Recent DJ Posts

Liam and Jack are recurring dream characters of mine. Liam always leaves me in a state of awe, like seeing a deceased loved one. When Jack appears, it's like...seeing a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Sometimes he's an ass. With Liam I'm always vividly aware, I can hear his voice. Feel textures. It's like becoming lucid. Jack is always more about emotions or situations.
Saja is a facet of my personality. Sometimes I become her when I dream. She belongs to Liam.

I find myself walking down the hall in my new apartment. I see a man kneeling at the foot of my bed, he's strikingly familiar. Dark-haired, wearing a plaid shirt and black jeans. This should immediately make me think of Jack, but I can't seem to think of his name. I go into my room, which is larger. The closet doors are open and there's a large alcove at the foot of the bed. I regard him with some fascination, as I always do. There's a random person hanging out by one of the windows, and also a man laying before him. My ex? This is important, my time to explain. Because when I step up beside him I am not myself. I am Saja. I want to tell my ex, and Jack about how there's this whole other person hiding in my subconscious, that takes over when I'm dreaming. When I step up beside him he addresses me, though he continues to stare forward into the alcove.
"I've...come a long way to find you." He sounds strained and a little hesitant, "Do you...know who I am?"
I never get a clear look at his face, only his mouth. Everything feels slow and perfect as I drop to my knees in front of him, uncertain. He is familiar, for sure. No one could have come further than Liam, though. And because I am so firmly Saja right now, and not myself. I breathe Liam's name with a sad kind of reverence.
Jack hesitates. His stark, angry disbelief ripples through the air, striking me like a slap. My mistake leaves me cold and a little ashamed.
Jack's mouth twists into a slight sneer. "Liam. Always Liam. He isn't even real. Just a fantasy you've built into a man." He's trying to shame me because I've hurt him. I'm embarrassed and I want to counter his statement. Liam is just as real to me as he is. What about all the times of I've seen him? With his fire-like hair and crooked smile?
I don't speak, just convey my recognition. I KNOW him, but I'm afraid to call him Jack, just in case I am wrong.
A moment later Jack gives lie to his pronouncement of Liam being a fabrication.
His voice is low and intense, "Do you think he would have done the things I've done for you?" He wants to show me what he's done, and rips his shirt off. Because of the drama behind the action I expect to see some sort of scar to represent his sacrifice. There is nothing, though. His skin is pale and smooth. That doesn't mean it isn't there, only that I can't see it. I regard him silently and give him a small smile, pressing my mouth to his by way of apology.
There's a confusing sequence, in which I am doing things but also not doing them at the same time. My sister arrives to make fun of me for my actions. I make excuses for my behavior but my shame sharp. I leave the room instead, hoping she will forget. I go out into the living room, I suddenly have a grey cat. I've had him for a week, I realize. I frown...realizing there isn't a litter box. How could I have forgotten? I find my sister in my room, except now it's her son's room. She's cuddling with her own cat, a long haired grey female.
I tell her I somehow forgot she had a cat. I initially felt like a jerk for forgetting a litter box for my cat, then relieved that there was one in the house.


There was also some weird thing about being in a bar, and the drunken masses choosing sober people to 'ride the wave'. They would pick us at random, swinging us into the air with wild abandon, like crowd surfing. Then buy us a drink afterward.
I meet a man who looks a little like Neil Patrick Harris, who endured the swinging, just for the drunken people to offer him a drink. Just like they did for me moments before. He introduces himself as Jack. I smile a little, knowing he isn't my jack but wishing he was.

Non-Lucid
Actual Waking
False Awakening
Lucid

I left work early today and took a nap before my guitar lesson. I slept from 2:30pm to 3:58p, waking myself up two minutes before my alarm. I spent 10 minutes after that just laying there, waiting for the world to feel less strange and my blood to stop pounding in my ears. I had...11 short dreams? I can't decide if I like the false awakenings because they allow me to practice lucid skills, or if I hate them because they're creepy. And I never have one.

_____I'm in my room, it looks just as it should, but I can hear music playing somewhere in the house. When I turn over to listen, there's a deepening of sorts and I realize that there can't be music playing because I'm home alone. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, through the open door and it startles me into a lighter layer of dreaming. I'm confused, thinking I'm awake. I can't find my phone to check the time, it feels like I've been asleep for hours...
________I find myself out in the cul-de-sac. I take the sidewalk, walking along the curve, the image dims and intermittently is replaced with darkness, I know I'm close to waking and try to stabilize the dream. I once told myself that I should keep moving to give my brain something to work at, if I stop then the images stop and I'll wake up. I don't follow my own advice, and close my eyes to concentrate. It doesn't work.
_____I hear music again.
_____I'm pulled back under and when I leave my duplex, my control is steadfast. The world is bright and it's warm outside. I cross the street, curious about the open door in the duplex on the other side. I try to ignore the creepy man in a black fedora and trench coat eyeing me from one of the inside-curve driveways. He disapproves of my actions. I smile at him and continue on.
Going into the other house supplies a new storyline for me to walk. [B]Immediately inside there is a set of raw-wood riser-less stairs leading to the upper level. There are young girls everywhere, showing up for a party. I know I'm not invited, the two girls are best friends and they're popular, I'm not. I feel a spike of shame for inviting myself, but continue up the stairs. I can see them on the upper level, one is blond with blue eyes, the other has brown-black hair. They look familiar but I can't figure out why. I don't want them to see me, I'm certain they'll be mean. There are other girls everywhere participating in different activities. A smaller girl storms up the stairs, surprising me. I stand there, unsure what to do. Worse, the Birthday Girls appear, and tell the smaller girl they want to play a trust game. She's enthusiastic about participating. The game is stand on a higher step and lean back onto the hands of someone lower down. Then you walk up the stairs that way. Their eyes meet mine only for a moment and I'm so worried about what they'll do. I get out of the way for the blond to push the smaller girl up the stairs, but trip and fall backward. The brunette catches me and walks me up the stairs, giggling. I start laughing too, relieved that they have decided to be kind.
_____Drawn back to my room, there are other people in the house. I consider them family but they aren't people I know. There's a tall man with black hair and a bushy beard, an older man with steel grey hair pulled back into a tail, and two women. I don't recall much about this one. I realize they shouldn't be here and decide to go outside. This time I turn left, I see a cheetah running through the neighborhood and I can tell people are afraid of it, so I tell it to run away. It starts to but, I change my mind. It would be fun to run with a cheetah, I think. So I yell for it to come back, then immediately regret commanding it to do anything. I would rather it had chosen to be at my side.
_____I desperately try to check the time but my phone isn't working right. I'm at it for a while before I realize I'm still dreaming. I attempt to still my panicked heart and instead close my eyes, focusing my mind back and down. I open my eyes when I hear music. The song has clapping at the beginning. The room is...different. I'm laying not on the bed, but on a green chaise lounge set very close to the floor. The curtains are open now making the room very bright. The bed is under the window, the foot of it very close to the open door. I realize it isn't a song playing, but a man singing. The familiarity of his voice draws my eyes to the doorway, he's coming down the hall. He will be here soon. Liam.
Saja lays on the bed dressed how I often see her when I become her in my dreams, in an ivory ankle-length shift. She isn't resting, but she isn't awake either. She's paralyzed. I see her briefly from above, her head tilted back, lips parted, eyes slightly open but rolled up. She has one arm pinned to her chest like she's suffered a stroke. Liam appears in the doorway, just like I remember him, though he actually seems...happy. He's singing a song to Saja, I know it's a message, to correct the awful thing he said to me before, about wishing I/she had died with the others. The lyrics: "I'm here with my beautiful wife, in our wonderful life together." Liam is carrying a tray with tea and a bowl of water with a washcloth on rim. His eyes shift briefly to me before alighting on Saja.
"Are you Walking again, dear?" It indicates he's aware of my presence. Meaning that I have dreamwalked to this scene, and I am myself and Saja as well.
It is difficult to move, my mouth feels so stiff. I groan a reply, loathing the spit that runs from the corner of my mouth. "Noooooo." I manage to sound playful in my denial, slightly sarcastic. I don't want him to scold me for dreamwalking here to see him. He smiles down at her contorted form, one knee is bent, her right foot is up by her hip. He sets the tray down and draws her body out straight, covering her with a blanket, she's broken into a cold sweat. He takes the damp cloth and gently wipes the corner of her mouth, humming to her all the while.
____The previous scene slips away and I am back in bed. I know I'm still dreaming because everything feels heavy...and also because one of my friends from work is sitting by the bed using my nightstand as a table, her back to the wall. She is writing on a yellow legal pad, I can only make out one section that is all X's and 0's, but she pressed down so hard on the paper, obviously in a state of distress. I'm not sure she knows I'm there yet I'm certain I can comfort her anyway. I stroke her hair and tell her it will be alright.
"You're right, you're right. M's the dead one. I'm still here." She says, referring to her husband who passed away a few years ago. I continue soothing her. Eventually she pivots to look at me, becoming an old woman with her white hair back in a short ponytail.
She begins to tell me about what will happen next, but in the past tense like she's lived through it herself and wants to spare me the confusion. "Then the storm swept in from the sea. Everything changed after it obliterated New York City...and he arrived. The_____." I lean closer to hear her better but it doesn't help. I don't understand a single word she says to me, it's all gibberish.
"Wait, I can't understand you."
"Of course not, dear. It's here." Her watery eyes fix on something over my shoulder as terror steals over her features.
Very slowly, I turn. Behind me, looking like a terrifying mix of Mrs. Trunchbull from Matilda and the police sketch of Penelope from her suitor who saw her and flipped the hell out. The woman is thick but tall, with her hair in a bun, wearing Trunchbull's uniform...her eyes are black with no sclera under a rage-contorted brow. Her mouth is perpetually open, showing sharp needle sharp teeth...this thing leers down at me and starts to reach her hand out.
Nope.
I force myself into another layer of sleep and for a moment I think I'm awake. But my body is so very heavy. I can't even turn my head and for a moment I worry that something burst in my brain and I'm as paralyzed as Saja now. I struggle to move and when I see my deformed hand, I come to the relieving conclusion that I am in fact still dreaming.
____I find myself in a room like mine, but all the furniture is gone. There are long windows running the length of the room, very close to the floor. The whole room is painted dark purple. I can feel it looming behind me. I run at the mesh covered window, thinking I'm lucid enough to push through it but I am inhibited by my panic. Instead, I use the door. I think I hear the door open and call for my boyfriend to help me, but I realize that he isn't home. (Progress!) The apartment is laid out like my duplex but it feels higher off the ground, when I escape out the front door there is a black porch and awning, all modern lines, set against the purple building. In the distance I see a massive storm brewing and know that it is what my friend was talking about. I stand with 5 others, watching the horizon.
____I'm standing in front of the family from earlier. I'm trying to explain what's happening to me, but they just think I'm crazy. Behind them, the wall has disappeared and I see a train.
"There's a train."
"A train in our kitchen? You're hallucinating.."
"No I'm NOT. I'm...lucid."
"Obviously you're not lucid."
"I mean I'm dreaming."
They just look at me.
_____More music.
_____I rise to what I think is waking, but quickly realize I'm still dreaming. I'm starting to panic again, this round of dreams is extremely disorienting. I close my eyes and focus, putting my hands together against my chest, fingertips pressing together. I focus back again. There's a deepening and when I open my eyes I am sitting on a wooden examination table. The room is cluttered, tables against every wall and all surfaces covered with tools and stacks of books and papers. There's a frameless doorway at the top of two narrow steps. A creepy old man with round spectacles puts a q-tip with a long stem in my ear. It freaks me out and I cringe.
He picks up another one. I realize then that I'm a child. "Raise your arm, now." When I don't, he pulls my arm out straight and presses the q-tip to my armpit. It feels so weird, almost real. It gets weirder.
Liam appears in the doorway. While he isn't the cruel-faced man I've become acquainted with, neither is he quite the man who spent the morning singing to Saja. I still love him though. All versions of him. His outfit should have looked ridiculous...instead it was...eh, fantastic. The garb was vaguely...Musketeer? A capotain with a wider brim, his copper hair hanging to his shoulders. The material of his clothing is multicolored but by large these many colors suggest purple with threads of gold, green and blue. It's a long doublet.
His mouth set in a grim line, he looks so tired. I wonder if the person I have become in this scene is his child.
He confirms this by saying, "Hop down from there, son. It's time to go."
The kid hops down from the table, leaving me there to stare at the old man and watch Liam and 7 year old son leave the shop.
The old man looks at me. "You know you can't be here alone, you've gotta leave too."
He's right.
I jump down off the table, running to the window just in time to see Liam turn a corner. I press my hands to the glass but I cannot slip through it. The shopkeeper suggests I use the door, I run to it and pull it open, I can feel the metal frame against my hand as I rush out into the alley. The streets here are confusing and narrow inlaid with dark grey cobblestones. I go to where I last saw Liam but it's a dead end, he must have gone a different way. I stop a familiar looking woman who has her hair pulled back, wearing a white tank top, a long bronze necklace, and a leather satchel over her shoulder.
"Have you seen a tall, red haired man?"
She blinks slowly at me and resumes walking.
"Hey, wait."
"No."
"He'd have a child with him?"
"Haven't seen him. Stop talking to me."
____I think again that I am awake, just to find that I am not. I am worried I slept through my alarm and have missed my class. I feel like I've been asleep a very long time. I can't do this anymore. I lay there, the room doesn't feel right at the edges, so I know I'm still sleeping...but I'm so close to waking, I know it. I fight through several layers of fragments, where I look at my phone or can't find it or can't move. The dream is like a pool of tar, refusing to let me go, continually trying to drag me under. I protest violently, mentally wrenching my arm out from under the pillow. It takes too long for it to really happen. I force my eyes to remain open. I'm laying on my stomach, I raise my head and sluggishly toss the blanket aside.
I manage to final wake up, roll onto my back, resisting the draw of sleep and finally check my phone. It's 3:58pm.

