non-lucid

Two middle-aged spinsters are visiting Rumpelstiltskin/Gold just before attending some event, but he's busy with a delivery of some sort. The room where they wait for him holds a collection of various objects behind glass, and as they look around, one of them says, "Richer than the (some family name beginning with A) brothers!" The objects behind the glass are personal mementos from over the centuries, arranged and displayed in such a way as to look like a collection of history - playbills and tickets, a photo from a political protest that changed history, old forms of currency, all neatly labeled with places and dates and short descriptions. But I'm looking at the objects as a disembodied observer with Rumpelstiltskin's mindset, with fond memories of the actress depicted on that playbill, and a woman at that protest, and the profit I made when that country changed currencies. (Although I'm thinking of it as a collection of memories that stretches back centuries, the oldest items I actually see are only from the 1800s.) I think to myself, 'and I could sell it, if I chose.' As if convincing myself that I could part with it all, if I had to.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fragments - someone involved in some industry that's often glamorized in movies, intelligence or organized crime, mentally contrasting his actual day to day life with the ridiculous movies. A rich and powerful woman who's sleeping with the hired killer who works for her. Overdue library books, a trilogy by an author who's written 156 books, these ones with covers showing caves with stalactites that remind me of fangs. Rumpelstiltskin again, spending a summer at a country estate belonging to a brother and sister he knows, looking out the window and feeling someone's suffering, the potential for a deal; following it, and finding someone in the garden, reading a journal that had belonged to Belle.

Someone's telling me that two serpents, one that spits fire and the other water, have gone missing from their shrine. I say they're taking a trip, "naught to worry."

Rumpelstiltskin's hit upon a new-to-him form of magic, something that appears as a white light when he's working on it, and it's some major revelation - but he can't pursue it unless he cuts himself off from distractions like 'the boy.'

A minor tyrant with some nefarious plan has just provided his elite guard with some new, lethal weapon related to mind control and is staging a private demonstration for two prisoners, people who'd been opposing him. But the guard who's supposed to provide the demonstration, after hearing the tyrant's plans, uses the weapon to kill himself rather than go through with it. The tyrant's reaction to this is mostly just contempt, and he orders one of the other guards to take the dead man's place - but instead, they all kill themselves rather than be involved in this plan. Meanwhile, the two prisoners are set free by the tyrant's heir, a younger brother or nephew, someone who never seemed to take anything very seriously; it turns out that attitude was just an act, allowing him to arrange a rebellion without being suspected. Some seemingly-nonsensical comments he'd made earlier make more sense in light of this.

There's a woman bending over a pool table, two guys - her servants - behind her. A man lounging on a couch opposite her is holding a camera and taking a photo of her, and he's asking her if she's sure she wants to play this way, 2 against 1. The man currently taking his shot tells him to knock it off, the lady knows her own mind. I'm a 3rd person observer, and from where I'm 'standing', I can't see this woman's face clearly, but her hair and her bearing remind me of Janette. I have the feeling I've been looking for Janette for a long time, and I go in for a closer look. There's a resemblance, but it's not her. While I was distracted, the conversation's turned more serious and they've stopped paying attention to the pool game; I get the impression that this is some kind of informal interrogation of this woman, or she's being put on the spot in some way. She's saying, "perhaps we have to suffer, to (justify or maintain or deserve, some word like that) our position." The others don't much care for this theory.

There's a woman who's turning, and a guy I know is driving her somewhere in a white VW bug, just pulling out of the parking lot. We weren't expecting it to happen this soon; turning happens after a few blood exchanges, and the amount of times it takes varies from person to person, but she's only had two, so this is taking us off guard. I - a guy in a suit, in the parking lot, running alongside the car as they're starting to drive off - am saying to him, "let me in!", but he's in too much of a hurry to stop and tells me to just get in. So I go incorporeal (lost all visuals in the process) and as he drives through me, I resolidify (and visuals came back) in the back seat, where she's curled up on her side. I cradle her head in my lap.

