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As Louis, being seen as a vampire by someone who I didn't want to see that, fleeing the scene, and Lestat finding this much more funny than I think is appropriate.

Discussing a military operation, looking at a map of what is essentially much of India and Southeast Asia, although at this point in time - meant to be 6th or 7th century or so - the countries and their borders are significantly different than in the present; we're primarily discussing a trade route at the moment, but I've also been having a disagreement with the man in charge about our manpower. While discussing the trade route, we receive word of 500 archers spotted approaching from the north, in addition to the army we're already facing. I am significantly less confident about our ability to handle this than the boss is.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

As some manner of religious authority, I'm performing a ritual to help a group of people, a sort of blessing or summoning, making something sacred. At the start of the ritual I have to offer up whatever spiritual virtue I possess as a sacrifice; this will leave me vulnerable until the ritual's complete, so I'm relying on the two people who asked for my help to accompany me. With the offering made, we step through a portal.

This takes us to a dark and dusty room, a place I'm familiar with. I summon light into my hands, with an effect much like a dim flashlight. In the middle of the floor there's a large trunk full of false panels, something a stage magician might use; at the moment it's lying open so that all its tricks are clearly visible to anyone who might pass through. I didn't leave it like that. There are a few objects on the shelves of the room that weren't here the last time, indicating that someone other than me has indeed been using this place. This is something to worry about. I close the trunk properly, and we continue.

A brief memory gap - after the dark room, we came out into a field at night with a river off to our right, and what we did here I can't remember; but then we came to the cliff at the opposite side of the field, and the view here was so fantastic that I briefly went fully lucid to enjoy it. I'm looking down on an immense lake so still that I can see stars reflected here and there. In the far distance, there's an immense grey statue of a falcon submerged in the lake so that only its head is above the water - but that small part of the statue above the water is at least the height of a two or three story building.

Continuing the storyline, this is certainly the appropriate place to perform a sacred ritual, so I begin a prayer - something about the lake filling with stars. But before I get very far, that river off to our right rises in a flood. The two people with me are afraid, but I'm thinking this is convenient - we'll just ride that water down to the lake.

The river sweeps us over the cliff, which is great fun, and when I sink under the water of the lake I can see a group of hammerhead sharks swimming far below. They don't seem to care about us. Surfacing, although we've all separated, we're all making our separate ways toward that falcon statue.

Along the way, however, I bump into a seal; it considers me and then swims on. And then into a shark; the same happens again. And another shark, and this one seems more interested in my presence; and another that I have to physically shove away; and so on; I'm not concerned about my safety - though I am worried about the other two - but I become so busy fending off sharks that I can't continue to the statue.

Hellblazer, I/Constantine had been working with this teenage girl in the previous scene; now she's gone alone to a hospital to see her kid brother. He's in a ward with a lot of beds, and he's kneeling up on the end of his bed to talk to her. He's saying, "Is it possible that Grace is only after Constantine?" Grace is a surname - the Grace in question is a middle-aged man. And when the kid says Constantine, 'uncle' is implied. "Because he's not exactly a... us anymore." 'Us' meaning a person, a human being. I'd made one deal too many. Which has made it possible for me to be summoned up and controlled, used as a tool - that's what they suspect Grace is after.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After an unsuccessful night looking for blood, I have to rely on Elsa, a sort of servant. Last resort. We use transfusion tubes to draw out the blood, to avoid any unwanted side effects on her, and I alter her mind to make it pleasant for her. I compliment her on the quality, she's changed her diet since the last time we had to do this. I'm speaking German-accented English.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm climbing up a stairwell, climbing up through years. As I pass the platform that will lead to the 1990s, getting close to home, I hear voices up ahead. I come across a man and a woman leaning against the wall; the woman's saying, "No, it's 203. They changed the calendar - finally. I was starting to lose track."

Further up, another group having a conversation, talking about the cracks in the walls. A woman's saying, "They're glitching so bad a man could get in."

I reach my door, present day. But just beside my door, the cracks in the walls are so severe that they've formed a sort of second door - I think I could walk right through. The black sort of skittering motion that appears in all the cracks is more visible here. But the scene just before I entered the stairwell had involved accidentally intruding in a place where I shouldn't be, disrespectfully, and trying to make up for that. I decide against stepping through the cracks. I take the door to the present day.