The first part is extremely sexual, so I don't think I'll be sharing that. I'll pick up with the part where the DC in my bed help's me stand up. Kind of. I read a post before laying down about how to summon a DC, and I used one of the suggested techniques to make other things happen too.

At one point he laughs at me, saying I'm being very familiar and don't even know his name. He hands me a sheet of paper but it's all

gibberish, the only thing I can make out on it is HTFPBEAN and I refuse to call a man Bean, that can't possibly be his name. I hand the sheet back.

"And your name, my lovely?" He asks, he has a light accent that sounds like Jimmy Angelov from Practical Magic. I don't say it

aloud, but have willed it onto the paper, "Ah, yes. Saja, what a beautiful name." He almost hisses this, but it's not creepy.
Eventually I am laying on my stomach and he is laying on my back. He responds to my unspoken annoyance and frustration by chuckling.

"Soon, I promise. But first we need to get up."
"I can't. I'm so heavy." I protest. My body feels like it weighs a ton. He rests his cheek to mine and when his eyes look over the

side of the bed, mine are drawn there too.

"This is not my place, since this area belongs to you, you must find the floor. I can't see it. Once you see the floor, I will move us

there. Do you understand?"
Absurdly, I do. I look outward but all I can see is mattress. I try to lift my head but it's so heavy.

"Are you ready?"
"Wait." I gasp. "I can't see the floor from this angle."
"We'll have to do this together, Saja."
"I know, I know." We fight the weight of our bodies and make it to our knees. He's pressed tight to my back, one arm across my

shoulders.

"Focus." He says against my ear.
"I'm trying." The world falters and my vision doubles. We collapse forward and hit the wall where the pillows are stacked.

I force myself to expect my vision to be normal. No. I shift my perception and make my vision normal, I turn my eyes to the floor, "Okay, now!"

Everything twists and suddenly I'm standing in the doorway to my room. My companion is gone. I frown and look around,

then I realize I can still feel his arm across the front of my shoulders and I relax. We make our way out into the living room. The layout is slightly different and an ugly green-gold velvet couch that used to be in my living room growing up is there.

"That...is an ugly couch." I say. He agrees.

My sister appears and my companion leaves me there to watch her and my nephew talk about how school went for him today.

I shake my head to dispel the daze of common dreaming and make my way upstairs into the bathroom (my house doesn't have an upstairs), the closet door is paneled in mirrors. I catch sight of my face and stop, startled. The top half is all charred with angry red cracks. My eyes are ice green instead of their regular green and the pupils like pin pricks of darkness. I touch my face and lean toward the mirror...what happened?
A maid appears from the far end of the bathroom, there's a door standing open. From here I can see what looks like the railinged side of a hospital bed. Apparently that's where Bean has gone.

"It took it's toll, the burns did." She says to me. "You've been asleep so long." She leaves without another word.

I examine the charred remains of my face. This isn't at all sexy. I can feel Bean watching me from the other room, grinning. I cover my eyes with the flat of my hand and slowly raise it to my hairline, willing the charred flesh to disappear. It does. I reform my nose but have some trouble. At one point my eyes disappear, and my nose was just a bridgeless nub protruding from my face. I don't panic, I just refocus and use my hands to form it, make it small and straight. I think I am finished so I turn away but realize something odd about my face as my eye is catching my reflection in the mirror.
I have to jaws, two mouths. That won't do.
I return to the mirror and take the second jaw lightly between my thumb and forefinger, then I pull it away and it disintegrates. There are ragged lines following the bone of my remaining jaw, so I gently press the skin back together and the cuts vanish. I smile at myself and turn to face Bean who leans against the hospital bed railing with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Look at you! That was fantastic! Just for that show of skill, you get a free ride." I don't for a second think he's talking about his car

. I join him in the other room. Now he's opening the door to a red SUV. He mentions qualities he likes in a woman. I realize then that I've kept my own body. I've always hated my chest. I grab myself and lift my breasts, adjusting them to a smaller size I like more. ((o.O Well, I guess I would if I could.))
He closes the car door and runs to the driver's side. I notice that another me is sitting inside already. He's already taking off. I feel a little cheated.

"Better hurry up!" He calls out the window. I will myself into the car's back seat. He says it will take several hours to get where

we're going. I know I can shorten our travel time. I close my eyes and will the car 'forward'.

The SUV appears beside a tall brick wall holding back a forest. There's a glowing purple portal in the wall. A friend of mine, thinking that this is the way home and to his soulmate has already gone inside.

"Where's Cel?" I ask Bean.
"Went to find Xy, or something like that."
I rush toward the portal.
"Where are you going?"
"To find Xy." I reply and step closer, as I approach it the purple pulls away and reforms into a dark green field, darkening sky

and a hill with a house atop it. There are people milling around everywhere, most of them wearing formal attire and masks. I stop one of them, time feels incredibly short. "Do you know where Xy is?"

"Up on the hill, where she always is. You should know that."
"I'm sorry, I don't remember anything from Before. Thank you!" I run up the hill and into the house. I scan every face knowing

that while I have never actually seen Xy, I will know her when I see her. She emerges from the kitchen and her lovely features pull into a welcoming smile. She enfolds me in a warm, tight hug and slowly rocks/spins us in a circle.

"It is so very good to see you again." She says to me.
"Did you see Cel?" I ask, "He came up here ahead of me."
"He had to leave, the veil won't stay open long."
"Moneca." I say, a small spike of bother hits me. Moneca? This should be Xy. She pulls away and she suddenly looks more fierce,

mean.

"How are you managing the rage, Saja?"
"Well I haven't hurt anyone before, have I?"
"Look at you, altering history to make it more appealing." She grins at me, showing all her teeth.

I snap awake.

I'm not exactly sure where to start.

Tortured Ghosts

I have a thin thread of lucidity during this part, otherwise it would have been terrifying. There's something happening with the earthbound spirits, they cluster around a traveling man. They can't help it, they want to be near him and they don't at once. They don't because they relive the accidents that killed them. I become each of them in turn, a blond woman turns her hand over again and again, each time she twists her wrist the hand disappears and becomes a stub, then returns.
Another woman, a red head who looks a little like Kate Winslet relives the moment when she found out she had died. She stands over a tub, now empty of water, but full of her corpse. Her face is missing, like her head was cut away in jagged layers from nose to ear. Since I am her (and I am not) I wait for the terror to hit me at finding my own body, but my subconscious is just lucid enough that I tell myself to close my eyes and take a deep breath. That it isn't real. The scream I waited for never comes.
I'm in a living room at dusk, shadows are slowly leaching the light from the room. A blonde ghost sits on the couch, another is crouched behind me beside the door.
They say these words in unison "He has another passenger, no others can ride.", then go stiff and dead eyed and move no longer.

