Carabas

There's this man who's gotten himself into some trouble, and I've offered my help in solving that problem. Alternatively, I've told him to speak with a woman who works for me, and she'll help him disappear for a while. When he doesn't come to meet me, I check in with that woman, still in the alley where I'd told the man to meet her, behind the building where she works as a maid, still in her uniform. She tells me the man didn't show. She looks worried. I'm annoyed. I think the man's making a poor decision.

It reminds me of another time. I see a building on top of a lake, a massive black arch. I'd made a deal with a woman that had led to the creation of this structure. She sees it as an architectural wonder and a symbol of her power, influence, capability, something along those lines; I see it as something impermanent. Like Ozymandias. I think of it as foolish. And I thought she would have realized that now that her deal's played out; I'd expected she'd want to make a new deal, to change course, I was looking forward to it. But when she does come to me for something else, it just compounds her original mistake. I'm disgusted but give her what she asks for.

Escaped from my IRL home onto my IRL street and went lucid when I crossed that boundary line. Started flying, admired some views of Christmas lights, getting less and less realistic as I went on, culminating in a castle with turrets completely covered in white lights.

Memory gap, crossed a lake by a natural rock bridge and entered a cavern on the other side, memory gap again, and then I'm semi-lucid again in a room with three sleeping people I recognize, including Julia. I try to leave without disturbing any of them, fail in this. Mary Jane wakes up, the closest to the exit, and we speak for a while; although we seem to know each other, I'm aware that Mary Jane is wholly imaginary, and that's the point of her in this scene, that she's imaginary. Julia is in the bed across from hers, and eventually wakes up - that's what I wanted to avoid most. I can feel the sensation of pressure from her hand, which stands out - it's the first time I've used that sense in tonight's dreams. Her face has started to resemble Mary Jane's, which is sad but not a surprise; but I think "her name is still her own," which is a surprise and a relief. (This whole scene is about mental associations.)

A man confronts me at my IRL home, having tracked me down, holding me responsible for something that happened long ago. I hear a memory of something he'd said to me then - "The rule of kings is over. We will take our place among free nations." The scene shifts to show the beginning of the thing he blames me for. A procession through a city, passing by a river, soldiers in silver-colored armor, rows and rows of lances in the sunlight, the king and myself in tall masked helmets and long robes, at the corner of my vision I'm aware of a ship moving along the river with sails and oars and something golden about it, and it's all a striking image, but I'm thinking of something like Cosa Nostra.

A young woman's walking quickly through the woods just before dawn - the trees are sparse and thin, lots of fallen leaves from past seasons covering the ground; she's wearing simple dark clothing and a white cap, from maybe around the 1500s. She's very nervous. I follow her as she steals a black hen - she's thinking about some dog as she does it - and makes her way to a well.

But just as she reaches the well, an older woman grabs her and shouts, "Witch! Possessed!" This woman's familiar to me. Painfully thin, red hair so short and strangely cut that I suspect it's growing out after being shaved off completely, wearing a nightdress as if she'd just seen my witch and jumped out of bed to stop her, but I don't believe it's a coincidence that she's here; I believe hunting witches is something she's done before.

The scene changes. Three men - two middle-aged, one older, all still looking like it's the 1500s - are discussing the woman who'd been caught as a witch, and her mother. Her mother had been the same, accused of "magical transformations," but she'd died years and years ago, and the daughter had been raised by another since she was a child, changed her family name. The last these men had heard of her, she was to be married to some knight. They frame this marriage as a very good thing, that she had a good life that she's thrown away; but I hear them say this and I think indeed she was married to him, and that had gone very badly for her, and that's why she summoned me.

Later. Different scene entirely, my IRL home, a pair of men attempted to break in and I turned them into cats. Cat burglars. They made for very angry cats but I was pleased with myself for the joke, and my sister had been wanting a white cat anyway.

(Dreaming hasn't been a focus lately, but: )

I'm floating in a void full of clouds and stars, and recognize that I'm lucid. A destination comes to mind - not one I'd planned in advance, it's an impulse. With that thought, I have the impression I've changed direction, moving closer to the earth - slightly negative connotations here; not bad, just frivolous.