I step out into what's meant to be an apartment where I live, distorted in a sort of cartoonish representation of hallucination, like you might see in an old music video; it seems to be underwater. Then my field of vision pulls back - now I'm looking at a screen containing an image of this room. It's labeled as a game preview. I'm aware that if I'd stepped through the cracks, the scene still wouldn't have lasted for much longer, since this is only a preview - but that's where the real storyline would begin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've taken my clockwork heart out of my chest to work on it. I have a mental association with the Snow Queen. I'm in my workshop, full of various clockwork devices, and I'm carrying on a conversation with my apprentice. The image changes to show the subject of our conversation - a bird whose flight over the desert is taking it over a pair of dark horses at the moment. I'm saying, "It doesn't matter if the bird is clockwork or flesh and blood." Either way, it'll fly the same repetitive pattern every year.

I'm flying over a river, and although I don't remember what I was flying on, in effect it's essentially a flying carpet - a small, flat surface carrying several people. Someone else is 'driving' it, I'm just along for the ride. We're taken over a waterfall, with several clouds beneath us, and among the clouds I see a huge gate hanging in the air, supported by pillars on either end. It turns out to be the first in a series of three gates, the entrance to a country - the first is very modern, with images like a billboard; the second somewhat less modern; and the third is very old and very beautiful, more like a decorative lattice made of stone and covered in moss, as tall as maybe a three-story building. I turn back to look at it as we pass overhead. On the other side, we land. I find that I'm excited, much more so than I'd expected to be, about traveling somewhere new. Less jaded than I thought apparently.

I'm surprised - although we've just entered a new country, there don't seem to be any customs to pass through, no guards. We've landed outside of a building, and I understand there are some procedures to be gone through inside; but there isn't anyone around out here, no one to stop us from just wandering off into the country. I intend to go inside, I just took note of it as something odd. There's what seems to be a giant bell planted in the ground, although it's so covered with moss it's hard to tell what's underneath. As I and the other people from the 'carpet' walk around outside, I notice several stone statues. There's a plaque underneath one of them that I read - this is part of the entrance procedure. We're meant to pay our respects by bowing before each of these statues. I do so, pointing this out to one of the other people from the 'carpet' to give them a heads up. The first three statues I come to are divine figures and legendary heroes, I bow before each of them; but then the fourth statue I find is an odd creature in a mask, labeled as a nightmare called Home Eater. I don't see why I should have to bow before my own kind.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was a scene in which someone was causing plants to grow rapidly among some stone ruins in a cave, and someone else saying to them, horrified, "What have you done?"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Lost Boys, as David I'm watching Michael drop out of the tree and run away from the killing. This was not the plan. He was supposed to kill someone, not run away. I don't like giving the new ones too much time to think - just do it, make a clean break, then explain what's happened to them. It's easier that way.

Back in the cave with Star, I'm standing off to one side and watching her. She's standing in front of a bunch of pots for plants covering a table. Most of them look empty, although I know she's planted seeds in each of them, and she's been trying to do something with them. But the one she's holding her hands over now is growing right before our eyes, responding to her somehow, like magic. Whatever she's been trying to do, it's working on this one. The other boys come back then, they all exclaim over what Star's doing, gathering around the plant and looking as excited about this as she is - except Michael. He's hanging back and looking at Star with this expression - not exactly betrayal, but close; like he'd thought she was someone he could trust, and now he believes he was wrong about that.

Yesterday's dreams included using abandoned tunnels running beneath a lake as a hiding place to sleep in during the day. There's one place that leads to a glass dome where you can look up and see the lake above you.

Today's: I'm trying to prevent some disaster, and I'm running out of time. At the moment I'm standing on a rooftop, watching several people in a field far below us. Along with me there's two people, a woman who I think of as my partner - she's on the other side of the roof at the moment, busy with her own efforts - and then this man. He has the power to make anything he says come true, but for his own safety and everyone else's, I made him forget about this power. This is an emergency. I force him to remember, and then I have him use that power to say that there's an earthquake. We all hold onto the roof and watch a crack open up in the field where those people are. The ground's still shaking, the people are scattering, but I don't think this will be enough. We should just bury this place beneath the sea, that ought to do it.

The place is covered in white mist now, blocking out everything below the roof we're standing on, and it's quiet, no more sounds of people below us. I'm walking back toward my partner on the other side of the roof, and I believe submerging this place and all the people in it has managed to avert the disaster. But then this dark spire rises up out of the fog directly in front of me, and keeps rising up into the sky.

