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I hop on a bus with a duffel bag and a backpack, headed out to Halifax. I arrive at the hostel. There's a book sale in one of the rooms. I gravitate toward the back corner and recognize the cover for a Sherlock Holmes collection. I open it up, pleasantly surprised to find the book full of illustrations. I head over to another corner by the windows and flip through a few children's books for reference. The illustrations in every book are watercolour and ink or acrylic and ink. They have a grainy, spooky tone to them and some of the watercolour scenes are brilliant. I pick out a few and head to cash.

"You've got two books there?"

I glance down at the pile in my arms. "More than that," I say.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm charging you for five, then. Your total is $4.25."

I hand her a five dollar bill and get three quarters back. Looking at the pile again, I realize that there's actually six books, but one is only a few torn out pages. Fair enough, I decide. I head back to my room to pack.

I'm looking at a shelf full of food and wondering when I found the time to buy all of this. I pack it away (bread goes squish) along with the books. It's a perfect fit, but I'm going to be annoyed travelling with all this luggage.

Chel, a girl who was a grade above me in high school, arrives as I'm leaving. We have an excited conversation involving the odds of meeting up on the other side of the country.

I decide to stop in Quickton before heading to Vancouver. For a break in a long goddamn bus ride, if nothing else. The bus station by the Westin is suddenly a part of Ixburg.

***

In Quickton, grocery shopping. Sprained left leg, hobbling along, wondering where my crutches went. I limp along on my left ankle after I get tired of hopping. It hurts, but it could be worse. I talk to my late grandma.

***

Still in Quickton, I'm on trial as a witch. The woman accusing me is a made up character who, apparently, went to high school with me. I spend most of the trial resisting the urge to burn her alive via dream-powers. Apparently that wouldn't help my case much.

I'm defending myself; no lawyers allowed. I catch the woman in the middle of a lie and ruthlessly pounce on it, drawing out answers that prove she wasn't where she said she was. Something about flowers that are yellow and in a pot. Daisies, probably.

I'm not sure if my argument's had any effect on the jury yet, so when the Judge asks me about the green lightsaber they have in custody, I immediately reply, "My lightsabers aren't green." I consider summoning my dual sabers to the courtroom, but again, supernatural powers are not what anyone needs to see right now.

I go into a tangent, wondering what my colour actually is. Purple is tempting, and I've always been partial to red and blue, but orange is pretty close and I'm not genuinely Sith-like (far too dogmatic for me). I don't really like orange much, though. I swing a couple orange sabers around in the hallway just to try them out.

I'm sitting back in my box with my arch-nemesis a couple places down, wondering if the trial can adjourn for the day. It's almost five and I'm bored.

We all go home for the night. I've been released into the custody of my parents, so I'm walking into a bigger version of their house, kicking off my shoes as I go. I'm picking up a piece of paper that might be an assassination contract a la Assassin's Creed. Unfortunately, without some serious creativity, I won't be able to collect on it. I'm supposed to stay here, after all...

Witch Trials. Scare Factor: 2. Reaction: I think I was completely guilty of everything I was accused of.[/QUOTE]

1. This one was long and detailed, covering several days of dream-time, with some on-the-ground action, some movie-screen views of other characters, and even some back-story. It all took place in the little town in PA where I grew up. It started with the story of Altrip Jones, a man from my town who went out and made a fortune in the city, then came back and built this weird monument of a public building, with huge, white marble gargoyles jutting from the corners. It was some kind of culture/community center. So I saw this as if in a documentary, then I was back in my hometown, but a weirdly prosperous version where this guy had infused all this money into it.

2. I'm attending a funeral in my hometown, and it's a big family gathering, but it's a dream family, not my real family, and pretty much a dream-town, too. Mostly I'm interacting with two little brothers who have never met me before, because I've been away that long, and I"m working to protect my little uncle (real person) from professional assassins, including a 40-something Gene Hackman. These guys really like to rapel down buildings. I'm not resisting them violently, just tracking their movements and evading them.

3. At some point, I'm taking a walk with some dude I don't know, and he lights up a j. We turn a corner and here we are at a big, sandy beach (nothing like this in my real town). We pass it around and a few people join us, then security comes sniffing around, so I have to evade them and end up alone way down the beach. I start running back toward the crowd (now leaving--it's night-time, and they're closing down the beach), then realize it would be much faster to glide over the sand, then think "Well, why don't I just fly?" So I'm flying down the beach, and I stop and think, "Wait a sec, am I dreaming?" The dunes and everything look pretty real, but I do an RC (my first ever deliberate RC--thanks DV), which for me is kind of a karma-probe to see if objects around me have history and depth--dream objects are more transparent, have less presence than waking objects, even if visually identical. So anyway, I'm lucid, but everything stays pretty solid. I walk around and come to a pliant barrier where the beach just stops, but recalling some stuff from the forums, I try to dissolve or push through, and manage to get my hands through, like pushing through saran wrap. I didn't get to do much else before I woke up. Still, that's two LDs in a 10 days, after many months without any. Whoop!