Liam, Saja. Kvothe, Batman, Sylar/Silas
While I am glad Liam has made another appearance, this dream was really strange. It tried so -hard- to have a storyline. Here's what I remember:

I am in an odd combination of Walmart and Lowe's, a crazy woman keeps sending me and my friend to fetch her things from other parts of the store but she doesn't give us details, she

just says "Get me something with a hook on it." like it is a scavenger hunt. So we do, we run to Electrical. My friend is wearing knee high brown suede boots, black tights, a jean skirt and tank top. She is several inches taller than me, with long brown hair and brown eyes.

"Okay, she said something that glows like a firefly, something with a hook on it, and a reflective surface." My friend says as we rush down one of the aisles. "Remember that

there are cameras everywhere, don't put anything in your pockets."
Instead of thinking that is ludicrous, it makes complete sense and I thank her for reminding me. We head down one of the aisles, it's all open and has no racking but the products are stacked like they would be on shelves, in big organized piles. She grabs a lamp and tucks it under her arm, waving at one of the cameras. There's an endcap with hand mirrors, I grab one. We head back to the main aisle which now opens up into a mall-like area.

"I'll go get the hooks." My friend says. The crazy woman runs back up to me, she has long greying blond hair pulled back into a

thick ponytail and bangs that run straight across the top of her wire glasses. She's wearing a white shirt and a pink jacket.

"What the hell is that?" She demands, pointing at the lamp and the mirror.
"The things you asked for..."

"No no NO." She shouts something about wanting all of those things in one object then turns and runs away as a man comes

to stand beside me. When she gets about 20ft away she starts skipping.
We stare after her with identical expressions of amused dismay.

"Remind me why we're fetching her things?" I say to him.
"What else would we do. Where's Kara?"
"She went to get the hooks....which I see you already have. Not that it matters." I reply, gesturing to the white boxes cradled

against his chest. I finally look up at him and my heart turns over. He's wearing a white suit with a black shirt. It is Liam. Same crooked, infectious smile, red hair falling into his eyes which are a familiar vibrant blue. I see myself from the side and see that I am Saja, my hair now long and curling to my waist, wearing a dress with a thin belt and cropped sweater. I want an excuse to touch him, because we are not quite who we feel like we are, we are still playing characters. I reach up to take the white box from him, when my hand gets close he takes my fingers into the hand that's pressed tight to his chest. He smiles at me.
Kara comes to join us and he releases my hand.

"I got the hooks!" She exclaims, then sees the box he carries and lets out a disappointed "aaaw.."

I start to explain that the crazy woman is asking for something different, when she reappears and looks over our gathered objects. She sighs loudly.

"Fine fine, I guess it will have to do. We're out of time. Follow me."

((Now it gets really confusing)) We follow her down the corridor, part of me understands what is happening. That we are in her thrall and we are wanted for a spell of some kind. I understand why she would want me but not Liam. He shouldn't even be here. I glance over at him and he's wearing a dazed, troubled expression which mirrors my own.

Then I am Liam, glancing over at Saja and thinking that I understand why they would want her, but not me. I shouldn't even be

here. We walk down a dark narrow hallway, the others are further ahead of me, so that when I finally reach the door at the end they are already inside. The door stands open and there is so little light that I can't see anything of the layout. I step inside though, because Saja is in there. It's not her fault they used her to lead me here. I can feel the spell pressing down on my consciousness, making independent thought heavy, like walking through mud. A portly man dressed as an 1800's gentleman complete with a monicle and handlebar mustache emerges from a deeply shadowed corner. The women each carry a large bell jar with a lit candle inside.
I follow the man with my eyes, frowning fiercely.

"I am sure you're wondering why you're here."

I think something sarcastic in his direction and he chuckles at me.

The women take a step closer, revealing a twin bed with a two woven blankets on top of it, a green and a dull burgundy.

I know I'm supposed to lay down and find myself climbing onto the bed as a child would, on my hands and knees. I resist the pull and the world tilts. I see the cuff of my jacket, and see my hands as Saja would see them.

"Here, let me help." The man pulls back the blankets, then shuffles to the shuttered window at the side of the bed and opens i

t letting in bright daylight. Something in me eases, I can't tell if it is my resistance, or the thrall.

"You are here because of your singular nature, who you used to be. Who you are now." He says and instructs me to lay down.

I comply, my eyes sliding over the dull-eyed Saja who still stands at the foot of the bed, holding a jar.

The world suddenly feels compact, compressed, the pressure of the wind as it rushes through the open window and the

weathered wood of the walls withering away (alliteration!! Sorry, I couldn't help myself). Then we are flying. All of us, the two thralled girls off to the side, the old crazy woman, the portly gentleman and myself. There are numerous strings dangling around us attached to all different manner of coins. We rise into the sky. His reason doesn't really explain why I am here, but I understand anyway. I hold the name of the wind (this is where Kvothe comes in) inside me, and the wind will not harm me, or those with me. It's why we can defy gravity and why the strong gales outside the border of coins does not sweep in on us. I take a deep breath and speak the name of the wind, it rushes from my mouth and the man commands me to stop. I don't listen.

Now it gets even weirder.
Something about Liam becoming Batman and Saja being Catwoman. I try to get a better angle as he leans down threaten her but kisses her instead.

I am outside, flying. I see a long bridge connecting a fortress to the city and a moat. I fly down because I see a small figure

crouched on a rock jutting from the water. It is supposed to be Saja...and in a way, it looks like her, I guess. I drop down in front of her. She's wearing an elaborately layered red gown, each layered part of the skirt fringed in black lace, she's wearing half of a plague mask and a red wig with black fringe, that matches her dress. She's completely soaked and frozen like a statue. I can tell she's breathing though. I reach over and remove her mask. Water drips down her deathly pale face and her eyes are silver. Her face isn't how I recall it from other dreams, more narrow and plain. I notice she's holding an axe in one hand, like she's waiting for the go to attack the enemy. I can see her black hair underneath the wig. Huh.

Then I am in the bedroom from before. Liam is sitting on the end of the bed with a thin knife in his hand. He is clutching the handle

and I know he is resisting his past life as a serial killer. (?! I shouldn't take this too seriously...considering he was batman 10 minutes ago.) Another face flickers over his own, black eyes, black hair slicked back, wearing a big loose navy blue t-shirt.

"Don't be who you were...be who you are."

I insist, Liam is having trouble fighting it and his face keeps flickering from the dark eyed man to the one I know.
This is also confusing because I am the silver-eyed girl from before. I'm wearing a black tanktop and dark gray pants. I have no idea who this is supposed to be. I feel like Saja but I don't really look like her.

The gentleman from before appears, telling me that he's fighting his nature for my benefit. That if we hadn't interfered, Silas

would have emerged and started killing again. He calls me Julie.((I have only ever been called my WL name a handful of times. So this is pretty strange.))
I rush across the room from where I crouched next to the bed where Liam is sitting.

"Stop calling me that, my name is SAJA." I yell at him. I must look pretty disconcerting because he backs away with his

hands before him in a placating gesture.

"Alright, alright. You're Saja. Let us help him."
"NO. Only I can help him."

In Which Liam Kisses a Man

There is an image reel on the wall. When I turn the knob beside it different portraits cycle into

view. They are kind of terribly drawn anime faces and all different kinds. They are familiar. People I knew as Saja. I become lucid for this but immediately the images start to catch and blur like I can no longer make the reel function correctly. So I pull back and watch as the DC I was inhabiting takes over. He is a hulk of a man, at least 6'7", broad and muscular. He looks to be made out of dark rock. He turns the reel and the top one that is even with his face becomes a mirror. Then the mirror becomes a window and there is a person on the other side. My heart does a sort of flopping thing, like a fish on dry land. The man on the other side of the glass is Liam. By the second his face becomes more defined and animated. Pale skin, bright like he is illuminated from within. Clear blue eyes, a long straight nose, wide smiling mouth and bright copper hair.

"AH! Now I can think again." He says. The window becomes a door and then disappears.

As tall as he is, the DC is still four inches taller. Liam is obviously amused, standing in front of the hulking man with his hands on his hips in an achingly familiar posture. Lean, fit Liam is out-bulked by the DC. He's wearing a loose white suit with faded blue accents.

"Well...that's an interesting new look for you." Liam says, smiling a little. He still thinks I'm in

there, looking up at the DC. He hooks a fine long-fingered hand around the back of the DC's neck and pulls him down, kissing him on the mouth. "Since you are obviously otherwise occupied, I'll get out of here." While the presence of Liam is gone, a DC walks away. He looks deformed and is no longer wearing the suit, but a tank top and jeans. He's like an ugly echo of the rock DC.

Ghost Child

I'm in the house in MA. It is haunted by an infant who died. I am the mother. The spirits usually come out at night or on dark days. Now it is

night. I need to wash my hands but as I pause by the open bathroom door, I can already hear the infant crying forlornly from where she lost her life. I decide to go to the kitchen instead. For some reason Attachment 5260 the sink is on the same wall as the entry door and the dining room entry-way instead of on the far side. The cabinet doors are open and white hand towels are draped across them, so that I can't see underneath the sink. As I pass in front of the sink I realize that I am holding my arms like I am cradling a baby, and that in my arms is a bundle of white blankets. I feel a distant, gauzy spike of fear which is soon replace with a desperate mad sort of awe. The longer I focus on the blanket, the more I notice a tiny perfect face underneath a corner of blanket. I draw the fabric back and the baby screams, immediately fussy.

"Shhhh...mommy's here." I try to soothe her, rock her, sure that my continued existence

hinges on successfully calming her. "We'll spendsome time together, you and I. The whole night, if you want."

She yawns, but she feels...menacing still. But she is mine and I will not cast her aside.

It isn't her fault that she cannot rest like other dead. I leave the kitchen and instead of stairs there is a long hall with benches hugging the walls. I sit down and for some reason set her down on the bench beside me, facing the bedroom side of the house. A blonde teenager appears and, recognizing the baby for what she is, begins antagonizing her.

"HEY, you'll stop if you know what's good for you!" I say, knowing that for her to stay, he

needs to stop and if he doesn't she will kill him. It has happened before.
He glares at me and stops leaning over her.
"We're spending time together, leave us alone."
A girl appears and the bundle disappears. She looks like this: Attachment 5261. I know she is my daughter. She has tanned skin, long wavy brown hair pulled half back and somewhat chubby cheeks. Her brown eyes glitter with thinly veiled malice. Attention for her is sustenance.

