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There's a girl walking up a narrow attic staircase that she very much doesn't want to go up. There's something that looks like a child at the base of the stairs, forcing her to go up and see 'mother.' 'Mother' is something that this girl has fed people to before, but she's never gone up the stairs herself. Now she's failed the pair somehow. Whatever's at the top of the stairs feels nightmarish enough that I decide I don't want to see this, and take just enough control to back out of the scene. There was some resistance, and it felt like a race against time, whether I could get out before the girl got to the top of the stairs.

I'm standing somewhere airy, white walkways, a few white walls, mostly open space. There are a few pages on the ground, a story I was reading, but I feel too on edge to focus on it. I put my back to a wall, that helps.

The Magician on a city street with a little girl. He's saying, "Countless thousands of worlds, or (something, along the lines of 'a few') worlds and those you know." She asks what he means, and he says nevermind, but he's talking about the price for what he's about to do for her; something's going to be lost. He doesn't want her to feel guilty over it, so he doesn't explain the details. He raises his staff and these gold shapes form in the air around them - flat, curved, with sharp points, something like a tribal tattoo come to life, I have vague associations with wings and clockwork (they do resemble stylized wings, but no clue what the clockwork association's from) - and then their surroundings seem to shatter, taking them somewhere 'between worlds.'

Memory gaps and vague fragments after that: those same two characters standing in front of images like holograms, representing people that little girl knew, but the images are fragmentary, like they've had pieces digitally erased, leaving a bit of hair or a corner of a dress hanging in midair, but never any faces. Something to do with the importance of the little girl remembering "Rose," but there's a trick to it - she knew someone who was called Rose, but who also used another name, and it's that other name she really has to remember. Four knights, two in red and two in blue, male and female, and the man in blue has some message to do with the kid's father and something about a doll.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm playing some kind of game based on Middle-earth - there's no sense of me physically playing a video game or the like, I seem to physically be there and it seems to be a real place, but I think of it as a game. At the moment I'm trading in some weapon and given a new selection to choose from. It's mostly swords and daggers. I choose a staff. This alters the way the game is played, although I hadn't realized it when I made that choice; it removes me from the fighting and instead allows me to travel freely, flying over the countryside, exploring the world, unlocking all the elven settlements that were otherwise hidden. I won't be able to continue the storyline this way, but it has its appeal.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A movie about robots, filmed in first person POV, full of scenes designed to make you feel sympathy for the robots, even while the robots themselves remind you that they're just tools and there's no need to feel concerned.

Belle and a newly-human, rather fragile-looking Rumpelstiltskin have been traveling somewhere and are now in some dimly-lit house where they're finally meeting with Rumpelstiltskin's son. (His personality's so different from Bae's that I hesitate to use the same name for this dream version.) Belle and the son talk while Rumpelstiltskin's sort of collapsed in a chair, Belle's next to him, the son's on the second floor and looking down at them over a railing; she seems suspicious of him. It seems they've met before, in a shared dream, and something that she saw in that dream is making her suspicious of him now. He warns her not to take shared dreams too literally, as other associations tend to leak in.

There's a set of boxes which, when arranged properly, will display a poem by Rumi; it's a game, a puzzle. Each box is engraved with a few lines, the trick is in figuring out the proper order, and there are hints, such as do not separate the loved ones, send the child to school, don't leave him to wander the shore with the mermaid and her knife. The last part is easy enough - one box ends with a line about water spirits, another box starts with a line about a child, I'll just be sure not to connect those two; but there are quite a few different lines that could be interpreted as 'loved ones.'

A woman is sending a message to her employers, as a result of which the building she's in will be locked down and everyone inside will be killed, including herself and her two assistants. Her assistants are artificially-created humans, and display no emotion, but I'm thinking that the loss of their lives is just as important as any other life.

A woman has just been teleported into a castle, somewhere very dangerous, by someone named Anna, and she's very annoyed about this. Although Anna isn't here, the woman yells about it anyway, on the assumption that Anna will be watching her with magic. It's not just the danger that's upset her; at any other time she would have killed to be able to get into this castle, but right now, she'd been in the middle of something urgent, and she really needs to get back to it, so she looks for the way out. A hooded figure appears and reveals a passage to her, a passage that seems to violate the laws of physics and which is filled with a seemingly endless line of graves, and he tries to speak to her, to guide her into that passage, but she ignores him - she's spotted the main doors. As she walks away from the graves and towards the exit, she passes a box with some marking on it that makes her think about dragons, thinking of them as the product of elemental spirits that gathered together and festered.