It's this huge, gothic tower, a single immense spire composed of smaller ones, spire upon spire upon spire, all jagged edges. I think of a cathedral, but there's no religious imagery, just a sense of awe and horror; I think of a clock tower, but there's no face. It keeps rising higher and higher, I can no longer see the top of it. Flooding this place was a wasted effort.

And as I hang onto the edge of the roof and watch the spire rise, I hear an old man's voice in my head. "Here to keep your ledge, little boy, who once rared-"

My brother's killed and drained a number of people in some public building in the desert, a rest stop or similar, but he has no memory of doing so. In fact when he saw the bodies he assumed they were my work - which would normally be a reasonable assumption, but since it's not true in this case, and since it seems there's something wrong with him, we've been having a very frustrating conversation. We left in a hurry and now he's assuring me that there's no need for me to make excuses, he's always understood that occasional lapses in self-control are an unavoidable part of my nature, none of them blame me for it. Thanks for that note, but that's really not the issue here.

Meanwhile, back in that building in the desert, my brother's leftovers have woken up and managed to find their way outside. They're huddled together, not really aware of their surroundings, barely able to move - more like zombies really. Torn clothes, bloodstains, visibly dead. There was a woman just outside the building when they found their way out the door, and the one in front managed to grab her and drink her despite her struggles, and once he's had his fill he passes her back over his head, one-handed, to the next.

He walks into the desert, away from the little horde, looking slightly more aware now, and he walks straight up to the mangled body of another vampire lying in the dirt, trying to pull himself together and looking rather pitiful. This one actually is my work. Leftover asks mangled body what he (leftover) is. Mangled body informs him he's a vampire.

The leftover says, "I'm a what? Oh, fuck." Utter disgust at the ridiculousness of this. Disembodied, I'm thinking how much I love the modern reaction.

I've hidden a human girl in my room, and I'm trying to distract my "sister" so the human will have a chance to escape. It's not difficult - we don't get along at all, so it's easy to pick a fight. We both look and act like and possibly really are teenagers. I walk away from her, giving the impression that I want her to leave me alone, knowing that's the easiest way to make sure she'll follow me. Looking for a drink, I walk into a room where my "sister's" left a human girl lying semi-conscious on the floor. I hate her parties - I hate living here in general; it's like living in a frat house. That's part of why I want to help that human escape - I know she's been investigating us but I don't care, I really, really dislike these people. I haven't been here long, maybe a week, and I'm hoping my "father" will decide to move again soon. I pick up a nearly-empty bottle, take a drink - alcohol. I spit it out and pick up another bottle. I ask the semi-conscious girl, hey, is this my sister's drink? She doesn't answer me, and I wasn't really expecting her to. I drink it anyway. Yes, this one's my "sister's." I hate the taste of bottled blood, but it's what I'm used to. Keeping the bottle, I walk outside.

The yard out back is huge, and ends in a fence with barbed and electric wires running along the top. As I'm walking along the edge of that fence, I come across a padlocked gate. It opens directly onto a dirt road, and on the other side of the road there's another gate - no locks on this one - opening onto a trail leading into the woods. There's something intensely familiar about this - it bothers me. I have the feeling I've seen this a long time ago, like some childhood memory. I say something about this to my "sister," but she doesn't see why that would bother me. As I'm trying to explain the odd feeling, I'm distracted by a sound from the other side of the fence, way off to our right.

On the side of the fence opening directly onto the woods, there's two people who look like hikers trying to climb the fence and look inside. They're talking to each other cheerfully, wondering what they've come across and what the barbed wire's for - to keep something out or in? It's to keep you out, I tell him as I lean over the wires, grab him and smash his head against the wooden part of the fence. It's to keep them out for their own protection, otherwise this happens. My "sister" has taken the woman he was with. Then I hear voices from the woods - they weren't alone. While my "sister's" still busy with hers, I jump over the fence and run down the other three hikers. I find myself humming as I do so - when I've finished, I realize I'm thinking of the tune as an old drinking song from the 1800s. That's odd - I wasn't alive then, where do I know that song from? I have a vague impression of enjoying myself while singing that song in a situation much like this. I look at the hiker I'm still holding, and I think, just a little while ago I was having a conversation with someone killing a rabbit, and I'd said that it wasn't the death I objected to, it was the attitude behind it, the lack of respect. What a hypocrite I am.

