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Disembodied, I'm standing on the second floor, looking over a railing down at the main hall of this three-floor antebellum mansion filled with women waltzing to Que Sera, Sera. There's men here too, but they might as well be props, they're not what I'm here to see. A fire breaks out with no apparent cause, and I recognize what moment in time this must be; the fire here is a reflection of what's happening in reality in the place where they're sleeping. One of the women is caught in the fire and starts screaming. And then the fire's gone, and she's fine, and they go back to dancing. Though they're not aware of it, the end of the fire signified the end of their connection with reality; their sleeping bodies have died, and they won't be able to leave this dream world.

Started in some sort of room, with my mom and this cute girl. we were playing around traveling through different worlds and I kissed her. We became girlfriend and boyfriend and continued to travel and ended up in a bar. we met two other people in the bar that could use arcana. We all messed around with our powers and when my friends were playing bingo at the bar I used my magic with my pentagram necklace to make it stronger but something backfired and I messed something up, time, or perhaps even myself. I woke up soon after.

Mazikeen's picking up a crow for me, telling it that it's not going to get out of our deal. There's always an excuse.

"What excuse?" says the crow. "I'm not trying anything. I'm just pointing out I've got mouths to feed."

Many people do. But she counts the children in the nest, six of them. She initially seems not to care, saying something about distributing its belongings; but then she says something about giving them time to "grow into it." The crow's got one more year.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A group of people sitting around a round table, while I'm standing. There's a woman who is composed of three women superimposed over each other, two living, one dead and decayed but still conscious due to her connection to the other two. I'm speaking to one of the living ones, Lily, the one who belongs to this reality, and offering a way to separate her from the other two. She has doubts. The other two are in favor of it. They ultimately agree.

Later, I'm reading an account of the deaths of that group who'd been sitting around the table, a kind of organization I'd led. I'd made a deal on behalf of those three women, and to hold up my end of the deal, I was away for a long time; I think of this as abandoning that group. There was a fire. I'm reading a note to the effect that the group itself will reappear in some form or another, but the people I'd abandoned are dead.

#418 - MILD - 5:13AM

Coffee (Caffeine) 2tbsp brewed. 4tbsp sugar and about 1/8 cup milk
I wake about 3:45am from a vivid dream and decide it's too close to my 4:00AM alarm to go back to sleep so I go ahead and get up just long enough to drink my coffee. I return to bed thinking about the dream I just had and what it would have been like if I had become lucid. I quickly drop into sleep.


I wake my daughters up to get ready for school. There is some conversation and I randomly climb out a window in a hallway. The house is a two story and I come out on a low part of the roof. I am trapped because a woman who looks like Michonne in a Sonic uniform is on a ladder that is some how blocking my exit. I tap her on the lag and politely ask her to move. She tells me to hold on so I just find away to squeeze past. As I climb down off the roof I tell the woman and her associate that I am leaving for work so if they have any questions ask my wife. I tell them to just call for Janice (That's my mom's name... awkward.) I feel like this isn't the right name so I start to tell them they can just call for Mrs. Coon but I stop myself because they might thing I am trying to make an inappropriate joke. I wonder why they are here and what they are working on. Oh they must be installing tile. On the roof? Maybe it's something else.

I as I drop down I land inside the house. There is a ladder on a wall that is made of tape measure. I fiddle with it noting how flimsy it is. I decide it probably won't hold my weight so I leave it alone. I remember that I should be getting to work so I check the time on my cell phone in my pocket. 11:25am. Wow I am really late!

I look up and find myself at work. Robert M. is saying something about taking a half day vacation then says he better clock in. I think it's a little late for half day so I check the time again. 10:10AM. I become confused about the time and decide I better just clock in. I start typing my employee number and pause as I recall how I was just in my 'house' and suddenly I am at work. Then there's the time thing...Then, it finally dawns on me. I must be dreaming. I feel a wry smile come on my face and I step away from the computer. The dream collapses at this point, but I manage to get things back in order by focusing on what I should be seeing. Things are a bit unstable now but I think I can work with it.