Grayson's come across Mina and Harker in some danger and got them out of it by offering them a ride home in his carriage. Now they're discussing a message he's sent someone to deliver, and Mina's objecting to sending this messenger into danger on their behalf. Grayson asks what danger she's referring to. Why, the war, of course. They're not far from the battlefield; that's part of why they were so grateful for his rescue. Throughout this conversation, Harker has become increasingly uncomfortable and is beginning to regret accepting the ride. Mina, sitting across from the other two, is noting that Grayson's in shadows so dark he can't be seen.

Lucy in a different carriage, with Lady Jayne riding outside. Jayne says to her, "Don't you think you had better go?" "No. My choice is to stay." "Atta girl."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A species of small creatures which, as they grow up, take on masters and will instinctively fight the servants of other masters if left alone together - which often results in fighting their own siblings, sometimes to the death. Later, when they grow into masters themselves, they see the other side of that, with the responsibility and grief of killing. (The dream logic was inconsistent about who was actually the one doing the killing, the servant or the master. The main point was violence without thought of consequences in the young, servant version, contrasted with the grief, guilt, and sense of responsibility in the older, master version, and a sense of circular time or mythic time, coming back around to the same event but from a different perspective.)

I'm breaking into the ruins of an old and isolated church, with a cat, carrying a candle; I climb up the stone wall and up onto the second floor, which is mostly open to the sky. However, just as I get there, I see the property owner returning home across the fields in the distance, in a dogsled. I extinguish the candle I was carrying, but it's too late, he's already spotted the light and is turning this way. I climb back down the wall and run for it. However, I'm on foot and he's got dogs; my odds of outrunning him aren't good.

We cross a river, and the scene changes to 3rd person; now it's a group of children who are running from him, and they dive beneath the water and stay there. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about legends of creatures that can't cross running water, and about the way the scene changed when I hit the water, the river acting as an event boundary.

A party where I've been looking for a woman, a dressmaker, known for a dress that resembles the sea. I find her, an elderly woman, and I ask her about that dress, which pleases her, but which isn't the subject I really want to talk to her about. We're interrupted by another woman, someone I know, and the two of them go off to talk in another room, behind a closed door. I eavesdrop from just outside. I hear them mention a Joanna - a dead woman who I keep hearing about, someone who left a widower behind, someone powerful. I'm caught listening, and so go away without hearing the rest of the conversation.

Rumpelstiltskin. I have some guests, people here to do business, but I've just turned away from them and am talking to Belle, showing her the potion I'm preparing and saying "It's designed to attract." The scene switches to 3rd person, and I note that Rumpelstiltskin loses the showman routine he uses with the others when he talks to Belle; I'm thinking something abut the length of time Belle's been around and how they interact, which is something that Rumpelstiltskin is feeling a little bewildered about. He heads up to the tower to get in touch with someone through some magical means. "Don't go listening," he says to Belle. She's indignant - of course she wouldn't!

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Based on Carmen - she's dancing, I'm sitting in a chair watching her and thinking about the past, about killing for her, feeling sober. (This felt like it was a variation on the servant creatures from before - as if there was something I was trying to work out but wasn't quite getting, so the dream was rephrasing.)

Just a bit of scenery: I was flying through a forest by a river, with a road running through it. A few of the trees had formed something like natural nests in the places where their trunks divided: wide platforms ringed with thick branches and covered with moss, out of sight of the road and with a good view of the river. They looked like they'd make a nice place to rest, but I was in too much of a hurry to stop.

Fragments - song lyrics misusing the word indigent ("all the charm indigent in you" - I assume it was aiming for 'inherent'); and later, a fragment involving a tribe called Indogen, immortal creatures that were 'judged unworthy by god' and sentenced to stay in this land (wherever the dream was currently set) instead of continuing on their 'journey to the sun.'

An apocalypse scenario; I've run through this scenario two times already and failed both times. First, I have to leave this building quickly, and avoid getting involved with this group of people; that was the mistake I made last time. Second, I can't forget to (something to do with a virus and immunity or a vaccine or similar); that was the mistake I made the first time around. Third, I have to track down three men: one's a scientist whose theories are closely related to the events that are about to happen; the second is a specific doctor.

When I leave the building through the back door, the storyline changes; I'm caught up in some kind of street performance going on just outside, and a woman in the crowd sees me and recognizes me, and comes up to thank me for something I'd done for her in the past involving her ring.

Another apocalypse scene then: a woman who's carrying her son, looks around 3, is begging me to take him with me.