I was in a small shop when blood dripping from overhead stained the white shirt I was wearing. I looked up and I could see small circles of blood pooling and dripping down from from the ceiling in two separate places. Where could it be coming from? The explanation that seemed most likely was that the vampires were leaving their victims on the roof again. If so, I was going to be very annoyed, because sometimes it was days before anyone found them and by then they were going bad. I wondered if I should go up and check, but remembered that there was somewhere I needed to be shortly so I would have to hurry home to shower and change my shirt.

Back home, I had sufficient awareness to notice that the place looked unfamiliar (like most of my dream places, it resembled nowhere I've been in RL), but then I remembered that we had just moved here. I walked around admiring the new house: it was much more spacious than the last one, and had great atmosphere. For instance, in my room there were places where tree roots were growing down over the wall, creating beautiful lattice patterns and giving the room a pleasant rustic feel. I remembered my last landlord was always paranoid about tree roots growing near the house, but in this case their growth had been shaped in such a way that they formed a wonderful symbiosis with the architecture. There was a shallow pond my room too, unless I'm remembering a different room, and some kind of fish or crustaceans living in the pond.

I found my mother in the yard just behind the house. She was engaged in some kind of task, using a tree stump as a base to scrub the blue pigment off of some pieces of paper (as far as I could make out) and wanted me to come help. I also noticed a little pool or pond in the backyard that I thought I should take a closer look at when I had more time. But it was already 11am and I needed to be at my next engagement by 11:30, which barely left me time to take a shower. My brother came out to help my mom instead, so I excused myself and went back inside the house.

I passed a room that was entirely filled with an inground swimming pool, leaving just enough floorspace to walk around the edges. I gazed down into the water and was surprised how deep it was. I think my dad was in the room; I remember asking about the depth and then noticing the large black numbers marked on the side of the pool that confirmed his answer: eighteen feet. I reached down to touch the water and was delighted by how warm it was. This was much better than an outdoor pool because we could use it year round! And it was the third body of water I'd seen in the house so far. "I'm really starting to like this house!"

There was more but my recall gets vague after that. One thing to note, though: this dream was little more than a concatenation of dream signs! Mother, father, brother, unfamiliar house, no less than three bodies of water—somehow I went from one to another in a state of total obliviousness, and yet the dream kept throwing them at me as if to say, "Erm, excuse me. Hey. Hey! Notice anything?"

I'm walking in a garden with a young woman who's essentially an adopted daughter for legal purposes, but I think of her more as a student. I've just brought a woman into the household after finally convincing her to leave the increasingly dangerous situation in her own territory, and I'm explaining to my 'daughter' why this woman won't be staying in the women's quarters with her other two 'mothers' - two women who are legally my wives but who I've never had any kind of relationship with, sexual or otherwise; I just needed a legal way to allow them to stay in this household. She'll be relaying what I say to the other women, I'm aware.

I'm explaining that this third wife's faith compels her to spend her days in isolation until the (some word that means evening prayers - the point is that this story will explain why she's never seen in daylight). It's a custom that's not uncommon among her people, I claim. I'm thinking that the way religions dominate this place and time is as convenient as it is inconvenient.

The daughter finds this ridiculous, but she won't question that faith is the reason for it. She's not pleased with the situation in general though. I'm telling her that although this third wife won't be living in the women's quarters, nonetheless you must treat her as another mother - in other words, though she's new to the household she outranks the daughter. This is apparently the last straw for her - she says, "Oh, I am in the mountains of madness!"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

As Rumpelstiltskin, I've been watching without saying anything while Belle had a sort of confrontation with a woman I'd been working with. I've got plans involving this woman, and Belle knows them, and she's just made it clear she won't be standing with me in this. She's leaving now, and as she turns away my perception changes - I see the three of us as we were in the other world. Seeing her like this, Belle's wearing this white hooded cloak lined in fur, a symbol of the Snow Queen. Several reactions to that - first, a sort of bitter sense of humor that of course the wife of the Dark One could only be the Snow Queen. But I also think of this as a reminder that she's not to be taken lightly.