"You have been warned once. Your actions are making me hungry...you don't wanna

know what I eat." She says and tries to smile at me but her eyes are still hard and angry, and the mask of her face just makes me sad. At least she is here with me.
She cuts between myself and the young man and approaches a closet door. She is a young woman and looks like Red from Once Upon a Time, Attachment 5262 she's wearing a loose white shirt with slit shoulders, black shorts and knee high black boots. There is a thin trickling of blood at the corner of her mouth. I realize then that she is not even a vampire, but a cannibal and that she eats people alive. I try to tell myself I am wrong but all the while she watches the young man with a obvious hunger. ((I suppose I have decided this is what my daughter looks like, because that's also how I saw Aura from this dream Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views - Amurehna - Dream Journals, and Aura is Saja's daughter in the story I'm writing. I got her name from another dream, maybe I'll post that one too. Eventually.))


Sleep Paralysis Interlude

I am in bed and I can not move. I open my eyes a little at the sound of a woman's

voice. She is twisted like a contortionist, her head between her legs and her legs bent at the knee so that my legs run underneath her. She is telling me a story about when she was alive, that in her time there was not a friend of hers that did not have a boxed hair dye called White Wash Blonde, by Bombshell Antiquities. I even get a view of the aged white and red box. I start to tell her that she could still use it, but then I realize that she is completely bald. I figure if I can keep her talking she won't be so terrifying.
Then I realize there's a man on the other side of her. I feel a hand grip my foot. I issue a whimper of terror and look over at my boyfriend who is playing a game on his computer. I wish that he would hear me, come over and wake me up. He does not notice though.

There's a fragment about being in my living room and seeing piles of greyish dirt on the floor. I see a pink and white dress on the floor in the dust and shake it out, put it on, and pat the remaining stuff out of the skirt.

WTF Mash-up

John Locke escapes from containment, he has been captured by a secret faction called

The Project headed by Noah Bennet. They will not tell him anything. When Locke frees himself, the world outside is fantastically colorful and brightly saturated. There are fields in every direction, lush green and bursting with crops. He sees a man spraying water mixed with chemicals over a large pumpkin patch, the largest is man sized. Noah finds him and tells John he was not ready to see any of this and is certain that John will not even try to understand the purpose of The Project.

"So...what exactly is your goal?" Locke asks.
"Would you believe me if I said that we are trying to ease the food shortage by growing larger crops?"
"No, I wouldn't."
"I didn't think so."

We have infiltrated the area and are looking for Locke. Sometimes I am with my

boyfriend and sometimes he is Jack (this time he looks a little like this guy he is 6' tall with black hair, true to form he is wearing a blue and white plaid button-up and black jeans). We stand facing one of the fences, behind it are great green rolling hills of crops. We exchange a look. I am standing in bright yellow dirt that when wet has the texture of sand. It reminds me of the Yellow Brick Road. I wonder aloud if they added yellow dye to get this effect because I have never seen dirt like it. I bend down and puck up some between my thumb and forefinger. Strange.

A black man in a suit hails us from the road and we turn to face him. "Hey now, you know

you're not supposed to be out here." He says. He doesn't seem at all threatening, we make an effort to look ashamed that we have broken the rules. "Come on, we'll get you two gingers initiated. Boss says that we can trust you."
We follow him back to the road without a fight, I look up at Jack.

"Did you hear him call us gingers?"
"Yeah." He lets out a brief, quiet laugh.

When I look at him again I can see some bright coppery strands mixed in with the black.

"You're looking a little auburn today so I understand you, but what about me? My hair is black."

He scrutinizes me and then grins, replying with some nonsense like "Well, you've got that V." Which makes me think of vampire blood, like from True Blood.

"Oh yeah." I say nodding. "I guess."

We reach a broad wooden gate-wall and are welcomed inside.

"Boss said you could help us solve a murder, that your talent is uniquely suited for this kind of thing."

There's a lapse. Noah is on vacation with Claire and his wife. Claire is acting more like Juliette Barnes from Nashville. She seeing a

farmhand, Alex Pettyfer, but her parents found out and tried to sever the relationship by deceiving him into thinking she no longer wished to see him. They are in a hotel room. Noah displays a hologram of Claire.

"Hey! Daddy, why do you have that? It's mine." She says petulantly.

"We took it from that boy you've been seeing...you won't be talking to him anymore." says Noah.

She watches the hologram. It is of herself swimming with lengths of dusky purple fabric hiding her nakedness only JUST. They used to use the hologram to communicate, so Noah used it and acted like he was sending a message from Claire.
Claire taps the comm on her ear. "Operator, patch me through to the Folds."

"I apologize, mistress, contacted with the Folds has been suspended."
"NO! You have to tell him I don't mean it."
"Contact..."
"Will you keep trying?"
"Yes mistress."
"Daddy...we're not on vacation, are we?"
"No, honey. There is something happening at home and I didn't want you in the middle of it."

As we leave the field it erupts violently into motion, like a roiled mess, like a landslide

spilling up from the earth, swirling and swallowing anything in its path. When the hands realize what is happening they try to speed away in all different sizes of work trucks. Most do not make it. What looks like a blue garbage truck careens wildly on the loose earth but manages to escape. This vehicle is driven by Alex. It is not clear whether Noah triggered the upheaval or if the land revolted because of all the chemicals they poured into it.

As I walk with the black man and my boyfriend/Jack, he tells us the story. I very

clearly see an armored munchkin knight who has become a vampire, lift the visor on his helm and attack Snow White. They were under orders from a 3rd party to kill her and a number of others. She was in her castle, they killed her on the landing between two flights of stairs. The munchkin regrets the part he played in the murders but kept doing the Other's bidding until he was murdered as well. As a medium, I am here to call their spirits and to declare to all gathered who the plotter is.

I'm in a darkened hotel room with my boyfriend. he mentions seeing a trailer for a movie and says it has 'the man I met' in it, sounding a

little jealous. I have no idea what he is talking about until he shows me a poster of the movie. It is Damon from Vampire Diaries in bed with 6 women.

"Of course he'd be a ladies man." I say, smiling a little. I don't recall ever meeting him

though. There was also a scrap of storyline about Elena and remember thinking that this is how the munchkins became vampires in the first place.

Walking with my boyfriend/Jack toward a large building with a sliding barn door. I

separate from myself and huddle against the wall to watch her approach. Nadia, another medium, appears. Nadia looks like her, but with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She's wearing a blue/white tank top with khaki cargo pants. They recognize their like nature immediately and when they draw too close together something odd happens. Their hands meld together into one long fleshy appendage and they fall to their knees, eyes glowing, heads thrown back. Together they will call out the murderer.

There are Disney princesses all around the room. Cinderella is next to me, I now realize

that I am Snow White. In the far corner of the room Sleeping Beauty lays on a table...and on top of a dead body. When she spots the mediums she flies into an ill-considered rage immediately giving herself away. I am not really sure what happens next, she stalks around the room yelling nothing that makes any sense. Her evil gaze falls on me and at once I realize that this isn't Sleeping Beauty, it is a witch that has stolen her skin and wears her like a costume (EEEEWWW).

"YOU! What are you doing here?! I guess that's what I get for leaving the job to a bunch

of munchkins." Then she shoots me in the head with a fireball, it goes straight through my head like a bullet and melts my head to the wall like a ragged mess of wax (thank you subconscious...). She murders Cinderella and I realize I can still move, I reach out and seize the skirt of her sparkling blue/pink dress. I rip the Sleeping Beauty dress and skin enough that it shows everyone the witch underneath. She kills five more people before someone takes her down. A flock of Jasmines appear carrying bowls, their necklace and headband gems glowing green as they spread out and heal the 'dead'. With my limited scope I try to find my boyfriend, but I know that he has left and didn't bother checking to see if I was alright. Jasmine heals my weird wax-melted head.

Something about all of it feeling staged, like Sleeping Beauty only thought she was killing all of us, or that through the mediums we lived her intentions.

Forgot that I never copied this to my Dream Journal even though I made a post about it. I may as well add another while I'm here.

Co-worker acting Strangely - 12/14/2012

I don't remember how the dream began. Like many of my dreams it took place in one of my childhood homes, except that the wall dividing the two bedrooms at the end of the hall is gone so that it is one big room. A co-worker of mine (I'll call him K) is intentionally scaring people. But not in a leap-around-corners kind of way. More in an extremely-creepy-I'm-intending-to-murder-you way.

I'm watching him from the end of the hall. He's wearing ancient Chinese armor. It's all brown and black, the front and back are dark brown tiles linked together, with black plating underneath. He's wearing kind of a conical helmet with a face on the front, and a face on the back. The armor is designed in such a way that it's very difficult to tell which direction he is actually facing in. K is moving around the two people at the other end of the hall, twisting and sliding and bending like a contortionist.
This is about when I become aware it's a dream. I go to the other end of the hall, though he really scares me. I see that he's pulling a small bronze knife with a triangular blade from inside his armor. I can see another one. I make the choice to steal it as he's twisting around the man at the end of the hall. I believe that this is my only chance to stop the horror of K. So I grab the knife from inside his armor and stab him in the neck. The blade goes in, but he is bloodless. He takes the helmet off and removes the knife from his neck. It slides out like his skin is a sheathe. K slides the knife back into his neck and pulls it out several times, grinning at the three of us. I'm horrified.

The dream skips scenes. I'm standing at the start of the hallway again. I am very tired and I can see my bed. I'm really looking forward to sleeping. It has a tarnished brass frame and stark white sheets. That's when I realize K is laying in the exact middle of the bed, his presence deeply dismays me, though now he's just wearing a white t-shirt. The armor is gone. I assume he's not playing the creepy guy anymore, and see that as a role, a costume. I'm afraid, but I'm tired and I just want to rest. I walk to the bed and pull the sheet back like I'm going to lay down, but then I just stare at him. I can see the bloodless slit in his neck where he was keeping the knife. It really unsettles me. I go into the black doorway across from the bed, knowing it's my parent's bedroom. I realize the couple inside are not my parents, and I don't really know what I expect them to do about my problem. But, like a frightened child (that's even how I identified this action in the dream), I wake the man by lightly touching his foot.
"I don't know where I'm supposed to sleep....K is in my bed."
"It's alright, don't worry about it." The man says.
"But I'm afraid."
The man doesn't respond, I know he's gone back to sleep. I return to my bed. K rolls over and sits up. I just look at him warily.
"It's okay if you lay down." he says.
Reluctantly, I get under the sheets. I'm still afraid. He tries to reassure me that he's not going to kill me, but as he says it he pulls the bronze knife from under one of the pillows and casually slips it into the slit in his neck. He grins. I'm not reassured at all...

