Carabas

From Buffy, I/Spike am meeting Dru for the first time. Found her lying in an alley, looking unfocused. In this version of the story, the William the Bloody nickname doesn't come from poetry. Scene changes to present-day, transitioning with Dru describing that last scene, clearly fond of the memory; she says she liked seeing that sort of initiative in the living. She's putting it in terms that are disturbing the woman she's talking to.

Nearby, I'm also reminiscing about Dru to someone else. We used to play this game with the people who'd hunt us. Scene changes to show the game - I'm running into a churchyard, holding a cross or something like it in one hand and some weapon in the other, run up to the hunter all wide-eyed. Make like I'm volunteering to join his hunt, country kid all full of admiration, or like the monster's right behind me - either way, the point's just to get in close. Not challenging enough to be called a game maybe, but we still thought it was fun.

The first run-through of the scene, I 'won' the game easily, but then I'm remembering a second one with this weathered old woman who was suspicious of me right from the start, didn't buy the act. Circling around her, I wound up climbing further into the hills covered in graves, and as I climb I transition partially out of the Spike character. I'm hearing voices up here among the graves, not from the graves themselves but still tied to this place - three men who were here a long time ago and moved on, people I've been looking for traces of for a long time. I can't hold on to what they're saying.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

From Hellblazer, I/Constantine am walking out a back door into a narrow courtyard and out a large gate, then turn back to look at the building I've just left. Ravenscar. The image is distorted - I'm looking at a long wall with a gate in the center, one tower visible over it, and a few windows opening onto that courtyard, letting you see a little more of the building, and that's all fine enough; except it looks impossibly tall, and at strange slanted angles, and the views through those windows are showing me more than should be possible as I look up and up and up. I catch glimpses of the moon through those windows sometimes. In a stunning lack of lucidity, I think of this as "the place that haunts my dreams."

Scene changes. I'm still looking up at that extreme angle, but I'm looking at a different place, focusing on this life-sized stone statue of a woman high above me in the moonlight. I have a sense of something religious about it, like she's meant to be praying, though there's nothing about her position to suggest it, or like she's meant to be an angel, though there's no wings. I think something along the lines of, "Of course, it would be her," with a sense of resignation.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man begging me for something, and I'm tired of this, bored. I tell him, life, death, pick one, plead your case, make it convincing, you've got one minute, go. It takes him a moment to process this, but then he starts singing.

I recognize the song from a theatre show I enjoy about Lucifer, but can't place the scene immediately - at first I think it's Lilith's song. I'm amused - you think reminding me of her will make me more sympathetic to you too? I like the inspired emotional manipulation, but that's not going to work - she moved me, he didn't. But then I recognize the actual song. It's from the story of a woman who had to choose between love and advancing her career as a dancer - she chose dance. The song is about her calling herself foolish for causing pain to them both, her and the boy she loves, but ultimately defending her choice as a valid one.

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 flying down the center of a stairwell.

At the bottom of the stairs, I switch to 3rd person. This is a college, and classes are letting out. There's this incredibly beautiful androgynous person who stops a guy in the hall and talks to him, then s/he gives him this piece of paper with a small square smear of something dark green on it. This color will alter the guy's personality. The guy takes it, and he refers to them as boss and generally acts friendly and cheerful, but he's careful not to actually touch the color. S/he tells him to find a place without any people.

The guy heads up the stairs to the second floor, and I switch to his POV. Most of the classrooms have a few people in them even though they're between classes, but I find one where the chairs have been stacked up on the tables, I figure no one's going to be using this classroom for the rest of the night, and I call the boss over. S/he gives me some more of those papers, with different colors on them and labels giving an idea of their effects, and tells me to distribute them to some of the other students here. I go to do so, but then realize I've mixed up the one s/he gave me with the others. It was clear when s/he was talking to me in the empty classroom that s/he expected me to have already taken it, and now I'm worried about making them mad. When I can't find it again, I wind up taking a different one instead, a slightly lighter colored green, the closest match I could find. Immediately after, I find the one I was looking for, and I wonder whether it's safe to take two. I take it anyway.

I'm talking to someone against the boss's wishes. I consider myself loyal to the boss, but s/he's got a self-destructive streak that I have no problem acting against. Those papers would have prevented me from doing so, but taking two of them sort of cancelled each other out, the changes they caused didn't stick. This guy I'm talking to is a detective or something similar, and I'm telling him a woman's name. He has others working for him and he has them ask after the woman.