However, the woman I'd been working with has just asked something to the effect of 'who are you,' and Belle's response is, "I'm the maid." This is, again, a way of stating that she's not my partner in this situation, she's not on my side; but it's also a rejection of the way I'm seeing her right now. By choosing to define herself as a maid rather than a queen, it should be as if she's giving up power, but instead I think of this as power that I admire - her ability to choose her own path and demand that others see her as she chooses.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's this massive tower of ice - a cylinder reaching up into the sky and down to the earth as far as I can see as I float in front of it, intensely detailed jagged edges much like a frozen waterfall. I/Rumpelstiltskin see an image of Belle standing with one arm raised as if she's holding something up, associated with this pillar, and I'm convinced the role of the queen is a burden she took on because of me - or if not because of me directly, it's a situation she wouldn't have been put in if it hadn't been for my involvement. I hate knowing that this will continue to affect her even in the other world.

A man who wore a heavy overcoat and hat to hide his appearance - though we eventually saw him out of it, and he's far from the strangest thing we've seen in this world - is currently talking to me about his trick with languages. He hears meanings, not words. And he's concerned because when we had been talking with those demons earlier, to his ears the demons were saying nothing at all. In other words, they were lying. I can't say I'm surprised.

Lestat and Claudia have been fighting on a ship - mostly verbally, but they're fairly serious. He'd gotten angry and taken her up into the air with him, and now she's broken away and run toward the prow of the ship. She turns and looks at me, and my image of her changes - I see a human girl, long brown hair under a white cap. She mouths, "Help me, Father."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A flashback to the 1930s or so. A movie's being rewritten to expand a starlet's part, and the leading man's being told this over the phone. He doesn't take it well. The movie's focus was on a struggle between two men, the romance subplot with the starlet's character had been relatively minor. He doesn't like people messing with the storyline just because they got a big name involved.

In the present - which is the 1950s or so - that former actor's talking with a man in an office, someone he thinks of as a servant in some sense. The actor's blackmailing him or something similar. A knock comes at the door, and that 'servant' hurriedly puts on a black suit coat and slouches. He looks greasy - part of the act. When the person who knocked comes in, the actor does all the talking but he treats that 'servant' as his boss, deferring to him.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Two men and a woman are trying to figure out a plan to break someone out of a guarded cell. One of those men leaves and starts stirring up a great deal of trouble - getting on the loudspeaker, taunting the guards, bringing up the security camera image that shows a guard he'd killed earlier. Now that alarms are ringing, that woman who'd been planning with him earlier manages to get to him before security does. She asks, "What are you doing?!" He hadn't told them this earlier, but he's a known criminal - his face would have given them away on the way out. So he figured it's better if he puts that to use and acts as a distraction. She's incredibly exasperated with him.

As FK's Nicholas, I saw an image of a vase of white roses, bleeding a few trails of red blood - I believed that this was a hallucination, thinking of it as "a bit of silliness" - and then I saw a mental image of Janette lying on a white couch, looking unwell, somehow connected with those roses. Now I'm sitting on that couch, and Janette's lying on her side with her head resting against my thigh, my hand in her hair. We're talking about a particular time in the past when things had been better between the three of us. As we talk, I'm thinking about how easily I revert to this version of myself when I'm around them - without thinking, my body language, my speech patterns change automatically. It's like taking off a mask.

POV shifts to show LaCroix. He's at some kind of charity event. At the moment he's talking to a man near a buffet table, a man he knows in some professional capacity, and a moment comes when he has to either eat or make some excuse. Without hesitating, he puts some item of food in his mouth. As a disembodied observer/Nicholas, I'm incredibly jealous of his ability to do that without flinching. It would make my life so much easier if I could pretend to eat - socialization revolves almost entirely around food and drink, so just imagine how much easier it would be to blend in. After a moment, LaCroix makes a displeased face, reaches for a napkin, and removes the thing in his mouth. He makes some comment about the poor quality of the food this year compared to previous years, and the man he's talking to agrees. LaCroix's posing as a gourmet, picky about what he eats - it's his usual trick, insulting the food wherever he goes. They make a joke about not being able to trust the food in a place that has such skinny staff, and then the man LaCroix's talking to complains that this event has gone downhill in general - disappointing for such a worthy charity. LaCroix makes a comment about the decline of morality as time goes by. He manages to say this with a straight face.

Dream 1
I was in my bathroom and two other kids from my school who I know were there. I got into the shower and they kept on messing around and I was getting really annoyed with them, because they were keeping me from showering. I was then in the courtyard of my high school and I was talking to a girl trying to get her to do something again.

