non-lucid

A woman's feeling every bone in her wings break in half, one at a time, methodically, starting at the tips and working their way up. This isn't happening now - it's a memory. I'm not even sure it was originally her memory - this woman doesn't have wings now and I don't know if she ever did. But she's feeling the pain of it as if it were happening to her now.

She's strapped to a chair, and a man in a suit has just taken his hand away from the top of her head, ending her experience of that memory. He didn't get the reaction he wanted. He says something to the effect of "I was saving this for a reward, but-" and puts his hand on her head again.

This time she sees a memory of Constantine strapped to that same chair, from the perspective of a woman speaking to him. The woman runs her finger under his jaw - he makes a joke about how he would've shaved, but there's this whole held prisoner thing. Although I'm in third person throughout this dream, and although visually, I'm seeing this particular image from the perspective of that woman speaking, same as the woman in the chair is, nonetheless I feel the sensation of her finger on my/his jaw, unusually vividly tactile.

The man in the suit takes his hand away again. From what he's saying now, I get the impression that the woman strapped to the chair loves Constantine, and that this man and the group he's with are using that to groom her to kill him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

At a school, two boys close to graduation are lying in a field, watching a group of underclassmen playing some sport nearby. There's an underclassman in that game who one of them sort of took under his wing, and now the kid's developed a crush on him. The other boy is saying, great, take him home, get him "thoroughly raunched." The first boy takes this as a joke, says that he's not interested in anyone else, and kisses his throat. The other boy goes distant and pulls away. He resents emotional attachment - the first boy hasn't figured that out yet, but he will.

As Louis, being seen as a vampire by someone who I didn't want to see that, fleeing the scene, and Lestat finding this much more funny than I think is appropriate.

Discussing a military operation, looking at a map of what is essentially much of India and Southeast Asia, although at this point in time - meant to be 6th or 7th century or so - the countries and their borders are significantly different than in the present; we're primarily discussing a trade route at the moment, but I've also been having a disagreement with the man in charge about our manpower. While discussing the trade route, we receive word of 500 archers spotted approaching from the north, in addition to the army we're already facing. I am significantly less confident about our ability to handle this than the boss is.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

As some manner of religious authority, I'm performing a ritual to help a group of people, a sort of blessing or summoning, making something sacred. At the start of the ritual I have to offer up whatever spiritual virtue I possess as a sacrifice; this will leave me vulnerable until the ritual's complete, so I'm relying on the two people who asked for my help to accompany me. With the offering made, we step through a portal.

This takes us to a dark and dusty room, a place I'm familiar with. I summon light into my hands, with an effect much like a dim flashlight. In the middle of the floor there's a large trunk full of false panels, something a stage magician might use; at the moment it's lying open so that all its tricks are clearly visible to anyone who might pass through. I didn't leave it like that. There are a few objects on the shelves of the room that weren't here the last time, indicating that someone other than me has indeed been using this place. This is something to worry about. I close the trunk properly, and we continue.

A brief memory gap - after the dark room, we came out into a field at night with a river off to our right, and what we did here I can't remember; but then we came to the cliff at the opposite side of the field, and the view here was so fantastic that I briefly went fully lucid to enjoy it. I'm looking down on an immense lake so still that I can see stars reflected here and there. In the far distance, there's an immense grey statue of a falcon submerged in the lake so that only its head is above the water - but that small part of the statue above the water is at least the height of a two or three story building.

Continuing the storyline, this is certainly the appropriate place to perform a sacred ritual, so I begin a prayer - something about the lake filling with stars. But before I get very far, that river off to our right rises in a flood. The two people with me are afraid, but I'm thinking this is convenient - we'll just ride that water down to the lake.

The river sweeps us over the cliff, which is great fun, and when I sink under the water of the lake I can see a group of hammerhead sharks swimming far below. They don't seem to care about us. Surfacing, although we've all separated, we're all making our separate ways toward that falcon statue.

Along the way, however, I bump into a seal; it considers me and then swims on. And then into a shark; the same happens again. And another shark, and this one seems more interested in my presence; and another that I have to physically shove away; and so on; I'm not concerned about my safety - though I am worried about the other two - but I become so busy fending off sharks that I can't continue to the statue.

I'm entering a large garage, looking for the owner. Off to the right I see a white truck I recognize from the first time I met him, when he'd kidnapped the queen. There are three vases full of red roses sitting in the truck bed now. The man I'm looking for is further into the garage, off to the left, along with another man who I also met during that kidnapping incident. I exchange the usual greetings with this second man, then walk up to the one I came to see. He's an incredibly big guy, tall and muscular, and he doesn't turn from what he's doing to look at me. Neither of us say anything for a moment - I have a hard time deciding how to talk to him - and then when we do speak, both of us start talking at once.

He asks about the queen at the same moment I say, "(the queen's name)'s sick." Dying, most likely.

He's shocked and horrified, as expected, and asks me a bunch of questions about her. As we talk, we raise the question of whether her sickness is a reflection of the state of the land, or whether the land's sickness is a reflection of the state of the queen - that they're linked is obvious, but which one started it, which is the cause, that's the question.

The other man joins in the conversation at this point. They'd been tracking the changes in the land on their own, not realizing what was happening to the queen; and comparing our information, the two of them become convinced it started with the land. That second man shows me one of their maps on a computer screen, showing when a giant creature associated with cold moved into the far northwest and burrowed deep into the earth - that was the first one, the one that started it. They'd already been planning to remove or kill it. It goes without saying that I'll be coming too.

As I'm looking at his data, I'm thinking, amused, how convenient, making this into a problem that can be solved with our skillset.

A woman's just rescued two men and they're currently escaping through a series of underground tunnels. She's just shoved one of them up a ladder, to a manhole leading out of this tunnel, but apparently that's her limit - she collapses onto the floor, which is a sort of metal grate over water. I can see blood on her face. The other man says, teasing about the way she's been telling him to just let her handle things this whole time, "This is your plan? To lie here and bleed to death?"

She says, "See, I knew you wouldn't be down with the plan."

He picks her up and carries her up the ladder. I switch to first person, from the POV of the man she'd shoved up the ladder before; we've climbed up to the level of the subway tunnels that are currently in use. We walk along the tracks for a while, and just as we reach a platform - currently empty, though I'm aware people could show up at any moment - we hear a train in the distance. I have to help both of them up onto the platform, he's so tired from carrying her, and I'm thinking about how we each keep exhausting ourselves to pull the other two up. I climb up after them, and collapse on the stairs, exhausted, listening to the train.

I'm playing go with an old friend, and off to my left there's a woman who's thanking me on her hands and knees. I've just told her about the arrangements I've made to get her and her unborn child out of their current situation. I'm looking at the board, not at her, waiting for my friend to make his move - I'm smiling throughout this scene, since it irritates my friend. I haven't looked at the woman throughout the conversation. This was business, although I did take a personal interest since the father wasn't human. As she starts to leave, I tell her I'd like to see the child when it's born. Take it to a specific temple - I don't mention this last part, but there's a particular fox demon who lives behind that temple, a relative of mine, and I think he would take an interest in the child.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

The spirit of a certain man has been released and possessed someone, and since I and a friend of mine are the ones who bound him in the first place, a woman's asking me how we managed it the first time. I'm telling her it won't work again - we were relying on his trust in us. We prepared a meal and my friend put sleeping drugs in his soup. Scene changes to show that night - the three of us are having a casual conversation. I'm arguing against some point he's just made, and to illustrate my point, I compare it to chess players - although the point of the game is to defeat your opponent, it doesn't follow that a chess player would hate everyone else who plays chess, just because they intend to defeat them.

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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