non-lucid

Earlier, was just lucid enough to deliberately fly upward with the intent of getting a wider view, instead lost visuals and wound up in a completely different scene, losing lucidity.

Standing on a ladder outside a suburban home, the wind shifts, hot and dry, a sense of the desert that's going to claim this place and incorporate it into my people's territory. I'm the one who led them to this place, but I feel conflicted now. I excuse myself to the man who'd been holding the ladder, and go inside to take care of some loose ends. There are too many signs of how personal an interest I've taken in this world, learning their language, getting much too attached; I should dispose of that evidence.

Elsewhere, among the troops, I'm speaking to one of them on behalf of a man in this world, Adam, trying to make sure they take care when they process him. I say I've never seen a dreamer with power like his before. Which is true, but I'm also being careful to phrase it in practical terms, downplaying any personal attachment. I have to stress the importance of him as a resource not to be wasted. The man I'm speaking to agrees that they'll be careful, but I don't think he's really paying attention, just brushing me off. I end the scene flying back to that suburban house, desperately searching for Adam.

The following scene focuses on a brother figure chiding me for hanging onto a ghost.

There's a grand performance starting, but I've seen it all before, so I ignore the main plot, move past the crowds and deeper into the building where it's being staged, watching the parade of characters emerging to take their places. The very last to emerge is the witch queen, behind her two enchanted attendants. Since I'm the only audience member here, she takes me aside to tell me my fortune.

As she talks, it becomes clear that she's mistaken me for a woman, and that she might not have taken me aside if she knew otherwise. When she pauses to give me a chance to respond, I keep my mouth shut to avoid spoiling the illusion; she's clearly not pleased with my silence but she goes with it. She takes a needle and draws lines of thread through the skin on the back of my hand, talks with thees and thous, and pronounces 'clan' like 'clin.' She asks whether I'll play the role of part of her 'clin', and I agree, which requires a verbal answer. Her attendants take out instruments to arrange the ends of the threads.

I'm sitting on the edge of a bed in a small rented room, wood panel walls, watching a man kneel and lace up the boots he's just given me. I'm thinking that a chase without consequences lacks interest - we've caught each other several times now but neither of us has actually killed the other, which should be the natural conclusion here. Makes me feel tired. I think I'll stop hunting him after today. The boots belonged to a dead Nazi, and I'm wronging people by wearing them; that's the reason he's giving them to me.

Later the same day, we're standing in a very small graveyard on a green hill, and now he's giving me a green hat that I think of as going with the boots, though it doesn't resemble a military uniform. I recognize both it and the boots as part of a costume signifying Ivan, which would make him Koschei. He disagrees with this observation, says he'd rather be the Firebird. I'm thinking that he's greatly misinterpreted our story.

In the previous scene, I'd been doing shots with a man who drinks live snakes, one every day. The bartender gives me a dead one, since it's my first time; it'll go down easier. Now I'm walking around half-submerged ruins where I've been before. There's meant to be a door here, though I hadn't seen it the first time around. Now that I'm searching, though, I spot the fold in reality that's hidden it, pull it through so that it becomes solid. It's set in the base of what had been an empty stone arch.

The other side of the door is an in-between place, and I go slightly lucid in order to pause and enjoy the view. It's a stone bridge hanging in space, pale stone, low and sloping walls on either side, and something like coral growing over it in patches. This space has the quality of light seen from underwater, and floating above there's some enormous, amorphous, diaphanous shape, jellyfish-like. It's all very pleasant.

Along the bridge I run into two women with the tails of snakes, mermaid-like, who are frozen in place, and whose verbal words don't match the meanings I hear - the verbal words are friendly, the underlying meaning is to get me to come close enough and stay long enough for them to kill and eat me. I find them pleasant, too; I can't blame them for being hungry, this place sees so little traffic, and I don't intend to stay long enough for them to kill me, so they're effectively harmless.

When I leave the in-between place, it takes me to a scene where an Egyptian woman with a clipboard is consulting a guest list. I have to wait in line behind some snake-haired triplets while a dead human woman talks to the woman with the clipboard, trying to justify why she belongs inside, citing the royal status of her lover.

I'm observing a time period when humanity's living on only one planet. Everywhere else has grown too cold to support them. I'm watching one man chase another into space, and he's thinking something about fuel. I'm thinking about my own choice of focus, a little amused - in a time period like this, I'd expect my focus to be on someone's epic struggle to save humanity or something to that effect. But that doesn't interest me here; this last world is going to fail regardless. I'm interested in this man's more personal struggle.