I'm in a bar; it serves as a front room for my actual destination. There's conversation, people sitting around at tables; the bartender's a heavyset and balding man. Asks what I want to drink. I believe I'm not physical enough here to either drink or pay for anything, but refusing to order anything isn't acceptable, so I ask for a water. I'm thinking about the unusual vividness of this scene. The man to my right, clearly a regular, starts talking to me and the bartender, talking about the guy who owns this place (the person I came here to see) and the way things are done here; I'm going to have to set up a tab before I can order anything, even water. The bartender asks to see my phone in order to give me the owner's number. I take it out, but the screen's showing what I think of as the real world, in contrast to this place. I'm concerned about the bartender seeing that and recognizing that I'm out of place here. I hand him the phone anyway. He programs the number in without seeing anything out of the ordinary and hands my phone back.

The image on the phone, my 'real' world, is showing a woman with dirty blonde hair, winter clothing, knit hat, walking on a narrow street at night, the outskirts of a small city maybe, lots of greenery around on this particular street but the sense that there's a much more heavily built up area within walking distance. She's talking to someone, male, a friend or a sibling. The scene shifts so I'm there with them. They walk, they talk, they're being followed by something other than me. There's a sense of the dream becoming a nightmare.

As they entered an apartment building, I made the mistake of reacting to the other thing following them, thus letting it realize I was aware of it and attracting its attention. It attempted to latch onto me instead, and in the next scene it's taken on the role of my younger sibling (not one of my actual IRL ones), inserting itself into a role in my dream the same way it had been playing a role in that woman's dream. There was a brief moment where I accepted it as my sibling, before I remembered. It was very shocked when I hurt it in the process of removing it. "Ow, ow, you're hurting me!" "Get off of me, then." It did, and I woke up.

In the previous scene, I'd been doing shots with a man who drinks live snakes, one every day. The bartender gives me a dead one, since it's my first time; it'll go down easier. Now I'm walking around half-submerged ruins where I've been before. There's meant to be a door here, though I hadn't seen it the first time around. Now that I'm searching, though, I spot the fold in reality that's hidden it, pull it through so that it becomes solid. It's set in the base of what had been an empty stone arch.

The other side of the door is an in-between place, and I go slightly lucid in order to pause and enjoy the view. It's a stone bridge hanging in space, pale stone, low and sloping walls on either side, and something like coral growing over it in patches. This space has the quality of light seen from underwater, and floating above there's some enormous, amorphous, diaphanous shape, jellyfish-like. It's all very pleasant.

Along the bridge I run into two women with the tails of snakes, mermaid-like, who are frozen in place, and whose verbal words don't match the meanings I hear - the verbal words are friendly, the underlying meaning is to get me to come close enough and stay long enough for them to kill and eat me. I find them pleasant, too; I can't blame them for being hungry, this place sees so little traffic, and I don't intend to stay long enough for them to kill me, so they're effectively harmless.

When I leave the in-between place, it takes me to a scene where an Egyptian woman with a clipboard is consulting a guest list. I have to wait in line behind some snake-haired triplets while a dead human woman talks to the woman with the clipboard, trying to justify why she belongs inside, citing the royal status of her lover.

I'm on a lake. In the lake, there's a small island; there's an enormous tree whose roots cover almost the entire island; at the base of the tree, there's a standing mirror, silver in color this time; and in front of the mirror, there are two steel bars. There's a steel vine covered in thorns that's wrapped around the bars in an arch, serving as a lock. I unwind the thorny vine and remove it. The mirror's open now.

Traveling through the basement of a ruined mansion, where the walls have crumbled so much there's a sense of open air and greenery, there's a painting of Joan of Arc commissioned by the woman who used to own this estate, and I'm pleased to see she had it painted so that Joan resembles the commissioner herself. This would be considered disrespectful, which is why it was hidden away in the basement.

I'm in an open, airy, bright library where some event is going on, some new release that's drawn in a lot of upper class, scholarly types. It's interrupted by a woman who's some kind of monster I'm familiar with, delivering a hostile message to me and leaving again. She frightened most of the people into backing away. I'm thinking, although these things are hostile and my automatic reaction to them is equally hostile, they only exist because of my "tainted blood," which was what originally created her kind, generations back; thinking about that, there's a shift in attitude, I start to pity them. They're essentially my responsibility, though they're not aware of it.

Setting loosely based on China some centuries ago, vaguely Ming dynasty. Two men have been speaking to a human woman about a book, but they're interrupted by a human man who is a friend of hers, of sorts - he offers to join their expedition. He has some manner of expertise to do with this book they're looking for, and if he comes along, the woman's presence would be unnecessary. The leader of the two at first is ready to agree, this would be much preferable.