I honestly don't understand. As a person, K doesn't scare me. We're even work friends. On top of that I very rarely have nightmares, so I don't know why I had this one. Nothing has happened at work with K to trigger it. ((In hindsight this is hilarious. At the time it was true, I didn't really have nightmares for a long time. I've had many lately =/))

A man in a suit is talking to a young man with a narrow face, black eyes and black hair. He's giving him news of some inevitable event. The guy reacts childishly, beginning to protest in a high, frightened voice. "No, no, no, no, I don't want to. I don't WANT to. No, no, no."
The man in the suit frowns at him, thinking that obviously this person is more child than man. He had expected a more mature reaction. The kid looks dead-eyed, and for a second I wonder if he's pretending to be scared. Then I realize I've misinterpreted his wooden expression, he's terrified.


Saja and Wolf, Shame and Separation 02/05/2013
Part of this is going in a spoiler because it's sexual.
The beginning is much less clear than the end. I'm traveling in proximity with a group of people. It feels like we are on foot, going in the same direction but not actually together.
There's a long lush green field. They sky is gray overhead, but I've always liked how vivid the world looks following a rain spell. There are a couple of people flying kites. From the back, I recognize Walter Bishop. We end up riding bikes down the length of field , careful not to run long black hoses. I had a reason for doing that, but I can't remember it now.
We arrive at the house just before nightfall. The house feels old and rundown. The walls are wood paneled, the carpet dingy white. A few feet from the front door is a large mattress and a chair at the foot of the bed. I stand by the chair. A middle-aged man with curly black hair going gray, decides that the thing to do now is have sex.

Spoiler for grossness. :

Everyone except one woman and a couple of the men object. On the left half of the mattress is the man's brother, laying with a long legged blonde woman. She is only wearing a light blue button-up. He opens the shirt, spooning behind her. I catch the eye of the other man laying on the right half of the bed.
He eyes me lustfully. I just stand there, uncertain, unwilling. All around the house, people are pairing off. I feel like I have to do it too, and at the time, I almost want to.
"Take off your shirt, pants and bra. Leave on the that jacket and your panties."
I do as he says, leaving myself barely clothed now in white panties and a fuchsia duster that hangs to mid-thigh. He holds his hand out to me and I walk across the mattress on my knees to take it. He pulls me down in front of him. I feel a surge a disgust.
"Yes, that's nice." He croons as I lay down on my side. When I move the sweater pulls open. I'm pretty sure I don't want to have sex, especially with all these people around. He tries to convince me otherwise, telling me to watch the others. My eyes skate over the blonde and his brother. He's calling our attention to her arousal.
The man starts to touch me, pressing his lips to my neck and fondling my breasts. He slips a hand down between my legs and whispers to me. This goes on for a long time, but he doesn't take me. The whole thing feels like a mockery of something, and I can't put my finger on what it is. Like there's a deeply buried memory similar to what the man is doing, but this time I'm revolted.

A fierce-looking woman with red-blonde hair stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, looking disgusted. She beckons to me. I'm relieved I have a reason to desert the bed, I feel unclean. She goes to the window and peers out through the slats of the blind. It is late and the End is on its way. Unhealthy light flashes through the slats.
"They've started to gather. It's almost time."
"The others are out there?" I ask, intrigued. She glances down at me and I'm acutely aware that I'm mostly naked. I pull the sweater closed and cross my arms to keep it that way. "Is Wolf with them?"
"Who?"
"Our leader." I start to feel stupid. "The one who brought us here." I feel like I've made a mistake and it worries me.
"Oh. Him. I haven't noticed." She pauses. "So...you think that he orchestrated all of this." Her tone makes it sound like he's a low-brow brute and that my suggestion is entirely ridiculous. I'm offended for him, and for myself.
"No, the Spirits told him what to do."
"Oh, of course they did."
I wonder if 'Wolf' means nothing to them but I can't think of another name to call him. I sink into a chair that's angled slightly away from the window. She doesn't realize how deeply her lack of reaction has affected me. I ask about the first person I can think of.

"Is Saja with them?"
She gives me an uncomprehending look. "Could you check? She's..." I briefly describe her, she'd be small with curling black hair to her waist. I'm on the verge of tears now, my voice is thick with emotion.
"No." She responds, looking outside. "Maybe they just haven't arrived yet." She says it like she's just trying to make me feel better.
I completely lose it. My sense of purpose, my hope for all this to be over. The belief that my instincts were right just crumbles to nothing. I feel shame and revulsion for letting a stranger touch me so intimately and in front of others.
"I left for this?"
She doesn't understand what I'm talking about. I realize that she has forgotten all of it. Who we were, what we did, all that we left behind.
"I left Home so that some disgusting perverted stranger could feel me up? I left Liam for this?" I'm crying hysterically now. A different woman tries to comfort me but she has recently left one of the men and I can't stand the thought of her dirty hands on me. I've pulled my knees up to my chest and I'm hugging them as I sob nonsensical questions. The idea that we've come to this has broken me.

02/21/2013 Unsettling, Liam

This dream is unsettling because it was always difficult enough to walk around with this guy at work, because of how much he reminded me Liam. My reasoning mind kept me from thinking about it too much and after repeatedly working with him I had conditioned myself to ignore it. I had never dreamt anything like this with him as the focus and it made me very uncomfortable. For anyone who is hasn't been following along, Liam is a vivid DC who often appears in my dreams. He's tall, with copper or auburn hair and blue eyes. I'll leave the description at that.
I'm sitting on a dark blue couch pressed against a wall of dark tinted windows. It is night outside, it has a very...after-hours feel. Beside me is someone I used to work with who reminds me of Liam.
A pretty young woman sweeps out of the place, calling over her shoulder about meeting him later for coffee. He looks troubled, tense, unhappy. As I am about to ask him what's wrong, he speaks into the stillness.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to tell my wife." He says.
I smile sympathetically and pull my knees up onto the couch.
"I guess that depends on your intent. If you're going to coffee because you have feelings for her..."
He cuts me off with a humorless laugh. "You think this is about her?"
I freeze, unsure what I should do or say. Does that mean I'm the problem? Even in the dark I can tell he keeps glancing at me, deeply troubled. He averts his eyes, bowing his head, thinking how difficult this has become. He's trembling with the effort to...stay contained. To not cross a line. After a long moment, he reluctantly reaches over and touches my knee. This forcefully reminds me of Liam. I blush furiously, trying to stifle the rush of emotions that beset me. I sit very still. He starts to withdraw his hand when I pull it back by linking my pinky and ring finger with his, very aware of the weight of his hand and the pounding of my heart. He desperately wants this and doesn't at the same time.
I release his hand and rise to my knees beside him. I'm wearing a faded green tank top that I haven't seen since I was in high school. He presses his hand flat against my abdomen. I realize that this is the closest I will ever come to being intimate with Liam and decide to revel in the moment. He looks up at me. Faint light from outside illuminates the left side of his face and turns one eye into a shining pool. He looks so much like Liam that it hurts. He reaches up with his free hand and presses his palm to the left side of my neck. Again, I think of Liam. He draws me down and brushes his lips below my right ear. I lose track of everything.
Something forces me awake.

I might be secretly obsessed with Liam and Saja, why else would they show up so often?

Fragment: Mall and Liam Echo
I'm walking into a mall, following my boyfriend. He leaves to check a store out but my left foot hurts so I just stand in the courtyard. There's a bench next to a raised tile planter filled with soil, a wooden sign, and mounted on top of the sign is a pane of glass. I limp over to the planter thing (I have no idea what it's actually called), pain shoots from my toes to my ankle. I notice that an old man staring at me, concerned, I ignore him. As I'm sitting down I see a man through the glass that immediately reminds me of Liam. I pause and stare at him. He looks tired, in a lightly rumpled gray suit, a tiny little girl I take to be his daughter grabs his hand and leads him a few running steps. He smiles faintly and shakes the hair from his eyes with a slight movement of his head. In this dream his hair is a dark red brown.

I force myself to stop, thinking that I can't just keep gawking strangers. I sit down and take my shoe off to rub my foot. I wonder if I should go to the emergency care place they have in the mall...

Saja: The Runewall, the Gate, and the Return
The mansion feels like it is both inside and outside. There's an entry hall, in the foyer is a double stair case with a deep red-brown bannister and black/white checker pattern tile on the stairs, running up to the second floor. Most of the tile in the room at the foot of the stairs is gone. Across from the bottom landing is another doorway, the door itself is gone and it opens up into a ruined section of the house. Jutting out of the dirt next to the door is a two foot tall polished dark grey stone wall () On the inside curve are three lines of runes.
The Liam echo from the dream fragment kneels next to a woman who is dressed in all white and grey shimmering cloth.
"You really did find it then.." He says. Her expression becomes mildly bemused, eyes far away, she nods. "Do you know what it says?" he asks.
"What do you mean? The stone is blank."
Liam rises and walks around to stand on the inside curve of the runewall. He touches the top of it and a faint vibration rises from the surface. The woman stands up and looks at the stone in shock and further bemusement.
"So it is the runewall." She doesn't necessarily sound happy, just tired.
"Can you read the runes now?"
"They are...difficult to read. They all run together."
He points, "What about this part?" There's a vertical line of English letters on the outer edge preceding the first line of runes.
X
E
B
They talk about what it means that he can read those letters, even pronounce it like it's a word. Zheb. She gives him the gist of what the runes say, he joins her on the other side of the wall. She says something about trials and sending messages. She uses a formal tone the one I associate with speaking a prophecy. The wall is a sign that the gate will soon reopen.
"You were destined to reveal the wall, just as I was destined to craft the basin."
She says there are artifacts that have to be found to open the gate and that in the final location, the middle of a hollow plateau, she will create the basin in the clay. I see a rough rock formation. The basin will show them where the key to the gate can be found.
As she speaks she pushes her hands down into the wet sand like she is kneading dough. The walls of the crafted crater rise up, she runs furrows into the sand floor with her fingers.
"The plateau could be anywhere, they are all over the place." Liam says, frowning slightly.
"Don't worry. Believe me, when the time comes, we will know exactly how to find it. Do you know how to send the message?"
"Yes."
She gives him a small, troubled smile. The task ahead will not be easy.

