Carabas

Earlier, was just lucid enough to deliberately fly upward with the intent of getting a wider view, instead lost visuals and wound up in a completely different scene, losing lucidity.

Standing on a ladder outside a suburban home, the wind shifts, hot and dry, a sense of the desert that's going to claim this place and incorporate it into my people's territory. I'm the one who led them to this place, but I feel conflicted now. I excuse myself to the man who'd been holding the ladder, and go inside to take care of some loose ends. There are too many signs of how personal an interest I've taken in this world, learning their language, getting much too attached; I should dispose of that evidence.

Elsewhere, among the troops, I'm speaking to one of them on behalf of a man in this world, Adam, trying to make sure they take care when they process him. I say I've never seen a dreamer with power like his before. Which is true, but I'm also being careful to phrase it in practical terms, downplaying any personal attachment. I have to stress the importance of him as a resource not to be wasted. The man I'm speaking to agrees that they'll be careful, but I don't think he's really paying attention, just brushing me off. I end the scene flying back to that suburban house, desperately searching for Adam.

The following scene focuses on a brother figure chiding me for hanging onto a ghost.

I'd been looking at a map showing three islands that had been conquered by someone else; I'm unconcerned about the islands themselves but am considering their influence over the surrounding sea routes.

Now standing on the deck of a ship, I'm speaking to a military leader from another ship, part of the group that conquered those islands - he's a passenger, not the ship's captain. He addresses me as Enchanter, which amuses me. I express my surprise that he's willing to deal with me if he recognizes what I am - I was under the impression that his people thought of my kind as demons. Isn't he worried that he's risking corruption with this conversation?

He indicates that many of his attitudes have changed since coming to this region. He describes how he'd arrived with four of my kind sealed on his ship; while on the central island, they'd broken free and in doing so, as he puts it, "bound themselves to the chains of ghosts." It's a reference to the past of that island - once they were no longer sealed away, they became entangled with local legends, automatically embodying the locals' beliefs. The way this man sees it, they are no longer themselves - by breaking free of their seals and into this world, they've trapped themselves in these roles, living out ancient history. He sees this as a negative thing. I don't. It's the way we work.

At the McKittrick Hotel, I ran an errand for Hecate, and in return she's granting me access to a certain flight of stairs. I hand her written note to this effect to the doorman, and he removes the rope blocking off the stairs. He looks bored. He warns me that the things I'll see up there are just ghosts, so don't take any of it too seriously. I tell him I know. I'm still looking forward to seeing something new.

At the top of the stairs, everything is airy and bright, and there's the dead body of a soldier in dress uniform sitting against the railing that overlooks the ballroom, arms spread and head dangling forward in a way that reminds me of a scarecrow. His name's Jeremy. A woman in white walks up to him - there's something careless about her. Jeremy gets up from the railing, and they begin to dance through the rooms of the hotel. There's no music.

My IRL sisters are visiting me and we've been bickering as we walk to the door of my IRL house. There's a dead girl standing in the driveway, staring at the door, and - sarcastically, it's related to what we were bickering about - I say to her something along the lines of "Well? Are you coming in, too?" This is said more for my sisters' benefit than for the dead girl; she doesn't seem to react.

Inside, I get online and read a news article. The powerful old guard of some country have been giving themselves promotions. One man is referred to by the titles Ulmo (name taken from Tolkien, but at the time I believed it was a reference to some eastern European mythology) and Eleusis, and a rank which translates to Old Knight. The Ulmo of myth is (in this dream) associated with beginnings and the dawn, and that was symbolic for this man's political duties, but as these people have given themselves promotions those myth-derived titles have become more literal - he can now literally control dawn, and other forms of time related to the beginnings of things.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a caterpillar in my IRL house. I pick it up, and although it keeps wriggling away, I eventually manage to take it outside. When I put it down in the grass, it immediately tries to get back inside, and I realize there's a beetle out there it's trying to get away from. The beetle tells me that this is the spirit of a dead girl. It tells me a story about this girl and a hockey player who's also now dead, and about two guys who took a deal not to talk about something that happened between two hockey players and two girls. I see the hockey player and the dead girl on a train, and she's staring blankly into space with these wide, round eyes.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm watching an extended version of Near Dark with various extras. The one I'm watching seems to be an interview, but with the characters themselves, not the cast/crew. The family's standing around a Cadillac convertible, and Caleb's talking to someone about how he first joined the family, a long time ago. He'd been driving with a woman, she'd been drunk, when the family found them she hadn't realized the danger they were in. He talks about Mae, and then he holds up her hand and says "and lucky me - no ring." He laughs. Jesse looks a little disgusted by the way Caleb talks about Mae, but he laughs too. Caleb's wearing a belt buckle shaped like the head of a snake with fangs bared.

I decide to go back to the main menu. This isn't just for Near Dark, but for a wide variety of movies, and one displays a picture of John Constantine with a title that references immortality and love and/or betrayal. The menu images are constantly shifting, and he slips off the screen. There are at least two layers of the image, and I think of those layers as somehow acting as mirrors, both of the viewer and of each other. By changing the angle I'm standing at, I get Constantine back in view.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Someone's telling a story. The listener asks, "Was it the wrath of heaven?" The storyteller shakes her head. "It was the wrath of the humans." Following someone's advice led to some captured human surviving and leaving the fortress where the storyteller lived, an isolated building in the center of a vast field stretching to the horizon, the only landmark I can see. He returned with many soldiers. As a disembodied observer standing on the top of that fortress, I can hear the soldiers shouting to each other. They're speaking Korean, I don't understand them.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A setting based on a fantasy version of ancient China. An elegantly dressed woman is telling a terrified human man to "call me elder sister." He frantically agrees, although he nearly calls her something more along the lines of 'mistress' as he does so; he's thinking about her connection to his master. She releases him and walks off, through a fence, passing through the solid object like it's not there. Looking at this, the man says or thinks "What a way for owls to fly around at night."

A similar fantasy China setting. There's a man leading a human woman around a palace, talking about truth and the inability to lie. "Like this," the woman says, holding up the candle she was given by the woman who rules this place. It has words carved into it, which she believes promises her safe passage in some fashion. He laughs, and says that's a careful bit of phrasing, which causes her to look concerned. He reads it out, and it says something along the lines of "The human will want/feel no hunger." He points out that this statement will be true even if she stays here forever - she won't want food, she won't feel hunger. But actually eating solid food that will sustain her life, or returning to her own world to do so - that's a different subject entirely, and it's not covered by the carefully-phrased promise on the candle.

In a modern setting, I'm staying somewhere for the night with a small group of other people. Other groups are here as well, and there's concerns about space, so when I finally see the room we've been given I'm surprised by how big it is. There aren't many beds, but there's a lot of floor space, there should be no problem. We all sort out spaces for our bedrolls, and some of us go over the movies we have between us. I wonder if I can convince the others to put on Near Dark. The floor's becoming crowded, and I just manage to find a space for my backpack; on top of the backpack I place a stuffed animal shaped like a dog, which I'm aware contains a guardian dog spirit who protected me from the ghost of a dead girl earlier tonight.

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.