the man taking the black object finishes the words himself, he already knows them - indicating that, by chance or rather by fate, that black object has finally been passed on to its real owner. Endymion's true, light, uniform appears on him, and he leaves to find Usagi, flying through the air - which I have an incredibly bad feeling about. The real Endymion isn't necessarily a good person for Usagi to know.

The other people Mamoru was with have left the scene, Mamoru's now kneeling in the street, surrounded by cops with a misunderstanding, and a police detective is holding a sword to Mamoru's throat. One of the cops calls the detective away - there's some order over the radio that means both that they're needed elsewhere and that Mamoru isn't guilty of whatever it was they think he did and should be released. The detective is extremely reluctant to follow this order, he doesn't want to let Mamoru go. The cop relaying the orders from the radio phrases those orders in a way that praises the detective's work up until now and stresses how much he's needed, and finally the detective releases Mamoru and he and the cops all get into their cars and drive off, towards a bridge.

I'm someone who's investigating a woman, and my partner and I are searching her apartment. I'm going through old chat logs on her computer. As we leave, walking down the stairwell, we talk about something I found in those logs. I'm saying to her something about "the desire to feel someone else can understand your experience, your point of view. The internet can be great for that." I'm thinking that I'm starting to understand this woman we're investigating, to know how she thinks; I can relate to her. I'm also thinking that the internet's never worked out that way for me - but then I think, feeling alone in something is a universal human experience in itself.

Connecting directly to that feeling-alone-in-something thought - we get to the bottom of the stairwell and walk out the door, and outside, we're in the ruins of an apartment building where I used to live. Everything I can see is covered in debris. We're standing in front of what used to be the indoor pool on the first floor - there's no water, there's a layer of debris at the bottom, and there's no wall or ceiling, the pool is the only recognizable part of the building left. This is a memory of where I was when my wife and daughter died. I climb down to the pool ladder, trying to recreate the moment. But I'm shorter now than I was then, the perspective's wrong. Getting the right eye level means putting my feet on a different rung of the ladder than before. It's not quite right.

Looking around, I find something in the debris. It looks like a cartridge for an old video game console; from the pictures and words on it, I get the impression it's not a game itself, but a soundtrack. My partner takes it from me and looks it over and says, yeah, if you don't know what you're doing it'll just be a soundtrack - but this contains a hidden emulator.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fantasy setting loosely based on ancient China. As a disembodied observer, I'm watching a man teleport into a large tunnel or cave, only to immediately crumble into dust. I'm thinking, whoops. Let's retry that.

Earlier, a woman showed that man a dark green and glittering substance kept in a small, rectangular, light green bottle, and explained that to use it you simply rub it over the palms of your hands and clap them together. Having seen him crumble into dust, I can tell she was tricking him, deliberately leading him to his death, but I'm also aware that this substance really is something of value - this man only asked her about it because he's seen her use it before. There's an old man listening to their conversation, and when she's left that old man catches the younger man's eye and takes the bottle himself, tucking it into his sleeve. The scene skips ahead to a moment when those two men are surrounded and need to escape in a hurry; the old man produces that bottle, rubs the contents over his hands - which causes them to look claw-like - and claps his hands together. Both men are teleported to that tunnel - this time around, the original teleporter lives, and the old man crumbles into dust.

A sort of ancient China-based fantasy setting. Someone's left an offering of a fish for me at my shrine, and I'm suspicious of it, so I only take a taste. It turns out to be fine. Now I feel regret; if I'd known it was good, I would have eaten the whole thing. From my perspective, after I tasted it, the rest turned to stone; I'm aware the humans offering it would have seen it differently.

Nearby, there's a man talking with his wife in their home late at night. He's going through a sort of existential despair, and he's sort of thinking through it out loud, talking more to himself than to his wife. Someone else appears and tells him that this existential despair is good, it's an indication that it's time for him to move on to the next stage of life, to become immortal. The man totally buys it. I'm a disembodied observer, but I still have the mindset of the character from the shrine in the previous scene, and I'm extremely irritated with that new person/creature. I think of this man and his wife as mine, and I don't appreciate others attempting to mislead and take advantage of them.