Then I am Saja. I meet a tall dark haired main in a ruined mansion, it's nearly identical to the mansion where Liam revealed the writing on the runewall. Something isn't right, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I wonder where his family is, they were supposed to come here to see him off. Once the others arrived, we would be going home.
"Where is the gate?" He asks. He looks tense and unhappy.
"There's a balcony on the second floor that leads out into a garden then to a field. The gate is there." I turn my back on him and skip lightly up the stairs. I see myself from the back, the long shining black curls. A cream colored dress with a light green-yellow bodice. My hair bounces as I mount the stairs. I twist around and find he is staring at me with undue intensity. I smile and, beckoning him to follow, run up the rest of the stairs.

I know the man has traveled a long way. Liam's message feels like it comes from across the sea. Far away, certainly, but not too far to reach. He reluctantly climbs the stairs. I can see how he's looking at me even though my back is turned and I finally understand why he is here alone.
He was forced to make a deal, in exchange for his family's safety he would get me from opening the gate and going home.

There's a lapse. We're outside. There's a stone arch standing alone in the middle of a garden. As we get closer heavy wooden doors shimmer into existence. I turn and confront him on his motives, but I don't remember what the outcome is.

Lucid
((The parts where I see him as Liam and become Saja feel different, like I'm on the edge of being lucid, but I don't make any choices. I just have clarity.))

The beginning is a little hazy. I was a member of an archeological dig in the desert. A man from the government came in to

find a missing woman and debunk our findings. He was being an irritating, arrogant ass, who kept ignoring facts and wouldn't listen to me.
There's a tent pitched alongside a wall, the wall looks like it belongs to the outside of the house I grew up in in MA. Out of the corner of my eye I see a dirt floor and observe all the 7x10 photographs tagged to the canvas. The government agent, Jack, is speaking to a blond woman who pins another photo up and then exits the tent. It annoys me that he's still following the evidence this way, because he's ignoring the danger. He has his back to me, he's wearing a black suit, white shirt, with a thin black tie. He considers the line of photographs, hands on his hips.

I can't help myself. "Still refusing to follow the facts, I see." I say to him. He turns around and drops his eyes to the floor, smiling

a little.

"Oh. Hello again, Brenna." ((I've never been a Brenna before. Huh.)) He ignores my jab and looks after the blond woman

as she makes her way down the narrow canvas hall. "I was sad to see that she had dyed her hair."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I have a particular weakness for women with black hair." He gives me a significant look, it's almost playful. He's giving me the

option to ignore it. It's only then I realize that I'm Saja. My hair is waist length, black and wavy. I'm even wearing one of her dresses, the hem falls mid-calf, it's a spring green-yellow with a white apron. I draw my hair over one shoulder and smile. He walks over to stand beside me and examines another line of photographs. As he crosses the floor, the wind snaps the canvas overhead creating gaps for the sunlight to stream in. Where it shines on his hair, it makes it look less brown and more red. The longer I look at him the more red there is. He suddenly reminds me of Liam. It's only when he's standing next to me that I realize he's the right height, too. Before I had seen him as my enemy and would not allow myself to find him physically appealing, but he's opened a door and I can't ignore it. Because he looks like Liam.

I turn to face the wall of photographs. They all look the same to me. It's dimly lit snow with a faded splash of blood.

"Well. As long as we're sharing. I can't help but notice how much red you have in your hair...and I have a certain fondness for

redheads." I stare at his profile while he looks at the pictures, and see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

I fix my gaze on the pictures, pretending to look at them, knowing that as I turned away he looked over to study my profile.
"Look at us. Being civil. Can't have that, can we?" He comments wryly. "Why did you come here?"
"I want to try one more time to help you see the truth, Jack."
"Brenna." his tone is sharp, warning. His expression turns cold. "I don't have time to listen to your tripe."
"TRIPE?" I exclaim, suddenly outraged. "Oh YES. Why bother with facts when you can make up whatever story you like!"
"You were falsifying your findings and when you needed proof that these 'creatures' exist, you murdered a young girl to fit your story."
"You are so incredibly wrong. How can anyone stand to be around you?"
"Well, naturally I'm offended by deception. Honest people get along with me nicely."
"Oh, I'm sure." I snap sarcastically.

There's a lapse. It's after dark. I'm fleeing the tent because I've stolen evidence. Jack caught me at it and is pursuing me with ill

intent. I also overhead him talking about the undercover agent in our unit that was meant to disrupt the core stability of our group, to try to suss out who exactly the murderer is. The landscape looks like the yard outside the house in MA. Where there is a small hill leading down into the neighbor's yard, the lawn fades into sand and the landscape becomes a desert.
I'm barefoot and I can feel the cool sand under my feet. I get a brief bird's eye view of his pursuit. I'm shouting over my shoulder as I run.

"How can you be so willfully blind? When all the evidence is right in front of you!" The dune to my left is, I know, actually a

sphinx that has been swallowed by the desert. I run my hand along the front paw, clearing it of sand. There's some sort of creature nesting between its front legs, close to its chest. I eye the thing and hope it hasn't noticed me. A little ways further there's a stone wall and a line of open doorways. I think I've lost him for now. I jog up the next dune and at the bottom of the following valley is our research and living trailer.
I'm inside now. I pass a guy who looks exactly like Sendhil Ramamurthy. I ask him where Nate and the new girl went off to and he says to the kitchen.

"Will you get them for me, I just found something interesting." He says.

Attachment 4750 I suck at describing this crap, so I made another layout. I cross the living room and go to hall, the door to the kitchen is slightly open and Nate has his back to the door and the new girl, who is Jack's undercover agent. She doesn't feel right somehow, she is raising a large kitchen knife.

"HEY." I say loudly. They both turn around, she drops the knife and looks a little embarrassed. "Looks like we found something.

You wanna follow me?"

They follow me back to Sendhil. We act like I didn't just find the new girl about to murder Nate. Sendhil talks about how he

just found some proof that our group had been infiltrated, but we won't know by who until we can get all the hands together in the morning. The new girl looks extremely awkward, I wonder why I'm not saying anything.

"Jack is on his way here."
"We can meet him outside if you need some time." The girl offers.
I grin at her a little, her cheeks flush. "Sure. Whatever you like."

There's a lapse. Sendhil is trying to show me something, it's a really confusing image. We're looking at something like a mirror

or a tv screen. There a thin metal frame around it and it glows a dim blue. He's sitting right behind me, chin on my shoulder, urging me to look and see for myself.
I see my own face, and his. I can't really remember what happens here. I notice the shape of my eyes, and the curve of my jaw.

There's another confusing moment after another lapse, he says he's going to meet Jack outside. I say I'm going to follow but

when I pass the mirror in the living room I'm a fat young man with pale green eyes and cork-screw curly hair. Then I try to put on my shoes but I forget my socks, and my shoes are shaped all funny. They look more like a walking cast. I don't want to get sand in them when I go outside. So I take them off and try to find socks...

There's another lapse and the story picks back up. I have traveled to a snowy place up north, I have tipped Jack off, telling him

that if he follows me there he will find the proof I've tried to convince him exists. That the woman he thinks I've murdered is actually here and alive. I meet him outside the house, he's huddled next to the wall. I sit down across from him.

"Oh, I didn't realize you'd be here." He says.
I let him pretend I wasn't the one who gave him the tip, and remain silent.
"He said he'll come get me. The girl wakes up every morning at the same time, like clockwork."
"I'm glad you're here." I whisper.
"Are you? Well. There's that at least." he pauses. "We're on different sides."

He looks so much like Liam that I forget he's Jack. "LIAM." I say, leaning forward so my nose is almost touching his. "Do you really think I care about that?"
He doesn't look startled or confused that I used the wrong name. He meets my eyes squarely and shakes his head once, just a little. I can feel my name on his lips. I want him to say it. He's never used my name in the dream.
I will him to call me Saja.
He opens his mouth like he's going to speak and then closes it.

"At least put your arms around me, then?" I say, disappointed.
"I..."
"It's cold."
"I can't."
I want to kiss him on the cheek but I don't. "Fine."
"I'll...see how things play out."
"As you wish."

He smiles a little but he looks sad. We hear the front door of the weathered shack open and we go inside. The girl we have come here to see, lost her fiance out in the snow. They thought she would die. Physically she recovered, but once she woke she would just do nonsensical things and spout gibberish.

"Can we speak with her?" Jack asks.
"You can try." Says her grandfather. "I'll give you ten minutes." He leaves the house and we proceed in trying to talk to her.

I don't remember any of what she says, but she goes over to this small round table by the door.

"You might want to be car---" she deliberately runs into it. "Yes. That's right, keep running into the table."

She and picks up the lamp, "You might want to not---" she then leans forward and knocks her head against it. Hard. "Okay, sure. Knock yourself out."
Jack kind of rolls his eyes at my sarcasm.

"I don't think we'll get anything useful from her, do you?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna talk to the grandfather again."

Now the girl is laying on the table, cuddling with the lamp, her head hanging off the edge. Her skin has an unhealthy blue cast and her eyes look strange.

"Odd are the hours that meet us at the gate." She says. I frown at her.
"What gates?"
"The ones on the edges. IT lives beyond the gates. Follows every grain."

She's really freaking me out and I get the sense that she actually did die out in the snow and whatever THIS is, is no longer human. She's changing into something else. Her lips look blue. She reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt. I tear it out of her grasp and join Jack outside. I'm am done with this creepiness.
He gives the grandfather his best and we start to leave.

"I guess that settles it. You didn't murder her."
"Someone sure did."

He stops me and gestures at my shirt. There's a splash of luminescent blue on the front. Just beyond him I see two tonberry trundle out from the darkness, carrying their lamps and stylized blue knives. There's a glowing blue orb on the ground, they're attracted to it. One of them starts to come toward me. Jack pivots and sees the tonberry.
"Uh oh."
We watch as the second tonberry viciously stabs the blue orb and absorbs its energy. The other one stops in front of me and makes a weird keening noise. I take off across the snow.
"What are you doing?" Jack hisses after me.
"I'm running ya moron. I'll be fine."
The tonberry follows me to the edge of the lake. Running is fluid, so easy. I dive in, and hear a splash as it moves out into the water. Swimming is even easier, I glide effortlessly through the water until I reach the other side and leap to the bank. There's a large snowdrift there, and on the other side I know is the road. I climb over the drift and fall into the snow on the far side startling three strange turkey-peacock creatures into flight. There are three giant zebras in the road. They are the size of draft horses, I know they are extremely aggressive. I grab a handful of snow and pelt the zebra stallion's flank hard, and then dive into a snow drift to hide.
A second later the tonberry bursts through the snow hill I climbed over, the stallion is offended, thinking that the tonberry hit it with a snowball...so the zebra tramples the hell out of it.

