The Fourth Factor

In a forested area by a wide, shallow river with a large group of people. I’m not sure exactly what’s supposed to be going on, but at some point, it looks as if there’s some kind of attack on us. People are gathering at a couple of large pavilions nearby, so I go there as well. It’s now dark out, lit only by a couple of large bonfires.

Someone is heading towards me. They lunge, and I see that they have a knife. Reflexes take over, and after a brief struggle I’m standing behind her, pinning her to the ground with the knife at her throat. I can see it’s a woman now - physically larger than I am, but younger, maybe early 20s, with sandy blonde wavy hair down to her shoulders. I really don’t want to do this. But if I let her go, will she just go and attack someone else? No. I don’t think she will. She looks terrified.

“Are you scared?” I ask her. She says yes. I let her go, and she runs off, past the groups of indeterminate fire-lit people. I continue towards the pavilions.

—

I’m moving into a new flat - possibly at the beginning of a new university semester. I look around at everything: there seems to be a main area, with kitchen, dining room, and a living room area in an open-floor arrangement, then a bedroom/office separate from that. Someone else, a woman, seems to be there with me. I’m thinking about how I want to arrange the furniture here - everything seems to have come with the space.

At some point, it looks like a new room has appeared, so we go in to check it out. This appears to be a dedicated bedroom, meaning I can make the other one into just a study space. Apparently, we can’t leave again until I’ve checked out this new space and made sure that everything is in order here. But even though I can’t find anything that looks off about it, I seem to have gotten hold of the wrong end of the lucidity stick or something because I can’t shake the feeling that new rooms aren’t supposed to appear out of nowhere, and I should not be taking this in stride. Possibly I’m also still a little on edge from the whole someone trying to kill me thing from earlier in the night. No matter how many times I check the room and find nothing wrong, I just can’t convince myself that everything is OK, and so the whole thing just keeps dragging on.

At some point, though, I wake up in the bed there from what feels like a long and deep sleep. No one else seems to be around. What ended up happening? I try to remember, but the impressions are too confused. Some other people were here at one point, I guess? And I feel as if I should at least remember falling asleep here if that was what happened, which I don’t.

I get up and go into the main area. Maybe now I can move that table somewhere else. I’m sure I’ll never use it for anything there if I have an actual study. But it’s such a weird shape - where else would I even put it?

I wake up.

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