Dream 2
I was like the arrow, but I wasn't him. I went to the Joker’s office and had my assistant schedule an appointment. We purposely set off an alarm so we knew exactly where all of the security stuff was. The guard at the front checked us over and when we got through my assistant looked at a computer to see where things were. I was in the Joker’s office and it was like any other plain office. There was a plant on the table. I was trying to get him to help me or something. Then I was on Hawaii on vacation. I was out boating and we came up next to a very large island. The island had a cliff that dropped straight down, so you couldn't get onto it, and it was lush with tropical forest. There had been a boat that crashed and people were stranded in the sea. Our boat crashed and I had to swim to an island out a ways to stay alive. It was barely out of the water and pure black. There were other people on it. Then A plain flew over us and shot some bullets. I saw on the side of the plain it said F.I.E.N.D, which stood for something about America and tax. Then I was riding a four-wheeler in a construction type area and there are lots of jumps to go off. The four-wheeler is too tiny for me though. I call the Joker up while going through a dark alley and ask him for help, and I think he finally agrees. I hang up and do one last circle before heading back to the highway. I look at the ground and the dirt is moving by itself. I think an animal is under it. I can’t go on the highway because cars keep on coming. Finally, one stops for me but it gets hit. When I pull out onto the highway, the ambulance and police come and I have to stop too. I see a few people get out of the car involved in the crash, and I know it was their job to keep me from getting away so they got into a crash on purpose. I see Insisidus written on the side of the car. (Lik Insidious but spelled wrong) Then they suddenly have an RV and are staying on the side of the road. They are vampires and the guy’s daughter wants blood but since I was around she drank what normal people drink. I then look up something on the internet, what I think the movie was called. And lots of scary pictures show up.

(Yesterday.)

I'm a man trying to calm a situation down so that I won't wind up in a cell. It would be for a minor charge, but my situation's complicated. There's this woman I made a deal with a long time ago - I brought her to this world ('this world' is for all intents and purposes the same as IRL), and she freed me from the curse that had locked me up back in our own world. But there's a catch - if I'm locked up in a cell even for one night, that old curse will find me again, I'll be trapped again. I think of that as her 'winning' - we help each other often but I don't like her much. I'm afraid of being trapped, but I'm also afraid because if I'm trapped I won't be able to keep up the illusion that makes me look human.

(Today.)

A woman and I had been standing in the middle of a road surrounded by trees, discussing something - a car comes, the driver sees us, he swerves, he crashes. I'm irritated at the interruption, but I go over to the car so I can get a meal out of this before emergency services arrives. The scene changes abruptly - one moment I'm walking towards the car, the next moment time has passed, emergency services have already come and there's a crowd of people around. The woman and I leave and transform into a cloud of bats. In all my vampire dreams this has never happened before, and I pause to enjoy the novelty and absurdity. My perception's different. The sky is a brilliant saturated blue with something shimmering about it, and the air gives me the impression of containing new angles, like unseen tunnels.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I and a group of other people, all of us foreigners in this place, had been talking to a group of women on a small 'island' - just a heap of stones really. We're very frustrated. We're trying to get them to do something for their own good, and they're not cooperating. They end negotiations and vanish into thin air.

Still as the POV character from that last scene, I'm walking around the grounds of some large estate on a hill, with a gated entrance visible not too far away. I'm speaking to a woman all in pale gold - everything's pale gold, her robes, her hair, her skin, the mask that she wears that covers her whole face something like a welder's mask, only revealing one eye. She has her own issues with the people from that 'island' - she's saying they're against her and her plan simply because of her mental illness. She resents them.

I'm sitting on a wooden throne and talking to a man who's going through a bout of existential despair, and he's asking me about coping with vast spaces of time, with immortality - how do you do it? I find this hilariously awful - you're asking me?

There's this vampire who went through a bit of a rock star phase in the 60s. During that time he had this assistant who would occasionally arrange for the vampire to wake up with one of his groupies locked in the same room. The vampire resents this. He compares it to throwing a live, venomous snake at someone - neither the snake nor the victim has any choice in the matter, the snake is used as a tool.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

This woman, thoroughly soaked by the rain, just completely drenched, has just been put into the back seat of a car. The man who's just gotten out of the car and insisted she take it is now standing in the rain. After just a moment the woman gets out of the car again, makes this sort of exasperated sound, drapes her coat over his head to keep the rain off, and gets back in the car. The coat is thoroughly drenched so this does absolutely nothing to keep him dry, but he gets this big lopsided grin.