Gleefully triumphant that my plan worked, I wake up.

I was going to give you some back story on Saja and Liam, but it seemed incredibly stupid when I typed it out. I often become Saja and almost every time I have a lucid dream I go looking for Liam.
Lucid
Non-Lucid
False Awakening

The layout of my house is huge. It also seems to share something of the more important houses I have lived

in. It is also, in part, Lowe's. I'm making my way down a wide hallway with cream-yellow walls and dark walnut trim and flooring. This part looks a little like my house in MA. I take a right at the end of the hall, the next one has a heavy dark walnut door with little lanterns on either side. I open the door and outside is the Lowe's parking lot. There are racks of flowers on either side, and then standing placidly between them is a team of horses hitched to a small wagon. It's a string of six. Well, I guess they're ponies. They are all paints, and only one of them is black and white, with black flecks all across his coat. I look at that one fondly. All the others are variations of chestnut and white.

I decide I want to ride one. I almost choose the last one in the train but he's tethered at the back of the others,

so I pass him by and walk to the less pretty first horse. This one is mostly chestnut and has very little white aside from a diamond marking and some white in his mane. The top of their heads are even with mine, making them fairly small.
I'm pleased by how small they are because I'm short, and I can climb onto his back without standing on something. I straddle the pony and grip his mane. He starts walking forward. The dream feels more vivid here, like before I was just on the edge of lucidity and now I've found it. I start experimenting with control, using my mind to change his path since I don't have any kind of reins. The parking lot is cold, there's some snow on the ground, and few cars. I lead the horse back toward the door and slide to the ground. I pat his neck. Something startles me, and I can't actually remember what. I run inside and slam the door, then take off down the hallway. Hoping that they didn't see me, and that if they did I'll be too far into the house for them to know where I've gone.

There's a lapse, I'm in the same building but this time it looks more like Lowe's. The aisle is also open

to the outdoors. A co-worker is talking to me. I stare at the wall behind him trying to figure out what's different about it. What's there that shouldn't be?

"....Did they put a bathroom here?" I ask, a little incredulous. This is one of my aisles after all.

"Why yes, it looks like they did." He says. I stare at the blue wall, which is just like the stalls in the bathroom. I can see the

seams now.

"There's no handle on the door, must not be finished."

Somehow I know this is the Women's stall, and there's a Men's room a couple aisles over. My co-worker wanders off outside and again I feel like I'm on the edge of lucidity, then pushing into it. It's a beautiful day out, and suddenly I wonder what the exterior of the building looks like. I run outside, feeling unnaturally fast. This section is actually a second floor, set higher than the main part of the building. The concrete is new and yellow-white. I run along, rushing past my co-worker who says something I can't remember. I fling the door open and run inside...

Another lapse and I'm in a hospital-like section. I'm here for tests? I think? I need to go to the bathroom

first. I walk down a long, wide hallway. It feels deserted. At the end is a bathroom. I can't figure out what's weird about it, despite the fact that there aren't stalls and there are just chairs by the sink. At first I think the chairs are toilets, until I sit down on one and realize it is, in fact, a chair. The cushion is yellow, wider at the front lip and more narrow by the back of the chair. I frown at it, I really need to go.
The room is kind of C or [ shaped. I go further inside, it's all white-pink tile with pale pink stalls. Finally!
The bottom of the stall panels are tall enough for me to duck under. I go into the first stall and am disgusted to see flecks of urine on the seat. I hear someone else come into the bathroom, and I'm suddenly embarrassed. Even as I'm doing it I wonder why. I duck under the wall and go into the next stall. And then into the next one. Which...puts me in a kind of mail room. It's dimly lit and there are bags as tall as my hips full of mail, with people rushing in and out. An old man with white hair is directing them.

"Trying to find the bathroom?" he asks.

"Yeah.."

Behind him I notice the wall is the side of a stall. He gestures to it. I smile and duck underneath. It puts me on the far side of a

string of stalls. When I turn the corner I'm walking with a tallish black girl, wearing a green t-shirt, her hair is pulled back into a fluffy bun. I feel a moment of vertigo. I hear myself say that I'm Saja and that 'd been looking for her everywhere. What had I just been doing? Something odd happens here, my vision doubles and I'm standing a couple feet from the black girl and a slightly taller willowy woman with long brown hair. I've separated from the woman, like I'd just been inside her. I can see the back of my head, the wavy black hair. I've become Saja.

"Hey!" I call after them. The girl in the green didn't hear me, but the other woman tenses and when I call

after her again she glances at me, whip quick. Then pretends I don't exist.

"Hey, I KNOW you!" I say. She looks extremely uncomfortable and leaves as quickly as she can without breaking into a run.

The girl in the green looks startled, and suddenly I become real to her. The woman had been pretending to be me.

"Who are you? What just happened?"
"I am Saja."
"Do you know her?"

"Yeah..." I say something I can't remember. I look up at her. I'm little next to her, she's almost a head taller than me.

We walk out of the bathroom, next to it is a kind of study with a long table. It's dim and cozy, dark red walls, a banked fire, bookshelves lining the walls.
"

Can you use magic?" She asks me curiously.

I smile a little, walking over the threshold behind the girl. "I am magic."
There are people gathered around the table. A male dc sitting across from us is trying to influence the dream by telling them all 'my' story.

"How do you know anything about her? Your family is broken, disgraceful. Thieves and murderers, all. Why, your father could

come in here right now and murder us all--slit our throats where we sit." I can feel the others start to believe him, but what's the benefit of being lucid if I can't change anything.

"That sure would be a trick, wouldn't it? Considering he's dead." The man is staring hard at me, and it takes me a minute to

realize that I'm lying. "I killed him myself, murdered the bastard in his sleep."
Another moment of vertigo, the man is smirking at me, like he wanted me to say all that. "No wait." I amend. "That isn't my story at all. You want to hear my story? All of it?" He rolls his eyes and leaves the table. The green t-shirt girl and a few others sit down. I remain standing.

"Have you ever heard of the Serpent?"

The all give me blank looks.

"Alright then, I'll tell you about It." I try to decide where to start. I try to tell them about Ru-em, the province I'm from in

the Midlands, and how our culture developed, how we learned to plant and harvest. Then I shake my head, trying to clear it. That's not where I want to start. "There is a creature, on the edge of existence. It moves from world to world, consuming all in its path." Someone rolls their eyes at me, bored. The girl in the green t-shirt is rapt.

"It's massive, as big as the sky." I can see it, the purple-black scar against a clear blue sky. How the world shook. "Ancient.

It crashed through our reality and into the earth, and down into the Spirit of our world. Which it would eat until nothing remained."
I move around the table, to a smaller one in the corner. The girl and a couple others follow me. I sit down and they take the seats across the table. There's a small spiral notebook.

"It wasn't really serpent-like." I pick up a pen and begin to draw. "More...like a--" I think a slug, but decide not to say that out

loud. "Like a whale and a manta-ray and--"

"And a worm?"
"Kind of like that, yes."

She stares down at my small drawing, the ridges by the tail fin. "It looks scary."

"It is." I pause, thinking that no one wants that horror to visit their door. I look down at the paper and decide I want to write

something down. I open a pen and write "Saja is magic."
It's clearly legible, actual words. The ink is a little thin, but I can't have everything.
I tug at the cap of a marker and worry for a second that this effort is going to wake me up. The dream wavers as I pull off the cap and settles again when I set marker tip to paper.
"Liam is alive." Instead of black, the words come out pale translucent green. The tip has split so the letters, while I know what they are, blur together.
I try to write it again, but the tip is still messed up. I stare at the notebook and smile. What am I doing here, playing these little games? I could be off looking for Liam. I leave the table and then the room, when I reach the hall I start to call out for him.

"Liam! Liiiiiaaaam? Are you here?" I call out several variations and my eyes are drawn to a window. For some reason the blinds

are on the outside. 1" aluminum blinds. I see blue eyes and then a smile through the slats. My heart pounds with excitement. It's never been so easy to find him! The man opens the window and I rush to meet him. I pull up short as he's trying to dip inside. It's not Liam. Not even close.
He's scrawny, medium-height, with gray-brown hair and sharp blue eyes. His teeth are crooked and yellow, he's dressed all in black. Skull-cap, jacket, jeans. All black. I frown at him.

"Who are you? Where's Liam?"
"What d'ya mean 'where's Liam', Liam's dead."
Panic grips me for a second but I refuse to believe him. "You're lying, he can't be dead. I would know."
"Wooould you?" He has an accent, faintly Scottish. "From all the way over here?"
"I would."
"I don't know what to tell you, swee-heart. He's definitely dead. Been dead a long time."
"Stop saying that!" I yell, twisting my hand into a fist in his jacket. "He isn't dead!"
"Suit yerself. Don't say I didn't warn ye." He laughs at me, I hate how amused he is at my expense.

I'm in my bed. I can hear talking in the other room, thinking my boyfriend is watching something on his computer. I get up, decide to ask him if he wants something to eat. The voices get a little louder and I distinctly remember hearing them on the episode of Revenge I watched before laying down. I approach his door, which is cracked open. I wonder if he's watching Revenge, something he never watches. I go inside. His bed doesn't look right, it's all gold and red. There's a woman wearing blue striped shorts and a white tank top curled up along his legs near the foot of the bed.
What? I frown at the form huddled under the blankets. He turns restlessly and it's not my boyfriend at all.

"God damn it, I'm still dreaming." I say, surprised. The man blinks awake and startles into a sitting position.
"What are you doing in here?"

Before he can even finish the sentence I glance to the wall behind me. It has a wide window, I recognize it as one of the rooms from the building. I grin and run to it, open it and shove the screen out. I throw myself out and land in the hallway down below.

I land at the foot of a concrete staircase. At the top is a door with a sign above it saying who is broadcasting inside and has radio station numbers.
I can hear them through a speaker by the door. "Just like Jack and Ron except, me, obviously like Jack, doesn't have a problem clearing the saliva from my throat." It makes his voice sound less thick. A man comes outside and notices me listening, he tips his hat to me but my eyes kind of slide around him. He's tall, wearing a black ball cap a dark green t-shirt and black knee length shorts.
A tv screen on the wall at the top of the stairs flickers to life. It features a short blonde woman who looks vaguely like Amanda Bynes, wearing a bring pink uniform and hat, standing under a spotlight in a black room. She is trying to act out their radio show and is getting mixed reactions.
I frown, what am I doing? I was looking for Liam. I find I'm standing in front of the tv, I head back down the stairs. The hall there ends in a glass door with a metal bar across the middle. I push it open and rush outside, calling for him. The dream feels brittle, like it's about to fall apart. The walls are...papery. Thin. A man on a motorcycle rushes past me and stops. He flips up the visor and for a second he looks exactly like Liam. I rush to him and him to me. He pulls of the helmet. The closer he gets the less he looks like Liam. It takes me a second to realize it though.