I'm a different character in that same college setting. There are police or military or something surrounding an angel - which looks nothing at all like a human, I mostly have an impression of a vast white face like a mask or a doll, twice the height of a man, alien and hostile. I'm thinking to myself that I can't die, it's impossible, like I'm trying to convince myself, but seeing that angel shook me - something about seeing something that old, something that existed before I was created. The disembodied observer side of me is thinking that although the character side of me isn't aware of it, there's some connection between me-the-character and that angel.

As the same character, I'm talking to a woman, and ask her to lend me some money. I don't need a lot, just something to get me into a game, I'm confident as long as I have some money to start with I can easily multiply it. She's disgusted, says it's always the same with me. She gave me a business (I have some mental association here with both religion and gambling) and she expected me to run it, so why am I still doing this? I find this ridiculous of her. I had absolutely no interest in the business she gave me.

I'm talking to someone about characters from Buffy - but all but one of us here are aware that I'm just using them as metaphors to talk about us. The one who isn't aware, who thinks I'm just talking about fictional characters, gets bored and leaves, but I keep using the metaphor. I'm saying, no, Giles's problem was that he knew exactly what his - and more importantly, Buffy's - destiny was supposed to be, and he knew it wasn't going to happen. Hence his downward spiral; he knew what they should be doing, and yet there was nothing he could do. I'm looking at a woman who I equate with Buffy as I say this.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've just driven to my IRL mother's house from a lake, and decided I'm too tired to drive back to the lake tonight, I'll spend the night. Mom gets me a coffee, there's chunks of chocolate floating on the top, I'm thinking about how much I appreciate her thinking to provide comfort food like that. The coffee's too bitter for my taste. I'm thinking that's odd, since I usually drink black coffee. We talk about how tired I've been, and she says it's due to the work I've been doing. I think that's strange, since the job I've been doing is easy, but she says anything you're not used to will tire you out, and relates it to her own similar experience.

Regina is surrounded by people she resents and is saying "Get me my advisor. Now!" As a disembodied observer, I'm pleased to hear this - the advisor she's referring to is Rumpelstiltskin, and earlier someone used a similar phrasing and tone to ask for their father, so I take this parallel as an indication that she's viewing Rumpelstiltskin as a father figure, which was something I wanted.

As Rumpelstiltskin, I've been recently de-cursed but have made sure no one else realizes that. I'm looking through a cabinet for an object related to the situation Regina's currently in. I find it: a small statue of a man in armor standing beside a stone pillar with what looks like Chinese characters on it. I pick up the pillar, removing it from the rest of the statue. I'm talking to myself as I do this, saying "You're here, but are-" I hear Regina's soldiers arriving outside, come to fetch me. I've been expecting them. I immediately pocket the pillar and statue and adopt a pose appropriate for my old cursed self, irritating my bad knee for a moment but making sure no one else will be able to tell it's bothering me, adopting a mindset and mannerisms as if I were putting on a costume and mask, though it takes effort to mimic what used to come naturally - that manic delight and curiosity and energy and attention focused in a million different directions at once. I'm getting used to faking this, though, and am more worried about whether that trinket I'm carrying will work.

Fragment: "So the little girl had a last (something) request."

Buffy setting. Angel has a son (not Connor), and someone is threatening to turn that son into a vampire. The vampire's trying to convince Angel that this would be a good thing - not trying too hard, he intends to do this for Angel's own good whether Angel wants it or not - and Angel's trying to show him why it's a bad idea. He calls out a kid vampire he'd made himself, Angel's holding him by the shoulders and the kid says he died when he was 8, looks older but not by much, and then says "I'm good with math, but facial recognition..." The point is that the brain stops developing before its time.

There were some earlier fragments in that same setting - talking about once-in-a-lifetime perfect happiness vs. just plain everyday happiness, and watching Buffy walking down a sidewalk past a brick wall.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Reading about Josephine Baker, a sister who'd died and a mother she'd admired.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Forever Knight setting. As Nicolas, I'm with some humans in a public place, in a hurry, when just for a moment I spot LaCroix and Janette in the crowd with someone else, a woman either I or Janette turned relatively recently, within the past century or so - I desperately want to be with them. I'd been cut off from them. I can't just abandon my humans here, but I have to at least get a message to them. I make my excuses and head back to where I saw them. (I'd seen them dressed as they did in the 1940s - symbolic for happier times together. Also a connection to a kid vampire, so this dream was probably partially inspired by the Angel one.)

In a hallway. LaCroix was here a moment ago, sitting in a chair at the end of the hall, and I'm looking at a telegram that was on the table next to him. I wonder if that bit about text in dreams changing when you look away is true. I focus on an 8; I look again, and it's a 58; then 8 again, then a Cyrillic н. I guess it's true. (As I was expecting it to change, this seems a bit pointless.) I then resume looking for LaCroix.