There's another guy standing in the rain with him, and my first impression - before the woman had gotten back out of the car - had been that the two men were enemies of some kind, but that the first guy was obliged to go along with him for something. But looking at the second guy again now, on second thought I'm thinking of him as a friend.

The scene changes to show the woman and that first guy again, parting at a rural train station sometime in the 1800s. I'm thinking about how during the scene in the rain, they hadn't remembered each other from this time. Part of immortality - it's important for them to forget every so often.

False awakening. I try to write down this past scene, and write that there were three different ways things could go for that pair in the rain. The best route for them is associated with fire.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm a man passing a large arched opening in a stone wall, and as I look at it I remember that someone had asked me to fetch something for him from down here. I hadn't intended to, but since I'm here anyway I might as well. I go inside, into an immense underground stone dome with a dirt floor. It's empty, and large enough that it's difficult to see the other walls, but I'm aware there will be a door off to the right leading to a place where things are stored. As I'm walking, I hear a voice accusing me of enjoying blood. I don't see a physical source of the voice, but I expect he'll show himself eventually. I sort of laugh at the accusation but otherwise ignore him and keep walking. The voice continues: "If you are one of the evil dogs, care to know as much as I do?"

A dream ends with my mother's death by self-inflicted head wound, in a scene comparing her to a woman who'd shot others in order to protect the family; this is followed by several false awakenings in which my IRL sisters and I realize we've all had that same dream and argue over whether to go check on her - S. was against waking her. (There was also a room behind S. that I recognized as out of place, though I rationalized it away.) In the last false awakening we finally do check on her, and the head wound turns out to have been a metaphor for a stroke she experienced in the night; I go to call 911, only to have her stop me and explain that the stroke is also a metaphor - she removed something from her mouth which had been distorting her speech and features.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm in a field looking at scarecrows tied in place with gold that shines in the sunlight. I've just been hearing a story about how they got here - they were people once. Dead now. There's a mist starting to come down from between the mountains at the far end of the field, as it always does at this time of day though I've never been here to see it before, and I'm watching it make spiraling patterns in the sky. It's very beautiful.

As Spike, I'm sitting in a classroom that Buffy's gang is using to talk about an apocalyptic threat - something involving a demon from another dimension - I'm annoyed at how blasé they are about it. I'm aware this is normal for them, but it's something that shouldn't be normal for anyone. It's as if they're not taking a warning seriously.

I'm looking after a little girl and a little boy. My IRL father's recently married their mother. At the moment we're heading for the car, and the little girl asks to stop by our parents' new house. I say sure, we can swing by and take a look if you want - it has pretty steps, doesn't it? She says that's not it, she wants to go inside. I tell them we can't do that yet. The little girl doesn't understand why not - she says the divination's already been done. I hadn't been aware of that. The results of the divination must have been bad. I see an image of something being driven into the ground outside the house with a hammer - if it's blocked by anything, if it doesn't sink completely into the ground in one blow, then it's a sign of misfortune and they'll have to clear the misfortune before anyone can enter. I see my IRL father walking away from that divination and getting into a car, and I think about the traditions associated with the place our families come from.

Transition to that place - it's a small New England town. I'm walking down main street - well, 'walking'; I think I was disembodied at this point - and I overhear snatches of conversations with words like "dreams" (a girl pointing to a phrase in her friend's book) and "luck" (a goth girl talking on her cell phone about her boss). I pass by a church where the window is covered by cardboard. People are milling around outside, just left a service, and someone's commenting on how the priest here never gives any blessings and never reads from the Bible. Someone who works for the church is insisting, offended, that the priest is not a vampire - he's just unwell.

Transition to see that priest - he's giving a speech to a group of graduating students on an overcast day. He's making a point to appear in public during the daytime, to prove that he can. It's a small graduating class, maybe thirty or so people, and they're standing around him in a circle, very casual. The priest looks like he's in his 80s or 90s, slightly hunched, and he's got Nosferatu teeth. As he's speaking, the clouds are beginning to thin - the sun will be out soon. I'm mentally trying to get the priest to notice this, but he doesn't. Eventually one of the students comments on it, and the priest finally looks up. He finishes his speech and leaves in a hurry.