Rumpelstiltskin. There's a horrible smell coming from somewhere in the castle, and finally I've found the source: there's a dead body, someone who broke into the castle and got himself caught in one of the traps designed to stop such intruders from stealing my things. Belle and I have been calling back and forth as we were trying to figure out where that smell was coming from, and I'm pleased I found it before she did. I call to her now, telling her that I've found it and am taking care of it, without letting her know what it was. I magic it away.

Julia's ranting to me about something to do with the news, full of righteous anger. There's some important event going on in the world, some tragedy or disaster or outrage, and she doesn't feel they're covering it well; she's specifically talking about CNN's failure to report on real issues. I'm happy about all this - happy about her righteous anger, that is, not the tragedy or whatever it was - I love how she cares so deeply about these events that I've come to see as commonplace.

There's a girl, a witch, stopping in a school hallway to stand before the memorial to a recently-dead classmate, covered in flowers and candles. The dead girl was also a witch, although this isn't common knowledge, so although she didn't know the dead girl well, she takes this very personally. She's thinking about how she has something that belongs to the girl's killer, and about the girl's mother, and about poison. The candles burn down to stubs as she looks at them, and various other things around her start to catch fire; a boy who was close with the dead girl had been watching nearby, and when he sees this, he starts to run away. She stops him, corners him. He asks what she is; she says he'll never know, but that since he failed his friend, now there's someone else he has to protect - her.

A woman is introducing two of her friends to each other outside a mausoleum, introducing one of them by the nickname she calls her, "Little N." It's N's family mausoleum they're standing in front of. N introduces herself as "Anekhet (last name sounds something like Sastemony) - or Little N." From her tone, which is pleasant, it's still clear that the Little N nickname is a name for only this particular friend to use, not the man she's being introduced to. The man introduces himself with a bow as her ancestor and the founder of this town, and a "comocido" - which in the dream seemed to be a word related to suicide or homicide, a word that indicated the specific way in which he was killed, hundreds of years ago. Anekhet is surprised but not particularly thrown by this.

Integra is watching a map showing enemy vessels approaching England, trying to calculate how much time she has left, torn between two objectives, and finally she dispatches Alucard to a certain ship, to destroy it if he doesn't hear otherwise after a certain amount of time. Alucard drops out of the sky onto that ship, and in his head he's intensely focused on the form he needs to take at any given time, it's almost like psyching himself up, or like playing a role.

Fragments, one involving finding an old sketchbook with an image of a character I haven't drawn (or thought about) in years; another involving a song called Sleepwalker.

A man and a woman in an old abandoned house, the woman's become possessed by the spirit of her ancestor who'd lived there. She says she's hungry, which I, 3rd person observer, am certain is a lead-in to her doing something unnecessarily creepy. She catches a rat and starts chewing on it. I mentally compare it to evil overlords using skulls as building material, too over-the-top and nonsensical to actually be creepy. The possessing spirit knows this man, and she's saying to him, "I will say, however, this is the first time I've seen you in anything but pain." When she says that, he thinks briefly of a relationship he has with someone, but he says, "Come on, be serious -" He then deliberately misremembers her name, trying to downplay the authority she has over him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

FMA-based, Al is on some huge vehicle, like a train but so large it has a deck like a ship. An old man wearing armor and automail is introducing him to what appears to be a little girl, introducing her as a 'mechanist' who works on the human soul, something that's commonplace here, and which Al's been researching and is excited to finally get a look at. There's a good chance that she's not human but some kind of automaton, that's often the case for mechanists; Al isn't aware of this. She's thinking the same thing about Al, she expects the inside of his armor to be full of bolts and springs.

The old man who'd introduced the two of them gets his automail caught in some piece of machinery, which is dangerous. Al and someone else, a large man, work together to free him, but in the process the machinery pierces a hole through Al's armor, allowing the little girl to see inside and realize it's empty. Al is very self-conscious about this, but the girl's thinking something about how impressed she is that "he'll continue investigating the secrets he was investigating, not the secrets of his body" - the research he's been doing has no bearing on his own problem.