There's a crowd of people leaving a castle - although the castle looks historical/fantasy-ish, the clothes the people are wearing are futuristic, as is the glass-enclosed walkway they're leaving through. A woman who works for the castle as a kind of hostess is escorting a small group of people at the head of the crowd, congratulating them for winning a spot on some vessel, and then she says to the rest of the people following them, "Good luck in the race!" By which she means - these people are following the winners because they intend to take their spots by force, and the moment they're beyond the castle's protection it'll be every man for himself.

At the end of the glass walkway, the hostess leaves them, and the people pass through some barrier. The people in the walkway had seemed, not necessarily good-looking, but like people who put a lot of effort into their appearance: well-dressed, well-groomed. Once they pass through the barrier, this changes: they're naked, they look like they haven't bathed or shaved in months, more fat, less muscle. The castle was a kind of retreat, but everything it provided was an illusion; now that they've left, the illusions disappear. The people's reactions vary - most of them are shocked, but there's an old man who seems to have expected this with a sort of I-told-you-so attitude about it. There's a teenage boy with a bad knee who's particularly horrified, as he'd believed his knee had been fixed by the castle; he's complaining to his parents that they might as well have stayed home, at least at home they had servants. The castle had its guests doing a variety of chores, citing the spiritual benefits; now it's clear that was a scam.

A woman's saying, "It must not have been a good reality for Vanessa and Vilya." 'Vanessa' is an alternate version of herself. As she's speaking, I see the two people she's talking about, sitting before a very large fireplace. Vilya suddenly leaps up, as if he's just been hit by some stroke of inspiration, and he rushes to a table set up with a variety of alchemical instruments.

Three people in an underground room, grey stone walls lined with bookshelves. A woman and an old man who she's close to, and a young-looking man who made some kind of deal with them - I'm a disembodied observer, but I recognize him from my most recent lucid dream, as the 'future version of myself' who doesn't actually resemble me at all and who looks more like he's from the past. They've barred the doors in the hopes of giving themselves a little more time before someone arrives to stop them - guards or police or military, something along those lines, they're expecting some specific group and they know it's just a matter of time. But they've come to this room to find something specific, and there are hundreds or thousands of books here and no obvious organization to them. The woman's saying "Wherever (something) it'll take us forever to find it." The young-looking man had been sitting down with his eyes closed; now he opens them. They're glowing yellow, which startles the woman. He says, "I have found it. He has used the Britannica articles-" He continues talking, but I've become distracted by curiosity about that locating technique he just used; I associate it with a search technique I'd used in yesterday's dream.

A newly-made vampire is sitting in a car parked in a garage early in the morning, and is refusing to get out of the car because he's afraid of the patches of sunlight in the garage, he's sure he won't be able to avoid touching them. He's a full-grown man, blonde, bearded, looks Scandinavian in ancestry. The driver, his maker, a dark-haired woman, is calling him a big baby and telling him he'll just have to take his chances.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

IRL friend S. is working with a theater company connected to a shop, which stocks videos of their shows although those videos are out of the way and most customers don't realize the shop and the theater company are connected. They're talking about having to close down (not sure if this refers to the theater company or the shop or both).

A traveling woman reporter is commenting on some serial killer with an MO related to books, and observing that his trail coincidentally matches up with her travel patterns, she's joking about being suspected herself.

A man and his daughter in a forest, the man had some oath with a bird, representative of the forest, and now there's a deer leg wrapped in parcel paper lying on the ground by their camp, violating that oath. He didn't kill or butcher the deer, that was someone else, but the parcel paper was his, borrowed, and this is going to lead to misunderstanding and enmity between him and the bird. The man and his daughter are leaving, she's objecting because it's not their fault but he insists that they don't argue, just go.