"Are you him?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. My heart sinks a little when I realize he's a stranger. "No, you're not, are you."
He smiles apologetically.
Wouldn't he be here if he were alive? Maybe he really is dead. The man from earlier moves up beside me.

"I told ya."
"Stop it." I snap.
"Tried to warn ya." He says. The buildings to either side of me are beginning to break apart, like sand in the wind.

I realize I am close to waking and I try to focus to hold it together a little longer.I ignore him. Even from here I can see muddy black waves crash through a line of structures, tearing them to shreds and beginning to flood the parking lot from 3 sides. I stand and observe.

"What do you think will happen if I let it have me?" I ask, I feel a little hopeless and wrung out. What's the point of anything if

Liam is dead?

"Likely you'll die."

I stare at the water. It's consuming the building closest to me.

"Here, step on that." The man shuffles a large thin piece of blue foam board at me. "Fat lot of good it'll do you."

He then escapes back the way we came. The water lifts the foam board, it starts to float away under a black truck. I step onto the corner, and it rises with the water. Water takes the path behind me, it's too late to run now. The board won't last me long, there's no way it can stand up to the raging water. Cool air blows the hair back from my face. The board is swept from under me and I remain in the air. I flap my arms like a bird and rise above the water, deciding I'm not quite ready to die. People beside the front of the Lowe's/Hospital/House are pointing up at me in awe. The water is receding, leaking away from the parking lot. I see a small group beside what looks like a...firetruck shaped like a four wheeler. I direct myself toward it, the police officer there is tall and fair skinned. He has bright blue eyes and I can see a little red under his hat. He holds his hand out to receive me as I alight on the top of the ladder extending from the top of the four wheeler. He helps me down. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder. He looks strikingly like Liam but I know it isn't him, this man is only an echo. He knows exactly who I am though.

"You look just like him, you know."

He takes it as a compliment and smiles a little. "Thank you."
The police officer/Liam Echo turns away from me and speaks to the small group of survivors.

"Let's head inside where they are waiting to treat any injuries." He touches the brim of his hat when he glances at me, and then

his eyes rest on a legless woman in a wheel-chair with an IV drip. He says it's a miracle she survived. Given her health problems, the quality of her existence, I wonder if it might not be kinder if she had died. I'm not mean enough to say it though. He leads them inside, there's an emergency room bay just over the threshold.
Beside the door is a table. I walk to it. I notice there's an egg sitting in the middle of it. I pick it up and it slips from my hand, cracking against the table. It makes a noise like breaking, like it's boiled, but when I shake it I can hear the yolk. I test it between my hands and cracks spider out from the palms of my hands.
Now I'm curious. I throw it at the ground and the shell breaks away, but the yolk remains egg-shaped. Tough but still obviously a liquid. I begin to laugh, the revelation hitting me like a stone. I'm extremely delighted.
Of course, this is the message my subconscious wanted to send. Though the egg looked fragile, it could never actually have been broken.
I pick up the yolk, thinking to show the police officer. He seemed like he would enjoy a neat epiphany like this.

"Hey! Check this out!" He turns to face me and I throw the yolk. He isn't expecting it so he misses entirely and it breaks in

the most awkward spot. The crotch of his pants.

"Oh...I am so sorry! I just....wanted...to show you the egg!" I start laughing again, he looks a little amused and bewildered

and embarrassed. I leave, my last view of him is him trying to brush away the yolk. I decide it's time to wake up.

The room feels wide and open. Ahead of me is a stone tunnel. From where I'm standing I can't discern any details. As I focus my eyes, it becomes more detailed. I start to describe it to myself and it becomes. I'm delighted, thinking how it's like drawing, I see it in pencil shadings first, before it becomes real, and the image flows more smoothly than any drawing I have ever created.
When it is finished the stone is a mossy deep brown, wet with rain. I can't figure out where I've seen it before, but it feels so familiar. There are stairs leading up to a platform that sits to the right side of the tunnel. I start looking for something there but I no longer recall what it is.

The Poisoning of Azela Grey
I had a dream at midday, telling the tale of Azela Grey. I'm watching a news report, showing footage from a live Council meeting. She had fought for her spot as a Speaker, and a woman, which was something spectacular in its own right. She's tall, with dark shoulder-length hair. She's wearing a light gray business suit with a white shirt under the jacket. The council meeting is built like an amphitheater. A platform at the center where the primary 5 sit, and then 4 tiers of gently curving wood tables with seats where the rest of the Council sits. Azela sits in the last ring, of the least importance. The meeting is about to commence, she takes a sip. My awareness pulls back, showing a pixelated tv screen, a red band at the bottom.
"The Poisoning of Azela Grey"

I'm driving down a highway. The road is impossibly fast and crowded. A woman on a tiny black motorcycle that has a regular sized cream/tan motorcycle folded up above the back wheel speeds past me. I think how awesome that is and wonder where I can get one. She looks like this actress http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1490300/. A moving truck doesn't see her and moves lanes. I'm worried about her, so instead of getting hit, one of her wheels breaks off and she skids to a stop on the shoulder under an overpass. I go over to see if she needs help. Now she looks different, a tall brunette with wavy hair and olive skin. I separate from my character and I see myself from behind. I'm tiny next to her, the top of my head only just reaches past her shoulder.
I have shoulder length black hair. I'm wearing a white denim jacket and a brown dress with boots. Even with short hair I recognize her as Saja, I become her often. It seems perfect that she would stop to help someone, she's always thinking of others.
"Can I help you?" I ask her.
"Don't worry about it, this isn't your problem." She glances at me and does a subtle double-take. I know she thinks I'm attractive. I stand there patiently. She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. "Fine, I guess I could use some help."
"Perfect! I'll help you get the cycle into my van."


It skips to a grey, dim-lit room. On one end is a photographer. On the other is a two foot high, smooth white statue shaped like some kind of bird. The idea is that this is therapy, and in expressing my depression...on top of the bird, while someone takes pictures, I'll be able to feel better (riiiight...). I am Azela Grey, I no longer look like Saja. I'm taller, my hair isn't black but still dark brown, wavy and is a little longer. I'm wearing a dark brown dress with tiny white flowers, knee length boots and a netted brown jacket thing. The statue looks a little like a duck now. My photographer therapist urges me to begin.
The stress of the campaign has taken its toll. There are dark circles under my eyes and I look like I haven't smiled in a long time. My awareness pulls back and I'm watching myself pose on the duck. After a few flashes my friend from the highway comes to join me. She presses her body against my back and runs her hands down my sides. I smile. I know I shouldn't. I have a girlfriend. Plus, now there are pictures.
She has been trying to show me how to enjoy life again.

I'm walking down a cobbled street, it's dark with the recent rain. I duck into a bookstore. It's small, with 5 long tables. Tall bookshelves line the walls. There is only one book. It has a dark blue jacket with yellow on the front. Sometimes the yellow looks like flowers, sometimes like angelfish. Sometimes like stars. I can't make out the name either. Sometimes it looks like Seascape. Sometimes Starsea, sometimes Starscape. I open one of them and flip through it. I can't make sense of the text.
I think of how eroded our culture has become under the weight of the law. How this bookstore should have the freedom to sell more than one book. I suppose that's what my campaign is about, freedom. Now I have made a serious miss-step. There are the photos of myself and the woman. If they see those they could ban me from the council.
When I leave the bookstore my girlfriend is outside. She throws the pictures on the ground in front of me and leans forward, red with her effort not to yell.
"What are these? WHAT ARE THEY? After EVERYTHING we did to be together, to keep our relationship a secret you let some half-wit photographer take pictures of another woman groping you? These are all over the papers! AND there's mention of me! Why did you tell them about us and then take these pictures? This could ruin my career!"
She's a doctor, it's strange enough for a woman to be practicing medicine, now her license could be taken away because of my mistake. She storms off. I stare down at the pictures and gather them in my hands.
Behind me there are two steeply arched stone bridges that cross each other like an X. A man in a tux and top hat is narrating my story. He's telling a group of people who are singing and dancing under string-light decorations that it's sure I'll be banned, they might have listened to me on the council before this. They may have even passed the laws I suggested, but never now.
He talks of a time when people could love whoever they wanted.
Then he tells the part that hasn't happened yet, that as they are about to ban me, someone poisons my tea because of hatred for my sexual orientation, and the laws I wished to pass.


Huh. I've had dreams as men before, I've never had one where I was a lesbian. How interesting...

The room is laid out like the paint desk at work, but it's all stone. Everything is grey, the room is closed and open at once. I'm standing at the mouth of a hallway, a ramp descending. When I turn my back on it, a man in the hall is abducted, dropping his coin purse. At the front of the 'paint desk' there's another man. He's kind of ugly, but I try not to hold that against him. He's holding out his hand in a gesture of terrified defiance. When I hear the man taken behind me, I turn to see the coin purse and try to gather the spilled coins (a smattering of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies), then back. I see a creature drop out of the sky and snatch him.
"NO!" I yell, and try to run for him, I drop the coins.
The man and his captor have disappeared in a moment of distraction. Now there's a woman standing there, the light makes her look blue and purple. As she draws closer, she looks familiar. It's my face, sort of. I throw myself at her, one hand clutched to my chest, the other outstretched. I hit the ground. She falls too, her hand stretched out just like mine, other to her chest. I'm confused. I notice how she's dressed, an ankle length pale lavender dress with a white apron cinched at neck and waist. Her hair is dark, one long thick braid. Her features are delicate, eyes green. She almost looks animated, idealized.
Saja? I think, frowning. Why is she a villain here? Is it a trick? Ever before, if Saja appears I am her, we have never been divided like this. Her confusion mirrors mine. I make a grab at her face, she grabs at mine. 'Saja', however, changes form. She becomes a dragon...thing. She's all round and soft, and a shimmering purple. I try to climb onto her back, she glances down at me, about to take flight. I assume she'll take me to the others. She crouches, ready to leap, I can see the square of dreary sky overhead.