Carabas

That pilgrimage again, but sometime before we reached that mountain range. We're camped out somewhere green. I'm walking through the camp with that woman leading the pilgrimage, and although it's her visions they're following, no one pays her any particular attention as we're walking around. We come to the top of a cliff with a long series of wooden stairs leading to the bottom, crossing back and forth. Far below, two of our people are fighting, sort of - a soldier and a man I recognize, it's clear she's training him. I wonder why he'd want to do that - he's really not suited to fighting. The soldier sees us watching them and they both stop.

Time skip over all those stairs; we get to the bottom, and they're both sprawled out on the ground. She's asking him to list the three things he's learned. He goes um, ah, "Give me a minute. I just had it." She does give him a few moments, and then she gives him this expectant look. He seems surprised she didn't just drop it. He says, "I'm finished," and laughs.

An enormous raven, three times the size of any I've seen, lands on a fence post nearby; then it's a very elegant woman leaning against that fence post instead. I'm thinking, that would have been much more convenient than walking down all those stairs.

I'm disembodied and watching this woman who I think of as "the princess." She's standing on a cliff at night, looking out into the distance - I'm facing the opposite direction, and I wonder what she can see out there; she seems to be looking at something specific. She's with this big buff friend/guard. I'm hearing music, though I'm aware the music isn't part of the scene on the cliff that I'm watching. A mezzo-soprano singing, starting with a line that reminds me of the start of the Commendatore's song - "Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m'invitasti" - very similar sequence of notes, but in no language I recognize. The princess has come here to make some kind of self-sacrifice.

As I watch, this dark grey crystal-like structure forms on her right temple, up into her hairline. Smaller, similar structures appear elsewhere on her bare skin where it's visible, but they quickly fade away - I think of snow landing on the skin and instantly melting. But the larger ones on her temple stay. The princess sways as if she's about to pass out, and her friend/guard catches her, but she's all right after just a moment. Her friend finds this scene, her actions, incredibly painful. So do I. I admire her.

Those 'crystals' are things of the same nature I am - they're alive, in a sense, or similar enough to life; they're not capable of complex communication like I am, but they have awareness of a sort. And the princess has willingly made herself their host. Though she and her friend see this as self-sacrifice, I'd call it more of a deal. There's something that she wanted, and this will give her the power to see it accomplished - but she's giving up something too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Skyping with Julie, who turns out to live only an hour or two away, and feeling foolish for not reaching out to her before.

A scene involving using a spinning wheel for what both is and isn't the first time, having Rumpelstiltskin's mental associations but without actually being him in this scene; finding it soothing to watch the wheel spin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There was this angel who'd taken on physical form to help me, and when we were done I betrayed it, sold it or traded it to this woman. Now I've gone to see her, and I'm seeing what she's done with the angel. It's chained up against a wall, its feet off the ground, and its severed wings on display above its head. When it sees me, it puts its head against the wall and says without looking at me, "You're safe now, brother. I can't be out." By which it means it has no intention of trying to get free of its chains. Now that its wings have been removed, it's fallen; it doesn't want to see what would happen without the chains to impose some restraint.

A fragment where a character was referred to first as Silverhand, and then specifically as Airgetlám.

An army and civilian followers are camped around a castle they're allied with, south of their home. Their next ruler is with them, but he hadn't officially taken the throne yet. Now, someone still in their home country is making his own move for the throne; in response to that, the one with the army is standing up in front of his people and officially declaring himself king. This gets a mixed response - some people ask, by what right? Even though they were already following him, you still can't just crown yourself.

A woman's sitting on the outskirts of that crowd listening to his speech, by the top of a cliff, with three gnome-like creatures. She seems amused by the speech. One of the gnome-things distracts her from it by making too much noise - she casually kicks it off the cliff. One of the other gnome-things then grabs her by the foot and does the same to her, much to her surprise.

There's this strange, vaguely canine creature with a head almost completely covered in bony ridges, giving the impression that it has a skull for a head. It changes shape, sometimes looking insect-like, a vast serpent thing with many legs, and very rarely, it takes the form of a woman. It serves a certain human man who found it on a cliff, and the first time it changes into a woman it freaks him out immensely - he's wondered if maybe the creature is actually a person under a curse, but he's not at all sure which is the true form. At the moment, he's thinking "(creature's name) is the answer" - the moment he thinks that, something else bursts into the room and the creature leaps up to fight it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A narrator of a play saying "Young Romeo spies the young witch Barathia in the woods, but..."

A person I know IRL is annoyed at me over a misunderstanding, and posting passive aggressive messages about it online. I wonder whether I should correct the misunderstanding or just leave it alone.

I'm standing on a street corner with someone, waiting for the light to change, when I see two people walking towards us, including that IRL person from the previous scene. The light changes just then, and I know I should probably wait for her to catch up, but I hurry across the street instead. I follow the guy I'm walking with down onto the railway tracks, and there's something I really enjoy about walking along the tracks at night. A train goes past.

Still walking with that same guy, we've reached the trailer where his mother lives. When he knocks on the door, this guy he dislikes answers, some bigot his mother's dated in the past, but last he knew it was over between them, he wasn't expecting him to be here. They say something to each other I can't hear, I can just tell the guy in the door looks angry, and then the guy I'd been walking with turns around and leaves. He's really upset. I tell him to come back with me, we can go spend the holiday at my mother's place, she'll like having us over. At one point he decides to go back and kick that guy out of his mother's house and I physically hold him back.