I'm in my IRL mother's home, and ranting to her about that previous scene, which is now thought of as a Bible story. I'm opposed to its message - the final moral and point of the story is different, but this scene here, designating man as something separate from nature, is something I'm deeply frustrated by and I don't care that it's not the focus, I consider it irresponsible storytelling.

My mother's deeply religious Christian IRL neighbor is visiting her with his two sons (the neighbor does have two sons IRL, but these two DCs bear no resemblance to them). Although he's not offended, he says that I should focus on the main message of the story instead. I had no intention of starting a religious debate and am happy to let the subject drop. His youngest son, on the other hand, has gotten angry and wants to prove the point to me. I find fanaticism attractive on him. I'm aware he's both attracted to and deeply uncomfortable with me, thoughts about queer issues and gender issues on my mind. He comes to the window where I've been standing and lifts a rock outside and throws it into a tree. (With his mind, apparently - there was some awareness that this was dream logic, and that if we'd been outside he would have just used his hands.)

The conversation moves on to safer topics but I pull him aside, ask him what that was meant to prove. We go outside so he can finish making his point. He leads me over to his father's yard and shows me a hedge covered in red berries concealing a small tunnel leading underground. He seems afraid, but he says he's determined to make me a believer. He's so worked up about this I don't have the heart to tell him I'm already a believer, just not his variety of believer - this isn't the atheism-vs-theism debate he thinks it is - but that's all right. I'm still thinking about queer/gender issues when I get into the tunnel ahead of him.

In the tunnel, I'm a girl (who, in the dream, I thought of as resembling the oldest Narnia girl - she doesn't particularly, but this scene reminds me of 80's fantasy movies in general) crawling on my hands and knees, while the boy with me is sitting on the grass outside, worrying. The dream 'camera' briefly switches to 3rd person, allowing me to see the boy, myself, and just around a bend in the tunnel, a door, open just a crack, showing a dimly lit room with a woman dancing inside, the Queen, and it's the inhumanly beautiful Queen I want to get a glimpse of, although the boy is convinced this is a bad idea. Back to 1st person, I reach the door, peer through and see an image as if the dream 'camera' has zoomed in, focused on the Queen's lips painted so dark they're nearly black, her throat, her decolletage, and an awareness of ornaments of frozen drops of water or tears, telling myself I must remember every detail of this.

There's either a false awakening or a partial-awakening where I'm lying in bed 'recording' this dream, only to realize that I'm not physically writing anything, after which I actually did wake up and 'continue' writing right where I'd 'left off', the part where the boy threw the rock.

3rd person following 3 people traveling through time, one woman and two men. One of the men, Billy, winds up being left behind, the other two have to abandon him in a place where he's "condemned by the powers to a life of battles." But they've just now encountered him again, as the 9th "killer" they have to face in a place of challenges, carrying a sword. A great deal of time has passed from his perspective and he's almost unrecognizable, cold and intimidating.

They've returned to their own time, in the hotel rooms they were in before all the time travel started. Due to timeline shenanigans, the woman runs into a 'past' version of Billy in the hall, a version who hasn't done any time traveling at all yet, smiling as usual.

The 'killer' version of Billy is talking about the souls left "there," abandoned by her. The other man who'd traveled with them questions that phrasing, 'souls' - "Are there really any souls in hell now?" Due to timeline shenanigans, is the implication - before Billy'd been abandoned, the two of them had a longstanding debate on what happens to the people in erased timelines, whether they still exist in any form. Billy's smiling, which is not a good thing, and saying they can finally conclude that debate.

Near Dark, back when Homer's actual age was close to his apparent age. He and Jesse are in a motel room with a guy who appears to be a friend - not like them, exactly, but not someone they intend to kill either. This guy's offering to teach Homer to play poker, and Homer says he already knows, but it's no fun because he has to give Jesse all the money he wins afterward.

(Woke up at 5:51 am, after going to bed at 4:30. Back to sleep.)

A young man has somehow traveled to another world, one populated almost entirely by vampires. They subsist off each other's subpar blood, donations are required and a vital part of the economy. Unaware of any of this, the guy from another world has walked into a store run by this world's equivalent of a friend of his, the magician who sent him here. She isn't a magician in this reality, and can't help him. It takes her a while to realize that he's human, they're so rare and unexpected, but she can smell his blood and when she figures it out, she has him in a trance before he realizes he's in danger. At that moment, her equivalent in his reality pulls him back to his own world - but the vampire follows him.