I wonder about goals, but when I see a bulletin board I think I should try reading it. I do my best read out loud the wobbly and changing words. [something][something] on a cob. That make absolutely no sense. Now the dream is really unstable so I try rubbing my hands then the carpet. I notice it has a red and gold pattern.

Things get a bit more stable so I decide to walk outside while still rubbing my hands. I can't help but feel that I am literally holding the dream together by pure concentration. I tell myself there is plenty of time and I should relax. I feel my shoulders drop a bit and become at ease. Because of this the dram instantly fades away. I try DEILD with the phase method, but I am too wide awake. I decide to spend some time meditating before I get up.

#409 - DIELD - 6:06AM

I have a long and confusing dream about sleeping at my parents old house. The time keeps changing and I worry about getting up for work on time. The early details aren't important, but my parents eventually tell me they are leaving to go to a tomato festival. They leave my room and I lay there for a moment. Suddenly, I hear a terrible scream and cats fighting. I rush to the top of the stairs and see my cats running out of a bedroom at the bottom with tails fluffed out.

I wake slightly and relax back into the dream. I am the stairs again and I go down to the room at the bottom. It's dark in there and I feel like something evil is hiding in the room. I spend some time calling out whatever monster may be lurking with various forms of profanity, but nothing happens. Then, I fearfully reach into the room and try the light switch, but, of course, that doesn't work either. I decide this is all stupid and leave out the back door. As I step out, the cats rush past me into the yard. This makes me worry that something is following me so I turn and walk backwards a while. Thankfully, nothing is there. The house seems extra dark now that I am standing in full sunlight and I turn to have a look at the dream environment. The colors of the trees are a extra vivid and bright green, but also very dream like and blurry at the edges of my vision. I feel awe and peace and this makes me want to fly up into the sky. Before I can do anything else, I suddenly wake without warning.

There's a teenage girl who's come to me to learn her futures. I've spread them out like cards on the table, and as I hold my hand over one depicting a man she could be married to, she says she wouldn't mind that one so much, that wouldn't be so bad. I have the impression that she doesn't feel she has a choice in any of this - she might want to know what the options are, and she might have her own preferences, but someone else will be making the decision, not her.

With that in mind, I move to one of the futures on the outside edge, the more unlikely options. It's labeled Dreamer. I see her lying on a couch with an arm thrown over her head, looking at the ceiling, wasting away. Her clothes are glowing green like an absinthe advertisement. Since I think of her as wasting away here, I conclude that this is a future she wouldn't want and start to move my hand away, but that vision version of her stops me. She sings, "I listened to my dreams." This is important to her. It's not something she regrets. "They taught me how to feel." Behind her there's a glass window opening onto a balcony, from which I can see a river and the stars. There's a whale swimming through the clouds, adding to the fantastical nature of her possible future.

I'm not sure now to describe this dream. It was very long and complex, but when I think about writing it down, I can't think of how to explain it, so it may be pretty short.

Dream:

I was in a sort of "time loop". It was like for years I had been doing the same thing. I had been going to the school and being with my sister who is a teacher and with Mrs L. I had a tradition of doing a storytelling presentation. Every time it was the same, because every time in the "time loop" the day started exactly the same. But then suddenly I was there and about to do my presentation and realized that something had happened, and everything was different. I remember going into Mrs. L's office and we were both feeling nervous about what was happening.

----

Wow, that was a terrible way to describe what felt like an epic dream.

A concerned-looking woman and a businesslike man are checking in on a man who's recently been dug up from a grave - not his original one; someone else had decided to lock him up for a while. They'd been able to find him and retrieve him, but he'd needed some time to recover. The man he's staying with stops them at the door and says, "I don't know if he's ready for this yet." The businesslike man says something to the effect of "ready or not" and comes inside anyway. It's very pleasant inside - an open plan, wood paneling, lots of plants, dim lights with a slightly orange tint. There's a phonograph playing an old string quartet at a ridiculously loud volume. This is a modern setting, so the phonograph and the choice of music indicate the man who'd been buried is trying to calm himself down by turning to things from his past. The volume, as if he's trying to drown something out, implies it's not going well.

