A scene ended with me getting into a car and driving away. While I'm driving, however, something goes wrong, I keep weaving into the other lane, and I wind up getting pulled over by a cop. I'm thinking, good thing this is just a dream. And I'd rather not stick around for this, so I go incorporeal and float through the roof, invisible. I look down at the cop being surprised by the car without a driver, and then I decide to bring the car with me: I turn it into water droplets, which collect in the palm of my hand. There's a memory gap, but I doubt the semi-lucidity lasted long after that. Next scene I remember clearly is non-lucid: a woman is consulting a witch, asking her to do a spell or divination for her. When it's over, the witch asks the woman what that looked like from her end - meaning that during the course of the spell, the witch realized this woman's got some magic of her own. And the god this witch works for may or may not have an interest in this woman. The witch asks her a question, about why she's trying to (do something) when she's got too much on her plate already. The woman explains: there's a guy who loves her "pretty bad" - no mention of whether it's reciprocated - and she "can't hear him anymore," by which she means hear him in her head - it's a vampire thing - and she's worried about him. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) I'm temporarily working for a doctor with a small private practice, I'm in training. The doctor's showing me a patient's chart and is asking me if anything jumps out at me - I say the patient's lost 10 pounds, but I'm thinking, that could just be a diet. The doctor points out what she wanted me to see: this patient's been suffering from hallucinations, describing strange sights and sounds. But she lives in the city, and there are all sorts of strange things there; and on the date that she experienced these 'strange sights and sounds,' there was a parade. I'm doubtful. I say, "I don't know, it's pretty difficult to confuse a parade with a hallucination." The doctor admits this is true. There was a scene where I went to talk with that patient, and by the end of that scene we've wound up talking casually in the waiting room, she's very pretty and very easy to talk to. Then a baby belonging to one of the other patients crawls up into her lap. It's got a dripping diaper. This eventually leads to an unpleasant confrontation with the mother, who denied that the baby was the cause of the mess; the mother becomes so outraged that she takes out a gun, points it at the ceiling and shoots. I grab the woman's arm holding the gun. The other patients in the waiting room all run out the door, except the one I'd been talking to. I get the gun away from her before she can fire the other bullet - it's a two shot derringer - and I hand it to the other patient. As I do so I say something along the lines of "Hold this for me, honey." Then I think, wait a minute, she was my patient a minute ago, that's very unprofessional, I can't go around changing a DC's relationship to me mid-storyline just because we shared a nice conversation and a life-or-death situation. The woman has pulled out another gun, and I take it away from her and hand it to the patient again - there wind up being 4 guns total.
Updated 02-16-2014 at 11:54 PM by 64691
It's a little unclear, especially the beginning, I'll try to see what all I can remember...I was at my place of work (Alamo Drafthouse Cinema), I guess in the main hallway because there were lots of lockers. Some of my co-workers were vampires. I wasn't really afraid, I didn't see them as a major threat, they weren't trying to attack me. I'm not sure if I realized it at this point in the dream, but later on I was aware that I was a vampire slayer. However, in the beginning, I felt like I was friends with them or maybe even a vampire also. But apparently one of them (Andy?) had been bitten by a werewolf and was turning into a weird hybrid. That I was afraid of. Somewhere along the way, the dream scenery changed briefly. One of my co-worker's mother's was throwing away... a model window? It was like a miniature version of the big window in my bedroom, even had the colorful cloth with the Ajna symbol above it like I do IWL (in waking life). I couldn't believe they were throwing it away, I wanted to keep it for some reason. Then I realize there was a smaller one stacked inside of the bigger one. Felt like I couldn't take them both? So I decided to leave the smaller one and take the bigger one. It felt sturdy, like it was made of metal. Back to the work scenery. My were-coworker had bitten someone else before I could stop him! I felt like the werewolves were more dangerous - faster, stronger, more primal - than the vampires, and the were-vamp hybrids were even more-so. Very quickly more and more people were being turned. They wanted to turn me, like it was their mission. I became lucid at some point around here, and was trying to take complete control to fight them. I couldn't make the things I wanted to materialize come about. I wanted a flame thrower, I figured it was the fastest most effective way to fight them off, so I started pretending like I had one in my hands trying to set them on fire but it wasn't working. I did have a steak from the first part of the dream and was fighting them with that, but it was difficult, there were so many of them. I decided since I couldn't make a better weapon just appear out of thin air, I would find one. Began trying to open the lockers to get better weapon. I thought for sure that would work, but locker after locker I just kept finding shoes. =| Really cute shoes I wanted haha. Most of them were browns and blacks, with heels. Finally I called out loud something like "Why do I keep finding shoes?" to see if my subconscious would tell me what they symbolized/why I kept getting them instead of a weapon. I got an answer, just a voice going through the hallway (which I think now more resembled a school hallway) but I couldn't hear the answer clearly (I've had that same issue before in past lucid experiences when trying to ask my subconscious questions). I tried asking for the message again more clearly, but it didn't come. I felt like the answer I didn't hear well was a bullshit answer, something like "Because it's just what you do"? Whatever. Thanks for