Ed is on a different train. Kimblee, a prisoner, is being transported in the same car, it's a car for military personnel, and Kimblee's saying something about whether (something happens) or (something else happens), he just doesn't care; this annoys Ed. He gets off the train and heads for a stadium where he's supposed to meet Mustang, and he's supposed to make it look like it's a coincidence that they both happen to be there, since they're being watched.

In a wild west-inspired setting, there's someone called 'the Kid', although he's a grown man with greying hair and wrinkles. I'm watching him ride a motorcycle out of town, and I'm thinking that although he may not be a Kid, it'd also be wrong to call him a man, since he's not human.

There's a man and a woman in some kind of storage space, looks like an attic. She's asking if he's ever even tried moving to 'a real town' and setting up 'a real life,' the way she says other heroes have done. He's surprised she called him a hero and says she's got the wrong idea, and that he's not even human. As a third person observer, I'm thinking how cliche he is, the self-loathing vampire hero type. I focus on his appearance for the first time - a man in a red coat, with a face that reminds me of some actor but covered in scars and boils, and I'm thinking that at least this one's not pretty.

There's a dead guy on the floor between the two of them, and now he wakes up. The guy in the red coat picks up this huge sword with a curve in the blade which I associate with beheading, and he says something about how what he really wants isn't 'a real life in a real town'; what he wants is this weapon, automated, on a massive scale. The dead guy says something about being grateful before his head's taken off.

There are people arguing in the town square. The guy in the red coat gathered everyone here and is standing up on a wooden stage trying to talk to them. One person says, "You act like one of 'em, the game's won!" 'Them' meaning vampires, and 'won' meaning won by the vampires. The person he's arguing with says, "You resist 'em, the game's won!" Everyone seems to think it's hopeless. While the guy in the red coat is focused on them, he doesn't see the burned and headless body which is crawling out of town.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Dracula, a girl, and a priest/vampire slayer, in a field in daylight. Dracula's kneeling, and the priest's saying that He often seems to hear him and know what's needed. In response, black shapes fill the sky, blotting out the sun, which Dracula doesn't like at all. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about how this is an interesting switch; normally you'd think of darkness favoring vampires, but Dracula was fine with sunlight. The girl says something about sending him to hell, but she's got it backwards; the priest isn't in the business of damning souls. On closer look, the things blotting out the sun are crows; and then among them appear the souls of all those he'd turned.

An advertisement for a Christmas event called the Forest of Lights; Christmas shopping in a small store that has cookies out on display, someone exclaims over them, saying that they're just like the ones his grandmother used to make, which he hasn't been able to find since she died, not knowing what they were called.

A grandmother talking to a baby which is also herself: "You're going to be just fine." She's a woman who grew up in the present era, then somehow mentally time-traveled to the past and became trapped there, and wound up living out the life of her own grandmother. She's at a family gathering now and talking about a business she owns, when she has to sit down abruptly, and then holds out her hands and comments on how they're shaking. She's sure this is the moment when she dies. She's very calm about this, to the point that the people around her think she must be joking. There's a narrator then, saying something about how a part of her always expected that when she died, she would simply wake up back in her real body in the present. But she doesn't. It was a mind-soul transfer, the narrator says. When she died, she died. That was it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm looking at a grave marker in Erana's garden, and examining the spell on it; and then admiring the spell over the rest of the garden that makes it a sanctuary, and noting how even the water of the two rivers which flow around it are affected by the spell when they come into contact with it. Looking at all that running water, I'm having doubts about whether this will be the best place for Olivia to stay over the next few days, even though we're on her native soil, and even though it's otherwise ideal. The river running under the bridge at the entrance to the garden is just a trickle at the moment, but there's an image in my mind of that river growing wider, turning the garden into an island. I start to walk into the woods, and I pass Rogerian coming the other way with an animal he's caught for the two of them to eat. Olivia wakes up and says something about the meal, sounding delighted.