The man who'd tried to stop them at the door backs up so he's sort of standing guard in front of the door to the bedroom, but before the guests can force the issue, the man who'd been buried comes out on his own. Superficially looking completely recovered, friendly and open, neatly and formally dressed as usual - though as a disembodied observer, my first thought on seeing him was along the lines of, Was my hair really that short? What was wrong with me? Anyway, though he seems composed, he gives me the impression that it's just an act - that he's trying too hard to be his usual self.

The guests are surprised, wary, to see him seemingly doing so well, and he explains to them that so often when he's gone into the ground, he'd miss out on years, decades, centuries, and he'd expected the same thing to happen again. "Tonight I am an immortal," he says, by which he means the experience of having 'died' and returned without having missed anything, with his old life and identity still in place, "and I intend to remain that way. So I've had to squash some of my plans." The implication is that he'd spent his time buried coming up with revenge fantasies - but since it turns out he's only missed a few days, he's not going to destroy the identity and life he's constructed here just to carry that out.

Hellblazer, I/Constantine had been working with this teenage girl in the previous scene; now she's gone alone to a hospital to see her kid brother. He's in a ward with a lot of beds, and he's kneeling up on the end of his bed to talk to her. He's saying, "Is it possible that Grace is only after Constantine?" Grace is a surname - the Grace in question is a middle-aged man. And when the kid says Constantine, 'uncle' is implied. "Because he's not exactly a... us anymore." 'Us' meaning a person, a human being. I'd made one deal too many. Which has made it possible for me to be summoned up and controlled, used as a tool - that's what they suspect Grace is after.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After an unsuccessful night looking for blood, I have to rely on Elsa, a sort of servant. Last resort. We use transfusion tubes to draw out the blood, to avoid any unwanted side effects on her, and I alter her mind to make it pleasant for her. I compliment her on the quality, she's changed her diet since the last time we had to do this. I'm speaking German-accented English.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm climbing up a stairwell, climbing up through years. As I pass the platform that will lead to the 1990s, getting close to home, I hear voices up ahead. I come across a man and a woman leaning against the wall; the woman's saying, "No, it's 203. They changed the calendar - finally. I was starting to lose track."

Further up, another group having a conversation, talking about the cracks in the walls. A woman's saying, "They're glitching so bad a man could get in."

I reach my door, present day. But just beside my door, the cracks in the walls are so severe that they've formed a sort of second door - I think I could walk right through. The black sort of skittering motion that appears in all the cracks is more visible here. But the scene just before I entered the stairwell had involved accidentally intruding in a place where I shouldn't be, disrespectfully, and trying to make up for that. I decide against stepping through the cracks. I take the door to the present day.

I step out into what's meant to be an apartment where I live, distorted in a sort of cartoonish representation of hallucination, like you might see in an old music video; it seems to be underwater. Then my field of vision pulls back - now I'm looking at a screen containing an image of this room. It's labeled as a game preview. I'm aware that if I'd stepped through the cracks, the scene still wouldn't have lasted for much longer, since this is only a preview - but that's where the real storyline would begin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I've taken my clockwork heart out of my chest to work on it. I have a mental association with the Snow Queen. I'm in my workshop, full of various clockwork devices, and I'm carrying on a conversation with my apprentice. The image changes to show the subject of our conversation - a bird whose flight over the desert is taking it over a pair of dark horses at the moment. I'm saying, "It doesn't matter if the bird is clockwork or flesh and blood." Either way, it'll fly the same repetitive pattern every year.

I'm walking along a hall filled with exhibits - first, fragments of stones covered with hieroglyphics; then statues of Dumuzi; then a small section filled with art based on myths from various old African and Middle Eastern cultures, done by artists from the current African and Middle Eastern cultures - a reclaiming sort of thing. A painting of Eve holds my attention. Here I meet a very influential man and a woman who he has some claim on, but who seems mentally elsewhere - she speaks only nonsense. I feel protective of her, and I follow her out to a field where she gathers flowers and speaks nonsense at me for a while, but eventually that influential man and his followers come outside and she has to return. She hands me the flowers she's gathered and indicates I should eat them. Heather, foxglove, peony and violet. I put down a plank for her to walk across to return to him, and she hands me the traditional few coins for her passage.