nothing, subconscious. Still fighting off were-vamps and checking lockers when I'm able, I finally come across a straight razor, like for shaving. Also, since I became lucid I tried doing some really bad-ass fighting moves, like back flips and other gymnastics type stuff. It didn't feel like I had total good control so I was sort of able to, but it felt slow and sloppy. I tried slitting someone's throat with the razor, it didn't work out that well. It was like it just made a little cut. Hmph. I ended up in a "locker room" in a part with a bunch of showers. There were a few girls showering in there. I felt like all of my co-workers had been turned but for some reason I wasn't worried about all of them attacking me, just most of them. I think I was trying to hide in one of the showers? But they didn't have curtains and weren't really good for hiding so.. yeah, they definitely found me. Around this point, I was frustrated with trying to fight them all off and it not really working and I finally realized maybe that wasn't the point. I remembered something I had read before about dreams where people are being chased, confronting what's chasing them. I decided maybe I had to just let them get me to understand the meaning of the dream, and I wasn't afraid since I knew it was a dream. I was ready to surrender. So I told them "Ok, I'll let you guys change me if it's done by Garret and David" (two guys at work I think could be different sort of people from everyone else, and I'd be most likely to be interested in if I weren't already attached to someone). I think they went to get the guys. Very fuzzy here, I may have changed my mind and said Andy can just do it to get it over with already. Then I guess I woke up before it happened.
A setting based off the Victorian era or thereabouts. A man who belongs to some organization or secret society made a deal with another member, who is now dead. Now the man's been debating whether he'll bother keeping his end of the deal, since the other party's dead and thus isn't in a position to know or object. Right now he's in the dead man's home, in a type of storage area, going over some of his belongings that relate to that organization they're both in - that was part of the deal, disposing of some of these things according to the dead man's wishes. One of those belongings is something I think of as a 'cookie', though it's dry and tasteless, makes me think of hardtack. He decides to eat it after all, keeping up his end of the deal. Eating it causes him to become immortal. That same man at a later date, confronting his wife in her home, a basement room with brick walls but with several potted ferns and a table set up holding a large, beautiful book - her journal. She believed him dead, there was a funeral. He's standing over her journal, and he's asking why she hasn't been writing. He says, "You're not a (his family name - Bowman or Barrow or something like that), you don't (something along the lines of being driven by a consuming passion)." He feels that the changes and upsets in her life - such as his own 'death' - shouldn't have shaken her disciplined, well-ordered approach to her tasks. She's also immortal, in a different way than he is, but linked to him in some way. The nature of their immortality means they can't possibly live together again, even if they'd wanted to. That same man again is being pinned to a wall, held off the floor, by his daughter. They'd been talking relatively calmly earlier, but he realizes she's become a vampire, and her eyes glow blue and then gold, and now she's got him pinned to the wall. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking that she has the same face as a pirate woman who'd died in this man's arms long before his daughter was born; the pirate had been Chinese and the daughter's a white Englishwoman, but I think of them as having the same face and being in some sense the same person, and I have a vague impression of a third woman, a servant in England, who also has the same face. The daughter says to him, "You know what to do. Then come get me!" He stakes her, and she crumbles into dust. He's still stuck hanging on the wall. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) I'm standing between a coyote and a bird. The scene after this discusses the coyote as wandering and gathering a pack of odd strays - other species, including housecats. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) There's a woman, a leader of witches, who's given me some instructions to carry out, something I'm meant to do with her grave after she's been buried. Now I'm digging down through the loose dirt in her grave, sinking into it. I'm afraid of it closing over my head and suffocating me. I get out of the grave and fetch my staff, and use that to probe through the dirt, waiting for it to hit something. After a few other scenes, mostly involving the witches but gradually transitioning into scenes with IRL characters, I'm walking through a bookshop and I spot a book with a title that mentions one of my lucid goals, the one I'd intended as my task for the day. I immediately become lucid, but realize I'm already waking up. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) There's a group of people getting together at a restaurant, taking up the second floor, a sort of balcony area looking over the main room. The owner of the restaurant's friends with the leader of this group, and he's saying as he escorts them in, "You're the one who wanted to do this here. If you wanted privacy, you should've-" The tone's good-natured. There's a table set out for three: the boss, his wife who hasn't yet arrived, and a prostitute. The restaurant owner's wife comes over to talk to them, and she knows the prostitute, they exchange some friendly words. The prostitute's asking what this is about; the leader's got some plan in mind involving her, but they're waiting for his wife to arrive before he'll talk about it. The rest of his people are arranged at the surrounding tables, waiting and watching the main table quietly. There's a woman who rose from the dead. Her girlfriend's explaining to her that this has all happened before, repeatedly: they meet, after a few days this woman dies, and then a little while later she'll turn up again and 'meet' the girlfriend again, with no memory of this having happened before.