(Woke at 7:37. Back to sleep.)

A fragment of a scene involving Dracula, theater, and mythogenesis, using that term specifically.

A woman genetically engineered as a mate for a certain clone. The clone leads a double life, with a job and a wife who is unaware that he's anything other than a normal human, but he's also in close contact with the doctor who created both him and his 'brother', who he is somewhat obsessed with, and he suspects his genetically-engineered mate is secretly in love with that 'brother' - the brother is entirely unaware of any of this and believes himself a perfectly normal human, although the genetically engineered woman has recently appeared in his life and dropped some cryptic hints. The clone pulls the genetically engineered woman into his lap, which she tolerates, and demands that she tell him why she likes him, him specifically, "not the other one." She, with a charming accent I can't place, says it doesn't matter, and it's clear she's bored with his insecurity and instability.

(Woke at 9:40. Back to sleep.)

Three people whose lives are connected, although only one of them realizes it.

The first: A young man who recently beat cancer, legal guardian of his two younger sisters. One of them's been acting out in school recently and he's jokingly threatened her with calling in his biological mother, a woman who works with delinquents. But he is seriously wondering whether he should arrange for them to get together casually and talk - he doesn't mind her skipping classes but he's worried about what's going on in her mind.

The second: A teenage girl in a cancer ward, the same place where that man had been treated. Her death has been predicted to fall within the range of (the note said either Apr. or Aug., I couldn't tell which) 10-24. She has nightmares where this death is accompanied by a swarm of wasps. She doesn't fear death, but she hates wasps.

The third, and the one who is aware of the connection: A man who visits the hospital and watches the girl and the angel who lives there. The angel's voice can shatter glass, and it's going to kill this man someday - but it won't do anything until after that girl's death.

(Woke at 12:10.)

3rd person. A military camp at night, raining hard, ground's mostly mud, the dogs and eagles used for running messages are having a rough time of it - at which point the dream switches to 1st person. I'm standing outside the dream, watching it, complaining to a woman with me about the use of animal messengers. "These people can create magic doorways linking one place to another, why are they still using messengers? Why do they even have supply lines?" She tries to say it's probably just shorthand, but I'm not impressed by this excuse. It annoys me that magic is only being used for flashy combat techniques and such when it could be put to so much better logistic use, it's a complete waste of manpower.

The next ASOIAF book comes out, and I skim the first few chapters and find a pleasant surprise: another Melisandre POV chapter. I settle in to read.

3rd person, following a woman who works at a newsstand that former president Bush II used to walk past every day as part of his routine, a long time ago. Now he's here with a bandage around his head, blood showing through, looking dazed. This happens twice. Both times he's found and picked up by his own security, but the woman is thinking to herself he 'looks the way he did in 2004,' meaning on the verge of death. The second time this happens he nearly walks into traffic, looking as if this isn't something he wants to do but is unable to stop himself. Unable to think straight, his mind is following an old routine.

A woman took me back to her home and left me to sleep, and now I'm hiding behind a door and watching her tend to a crying man, seeming to comfort him. In actuality, the scarf she wears around her hair is soaked in tears; this is how the witch feeds.

(Woke up with comparisons to Circe on my mind for that last one. Back to sleep.)

3rd person following a couple who meet for lunch every day, sitting at the outdoor tables of a cafe in a major city. He's a writer, and she used to read his stories during her breaks and tell him what she thought at lunch, but with this most recent book she finds she's got less and less time for it and finds herself making excuses: "I had a few moments in class, but..." He dislikes that she seems to feel obligated to read it, and tries to tell her there's no reason she should be spending all her free time on his writing, but when he says this out loud it just sounds like they're drifting apart. He gives her a peck on the cheek as they stand up from the table, and as he leaves he passes two women bending their heads together for a kiss.

I'm running some kind of transdimensional superhero team (though everyone here's wearing suits and ties, thank god, or casual clothes in Banner's case; no spandex in sight), and we've just encountered this reality's version of Superman, a version who grew up not on Earth but as the only living creature on a dead planet, raised by recordings, never understanding what had happened to everybody else.