But the human man then says, why should his cut be only 10%? Make it 100% - he'll keep the book himself, but translate it for them. To his mind, this would be a better deal for all of them, he expects this to be accepted. But the leader of the two is offended by his presumption and kills him, abandoning his human appearance in the process - his eyes are covered by a cloudy grey film, his teeth are fangs on both upper and lower jaws. I'm remembering a year earlier, when that human man had been doing something in a place where many books were stored, directly above where this man had been sleeping in the ground for a long time. The human woman, watching him kill her friend, blames herself - she was involved in something that happened in a market a year ago, when this man woke up.

Belle is in the kitchen of someone else's house, someplace that has servant quarters, and she's found a jar of a certain weed that's been spilled - it's not something that should be used for cooking, it's dangerous, causes disfigurement. The implication in finding it spilled across the counter is that a servant was carelessly exposed to it. It's said that it only affects those who say rude/cruel/insulting things while holding it - a physical disfigurement to reflect a disfigurement of the soul. She calls Rumplestiltskin to dispose of it safely, and to look into what it was doing there.

As he removes it, he looks around the building and sees old photos and negatives of him and Belle among various trophies that the owner of the house has collected - there's a sense that these photos are things that were stolen from him. He looks at one in particular, a moment when he'd stopped Belle from saying that she loved him. He regrets this, and says he would listen now. She says, "I would have meant it then." And wouldn't now, is the implication. But she stops him from moving away from her by grabbing him roughly by the hair.

She tells him her plan is to find her ideal world this time, with the money that Regina left her, and with him, as they're stuck together due to a previous deal. He reminds her that he's no longer capable of appearing human, which will cause difficulties in many other worlds. "I'll work with it," she says. A previous deal requires him to leave at least a piece of himself in this current world, and I see an image of his hand chained to the sand, in the surf.

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.

I've broken into a building for a specific purpose, but it's not been going well. I killed someone while trying to stop him from raising the alarm, I hadn't intended that. Still standing over him, to my right there's a room with three men in 19th century dress uniform speaking. They're the reason I came here, and I'm certain I won't be able to finish what I came here to do now that they've seen this - but they're not reacting. On further examination, there's some manner of barrier between that room and this one, invisible from this side but seemingly solid from theirs. I lean through for a moment while those men are facing the other way, feeling no resistance, and find that from their side, it looks as if I'm leaning through a mirrored wall. Interesting setup; I'm thinking about why the owner of this home would need such a thing.

Then I focus on the men speaking on the other side, the reason I'm here. One is saying, "What do we do about Shaw?" Another replies, "Escaping-"

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Revisiting that one-way-mirror setup, there's a vivid yellow tint to the air on this side of the mirror, and I'm looking at an image of a white rabbit hanging from a noose held in a man's hand. I'm hearing a man I think of as some kind of instructor saying to me, "...exists in the past."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man I recognize from a previous dream leading a group of people out of some tunnels onto the surface. There's only a narrow ledge to stand on here, the top of a cliff, and it's raining, windy. Last time I'd described him as pale; this time there's something wrong with his skin, but I'm not focusing on it. I'm looking at his eyes; there's a red ring filling the outer half of his iris, that's new. Someone's saying in response to a question he just asked, "Perhaps we could talk on the way there," like they're in a hurry to get away from here.

Earlier, he'd been having a conversation with another man in those tunnels, taller, with white hair that's mostly fallen out. This man's arguing against him leaving with that group of people and going back to civilization, saying that either he'll spread corruption like a disease, or else he won't but he'll be blamed for doing so anyway. Previously, they'd unknowingly allowed some kind of corruption to spread before their own symptoms started to show, not realizing they were the cause.

A woman's landing a griffon. People come to meet her, and as she talks to one of them she's going to her bag and attending to her armor, getting out gloves and a helmet that weren't practical to wear while she was riding. She's talking about the things that need doing, acknowledging that some of them might be impossible at a small outpost like this, without the easy access to resources you get in the cities. And there's an animal strapped to the back of the griffon, restrained to keep it from hurting itself during the ride, in need of medical attention. They're next to the stables, but the griffon's too large for that - once everything's unloaded, it curls up on the ground like a cat, beside a tall fence.