Updated 02-10-2014 at 01:00 AM by 64691
Several fragments based on Tolkien, involving hooded figures, the statement that "No (name of hooded figures) will survive Aragorn" which has some vague association with atheism, and a few scenes in which Aragorn is either fighting the hooded figures alongside one or two other humans, or calmly talking to them, and either way shown to be in complete control. As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm stopping by the door of one of the storerooms. Belle's inside, talking. The room's mostly filled with straw, but it also holds a mirror, and she's using it to speak with the image of an old woman sitting in a chair and knitting, a woman I know. The woman's giving her advice. I'm pleased - partially at seeing the two of them get along well, but mostly at seeing Belle making use of my magic. They stop talking and Belle turns around and sees me watching them, and I feign disinterest. As FK's Nick, I'm stretched out on the floor of my apartment, talking to someone and using a laptop on a low table to search for something; the side of me that's a disembodied observer associates this with the semi-lucid search techniques used in other recent dreams. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) A vampire watching a woman turn, which at this stage mostly consists of becoming more physical, much like the old movies - not sexual specifically, just more aware of the senses. He's saying something about how there's no need to believe in a divine plan to explain the way they find each other again and again. Mina and Grayson are talking in a train car; she says she loves him, and the moment she does, he's flung by some invisible force out of the car, into the next, which is filling rapidly with water, up to the ceiling. He's thinking something regretful about Lucy.
There's a vampire who looks like a kid, who'd been having some kind of serious problems, but is assuring a friend of his that he's past them now. He's also discovered that, as a result of those problems, he can eat solid food now, and he's trying to stay off blood. He's optimistic about it. "I've been having some sickness, but-" His friend laughs, patronizingly. As a 3rd person observer, I side with the friend - this is a bad idea. There's a woman working at some kind of community center, and a man who seems to be drunk outside, holding a knife. She's saying to him through the door, "Go home, Ray! You're sick! You need help!" Afterwards she starts thinking about fated events, and timing. I'm working with a team of bounty hunters to catch two people, allowing one of them to lead us to the other without letting him realize he's being followed. We catch up to them in the woods, and they're both here, but they're unconscious, and surrounded by two "Wraths" - some semi-divine role, working for Ares. They're waiting for their master, who arrives just after we do. Three people discussing a conversation they just had with a police captain who hired them. One of them uses the slang term "NeuTrooL", a pun on "new" and "true" and "neutral", which means information given by someone who mistakenly believes their view is an objective truth, completely neutral, when in fact it's influenced by their own bias. A woman's telling me about her dreams, with a large cast of recurring characters and ongoing storylines. She's telling me her most recent one, about "the Prince and the Magician", and says that the Prince is captive but still playing an active role in events. As she talks, I see the prince sitting in a room that has something crystalline about it; he's a fae-looking thing, and he's sitting in front of a mirror with a spell on it, talking to someone at a distance. The creature in the mirror is very large, and has fur. The woman telling the story mentions the name Ba'alrael.