Outside - I remain in 3rd person POV and lose that shrine character's mindset. That couple's house is part of a small complex of several buildings enclosed by a wall, and elsewhere within that wall there's a woman who hunts demons, dressed like a man, chasing after a three-eyed crow, with another woman (a local, not a demon hunter) trying to keep up with her. They don't manage to catch it; it flew over the wall, and it didn't seem at all concerned about its pursuers. She's seen that crow before, the one controlling it has caused trouble for her in the past.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a forest, and changing into a suit of chainmail. It's gleaming white, head to toe.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A fantasy China setting again. There's an elf woman dressed all in white, head to toe, and there are two men taking her over to an island in a rowboat. One of the men is young, the other is middle-aged and has been recently disgraced in some way, he's cut off his hair to reflect that. Reaching the island she wants to go to involves passing through several veil-like things in the air covering the opening between two cliffs.

When they reach the town on the other side of that passage, the older man immediately jumps out of the boat and heads off through the streets, moving quickly. As a disembodied observer, I follow him, and I'm thinking that I've seen this scene before, from the younger man's POV. (Which is probably a false memory, but there's a chance it's true - it's true that I was in the young man's POV in a scene just before the rowboat, and I can only remember very vague fragments of that scene.) I'm thinking now that last time, that man had met up with us after we'd taken care of some business, just before we left the island. I had wondered what he was doing while he was gone, but he'd refused to say, he's always very secretive - I'm pleased I'm going to be able to find out now. (Of course, as soon as I thought that, I woke up.)

I'm reading cards for an off-duty cop or detective - it's about his case, and it's not official. The Hermit - that's the criminal. The Emperor - that's him. And then a minor card that indicates cooperation between the two of them, and things going smoothly.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm talking to this alien I'm traveling with and my first instinct is to call her Red - she's red from head to toe - but I stop and think about how nicknames work in alien cultures. Best case scenario, everyone's going to wind up calling me Pink, not sure I'm up for that. Me and another alien head outside on some errand, crossing this huge field, and as we're walking I ask him about nicknames. He says, "You don't want to say my name?", and I don't know how to interpret his tone - maybe bewildered, maybe hurt, maybe I've just accidentally proposed marriage, I don't know. We're still crossing the field, but we've wound up walking on top of/sliding down a pile of giant, motionless serpents.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are these people trapped in a cabin on a mountain by a group of killers, and they're wondering if their two friends who left earlier made it off the mountain okay. The scene changes to a group of people standing around a car parked near the base of the mountain, across a field of tall grass - the killers, a 'family.'

I switch to the POV of the father figure of the group, and I'm looking at the two young boys with us who are new to the family, keeping an eye on them. Not too worried though. Someone spots a figure moving out of the forest and into the field - the figure shouts to us when she sees us, waves her arms to get our attention. I'm thinking, huh, we missed one. We'd found a guy in the forest earlier, I hadn't realized there was still another one out there. That was sloppy.

Me and those two boys go to meet her, and she starts talking about how she needs a lift. Walking her back towards the car, we get to the part of the field near the road where the tall grass is all flattened down from what we'd done earlier, and there are a few things, plastic bags and such, scattered around on the ground. She's looking at the things on the ground and looking a little uncomfortable, she asks what we were doing out here. Having a picnic, one of the boys says. The rest of us laugh. It's technically true.

A setting based off the Victorian era or thereabouts. A man who belongs to some organization or secret society made a deal with another member, who is now dead. Now the man's been debating whether he'll bother keeping his end of the deal, since the other party's dead and thus isn't in a position to know or object. Right now he's in the dead man's home, in a type of storage area, going over some of his belongings that relate to that organization they're both in - that was part of the deal, disposing of some of these things according to the dead man's wishes. One of those belongings is something I think of as a 'cookie', though it's dry and tasteless, makes me think of hardtack. He decides to eat it after all, keeping up his end of the deal. Eating it causes him to become immortal.

That same man at a later date, confronting his wife in her home, a basement room with brick walls but with several potted ferns and a table set up holding a large, beautiful book - her journal. She believed him dead, there was a funeral. He's standing over her journal, and he's asking why she hasn't been writing. He says, "You're not a (his family name - Bowman or Barrow or something like that), you don't (something along the lines of being driven by a consuming passion)." He feels that the changes and upsets in her life - such as his own 'death' - shouldn't have shaken her disciplined, well-ordered approach to her tasks. She's also immortal, in a different way than he is, but linked to him in some way. The nature of their immortality means they can't possibly live together again, even if they'd wanted to.

