non-lucid

I'm flying over a river, and although I don't remember what I was flying on, in effect it's essentially a flying carpet - a small, flat surface carrying several people. Someone else is 'driving' it, I'm just along for the ride. We're taken over a waterfall, with several clouds beneath us, and among the clouds I see a huge gate hanging in the air, supported by pillars on either end. It turns out to be the first in a series of three gates, the entrance to a country - the first is very modern, with images like a billboard; the second somewhat less modern; and the third is very old and very beautiful, more like a decorative lattice made of stone and covered in moss, as tall as maybe a three-story building. I turn back to look at it as we pass overhead. On the other side, we land. I find that I'm excited, much more so than I'd expected to be, about traveling somewhere new. Less jaded than I thought apparently.

I'm surprised - although we've just entered a new country, there don't seem to be any customs to pass through, no guards. We've landed outside of a building, and I understand there are some procedures to be gone through inside; but there isn't anyone around out here, no one to stop us from just wandering off into the country. I intend to go inside, I just took note of it as something odd. There's what seems to be a giant bell planted in the ground, although it's so covered with moss it's hard to tell what's underneath. As I and the other people from the 'carpet' walk around outside, I notice several stone statues. There's a plaque underneath one of them that I read - this is part of the entrance procedure. We're meant to pay our respects by bowing before each of these statues. I do so, pointing this out to one of the other people from the 'carpet' to give them a heads up. The first three statues I come to are divine figures and legendary heroes, I bow before each of them; but then the fourth statue I find is an odd creature in a mask, labeled as a nightmare called Home Eater. I don't see why I should have to bow before my own kind.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was a scene in which someone was causing plants to grow rapidly among some stone ruins in a cave, and someone else saying to them, horrified, "What have you done?"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Lost Boys, as David I'm watching Michael drop out of the tree and run away from the killing. This was not the plan. He was supposed to kill someone, not run away. I don't like giving the new ones too much time to think - just do it, make a clean break, then explain what's happened to them. It's easier that way.

Back in the cave with Star, I'm standing off to one side and watching her. She's standing in front of a bunch of pots for plants covering a table. Most of them look empty, although I know she's planted seeds in each of them, and she's been trying to do something with them. But the one she's holding her hands over now is growing right before our eyes, responding to her somehow, like magic. Whatever she's been trying to do, it's working on this one. The other boys come back then, they all exclaim over what Star's doing, gathering around the plant and looking as excited about this as she is - except Michael. He's hanging back and looking at Star with this expression - not exactly betrayal, but close; like he'd thought she was someone he could trust, and now he believes he was wrong about that.

A phrase: "Catherine, and the first dream of a 2000 year-"

There had been a queen long ago named some variation on Selene - I admired her, and I've been looking after all the generations of her descendants ever since. In a few rare circumstances I'll even take one of her descendants in and raise them myself. Some resemble her a great deal, others don't - I think about bloodlines. Now one of her descendants is in love with me, and she's upset that I've told her I would be happy with a platonic relationship or otherwise, leaving the decision entirely up to her - she wants me to feel more strongly about it. She says if I would be happy with a platonic relationship, I can't really care about her. But I've been a presence and an influence in her life since she was born, and I foresaw this moment before she was born - I've had too much influence. I want to influence her as little as possible in this at least. It has to be entirely her decision.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've had too much to drink, and I'm making my way back to my hotel room with some woman, past the now-abandoned maypoles in the lobby, litter from the party on the floor. My vision's blurry, and I have this mental monologue about how I must be getting old if the drink's messing with my vision like this. She pushes me onto the bed, and my vision blurs more - through that blurred vision, her hair's much longer now. Also she has wings, white feathers. Fuck, I know this demon. There goes my night. She sits on the edge of the bed and tells me she wants what I promised her on the night I abandoned my child. I have a memory of taking him (? I think it was a him) to a border of some kind and making him cross, so that he'd be safely out of my reach. The demon's crawled onto the bed now, and when I tell her she's out of luck, the thing we got that night is already gone, she phases her hands through my chest, squeezes and twists something inside that shouldn't be squeezed or twisted.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Setting's a fantasy version of ancient China, a king in his bedroom talking to a priestess all in white via a vision in a mirror. He was telling her about people who will be coming her way, intending to use a sacred object in her care. But she's saying that what they want isn't possible - they've misunderstood its purpose. The portal it opens can't be used to take them to the divine realms. She says, "(something) and onyx must not overlap."