Updated 01-18-2014 at 01:53 AM by 64691
I'm standing in front of a row of elevators with reflective gold-colored doors, and in a sort of voiceover I'm hearing what sounds like an article about a scientific study of reflections. There's a lot of information that sounded reasonable at the time but didn't actually translate to waking life - for example, your eyes perceive this angle of motion and expect an impact that never comes, causing tension, and resulting in your attention focusing on this or that minor detail. As I get into the elevator, the article is saying something about there being two different ways to think of reflections which both carry different benefits, and it goes on to explain the two ways. I find this interesting and decide to experiment with switching to the other way of thinking, which is viewing your reflection as a separate person, even expecting it to talk. Acting on the article's advice, I address my reflection on the mirrored elevator wall. My reflection's a great deal taller than me, and completely covered by a hooded cloak. I find I like him - or it - a great deal. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) Some vague fragment involving briefly passing through an exhibit to do with planets, and something about Artemis. There's a woman who's determined to hold onto the hand of some monstrously deformed figure who keeps trying to shy away. She's thinking about how she's been through some kinds of transformations in the past herself, so it takes more than some monstrous appearance to frighten her off. The monstrous one's thinking something about Cain, and something about two angels, one in favor of allowing the other's creations - humans - to develop variations of themselves (which is to say, to have children); the one who created them was opposed; and now he's found his downfall in a relationship with a human, which wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for that decision, allowing the humans to develop into new variations. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) There's a man who's been running through the halls of a house and now reaches a dead end, a study with a portrait, which I briefly thought was a mirror. A man who's been following him at a walking pace comes into the room and starts talking about the portrait, and about the history of the man in the painting, who was - is? - a vampire. He says, "They forgive him the very thing he (something)," and then something about "fell." Meanwhile the man who'd been running is stumbling around the room with his hand over his stomach like he's been injured, saying "Please!" There's a resemblance between him and the portrait.
Updated 01-14-2014 at 12:51 AM by 64691
I'm at my mother's house, and she's putting 9 red beans in the snow behind the house. I ask her why, and she's astonished that I don't know. "Beans for Martin," she says. It's a reference to Redwall, which isn't just a story but a legend, or a fairy tale, something with customs attached - specifically in this case, leaving out nine red beans. "Ever since I was a little girl, they've always had nine at Christmas." (Woke up. Back to sleep.) Fragment to do with immortals whose modern clothing preferences tend to gravitate towards those most similar to the eras they grew up in; and later, getting a blood snack from my boyfriend's fridge, talking about indulgence and temptation. My IRL neighbor momentarily mistook me for a ghost he was looking for. I'm out looking for my IRL cat, to bring her inside, but I see two identical cats and am not sure which is her. (Noteworthy: doppelgangers are a common nightmare theme for me, and this time it's not a nightmare.) I catch them both, and as I'm holding them and explaining the dilemma to my neighbor, I become sure that my cat's the one on the right. Even though they're identical there's a different 'feel.' I'm pleased I was able to recognize the difference. But my neighbor insists that my cat is actually the one on the left; even after I discover some difference between them, he continues to insist on the wrong choice. Belle and Rumpelstiltskin are having an argument. He's looking very small and confused; he'd been wearing a coat covered in sharp quills like a porcupine's, and while normally he likes it, right now he doesn't have the show-off body language needed for it; he's managed to stick himself with it, twice. She's saying that he's mistaken about why she's unhappy, and that for all the nice things at the castle, she'd opt for a plain thatched house with ordinary things, with someone who does ordinary things, "something that matters." She means blacksmiths or farmers and similar - someone who's part of the community. Rumpelstiltskin's annoyed by this. "Well, you got me." Fragments: IRL sister S. and her friend P. help me with car trouble; and I tell someone to find me based on the imagery in a dream I made for them.
A minor tyrant with some nefarious plan has just provided his elite guard with some new, lethal weapon related to mind control and is staging a private demonstration for two prisoners, people who'd been opposing him. But the guard who's supposed to provide the demonstration, after hearing the tyrant's plans, uses the weapon to kill himself rather than go through with it. The tyrant's reaction to this is mostly just contempt, and he orders one of the other guards to take the dead man's place - but instead, they all kill themselves rather than be involved in this plan. Meanwhile, the two prisoners are set free by the tyrant's heir, a younger brother or nephew, someone who never seemed to take anything very seriously; it turns out that attitude was just an act, allowing him to arrange a rebellion without being suspected. Some seemingly-nonsensical comments he'd made earlier make more sense in light of this. There's a woman bending over a pool table, two guys - her servants - behind her. A man lounging on a couch opposite her is holding a camera and taking a photo of her, and he's asking her if she's sure she wants to play this way, 2 against 1. The man currently taking his shot tells him to knock it off, the lady knows her own mind. I'm a 3rd person observer, and from where I'm 'standing', I can't see this woman's face clearly, but her hair and her bearing remind me of Janette. I have the feeling I've been looking for Janette for a long time, and I go in for a closer look. There's a resemblance, but it's not her. While I was distracted, the conversation's turned more serious and they've stopped paying attention to the pool game; I get the impression that this is some kind of informal interrogation of this woman, or she's being put on the spot in some way. She's saying, "perhaps we have to suffer, to (justify or maintain or deserve, some word like that) our position." The others don't much care for this theory.