That same man again is being pinned to a wall, held off the floor, by his daughter. They'd been talking relatively calmly earlier, but he realizes she's become a vampire, and her eyes glow blue and then gold, and now she's got him pinned to the wall. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking that she has the same face as a pirate woman who'd died in this man's arms long before his daughter was born; the pirate had been Chinese and the daughter's a white Englishwoman, but I think of them as having the same face and being in some sense the same person, and I have a vague impression of a third woman, a servant in England, who also has the same face. The daughter says to him, "You know what to do. Then come get me!" He stakes her, and she crumbles into dust. He's still stuck hanging on the wall.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm standing between a coyote and a bird. The scene after this discusses the coyote as wandering and gathering a pack of odd strays - other species, including housecats.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a woman, a leader of witches, who's given me some instructions to carry out, something I'm meant to do with her grave after she's been buried. Now I'm digging down through the loose dirt in her grave, sinking into it. I'm afraid of it closing over my head and suffocating me. I get out of the grave and fetch my staff, and use that to probe through the dirt, waiting for it to hit something.

After a few other scenes, mostly involving the witches but gradually transitioning into scenes with IRL characters, I'm walking through a bookshop and I spot a book with a title that mentions one of my lucid goals, the one I'd intended as my task for the day. I immediately become lucid, but realize I'm already waking up.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a group of people getting together at a restaurant, taking up the second floor, a sort of balcony area looking over the main room. The owner of the restaurant's friends with the leader of this group, and he's saying as he escorts them in, "You're the one who wanted to do this here. If you wanted privacy, you should've-" The tone's good-natured. There's a table set out for three: the boss, his wife who hasn't yet arrived, and a prostitute. The restaurant owner's wife comes over to talk to them, and she knows the prostitute, they exchange some friendly words. The prostitute's asking what this is about; the leader's got some plan in mind involving her, but they're waiting for his wife to arrive before he'll talk about it. The rest of his people are arranged at the surrounding tables, waiting and watching the main table quietly.

There's a woman who rose from the dead. Her girlfriend's explaining to her that this has all happened before, repeatedly: they meet, after a few days this woman dies, and then a little while later she'll turn up again and 'meet' the girlfriend again, with no memory of this having happened before.

As Homestuck's Dave, I've been teleported somewhere else, leveled up some insane amount due to timeline shenanigans, and then was teleported back home, to Bro's apartment, in the middle of the same game we were playing when I was yanked out. I'm really annoyed, because now I'm way beyond Bro's level and I'm not okay with that. I'm looking at some kind of selector switch, trying to figure out how to scale it back from a dealing-with-the-fate-of-humanity level to a hanging-around-the-apartment-with-Bro level.

I'm looking at six cards laid out in two rows. They show ravens and swords, black ones and white ones of each. One large white figure is flanked by two smaller black figures, and vice versa. They're labeled, and I hear the text out loud, "Light and Shadow, Occidanto et Icandis."

(Woke up. Noted that my subconscious Latin is terrible. Went back to sleep.)

A little after a scene in which L. appeared, I'm thinking to myself that I'm going to have to tell M. that she was here, when it occurs to me that that's impossible, I must have been dreaming.

Immediately after that thought, the sheriff from Twin Peaks walks in. He complains to me about this demon thing - all these people involved in recent suspicious events have been blaming it on demons, which is ridiculous, he can't figure out what's going on. He leaves the room, and I follow him. In the next room, there are two other people. One of them has something sticking out of the center of his forehead, like a horn, or like he's been stabbed with something, and I realize he's the source of this rotting smell. I also realize he's supposed to be dead, and the sheriff's been harboring him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm reading a news article covering ongoing research on the inside of an ancient spaceship that's been unearthed. The scientist in this article says she's discovered that humanity developed on this planet based on the human image displayed inside this ship, not the other way around. I find it bizarre that this claim is being presented in a major credible news source, as opposed to tabloids and conspiracy theory type sources. Then it occurs to me that the presence of an ancient spaceship, which the article treats as an already-established, commonly-known fact, is also pretty bizarre. I start to look up more information from other sources online, but out loud, I talk about the article with someone else, who, without reading it, dismisses it all as nonsense. I try to stress to her that what's really bothering me as unusual here is its presence in a major newspaper.