I'm riding in a truck with a man who spots a pair of coyotes and stops the truck to shoot them. I knock the gun off target.

With that same man, I'm standing over a pair of bucks who are lying on the ground with several arrows in their sides, suffering because I knocked the killing shot off course.

I'm with someone else, a guy from the city, and watching that man pull into his driveway with the body of a horse in the back of his truck. We're standing in front of his neighbor's house, a chubby, long-haired, middle-aged hippie who is burning something that looks like a sphere of hay the size of a beach ball. The fire spreads to the ground, and then to his neighbor's yard, burning in strange geometric shapes, circles and lines. I start clapping, seeing that man's property on fire. The hippie tells me about a protest he's about to go to, a bunch of people are going to jump off a clocktower, do we want to come? The guy standing with me isn't interested, but I'm up for it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man and a woman with accordions warming up for a show in front of a mirror, the man comments on how beautiful the red of his accordion is.

I'm playing a piano duet with that man, and while his part is beautiful to listen to, my part has so little to do that I lose track of where we are and come in late, I play slow and haltingly. I wonder why he doesn't just play the whole piece himself, he could easily play my part with his left hand.

A machete being given to someone as a gift.

My IRL sister S. calls me and describes a place she stopped at as "a Twin Peaks diner." The use of Twin Peaks as an adjective makes no sense to me - what, do they have great pie with a side of prophetic dreams?

Twin Peaks setting, 3rd person, as a disembodied observer I'm looking at the trees along a mountain road, bare of leaves, small and spindly trees, so close together that none of them really had a chance to grow. A jeep comes down the road, driven by the sheriff, with Cooper in the passenger seat. Cooper's talking about how cold it's gotten, and he's pleasantly nervous about his date tonight.

There's an accident of some kind, an earthquake or a landslide, and the jeep gets stuck; the sheriff gets out of the jeep to walk along a footpath into the mountains. Cooper wants to take care of something in the jeep before he follows, something to calm him down before his date. The landslide or whatever it was that trapped the jeep has opened up a second path next to the usual footpath, and as a disembodied observer I think 'You are obviously being invited on a personal quest. Take it.' The sheriff doesn't take it. However, the usual path crumbles beneath his feet, and he lands on the second path anyway. At the moment the footpath crumbles beneath him, so does the road holding up the jeep, and it falls into a crevice with Cooper still inside.

A teenage girl who's recently begun to see strange things, people who look different to her than they do to everybody else, demonic, eyes in the wrong places or no mouths, and so on - she's thinking about one man in particular, a mentor or father figure, who now looks inhuman to her. She believes this is a delusion. But she's run across a woman who obliquely refers to herself as inhuman, clearly believing that they're both the same; and the woman goes on to talk about various creatures like them gathering, organized by that particular father figure, and about a 'sister' who that father figure favors, and weighing the pros and cons of killing that 'sister.' It's clear this girl is the 'sister' being talked about, though neither of them realize it.

This conversation had been happening at a food court in an airport while they were both waiting to meet other people, and eventually the girl put her head down on the table, folded her arms for a pillow and took a nap; when she woke up, another person was sitting next to her, a black-haired woman, talking to the first one, and when she sees the girl's waking up she tries to startle her. The girl doesn't get startled. The black-haired woman then says hello in a very odd, drawn-out tone.

(Woke up. That odd, drawn-out tone was the sound of a chainsaw next door. Back to sleep.)

Walking through mountains at night, talking about chocolate, and being followed by Gollum.

Going along with Buffy's friends on some scheme they've come up with, now that she's dead.

A small model of an obelisk, made out of salt.

I'm possessing a young man in college, and I'm doing a terrible job of mimicking his normal behavior, all his housemates suspect something's up with him.

Still in that college setting, a horror movie called 'Mandeathering' is recommended to me - I see a scene involving several creatures in a graveyard, one of them looking like Nosferatu and holding a child in his arms, described as a family that 'feeds on death,' and 'the weak ones' giving in to sadness or despair (though now I can't remember if 'the weak ones' were among the family or the ones they were feeding on). I google the movie, but think the guy recommending it must have gotten the title wrong, because none of the results I'm getting are for a horror movie; the first result is for a dream journal.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

On a ship, looking down at a human-shaped siren standing on an island and the man from my crew who's standing there with her. I'm thinking about going down there myself, but I'm also thinking about past experiences with things that call to you from the water, asking you to leave your ship. Never goes well.

Fragment of one person chasing another on horseback on that same island, something to do with a god.