There's a woman who's turning, and a guy I know is driving her somewhere in a white VW bug, just pulling out of the parking lot. We weren't expecting it to happen this soon; turning happens after a few blood exchanges, and the amount of times it takes varies from person to person, but she's only had two, so this is taking us off guard. I - a guy in a suit, in the parking lot, running alongside the car as they're starting to drive off - am saying to him, "let me in!", but he's in too much of a hurry to stop and tells me to just get in. So I go incorporeal (lost all visuals in the process) and as he drives through me, I resolidify (and visuals came back) in the back seat, where she's curled up on her side. I cradle her head in my lap.
Updated 12-18-2013 at 01:51 AM by 64691
Grayson's come across Mina and Harker in some danger and got them out of it by offering them a ride home in his carriage. Now they're discussing a message he's sent someone to deliver, and Mina's objecting to sending this messenger into danger on their behalf. Grayson asks what danger she's referring to. Why, the war, of course. They're not far from the battlefield; that's part of why they were so grateful for his rescue. Throughout this conversation, Harker has become increasingly uncomfortable and is beginning to regret accepting the ride. Mina, sitting across from the other two, is noting that Grayson's in shadows so dark he can't be seen. Lucy in a different carriage, with Lady Jayne riding outside. Jayne says to her, "Don't you think you had better go?" "No. My choice is to stay." "Atta girl." (Woke up. Back to sleep.) A species of small creatures which, as they grow up, take on masters and will instinctively fight the servants of other masters if left alone together - which often results in fighting their own siblings, sometimes to the death. Later, when they grow into masters themselves, they see the other side of that, with the responsibility and grief of killing. (The dream logic was inconsistent about who was actually the one doing the killing, the servant or the master. The main point was violence without thought of consequences in the young, servant version, contrasted with the grief, guilt, and sense of responsibility in the older, master version, and a sense of circular time or mythic time, coming back around to the same event but from a different perspective.) I'm breaking into the ruins of an old and isolated church, with a cat, carrying a candle; I climb up the stone wall and up onto the second floor, which is mostly open to the sky. However, just as I get there, I see the property owner returning home across the fields in the distance, in a dogsled. I extinguish the candle I was carrying, but it's too late, he's already spotted the light and is turning this way. I climb back down the wall and run for it. However, I'm on foot and he's got dogs; my odds of outrunning him aren't good. We cross a river, and the scene changes to 3rd person; now it's a group of children who are running from him, and they dive beneath the water and stay there. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about legends of creatures that can't cross running water, and about the way the scene changed when I hit the water, the river acting as an event boundary. A party where I've been looking for a woman, a dressmaker, known for a dress that resembles the sea. I find her, an elderly woman, and I ask her about that dress, which pleases her, but which isn't the subject I really want to talk to her about. We're interrupted by another woman, someone I know, and the two of them go off to talk in another room, behind a closed door. I eavesdrop from just outside. I hear them mention a Joanna - a dead woman who I keep hearing about, someone who left a widower behind, someone powerful. I'm caught listening, and so go away without hearing the rest of the conversation. Rumpelstiltskin. I have some guests, people here to do business, but I've just turned away from them and am talking to Belle, showing her the potion I'm preparing and saying "It's designed to attract." The scene switches to 3rd person, and I note that Rumpelstiltskin loses the showman routine he uses with the others when he talks to Belle; I'm thinking something abut the length of time Belle's been around and how they interact, which is something that Rumpelstiltskin is feeling a little bewildered about. He heads up to the tower to get in touch with someone through some magical means. "Don't go listening," he says to Belle. She's indignant - of course she wouldn't! (Woke up. Back to sleep.) Based on Carmen - she's dancing, I'm sitting in a chair watching her and thinking about the past, about killing for her, feeling sober. (This felt like it was a variation on the servant creatures from before - as if there was something I was trying to work out but wasn't quite getting, so the dream was rephrasing.)