There was a royal baby, Herbert, who was locked away with his mother and a small staff in an isolated section of the castle for 8 years, after some disaster with his father. Now they're allowing a few more people to enter, including myself. They're still referring to him as "the baby", although it's been eight years, and now I see why - he's sitting in a high chair, being fed by his nurse, treated as if he were an infant in every respect, and apparently he's never been taught to walk, talk, or feed himself. The queen, clearly mad, is referring to herself as Herbert - I think of this as reflecting a desire to take control of the late king's power.

Most of the small group allowed in behave like sycophants, fawning over them, but after we leave, I speak with two of the other people who were allowed inside, both of them as disturbed as I am: two cat-like creatures, brother and sister, one a doctor, the other a scholar or advisor of some kind. They're cat-sized and they walk on all fours, but they're different enough in the face that they're not quite capable of being confused for actual cats; they're striped black and brilliantly dark blue, and they come from a place called Cheshire. They're very kind, very intelligent, very soft-spoken. The brother says that he believes the child carries some infectious disease that affects the brain, and this is what must have caused the disaster with the king eight years ago. Now it's clearly infected the queen as well. He intends to return tonight to examine the boy more closely. I'm thinking no, he's wrong, it's not a disease that the boy carries but madness, and I have a clear mental image of madness as some kind of spirit attached to the boy. I have the impression that I already know how this will end, that this is the past, I'm seeing a tragedy play out and have been forbidden from doing anything to change it. Suddenly realizing, I exclaim out loud, "the Cheshire Cat!" I'm horrified by this revelation, the idea of the madness that will take over this kind and soft-spoken doctor, and I'm so disturbed that the doctor and his sister become concerned; although I try not to say anything more, my exclamation has surprised them, and it's clear that I know something.

I'm climbing a road up towards the mountains, through a landscape covered in snow, along with the two cats and several other people, heading away from the castle. There's an announcement over a system of loudspeakers, the queen's voice stating "We order you to the tower to be arrested." The announcement goes on to scold us, alternately addressing us as if we were children or saying we've dishonored our esteemed positions, and then says "Now place your life squarely in your master's hands!" Obviously we have no intention of turning ourselves over to be arrested, but the path to the mountains takes us right past that tower.

(Side note: It occurred to me yesterday, lucidity works best for me when I'm focused on a specific task, as with defusing nightmares, and that's probably something I could put to work for me more. So before going to bed today, I tried typing out one of my dream goals with the heading Task of the Day.)

I was flipping through the just-released final book in a series, the Wheel of Time, when it occurred to me that this series already ended. I get online to explain the discrepancy, and there's some explanation that this new book is an optional epilogue with bonus materials and illustrations and so on. I realize this is a dream. My first instinct is to just continue with what I was doing anyway, but right afterward I think, no, what I was doing was boring. There is no way I am going to waste a dream sitting around my IRL home on the computer. (Although come to think of it, a dream computer could probably do some interesting things too.) That decided, I immediately set out to perform the task I set for myself. (Successfully remembered!) The first step is finding a doorway or other way of changing scenes, so I head for the door.

Before I get there, however, I get distracted: I realize I'm holding the t-shirt I'd taken off earlier in the non-lucid part of the dream. But although I hadn't put on another shirt afterward, I'm fully clothed now, which I think of as a convenient bit of dream logic. I remember a previous lucid dream where I'd tried to transform a shirt into something else, not very successfully, so the presence of a spare now makes me want to try again. I decide to just transform it into a robe, that should be easy, I'll just lengthen it and create an opening in the front. I see there's an opening at the front of the collar now, so I take hold of either side and pull as if tearing it, extending that opening to the bottom, seeing that it's grown longer as I go. I hold it up to look at it - it's got the shape I pictured, but it looks like a poorly-sewn costume, like something a child would make. It's got a piece of plastic sticking out of it, as if a price tag's been torn off, and there's a tangle of loose threads and frayed edges across the opening in the front. I tear that tangle off, then realize I'm waking up. (It occurred to me afterward that both shirts had been specific shirts I actually own IRL. Makes me wonder if I'd have an easier time if, rather than just the general idea of a robe, I'd aimed for something more specific. Still, though: a more successful transformation of an object than the last attempt.)