I'm walking along a hall filled with exhibits - first, fragments of stones covered with hieroglyphics; then statues of Dumuzi; then a small section filled with art based on myths from various old African and Middle Eastern cultures, done by artists from the current African and Middle Eastern cultures - a reclaiming sort of thing. A painting of Eve holds my attention. Here I meet a very influential man and a woman who he has some claim on, but who seems mentally elsewhere - she speaks only nonsense. I feel protective of her, and I follow her out to a field where she gathers flowers and speaks nonsense at me for a while, but eventually that influential man and his followers come outside and she has to return. She hands me the flowers she's gathered and indicates I should eat them. Heather, foxglove, peony and violet. I put down a plank for her to walk across to return to him, and she hands me the traditional few coins for her passage.

A scene involving statues who came to life ends with a man speculating about whether it's possible for something carved in stone to change its role. He thinks it's possible, within limits. He speaks in a manner that's difficult for the people around him to understand - they say he speaks in riddles, but that's not intentional.

As I'm listening to him speak, the scene transitions; I'm in a dark stone room, listening to someone else speak to himself. I've lost track of what he was actually talking about, too busy focusing on his mannerisms and speech patterns, because I/Rumpelstiltskin recognize this scene - this is the man who I'll steal some of my more showy mannerisms and speech patterns from. Eventually he says a phrase that he uses very often, and recognizing it, I join in with him word for word. I've got his tone down very well, though my voice echoes, an effect of the spell I'm using to stay hidden - helps distort the location. He startles when he hears me, and I say, "Chilling, isn't it?" The similarity in our voices, I mean.

He looks around to try to find me, unsuccessfully, but he looks deeply unimpressed. "Expressing affection?" he asks.

"Precisely. But as an aside-" I drop the spell and step into the light as I speak.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Me and Jules are meeting as strangers - a man led us down to a room displaying various things that were important to each of us in the past. He wants us to go over our own displays to make sure there's nothing that needs to be changed. When we take a break, however, I wander over to some of the objects that are on the wall. There's a statue of a golden lion - something Jules made. He explains that it was based on an ancient model, but it's difficult when you can't be exactly sure of the symbolism each detail had to that ancient culture. I sympathize - I'd once studied the original pair of lion statues he based this one off of.

After several scenes on the streets of New York, I wander off into some hills, go lucid, and start to fly. Once I gain some altitude, I come across a river with several boats making their way downstream. I'm aware that if I follow the river downstream, it'll lead me back into the city; upstream, elsewhere. I'm torn, but then a large boat on the river draws my attention. Marie Antoinette's leaning on the railing, drinking an immense glass of pink champagne, and generally looking very inviting. I land on the boat and we go inside. Unfortunately, although I hear her meaning instead of her actual words, she complains that she can't understand what I'm saying - she's hearing the actual English words. I have to deliberately switch to speaking French - she can understand me well enough now, but my vocabulary's limited. I join her husband at a buffet table where he explains the various delicacies to me - they all sound fascinating, though I'm not eating. I leave him to go remove my overcoat; I meet a handsome guest and we enjoy some extremely unsubtle flirting. Eventually he leaves to rejoin his boyfriend, and as I'm admiring the pair of them I have a false awakening.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a witch sorting through various moments of time from her past. The first one she selects isn't the one she's looking for - it's the moment when she was taken to the castle, associated with a sense of pain, before she became a witch. She puts that moment back.