In a wild west-inspired setting, there's someone called 'the Kid', although he's a grown man with greying hair and wrinkles. I'm watching him ride a motorcycle out of town, and I'm thinking that although he may not be a Kid, it'd also be wrong to call him a man, since he's not human. There's a man and a woman in some kind of storage space, looks like an attic. She's asking if he's ever even tried moving to 'a real town' and setting up 'a real life,' the way she says other heroes have done. He's surprised she called him a hero and says she's got the wrong idea, and that he's not even human. As a third person observer, I'm thinking how cliche he is, the self-loathing vampire hero type. I focus on his appearance for the first time - a man in a red coat, with a face that reminds me of some actor but covered in scars and boils, and I'm thinking that at least this one's not pretty. There's a dead guy on the floor between the two of them, and now he wakes up. The guy in the red coat picks up this huge sword with a curve in the blade which I associate with beheading, and he says something about how what he really wants isn't 'a real life in a real town'; what he wants is this weapon, automated, on a massive scale. The dead guy says something about being grateful before his head's taken off. There are people arguing in the town square. The guy in the red coat gathered everyone here and is standing up on a wooden stage trying to talk to them. One person says, "You act like one of 'em, the game's won!" 'Them' meaning vampires, and 'won' meaning won by the vampires. The person he's arguing with says, "You resist 'em, the game's won!" Everyone seems to think it's hopeless. While the guy in the red coat is focused on them, he doesn't see the burned and headless body which is crawling out of town. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) Dracula, a girl, and a priest/vampire slayer, in a field in daylight. Dracula's kneeling, and the priest's saying that He often seems to hear him and know what's needed. In response, black shapes fill the sky, blotting out the sun, which Dracula doesn't like at all. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about how this is an interesting switch; normally you'd think of darkness favoring vampires, but Dracula was fine with sunlight. The girl says something about sending him to hell, but she's got it backwards; the priest isn't in the business of damning souls. On closer look, the things blotting out the sun are crows; and then among them appear the souls of all those he'd turned.
An advertisement for a Christmas event called the Forest of Lights; Christmas shopping in a small store that has cookies out on display, someone exclaims over them, saying that they're just like the ones his grandmother used to make, which he hasn't been able to find since she died, not knowing what they were called. A grandmother talking to a baby which is also herself: "You're going to be just fine." She's a woman who grew up in the present era, then somehow mentally time-traveled to the past and became trapped there, and wound up living out the life of her own grandmother. She's at a family gathering now and talking about a business she owns, when she has to sit down abruptly, and then holds out her hands and comments on how they're shaking. She's sure this is the moment when she dies. She's very calm about this, to the point that the people around her think she must be joking. There's a narrator then, saying something about how a part of her always expected that when she died, she would simply wake up back in her real body in the present. But she doesn't. It was a mind-soul transfer, the narrator says. When she died, she died. That was it. (Woke up. Back to sleep.) I'm looking at a grave marker in Erana's garden, and examining the spell on it; and then admiring the spell over the rest of the garden that makes it a sanctuary, and noting how even the water of the two rivers which flow around it are affected by the spell when they come into contact with it. Looking at all that running water, I'm having doubts about whether this will be the best place for Olivia to stay over the next few days, even though we're on her native soil, and even though it's otherwise ideal. The river running under the bridge at the entrance to the garden is just a trickle at the moment, but there's an image in my mind of that river growing wider, turning the garden into an island. I start to walk into the woods, and I pass Rogerian coming the other way with an animal he's caught for the two of them to eat. Olivia wakes up and says something about the meal, sounding delighted.