I'm aware T. is going to rob my home and kill me tonight, as if I'd seen the future. I took some steps in preparation for that, but I believed that what is going to happen can't be averted. However, it turns out I'd misinterpreted something: while T. really was robbing the place, the killer turns out to be someone else, a stranger who broke in with a knife. T. and some other people who live here help fight him off. We get to the scene I knew was coming, when the knife's supposed to cut deeply into my shoulder and stop just above my heart, and I wonder if I'll be able to feel pain in a dream. I decide to have the scene go a different way instead, I close my eyes and imagine that T. and the others hold him back enough that the knife turns aside. When I open my eyes again, the stranger is on the floor, dead.

I decide to perform "Deedlit's healing spell." (It's been years since I watched Lodoss - did Deedlit even have a healing spell? - I think this was mostly some generic mental association between elves and healing.) I say something I no longer remember, a phrase in English something like a prayer, and there's a warm gold glowing light around my hands, which I hold over the dead man until he revives, though he remains quietly on the floor. I then repeat the spell with the others in the room, although they don't seem to have any wounds, and they're surprised but appreciate it. I leave the room and go to heal my IRL sister L., who in the dream lives next door, waking her up in the process. I then go down the hall to find T. again and heal him too.

Me and T. talk for a while, and as he talks his appearance changes. He walks into the kitchen briefly and when he comes back, he's become a different person entirely, and he's joined by another man. They both claim to know me and to have been looking for me for a long time, although they call me by two different names. The one who wasn't T. speaks with a heavy Scottish accent and calls me Jack. As I'm speaking to them, I remember that while I'm lucid, I had some things I wanted to get done, and I try to remember what those were. I decide it was the Task of the Month. (Apparently reading the TOTM thread last night was enough to overrule my personal lucid goals.) I remember that the Task was to ask a DC who your true love or soulmate is, so I ask these guys, who's my true love? They both go silent and look extremely uncomfortable, like that's a question I shouldn't ask. I tell them any answer is fine, it's just a task, and I try phrasing it with 'soulmate' instead, but that doesn't get a better response. I feel like their belief that they knew me a long time ago is affecting this, that it's part of what makes this a question they don't want to answer, so I decide to go outside and find someone else to ask.

Outside my IRL home, I'm appreciating how vivid it is. There's a chill in the air, a nicely realistic touch, and there's no snow on the ground, which is a great change. I walk off the driveway and onto the main road, and for some reason I feel like that's an important dividing line, particularly when lucid. My attention is caught by a squirrel across the road standing on its front legs, craning its neck to look up at the sky; and then by the body of a dead deer at the 3-way crossroads. I believe (incorrectly) that this dead deer is always here at the crossroads when I dream, and I think about going over to talk to it, but on second thought the idea makes me a little uncomfortable - I think it'll follow me home. Better not. There's a rock just beside my driveway with some words carved into it, and I start to go over to read it, but a car drives by. I stop it and walk over to the driver, ask her who my true love is. Again, she goes silent and gives me the impression that this is a question I shouldn't ask. I decide to go for a ride, and I climb into the car through the window.

Inside the car, the woman I spoke to isn't the driver at all, she's a passenger. There's six women in the car, all of them working in the fashion industry or as models, and with the exception of the woman I'd spoken to and the driver, the rest of them resent someone who's not part of the industry hitching a ride. No one except the driver knows where they're going - it's a surprise. The driver's name is Audrey, she's someone big in the fashion industry, wearing large dark sunglasses. I ask Audrey who my true love is, and as an answer, she produces a piece of lined paper with something written on it, crumples it up, and throws it out the window. She's not throwing it away - she means for me to reach out my window and catch it. I'm too slow, I just miss it. But I decide - no, I didn't miss it. I caught it. I announce out loud, "Got it!" I 'remember' the feel of catching it, and then I draw my hand back inside the car. No good, my hand's empty. The women in the car look at me oddly for claiming to have caught the paper when I hadn't. I try the hand-behind-the-back summoning trick, but still nothing.

