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."
A man - or rather something that can look like a man - is a guest in this old couple's home, and he's just won some kind of friendly contest between them. As he's about to leave, the wife tells her husband to go fetch something in particular from the attic, something to give to the guest as a sort of trophy for winning that contest. The husband produces a scarf that he believes has several hairs from a certain genius musician woven into it. It was given to him in Paris long ago in recognition of something, and it's very precious to him, so it's a worthy gift. The guest takes the scarf but sees that the hairs woven into it actually come from a cat. The wife was aware of this. By forcing him to accept this bogus gift, she's tilted the contest in their favor in the end. The guest acknowledges that it's her win, without letting the husband know. As the guest leaves, he's thinking about the rematch they'll have when he returns to this place in 83 years. The people he'll be having a rematch with are that couple's descendants, but he doesn't understand the difference between a person's descendants and the person themself.
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