That woman and the man she'd been talking to are walking past me into a circle of armed enemies. Someone in the crowd says, "It is the corruption against the corruption." They sound surprised. I'm ostensibly on the crowd's side, but I arranged to bring these two here tonight, and I expect them to kill the man who leads this little group, currently sitting on a kind of throne. Although I say nothing, I see him watching me and I can tell he understands my intention - or more likely he's imagining some grand paranoid plan; but my plan here is very straightforward, just his death. I'm aware he and I are a minor nuisance for these people I've brought here, just something to be dealt with on their way to something else - I have a vague association with the moon - not at all the grand schemes he's been imagining.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a city and taking the opportunity to meet with an old friend who was reassigned here recently, a promotion. She works in a form of law enforcement. She's talking about the changes on the island where we last saw each other, talking about the ongoing conflict there. She says the forest has been burned down, so they'll have no more place to hide. There's no more way to get past the patrols skating over the water - I have a mental image of a ring, a platform floating on the water, encircling the whole island, with the port itself as the only opening.

She describes all this as if they're good things. Time was, she'd be helping me get my people out of places like that. She's met the man who leads the people in that forest - his people aren't mine, but their situation is nearly identical. But I'm thinking, I shouldn't be surprised - the last time she helped me, something happened that frightened her. It's why she stopped working with me. My people weren't at fault, but I'm not surprised that she'd take that fear out on them. But listening to her now, talking as if my people should be locked up, it's like she's forgotten I'm one of them.

In some small early 20th century village, I'm the youngest in a family of three sons, and for years now it's been expected that I'll marry the neighbor's youngest daughter when we grow up - we've always been good friends. In the previous scene we'd all been sitting around my family's dinner table; now I've gone to meet her down by the river, which is so full of plants it gives the impression you could walk across them like a bridge. The girl's here waiting, but before I go to meet her, I'm distracted by another girl, a stranger, standing in the center of the river. The observer side of me thinks, I have to remember this.

Her hair is probably blonde, but it's so matted and dirty that it's hard to tell. She's dressed in old-fashioned men's clothes, a shapeless and colorless coat over a blue velvet waistcoat with a pattern of rosebuds. Then I realize that while I've been focusing on remembering the details of her appearance, I've been missing the conversation the character side of me is having with her. I drop back to focus on what the character side of me is doing.

Years later, but near that same river. One of my brothers is handing me a silver pocket watch that belongs to our father, and telling me that he's in Madrid - they've known this all along, apparently. My brothers got me to come back here on the pretense that our father's missing - I'm annoyed but not surprised to find that was a lie. There's a woman here, somehow connected to that girl in the river but not the same person, and something about biting down on a chain, and her little fangs.

I'm carrying one end of a wooden box through what looks like an abandoned house, with that woman holding the other end - it's not particularly large or heavy, just large enough to be awkward for one person. I'm looking at our hands on the box, close enough to be nearly touching. Her nails look thick and discolored, greyish; there's blood ingrained around the nail, but I'm thinking that the blood's not what's causing the dark greyish appearance, since there's blood all over my hands too.

That woman is kissing me and holding me in place, not letting me turn my head to see what's going on, telling me not to move when I try to. Something is very wrong. There's other people here; the observer side of me recognizes this moment and I switch to third person to avoid it. The scene still continues in front of me, they kill her, but I don't see much of it, focusing on remembering the earlier scenes.

I'm wading through icy water, tracking someone down. It's dark, the water looks black, and there's this mist in the air, I can't see very far. There's bodies floating in the water, wrapped in cloth. There's another man here with me, he calls me by the name of Logan. I'm focused on the dampness in the air - it caused problems earlier when we couldn't get a fire to catch.

Thinking about fire makes me see another time, standing in a large stone hall, standing off to the left of the woman presiding over some ceremony, having to remain still throughout her speech, wearing armor, uncomfortable. There were rows of people arranged in front of us, and as she called each of them up she'd hand them a lit candle, symbolic, but I was looking at those candles and thinking of them as never enough to hold off the chill.

Back in the icy water, we've found the person we were looking for in a little area surrounded by bare trees. He's standing off to one side and watching an old woman perform some kind of ceremony, something like a funeral for the old ruler here - I have a vague impression of something strung up among the trees, either the last ruler's bones themselves or at least something representing them. She knows who we are. She tells me that just because I've killed the old ruler, that doesn't make this place mine. The territory is passed down through the blood, and there's still someone with the elf blood to inherit it - the man we've been tracking down. He's not related to the old ruler, and he's more human than anything else, as is she, but that doesn't matter; this territory will remain in the hands of his people, not mine.