Since I keep failing to get an answer to this question, I decide I'll switch to a different Task of the Month. For some reason I believe that the other basic task is to kiss a DC. I stop to think about that for a minute, since I'm sure that can't be right, that's too basic, but then I decide it's meant as something simple to stick with a Valentine's Day theme. (Was I mixing it up with the kiss-a-zombie one? I had just raised someone from the dead, shame I didn't follow up on that. ) Although I'm not sure how I got here, I'm now following Audrey into an elevator with one of the other women from the car. I ask Audrey if I can kiss her, and she says sure. I can't remember what happened after that, but next thing I remember we're leaving the elevator and I'm thinking that didn't work. We're now standing in a large room with a mirror and a couch, and I ask the other woman, a slightly chubby, very beautiful blonde, if I can kiss her. She says okay. We're standing in front of the mirror, and I'm surprised to see the mirror's actually reflecting her and the room we're in (though not me, as usual), and her reflection looks exactly like her, although it's watching us instead of mirroring her actions. I lean in to kiss her and close my eyes, but perhaps because I was distracted by the mirror, I find I've wound up kissing her reflection instead, through the glass. I move us away from the mirror, focus on the feeling of her shoulder under my hand, and try again. I'm too focused on comparing this to real life and trying to improve the realism to enjoy it much - the feeling of her lips themselves is accurate, but that's about it. I'm thinking that this sort of thing really doesn't translate to dreams well, and I should focus on doing things that aren't possible IRL. So I remember the 'other' (actual) task of the month: I step back and ask her if she knows who my true love is. Again, she seems uncomfortable with the question and doesn't answer. Then I think that asking someone you've just kissed to tell you about your true love may be a little tactless.

There's a cat by the mirror now, yowling. Two people who work here rush over to it to try to get it to be quiet. On the other side of the room, there's a whole row of mirrors and a hairdresser standing in front of them, talking about originality or lack thereof in fashion shows. I lose lucidity and follow him, listening to him for a few moments before I wake up.

A powerful old dead woman who I'd known when she was alive has possessed a young girl I know, a friend's kid, in high school. She's essentially holding the kid hostage in order to make some demand of me, and I'm refusing her. Another girl, a friend of the possessed one, can't understand why I won't just give in to the dead woman's demands and save her friend, she's very distraught. There's some weapon or power source that used to be sealed away in the ground, and I'm threatening to reseal it, so the dead woman won't be able to access it. She thinks I'm bluffing, because that'd be bad for me too, but I'm willing to do it. She says to me that I don't appreciate the strain she's putting this body under; she's using magic constantly at a level that may seem reasonable to me and her, but which is unsupportable for a kid like this, she'll burn out if it continues.

As the same character, I'm walking across a high school gym, intending to get some coffee. It's after school hours, and there's a group of kids here playing basketball. They keep disappearing and reappearing, teleporting short distances. I'm thinking of it as one of those games with rules that only kids understand, and thinking how great it is to see them given a chance to just come together and play around like normal kids. In the hall on the other side of the gym, I meet up with a guy in a suit and trenchcoat who's also watching the game. He says something along the lines of "I can't believe you (pl.) were able to find so many."

I'm in a store that sells various forms of blades, among other things, and my attention's caught by an iron mask with a strangely curved dagger set into it, removable. (After I woke up I realized the dagger's shape was inspired by F/SN.) The mask's face seems very narrow, but I believe that the mask's features will fit themselves to the wearer. The eyes are particularly narrow and I don't see any holes to look out of. There's a long and narrow stylized beard that reminds me of ancient Egyptian art, which would cover the wearer's neck, and the mouth is designed to look as if it's been sewn shut. I like it.

I'm distracted by the sound of more people arriving outside. There's a brief confrontation but they dismiss me and the people I'm with as not threatening, which irritates me. There's some debate over whether this post-apocalyptic, breakdown-of-society situation we're in will last, or whether things will return to normal in a few days.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are three astronauts who've said or done something that their bosses wouldn't approve of, and they've ceased broadcasting in a way that implies they're dead or soon will be. But when I talk to someone who wasn't watching their broadcast live, I find she's got a different impression of events, she believes everything's fine, and some reasonable-sounding excuse has been given for why the astronauts are no longer broadcasting. Their previous broadcast has been censored or changed.

I'm playing a piano, using sheet music for a jazz tune I'd never heard before. The sun's going down, and the light gradually darkens until I can't make out the sheet music in front of me.

I'm flying down the center of a stairwell.

At the bottom of the stairs, I switch to 3rd person. This is a college, and classes are letting out. There's this incredibly beautiful androgynous person who stops a guy in the hall and talks to him, then s/he gives him this piece of paper with a small square smear of something dark green on it. This color will alter the guy's personality. The guy takes it, and he refers to them as boss and generally acts friendly and cheerful, but he's careful not to actually touch the color. S/he tells him to find a place without any people.