Wednesday: Fragments involving a man with a hook for a hand, giving him a hand and taking his hook myself; a witch who was trying to force the hook-man to sleep so that she could somehow influence him in a dream; a prince and his army who arrived on this scene, with no knowledge of anything going on between the witch and the hook-man; and a man with some form of mental connection to the witch, his sister. A man visiting his wife's family with her, the first time since they were married. The father-in-law's distant and judgmental. He's saying, "You'll have to understand, we only drink old French wines here - Bordeaux," that being where the mother-in-law's from. Inside, the mother-in-law is a tiny woman with long, thick grey hair, very warm and expressive. She asks her son-in-law how his meditation practice is going, and asks if he's getting by okay in New York - which he loves, but she doesn't understand how anyone could enjoy living in cities. She says, "You've been in that city for about a hundred years, but you seem to have left in a good mood." He finds her energy overwhelming. In a small restaurant, the baker's brought out samples of new doughnuts for everyone to try, I had two, one with a peach filling, the other blueberry, and I was surprised by the taste of the 'blueberry' - it reminds me of pixie stix and sweet tarts and similar childhood candies, not in the sense of being sugary, it's more the type of flavoring those candies use. I comment on it, and someone at the next table asks what this lump in theirs is. I look and point out to them that it's a blueberry. They've never seen a blueberry before? While walking across a field, I'm explaining to someone what juice is. I wind up having to describe it as crushing something until its external protection breaks down and its liquid insides run out, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it very, very clear to the creature I'm talking to that this is something that should be done only to plants. As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm in a dream world, talking to an image of Regina that is breaking down and melting after being attacked by someone else, and I'm saying, "This isn't you." Allowing herself to show weakness, I mean. I say it again, then reconsider - it's possible this is one side of her, or even how I think of her. There had been a young girl with her, and now I take the girl by the hand and lead her away, ignoring the image of Regina that's still falling apart. Someone's telling me they need me to act as a detective. I cut them off, saying, "What, I'm supposed to magically figure out where the dying guy came from?" But I do find some form of trail, scratches on the floor, leading to what seemed like a wall but which must have some kind of opening. Vampires. I brought two humans to see a friend of mine, I wasn't intending to kill them, and I'm a little annoyed at my friend, but I'm not making any effort to stop him either. He's saying to the humans that he hasn't decided yet whether to kill them or turn them. His fangs dig into his own lip, and he spits blood on the human he's got pinned down, which has a sort of acidic effect. I, the dreamer rather than the character, observe that it's much like the way flies break down their food. I've been working on a system of cables to allow transportation around an island. It's something two guys had been using on a very small scale on their own property, and I've been working with them to expand it to cover the entire island. I'm mostly doing this to help out a woman I'm in love with who lives in a very remote area, but it's going to benefit everyone on the island. Now I'm looking at the initial stage that's about ready for a test run, and feeling proud, when a troop of soldiers with wings descends out of the sky. Their leader - who I've met before, in a friendlier setting - arrests me on suspicion of killing the king, among others. This is a setup - I know who the actual killer is, and I came to this island in the first place to hunt that person. I'm blaming myself for getting distracted with this side project; if I'd focused solely on my mission, maybe he wouldn't have had time to frame me. Thursday: There's a room on a spaceship that's being converted into a sort of swamp. This alien species needed this certain type of room for some cultural reason to do with the sharing of emotions, and so we set it up for him. One of the other aliens, from a different species, says that if humans turn out to be understanding and reasonable, s/he's going to be very disappointed. I say nah, don't worry, no matter how many understanding and reasonable humans you meet, you can always count on a few of us to mess things up, every time. A group of vampire hunters. A man leading things over the phone; someone who is either a doctor, a former doctor, or simply someone who steals meds from hospitals, refusing to be hurried by the hunters around him; a recording of a man interacting with someone who doesn't show up on video, with viewers arguing that it's definitely faked.
Updated 11-21-2013 at 11:40 PM by 64691
Monday: Forced into playing some game in order to save my father's life, using mandrake led to victory. People raiding a house, breaking things or stripping things from the walls and carrying them away. The words "los soņos del amos." A dance performance featuring various actors - Biehn, Paxton, Goldstein (as Diamondback), Henriksen showing up later offstage - arranged by a woman trying to use this performance to prove her worth; an old money type applauds the performance, technically a success, but succeeding here just means she's got the chance to fork over even more money than she already has, she's being used. Tuesday: A young girl who'd been in some kind of trouble runs into a reporter named Nicholas who promises to help her, but when she sees him in sunlight his eyes resemble a snake's. He tells her that if she succeeds in becoming human, he'll lose interest in her struggles, and then he'd probably kill her. A religion based on Alice 19th. A woman arrives from another world; I've seen this play out before, but in that version of events there was a man with her, this time she's alone; knowing what's coming, I kneel before her, ask her to spare my life, which doesn't