The man in question objects to this - this is a situation being forced on him. He tells me he's sorry. The guy who'd tracked him down with me makes some sarcastic comment, telling him to quit the humble act; but I believe him, this isn't something he'd wanted. Nonetheless, the old woman's in the right; there's nothing I can do here, we've lost. I tell him it's all right. It's only when I speak and hear the tone in my voice that I (the dreamer side of me) realize he and I (the character side of me) had been sleeping together; we're most likely going to have to end that now.

The old woman resumes her ceremony, now involving him. It doesn't take long, just a few words. There's a wreath of pale yellow flowers which he accepts from her; as soon as the ceremony's done he drops it and it falls apart in the water. I'm thinking of the moment I first met him, when he'd been locked up in a cell.

After a DA:O-based scene about pleasantly passing time with Zevran, I have a false awakening and go lucid in a much less pleasant setting: a college dorm where people are being influenced in their sleep by some sinister mental voice - I could make out his tone but not his words. My initial intent was to investigate this without letting the source of the voice realize I was immune to his influence, mimicking the behavior of his victims, but I approach a stone wall surrounding the building and decide nah, I'd rather just leave. I fly over the wall with some slight resistance which I think of as coming from the source of that voice, unwilling to let any of his prey escape.

This takes me down to a river surrounded by great grey boulders, leading down to the sea; as I follow the river it becomes filled by creatures similar to dolphins or porpoises - but incredibly ugly. I'm still feeling a sort of dragging effect from the scene I'd just left, resistance to moving further away; the water and open air feel refreshing but the animals' ugly appearance reflects some negative feel that's still affecting the dream.

There's a song in my head, and I choose to focus on the song instead of on my surroundings - an upbeat dance song from the 60s. I begin to see a music video that goes with it, though not vividly, more like daydreaming, still firmly aware of my surroundings along that river. I'm thinking this could be an interesting opportunity.

The music video has a wipe transition effect, like a clock hand sweeping around, and I focus on it - and now the music video has changed scenes from a dance hall to a boardwalk, and I've transitioned with it. I'm observing the boardwalk from above, 3rd person, with no more sense of that river with the sea creatures, or of the general feeling of unpleasantness from the past few scenes. I'm surprised that worked. It's unusually unvivid, though, still about the quality of a daydream; I wonder if I'm waking up. I shift my perspective, now standing on that boardwalk in the 60s, with a row of brilliantly colored pinball machines off to my right. That's much better. I drop back to non-lucidity for two more scenes.

Disembodied, I'm watching a teenage girl walk into my home, an old Victorian in a small city. The door wasn't locked. She's been sent here by someone who told her I can help her, but apparently he wasn't specific enough about exactly the kind of problem I would help her with - he'd emphasized how important it was that she get off the street tonight, so she's gotten the misimpression that I run some kind of homeless outreach thing. I'm thinking, amused, that she's not far wrong.

A girl who's just recently started staying with me walks out of the bathroom wearing a towel, and she says oh, hello to the girl who's just walked in, assuming that the girl must be a friend of mine. She tells the girl I'm 'out' right now - they know me by the name Nick. They chat a little back and forth, neither of them realizing their mistake, and I'm thinking this is a good coincidence, that a girl her same age was around to meet her first, and that they get along well; this should put her at ease.

The girl who just got out of the shower gets something to drink out of the fridge, and as she's doing so she holds up a particular marked bottle, asking if the girl wants any of this. Oh, damn it - so much for putting her at ease. It's blood, but the markings don't actually indicate that. Offering it was a reasonable thing to do, given the people she's seen just drop in looking for me; and since she's assuming the girl already knows me, she's also assuming the girl's already familiar with what's in that bottle. The girl says sure, takes the bottle, and opens it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm on one side of a wooden barricade, and an old friend of sorts on the other side is calling to me. He's telling me that he's taken my advice, and he's decided that I was right - all those people without any magic, their lives do have value after all. As he says this, I'm looking through the gaps in the barricade to the soldiers lined up on the other side. I recognize them, or rather I recognize their uniforms indicating the lord they serve, a man whose help I've been trying to secure for a while now. They're unnaturally still. It's clear my old friend is controlling them directly. I'm not going to have much luck with that lord if I kill off his people, not to mention the people on my side of the barricade who would never forgive me - we're going to have to run.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'd convinced a group of fox demons to give up their human forms, their physical forms. Now I'm returning to the lake where they live, and they're gone. There are markers like graves standing in the places they'd been when they gave up their forms, stakes of white wood with names written on them - or what they used for names, more like descriptions really, they changed them fairly often. I read each of them. I kneel down before one with a name I recognize - it had belonged to a child. For the sake of protecting one human man, I caused this.