The guy heads up the stairs to the second floor, and I switch to his POV. Most of the classrooms have a few people in them even though they're between classes, but I find one where the chairs have been stacked up on the tables, I figure no one's going to be using this classroom for the rest of the night, and I call the boss over. S/he gives me some more of those papers, with different colors on them and labels giving an idea of their effects, and tells me to distribute them to some of the other students here. I go to do so, but then realize I've mixed up the one s/he gave me with the others. It was clear when s/he was talking to me in the empty classroom that s/he expected me to have already taken it, and now I'm worried about making them mad. When I can't find it again, I wind up taking a different one instead, a slightly lighter colored green, the closest match I could find. Immediately after, I find the one I was looking for, and I wonder whether it's safe to take two. I take it anyway.

I'm talking to someone against the boss's wishes. I consider myself loyal to the boss, but s/he's got a self-destructive streak that I have no problem acting against. Those papers would have prevented me from doing so, but taking two of them sort of cancelled each other out, the changes they caused didn't stick. This guy I'm talking to is a detective or something similar, and I'm telling him a woman's name. He has others working for him and he has them ask after the woman.

I'm a different character in that same college setting. There are police or military or something surrounding an angel - which looks nothing at all like a human, I mostly have an impression of a vast white face like a mask or a doll, twice the height of a man, alien and hostile. I'm thinking to myself that I can't die, it's impossible, like I'm trying to convince myself, but seeing that angel shook me - something about seeing something that old, something that existed before I was created. The disembodied observer side of me is thinking that although the character side of me isn't aware of it, there's some connection between me-the-character and that angel.

As the same character, I'm talking to a woman, and ask her to lend me some money. I don't need a lot, just something to get me into a game, I'm confident as long as I have some money to start with I can easily multiply it. She's disgusted, says it's always the same with me. She gave me a business (I have some mental association here with both religion and gambling) and she expected me to run it, so why am I still doing this? I find this ridiculous of her. I had absolutely no interest in the business she gave me.

I'm talking to someone about characters from Buffy - but all but one of us here are aware that I'm just using them as metaphors to talk about us. The one who isn't aware, who thinks I'm just talking about fictional characters, gets bored and leaves, but I keep using the metaphor. I'm saying, no, Giles's problem was that he knew exactly what his - and more importantly, Buffy's - destiny was supposed to be, and he knew it wasn't going to happen. Hence his downward spiral; he knew what they should be doing, and yet there was nothing he could do. I'm looking at a woman who I equate with Buffy as I say this.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've just driven to my IRL mother's house from a lake, and decided I'm too tired to drive back to the lake tonight, I'll spend the night. Mom gets me a coffee, there's chunks of chocolate floating on the top, I'm thinking about how much I appreciate her thinking to provide comfort food like that. The coffee's too bitter for my taste. I'm thinking that's odd, since I usually drink black coffee. We talk about how tired I've been, and she says it's due to the work I've been doing. I think that's strange, since the job I've been doing is easy, but she says anything you're not used to will tire you out, and relates it to her own similar experience.

Regina is surrounded by people she resents and is saying "Get me my advisor. Now!" As a disembodied observer, I'm pleased to hear this - the advisor she's referring to is Rumpelstiltskin, and earlier someone used a similar phrasing and tone to ask for their father, so I take this parallel as an indication that she's viewing Rumpelstiltskin as a father figure, which was something I wanted.

As Rumpelstiltskin, I've been recently de-cursed but have made sure no one else realizes that. I'm looking through a cabinet for an object related to the situation Regina's currently in. I find it: a small statue of a man in armor standing beside a stone pillar with what looks like Chinese characters on it. I pick up the pillar, removing it from the rest of the statue. I'm talking to myself as I do this, saying "You're here, but are-" I hear Regina's soldiers arriving outside, come to fetch me. I've been expecting them. I immediately pocket the pillar and statue and adopt a pose appropriate for my old cursed self, irritating my bad knee for a moment but making sure no one else will be able to tell it's bothering me, adopting a mindset and mannerisms as if I were putting on a costume and mask, though it takes effort to mimic what used to come naturally - that manic delight and curiosity and energy and attention focused in a million different directions at once. I'm getting used to faking this, though, and am more worried about whether that trinket I'm carrying will work.