There's this woman who's a cop, kneeling in front of an old woman in a chair, and confessing something, but phrasing it like it's all hypothetical, referring to both herself and the old woman in the 3rd person, even though they both know who she's talking about. She gets to a point where she doesn't want to finish the story - the old woman said she admires her, and the cop thinks that will change if she finishes the story. She doesn't think the old woman will believe the rest of the story, and will think less of her for telling it. Still speaking as if this is all hypothetical, the old woman disagrees with her, and says that the cop should appreciate herself more. The old woman disappears, and where she'd been sitting, there's a lighter that the cop had lost in the desert, an old worn one with some stickers with words on them wrapped around it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

The same cop DC, although this time she's a white woman. She's in the corner of a room, trying to be quiet and still and not attract attention. There's a chenoo who's moving around the room, picking up some of the mess it made while fighting something else. It's changed a little after the fight, so that she can make out the face of the old man it used to be. It notices her, greets her cheerfully, calls her Nikita. It says that now that it's eaten (the thing it was fighting), it isn't going to eat her, which it's happy about since she's been nice.

I've just arrived on the edge of a cliff, out of sight, and now I'm following a path through the trees into town. I'm shocked by the state of the place. Although visually, I-the-dreamer didn't actually see anything that looked unusual - it was night, the streets were empty, there wasn't much to see but it seemed like an ordinary small town - I had the impression that I-the-character was looking at foulness or decay, something along those lines. I hear a conversation like a voiceover, it's not part of this scene - I have the impression it's something said later, as if what I'm seeing is a flashback related to that conversation. In the conversation, I'm saying, "I saw-" and someone else cuts me off, saying "No. You didn't 'see.' You corrupted." They sound angry. That is to say, whatever's wrong with this town is due to my presence, or at least the person speaking believed so. Visually, I'm still walking through that town, and a woman appears in the street, shining or glowing, wearing white robes, and after a moment I recognize Erana. I'm very relieved and run to her; she's not looking at me, she's looking around at the town, looking like she's mourning.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

That same town, relatively early in the evening, when there are still people in the streets. I'm walking together with a married couple. I'm looking at two shops next to each other, and I'm remembering when the man I'm walking with praised this town to me, telling me I should come and visit him and his wife here, talking about the brightly colored buildings and the many-colored tiles on the roofs. I'm looking at the faded paint on these buildings and trying to convince myself that maybe it looks better in sunlight, but I don't think so. I mention this to him, and he brushes it off, vaguely implying that I'm misremembering what he'd said, or that he'd exaggerated, and that it's not important. I start to press the subject, asking his wife about the state of the town.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm walking on a dirt road just before dawn, sky's bright. The ground to my right drops off sharply into a valley which at the moment is filled with rising mist, and I'm stopping to enjoy the sight. It's very beautiful.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A mother and daughter in their library, the mother is standing over a book lying open on a stand, and the daughter is behind the stand, trying to get a look at the book. She holds up a candle to try to read, but her mother tells her you can't read it like this. The mother puts out her candle, and all the other lights, and when it's pitch black the book starts glowing. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking something about how this makes perfect sense for a book about darkness. The mother is focusing on the book and saying "I shan't flee from you around here, mortal." The light from the book flares up so brightly I can't see anything else.

Me and Erana (of QFG) are in a cave we believe to be the entrance to hell. I'm looking at something in a glass case near the entrance, she's looking at things hanging on the walls. We found this place by chance; we were supposed to be heading somewhere else, but I believe that other place would have wound up being a dead end, and this cave is our best bet. There are these blue butterflies that live here that are known for flying against the wind. The opening that we believe to be the entrance to hell is unreachable for us due to the wind, but these butterflies can go right in, and as I watch them, I'm planning out how we can use that.

(Woke up. Went back to sleep.)

In some small city. Erana was killed, but she reappeared in the form of a child and grew up within a few hours. This happened twice, and we think it's a result of the time she died and I retrieved her soul from hell - now hell won't take her. I'm not sure it'll take me, either, but I'm not in a hurry to test that. Sitting in our hotel room after the second time it happened, I'm trying to think up a way to use that child form to our advantage, but this annoys her.

We're in a series of tunnels, and we split up to try to work out the correct answer to some kind of game that involves finding the right combination of drinks, or in another room, the right meal. We're meeting back up in the main tunnel to compare notes - Erana's solved the drinks room, I'm still working on mine. I mention that it reminds me of kumiko, meaning that it's partially a guessing game and the solution involves rather poetic references, which amuses me; it's kind of nostalgic, even though I'm frustrated. There's a voice in the distance and I say something about how it must be the guardian of this place. I spot him standing on a balcony over a gate we've been trying to get through, a guard with a head or helmet shaped like Anubis.