The second moment she selects - her daughter's choice between death or banishment. I think of Sleeping Beauty, converting a curse into something that's still a curse, but survivable. The daughter herself would have chosen death - young romantic type, I think of Romeo and Juliet - but her mother the witch says, "I gave him the terms quickly." By him, she means me/Rumpelstiltskin. She struck a deal with me to get her daughter away safely, before the daughter could choose a 'noble' death. The scene changes - I'm standing in the shadows at the very edge of a forest, looking at the castle on the hill in the distance. Despite the various fairy tale references in this scene, this castle's no fairy tale confection; it's a squat, practical thing. The daughter was somewhere inside at this moment in time.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After uncovering a secret lab leaking some kind of contamination that was killing the rats in the neighboring building, and making a quick escape out a second floor window and over a series of rooftops, I've wound up coincidentally coming across a scientist from that same lab and having a civil conversation on the subject of traveling through portals. We passed through one without her realizing it, and I'm baffled as to how she could not have noticed, but also baffled as to how to explain that moment of transition to her - I compare it to a change in air pressure, something you feel rather than something visible that you can point to.

She's excited about having found someone to talk to about this, someone who's used to traveling between worlds, and she asks me a variety of questions. But her expectations are so wildly different from my experiences that we're having trouble communicating - she seems to have a worldview straight out of Lovecraft. She asks me first about Old Ones, and I had no idea what she was talking about - the ancient beings that created the world, she explains. She describes them very specifically. That's something I've never come across, sorry. So then she asks about some other creature I've never heard of, and this one she explains as the demon lords that currently run the world now that the Old Ones are gone. This is hilarious. Again, sorry, no - if there are any demon lords running the world, I have yet to meet them. I start wondering if this story is actually a misinterpretation of some of my own past actions.

Recent dreams included a brief appearance from Bai Suzhen, and some good scenery - a trek along a lake covered in snow, watching fireworks in an amusement park.

Today's:

Sometime in the 1700s. Two women talking, one sitting in a chair, the other kneeling in front of her and holding her hands. The walls seem covered in gold and mirrors, with double doors in glass and a row of large windows opening onto the hallway. The windows shatter when I walk down the hall towards the doors - I'd only meant for the doors themselves to break. A cautionary sign. The woman who'd been in the chair is standing when I walk through the space where the doors used to be, shielding the other woman. She calls me Conte.

Two kids, a girl and a boy, are playing a video game. The boy's character has just hit something in the throat with a lead pipe, and the boy has an odd sensation of experiencing the same thing - not pain, more like a memory of someone hitting him just like that, in the throat and then in the side. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking that's a pity - even after we finally managed to create a peaceful timeline, the deaths from the other timelines are still affecting them.

Me and a few others have been poking around this seemingly abandoned house, and I have a suspicion that I'm getting more and more certain of as we explore. I finally voice it: this is my house, or rather, this world's version of me; a female version apparently. I'm reasonably certain we can use this as a way to connect between the worlds, since neither version of me is in our original world right now. We'll test it by passing through some random object - I pick up what looks like a game piece, a notched wooden peg painted green. I'll go to sleep with it in my pocket, and it should pass over to her side while I'm asleep.

Time skip. One of the people I'm traveling with - earnest young blonde man, round glasses, dressed in robes that remind me of the Magician's - is setting up what looks like a summoning circle, directing the others. He fills me in on what happened while I was unconscious this time around: the people in the other world were able to deliver the third of the necessary artifacts to us. It goes unsaid, but the important part was less the specific artifact and more the fact that it was an object that had passed between worlds, though they also have to represent specific elements. We're going to use the artifacts to open up a portal we can all get through. I'm vaguely annoyed about having such a one-sided view of things, only being able to see the events unfolding in this one world, getting half the story; but it can't be helped, I have to be asleep for any communication between worlds to occur.

Recent dreams included an appearance from Inanna and Dumuzi.

Today's:

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

"This is Australia," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

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

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

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

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

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

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