As mostly my IRL self, I'm following a news story about a court case. The girl on trial is a minor, but the people involved in the case keep talking about her as if she's an adult; there's racial connotations. Her outlook is not good. As not-exactly-my-IRL-self, I'm thinking this is an injustice. I've allowed them long enough to work this out themselves, they've had their chance; I'm going to step in and remove her from this ridiculous trial. There's a connotation here that this means dropping everything going on in my life. I'm nearly out the door when IRL-self stops to wonder exactly what I think I can do.

I'm standing in a dimly-lit, brown-toned library where I'm meeting Mazikeen for the first time in a long time. The dreamer part of me is critiquing the way the dream is representing her half-alive half-dead status; the parts of her without skin are tinged green, and it crosses over her body, so that her left arm and right leg are dead. I think of this as a clumsy representation of the life/death mix. The character part of me is remembering seeing her a long time ago, when she'd just been made immortal and she'd been elated about it, saying that she'll be able to continue to serve as long as I need her. I'm wondering whether she'll think what I'm doing now is worth serving - or rather, what I'm not doing now; I've abandoned certain ambitions.

I'm on a lake. In the lake, there's a small island; there's an enormous tree whose roots cover almost the entire island; at the base of the tree, there's a standing mirror, silver in color this time; and in front of the mirror, there are two steel bars. There's a steel vine covered in thorns that's wrapped around the bars in an arch, serving as a lock. I unwind the thorny vine and remove it. The mirror's open now.

Traveling through the basement of a ruined mansion, where the walls have crumbled so much there's a sense of open air and greenery, there's a painting of Joan of Arc commissioned by the woman who used to own this estate, and I'm pleased to see she had it painted so that Joan resembles the commissioner herself. This would be considered disrespectful, which is why it was hidden away in the basement.

I'm in an open, airy, bright library where some event is going on, some new release that's drawn in a lot of upper class, scholarly types. It's interrupted by a woman who's some kind of monster I'm familiar with, delivering a hostile message to me and leaving again. She frightened most of the people into backing away. I'm thinking, although these things are hostile and my automatic reaction to them is equally hostile, they only exist because of my "tainted blood," which was what originally created her kind, generations back; thinking about that, there's a shift in attitude, I start to pity them. They're essentially my responsibility, though they're not aware of it.

Transitioning from a scene where I'd been holding a sword, thinking about the danger of carrying a sword without a sheath, fully aware this wasn't about literal swords.

Three siblings meet on a road after a long time apart. One of the brothers is wearing armor and leading a small group of people fighting for some cause in his name; there's less than a hundred of them. The other brother and sister have just appeared hovering in the air, having traveled a vast distance in moments. The brother, I think of as a young version of myself; he's dressed in black, and says nothing throughout the scene, and there's a bloody vertical line over his heart, which I associate both with the heartless motif and with the sword in the previous scene. The sister is dressed in vibrant green, and I think of her as a witch. I'm thinking how much they've all changed since the last time they saw each other.

The brother with the small army asks his sister if he could move like they do. She says he could, but he'd have to start wearing higher collars. It's a reference to the scar over the other brother's heart, who looks uncomfortable at the mention; the implication of her words is that this isn't something to enter into casually.

I'm looking at the army traveling with him, and thinking about how much they've changed as well; I remember them with paint on their faces, thinking of them then as closer to a family rather than a lord and his followers, and I'm thinking that they've lost their identity, changing to suit the land they're traveling through. I'm thinking they were better off before they took up this cause.

I'm occupying someone else's body, and I-the-character am not entirely clear on the body's identity. A woman greets me in Korean, and following her expectations, I enter an elevator. I-the-dreamer am aware that the body I'm occupying owns this building, he's the president of a company, and this is his private elevator to his penthouse suite. There are no buttons inside the elevator; I-the-dreamer am aware it uses facial recognition, I-the-character am surprised when it starts to move.

The elevator opens onto his suite. There are a number of people in the bed, clearly after a party; the body's owner recognizes one of these people, the rest are strangers. I order everyone out; only that one exception stays. He's sitting up against the headboard, wearing an animal's pelt draped over his head, a wolf or a coyote. (It occurs to me after waking up that we were both wearing something else's skin.)

Another man appears, and he grips this man by the throat. I recognize him; he's the reason I-the-character occupied this particular body, in order to meet with him. He speaks to me, believing he's speaking to the body's owner. I-the-dreamer switch to third person because I want to see the expressions of me-the-character.

Speaking in English so that we won't be understood by the man with the animal pelt, I-the-character chide him for being "so eager to sink your teeth."

He says, "Not the only thing I'm good at. But surely we'll still eat this-"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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