Wednesday:

Fragments involving a man with a hook for a hand, giving him a hand and taking his hook myself; a witch who was trying to force the hook-man to sleep so that she could somehow influence him in a dream; a prince and his army who arrived on this scene, with no knowledge of anything going on between the witch and the hook-man; and a man with some form of mental connection to the witch, his sister.

A man visiting his wife's family with her, the first time since they were married. The father-in-law's distant and judgmental. He's saying, "You'll have to understand, we only drink old French wines here - Bordeaux," that being where the mother-in-law's from. Inside, the mother-in-law is a tiny woman with long, thick grey hair, very warm and expressive. She asks her son-in-law how his meditation practice is going, and asks if he's getting by okay in New York - which he loves, but she doesn't understand how anyone could enjoy living in cities. She says, "You've been in that city for about a hundred years, but you seem to have left in a good mood." He finds her energy overwhelming.

In a small restaurant, the baker's brought out samples of new doughnuts for everyone to try, I had two, one with a peach filling, the other blueberry, and I was surprised by the taste of the 'blueberry' - it reminds me of pixie stix and sweet tarts and similar childhood candies, not in the sense of being sugary, it's more the type of flavoring those candies use. I comment on it, and someone at the next table asks what this lump in theirs is. I look and point out to them that it's a blueberry. They've never seen a blueberry before?

While walking across a field, I'm explaining to someone what juice is. I wind up having to describe it as crushing something until its external protection breaks down and its liquid insides run out, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it very, very clear to the creature I'm talking to that this is something that should be done only to plants.

As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm in a dream world, talking to an image of Regina that is breaking down and melting after being attacked by someone else, and I'm saying, "This isn't you." Allowing herself to show weakness, I mean. I say it again, then reconsider - it's possible this is one side of her, or even how I think of her. There had been a young girl with her, and now I take the girl by the hand and lead her away, ignoring the image of Regina that's still falling apart.

Someone's telling me they need me to act as a detective. I cut them off, saying, "What, I'm supposed to magically figure out where the dying guy came from?" But I do find some form of trail, scratches on the floor, leading to what seemed like a wall but which must have some kind of opening.

Vampires. I brought two humans to see a friend of mine, I wasn't intending to kill them, and I'm a little annoyed at my friend, but I'm not making any effort to stop him either. He's saying to the humans that he hasn't decided yet whether to kill them or turn them. His fangs dig into his own lip, and he spits blood on the human he's got pinned down, which has a sort of acidic effect. I, the dreamer rather than the character, observe that it's much like the way flies break down their food.

I've been working on a system of cables to allow transportation around an island. It's something two guys had been using on a very small scale on their own property, and I've been working with them to expand it to cover the entire island. I'm mostly doing this to help out a woman I'm in love with who lives in a very remote area, but it's going to benefit everyone on the island. Now I'm looking at the initial stage that's about ready for a test run, and feeling proud, when a troop of soldiers with wings descends out of the sky. Their leader - who I've met before, in a friendlier setting - arrests me on suspicion of killing the king, among others. This is a setup - I know who the actual killer is, and I came to this island in the first place to hunt that person. I'm blaming myself for getting distracted with this side project; if I'd focused solely on my mission, maybe he wouldn't have had time to frame me.

Thursday:

There's a room on a spaceship that's being converted into a sort of swamp. This alien species needed this certain type of room for some cultural reason to do with the sharing of emotions, and so we set it up for him. One of the other aliens, from a different species, says that if humans turn out to be understanding and reasonable, s/he's going to be very disappointed. I say nah, don't worry, no matter how many understanding and reasonable humans you meet, you can always count on a few of us to mess things up, every time.

A group of vampire hunters. A man leading things over the phone; someone who is either a doctor, a former doctor, or simply someone who steals meds from hospitals, refusing to be hurried by the hunters around him; a recording of a man interacting with someone who doesn't show up on video, with viewers arguing that it's definitely faked.

Monday: Forced into playing some game in order to save my father's life, using mandrake led to victory. People raiding a house, breaking things or stripping things from the walls and carrying them away. The words "los soños del amos." A dance performance featuring various actors - Biehn, Paxton, Goldstein (as Diamondback), Henriksen showing up later offstage - arranged by a woman trying to use this performance to prove her worth; an old money type applauds the performance, technically a success, but succeeding here just means she's got the chance to fork over even more money than she already has, she's being used.