seem likely to work until I point out how little she knows about this world, and promise to guide her to the halls of power; she relents and accepts. Elijah speaking to Rebekah, telling her he has plans to meet someone in a dream at sun-up, which amuses him since he's just now become capable of walking in the light and yet is going to spend the time sleeping anyway. Wednesday: A large wolf in the woods, my cat cuddling up to it. A very small man is sent to pick a fight with a woman at a bar. He fails miserably. She talks to him about his daughter, says she couldn't believe what had happened, when the girl had turned out to be a witch after all and was snatched away by her mother - a 'good witch', who uses a different variety of magic than these two at the bar. It's implied the daughter's been taken to be used as a tool. She offers her help for a rescue mission, but he suspects she'd like to use his daughter as a tool, too. Thursday: A young woman and a friend, trapped in a maze of rooms cluttered with objects - statues, tapestries, things you'd expect in a museum - searching for one that holds a specific design which is her only means of escape, but it's a needle in a haystack situation. She picks up a statue and reminisces about when her mother used to fill her home with things like this - as she thinks that, she finally spots the design she's looking for, a tile set into the floor. The mirror above it ripples, and she's aware that she'll be leaving her friend behind here, but she doesn't have time to wait for him, she escapes through the mirror, back into the real world. Once on the other side, the mirror breaks. She says to someone on the other side that her friend is still trapped there, but this person tells her "Abby, all your life there's been no one there" - no one else in the real world has any memories of that person she believed to have been her lifelong friend. Friday: Meeting Olivia Atta Clemens for the first time at a party in Rome. NBC's version of Dracula is having an argument with someone referred to as his master, regarding the use of the phrase "your majesty," and people going missing. Saturday: Nightmare in which some creature embodying darkness is crouched above me, dispelled with Apollo trick, after which the dream ceased being a nightmare but I become concerned that the creature had simply moved on to the nearest target. I'm chasing someone and run into a cop along the way, and at first ask for his help but then decide there's no point, we're in a country where cops don't carry guns. A guy explaining Kaballah annoys me by making cryptic comments about me and fallen angels. Today: I'm stowing some papers in a hiding place on the roof; I'm thinking that Lydia (mental connotations of an odd mentor/student relationship with her) will pass through here later, and I'm positioning the papers where she'll be sure to see them, but trapping them in such a way that she won't be able to retrieve them in the little time she'll have up here. A scene with Lydia and I entering a small room where I've been holding Boone, her husband, captive; I sit down while she talks to him, take off my hat and smooth down my hair - I've got blond hair here. A scene with Lydia in a room crowded with empty picture frames, which used to hold pictures of her - she's aware they belong to (either my character or her husband, I can't remember which). A setting based on ancient Rome, I've been having a dispute with someone over a slave, one of my charioteers, and I'm thinking about this dispute as I watch the race. Something about one of the chariots or racers catches my eye, seems odd - then there's an 'accident.' Afterwards, I'm standing over a slave who broke several bones in that accident. A series of underground tunnels, and a group of vampire hunters. I've found a dead-end tunnel directly underneath their current camp, and I'm crouching on the ceiling, listening to them. One, I believe he's the leader, has been threatening one of the others, but the one being threatened has just walked away from the argument, and from the camp, saying he's going off to eat. I'm slightly concerned that he'll come down into this tunnel - since it's a dead end, there would be no way to avoid meeting him - but I don't think it's very likely. The ones who stayed are still talking about him, and from what they're saying I realize that he also eats people, but that he's in some sense still human. The others are concerned that they may have to kill him one day.
A psychiatrist talking to another doctor about music and musicians, saying this is the type of personality that in these days uses hypnosis to tell themselves "this is my fanciful, flighty dream, that no one lets die." In other words: treating a wild dream as a practical career path, and being convinced to abandon a dream, are both viewed as mistakes. There's a group of women in a small village, they all wear black and cover their hair, and a while ago they summoned up the Devil. Now he can't leave until a certain thing happens - he's trying to cause that thing to happen, the women are trying to prevent it. The women are talking about another, younger woman, who's either new in the village or has been away, and so isn't aware that this thing must be prevented. The scene changes to show that Devil, who's been posing as a human man in that village, and at the moment is trying to get home without being caught by the sun and without being seen by his wife, who believes him to be human. He gets out of the building he'd been in by crawling down the side of the wall head first, and sneaks into his own home through the kitchen window, just before his wife enters the room. She finds him there casually drinking a glass of wine, and he mocks her for some supposed addiction problem of hers. Someone's playing a waltz, I'm looking at LaCroix dancing with a blonde woman. I don't know him (I'm not playing Nick's role this time, though I'm not myself either), but something about seeing him gives me the sense that I'm seeing a path not taken. As I'm watching him and the woman he's dancing with, I become aware that this is Underhill, and a dream; and possibly those are synonyms. (This wasn't lucid at all - the character I was at the time was thinking of this scene as his own dream, not mine.)