Visions in the Dark

I am Rosso the Crimson and I am in some sort of army. For some reason a small group of soldiers including Shelke Rui, Vincent Valentine and I, defect and flee from the main army, which is situated in a sparse and barren, temperate forest. The rest of the soldiers in our group seem to be young adults and children.

Vincent and I have the responsibility to lead the children away from that place but our ideas and ways of doing things are often at odds and we fall into verbal conflict, though most of the time I conceed to Vincent's way of doing things. I am kind of annoyed at first, but ultimately trust that he will not lead us astray. As we leave the main camp, and out of the forest, it begins to snow and our first night is tryng to find shelter where we can sleep. There are several large gaps underneath logs or holes in the ground large enough for humans to crawl into, but Vincent says to stay away from them because dangerous wild animals, like bears and foxes, might live there.

We crest a hill and come across a children's playground where someone has thrown a blue tarp over some of the equipment, and while we could all easily fit under it, Vincent insists that we are not far enough away from the main army yet and we must continue. At this point in the dream, Vincent suddenly disappears and in his place is my brother Ryan.

We do not have to walk far to discover that we are on an island or something and must turn back. We return to the playground and I lay down on the ground to sleep, with Shelke beside me, and hope the man who I still expect to be Vincent to lay down on my other side. Instead the man lays down on the other side of Shelke and I am shocked and angry to see that it is Ryan not Vincent.

Despite being very tired I refuse to sleep and insist that Shelke switches spots with me because I am afraid that Ryan is going to sexually molest her. One of the other children soldiers cannot sleep and wanders around and finds a radio which he immediately turns on very loudly. I want the young boy to turn the radio off because I think it will give our position away but Ryan says it is fine and mocks my obvious apprehension. I convince the boy to turn the music down and everyone goes to sleep eventually, except for me.

Suddenly I sit up because I have an overwhelming urge to find Vincent, without whom I do not feel secure. I walk around the playground area and see that while it is still cold, most of the snow has disappeared. I turn off the radio as I pass it by. All of the defected soldiers except for Shelke and Ryan follow me.

One little girl freaks out because there is a tiny brown snake in the sand. I pick it up and throw it as far away as I can but quickly find another, and another and then many more. There is a reddish brown snake with a yellow rattle on its tail near the playground and the children flee because I positively identify it as a rattlesnake. Suddenly all of the snakes I can see are of the poisionous variety and as I walk back to my sleeping bag I am bitten several times, though I do not seem immediately affected by the poison, which feels hot and firely, almost electrical, coursing through my veins.

I cannot wake Shelke and since I refused to leave her there I lay back down on my roll to sleep. More and more snakes appear, each is bigger than the last and they are increasingly a variety of bright colours. Soon there are so many of them that I cannot move without touching several of them and they turn and bite me, again with that fiery, electrical feeling shooting through my body. I feel myself becoming increasingly weak and disoriented, but I do not know if it is because I am exhausted or because of the poison.

I sit up and notice that Shelke and Ryan are gone. Still hoping for Vincent to return I cry out to him to save me. When Ryan appears instead I am very upset, still wanting/expecting Vincent, and fall silent in anger and frustration. I sit crosslegged and completely still and the hundreds of snakes surround me and almost bury me in their mass and I find that I would rather be crushed or poisioned to death (though at this point I notice they have stopped biting me) by the snakes than to have Ryan come near me or save me, the very thought of which makes me feel sick.

The last image of the dream is looking at the mass of snakes in my lap and taking note of a rather large, bright red one with intricate oriental inspired patterns down its back that are coloured a bright yellow or gold.