Tuesday: A young girl who'd been in some kind of trouble runs into a reporter named Nicholas who promises to help her, but when she sees him in sunlight his eyes resemble a snake's. He tells her that if she succeeds in becoming human, he'll lose interest in her struggles, and then he'd probably kill her. A religion based on Alice 19th. A woman arrives from another world; I've seen this play out before, but in that version of events there was a man with her, this time she's alone; knowing what's coming, I kneel before her, ask her to spare my life, which doesn't seem likely to work until I point out how little she knows about this world, and promise to guide her to the halls of power; she relents and accepts. Elijah speaking to Rebekah, telling her he has plans to meet someone in a dream at sun-up, which amuses him since he's just now become capable of walking in the light and yet is going to spend the time sleeping anyway.

Wednesday: A large wolf in the woods, my cat cuddling up to it. A very small man is sent to pick a fight with a woman at a bar. He fails miserably. She talks to him about his daughter, says she couldn't believe what had happened, when the girl had turned out to be a witch after all and was snatched away by her mother - a 'good witch', who uses a different variety of magic than these two at the bar. It's implied the daughter's been taken to be used as a tool. She offers her help for a rescue mission, but he suspects she'd like to use his daughter as a tool, too.

Thursday: A young woman and a friend, trapped in a maze of rooms cluttered with objects - statues, tapestries, things you'd expect in a museum - searching for one that holds a specific design which is her only means of escape, but it's a needle in a haystack situation. She picks up a statue and reminisces about when her mother used to fill her home with things like this - as she thinks that, she finally spots the design she's looking for, a tile set into the floor. The mirror above it ripples, and she's aware that she'll be leaving her friend behind here, but she doesn't have time to wait for him, she escapes through the mirror, back into the real world. Once on the other side, the mirror breaks. She says to someone on the other side that her friend is still trapped there, but this person tells her "Abby, all your life there's been no one there" - no one else in the real world has any memories of that person she believed to have been her lifelong friend.

Friday: Meeting Olivia Atta Clemens for the first time at a party in Rome. NBC's version of Dracula is having an argument with someone referred to as his master, regarding the use of the phrase "your majesty," and people going missing.

Saturday: Nightmare in which some creature embodying darkness is crouched above me, dispelled with Apollo trick, after which the dream ceased being a nightmare but I become concerned that the creature had simply moved on to the nearest target. I'm chasing someone and run into a cop along the way, and at first ask for his help but then decide there's no point, we're in a country where cops don't carry guns. A guy explaining Kaballah annoys me by making cryptic comments about me and fallen angels.

Today:

I'm stowing some papers in a hiding place on the roof; I'm thinking that Lydia (mental connotations of an odd mentor/student relationship with her) will pass through here later, and I'm positioning the papers where she'll be sure to see them, but trapping them in such a way that she won't be able to retrieve them in the little time she'll have up here. A scene with Lydia and I entering a small room where I've been holding Boone, her husband, captive; I sit down while she talks to him, take off my hat and smooth down my hair - I've got blond hair here. A scene with Lydia in a room crowded with empty picture frames, which used to hold pictures of her - she's aware they belong to (either my character or her husband, I can't remember which).

A setting based on ancient Rome, I've been having a dispute with someone over a slave, one of my charioteers, and I'm thinking about this dispute as I watch the race. Something about one of the chariots or racers catches my eye, seems odd - then there's an 'accident.' Afterwards, I'm standing over a slave who broke several bones in that accident.

A series of underground tunnels, and a group of vampire hunters. I've found a dead-end tunnel directly underneath their current camp, and I'm crouching on the ceiling, listening to them. One, I believe he's the leader, has been threatening one of the others, but the one being threatened has just walked away from the argument, and from the camp, saying he's going off to eat. I'm slightly concerned that he'll come down into this tunnel - since it's a dead end, there would be no way to avoid meeting him - but I don't think it's very likely. The ones who stayed are still talking about him, and from what they're saying I realize that he also eats people, but that he's in some sense still human. The others are concerned that they may have to kill him one day.