A scene involving statues who came to life ends with a man speculating about whether it's possible for something carved in stone to change its role. He thinks it's possible, within limits. He speaks in a manner that's difficult for the people around him to understand - they say he speaks in riddles, but that's not intentional.

As I'm listening to him speak, the scene transitions; I'm in a dark stone room, listening to someone else speak to himself. I've lost track of what he was actually talking about, too busy focusing on his mannerisms and speech patterns, because I/Rumpelstiltskin recognize this scene - this is the man who I'll steal some of my more showy mannerisms and speech patterns from. Eventually he says a phrase that he uses very often, and recognizing it, I join in with him word for word. I've got his tone down very well, though my voice echoes, an effect of the spell I'm using to stay hidden - helps distort the location. He startles when he hears me, and I say, "Chilling, isn't it?" The similarity in our voices, I mean.

He looks around to try to find me, unsuccessfully, but he looks deeply unimpressed. "Expressing affection?" he asks.

"Precisely. But as an aside-" I drop the spell and step into the light as I speak.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Me and Jules are meeting as strangers - a man led us down to a room displaying various things that were important to each of us in the past. He wants us to go over our own displays to make sure there's nothing that needs to be changed. When we take a break, however, I wander over to some of the objects that are on the wall. There's a statue of a golden lion - something Jules made. He explains that it was based on an ancient model, but it's difficult when you can't be exactly sure of the symbolism each detail had to that ancient culture. I sympathize - I'd once studied the original pair of lion statues he based this one off of.

After several scenes on the streets of New York, I wander off into some hills, go lucid, and start to fly. Once I gain some altitude, I come across a river with several boats making their way downstream. I'm aware that if I follow the river downstream, it'll lead me back into the city; upstream, elsewhere. I'm torn, but then a large boat on the river draws my attention. Marie Antoinette's leaning on the railing, drinking an immense glass of pink champagne, and generally looking very inviting. I land on the boat and we go inside. Unfortunately, although I hear her meaning instead of her actual words, she complains that she can't understand what I'm saying - she's hearing the actual English words. I have to deliberately switch to speaking French - she can understand me well enough now, but my vocabulary's limited. I join her husband at a buffet table where he explains the various delicacies to me - they all sound fascinating, though I'm not eating. I leave him to go remove my overcoat; I meet a handsome guest and we enjoy some extremely unsubtle flirting. Eventually he leaves to rejoin his boyfriend, and as I'm admiring the pair of them I have a false awakening.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a witch sorting through various moments of time from her past. The first one she selects isn't the one she's looking for - it's the moment when she was taken to the castle, associated with a sense of pain, before she became a witch. She puts that moment back.

The second moment she selects - her daughter's choice between death or banishment. I think of Sleeping Beauty, converting a curse into something that's still a curse, but survivable. The daughter herself would have chosen death - young romantic type, I think of Romeo and Juliet - but her mother the witch says, "I gave him the terms quickly." By him, she means me/Rumpelstiltskin. She struck a deal with me to get her daughter away safely, before the daughter could choose a 'noble' death. The scene changes - I'm standing in the shadows at the very edge of a forest, looking at the castle on the hill in the distance. Despite the various fairy tale references in this scene, this castle's no fairy tale confection; it's a squat, practical thing. The daughter was somewhere inside at this moment in time.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After uncovering a secret lab leaking some kind of contamination that was killing the rats in the neighboring building, and making a quick escape out a second floor window and over a series of rooftops, I've wound up coincidentally coming across a scientist from that same lab and having a civil conversation on the subject of traveling through portals. We passed through one without her realizing it, and I'm baffled as to how she could not have noticed, but also baffled as to how to explain that moment of transition to her - I compare it to a change in air pressure, something you feel rather than something visible that you can point to.

She's excited about having found someone to talk to about this, someone who's used to traveling between worlds, and she asks me a variety of questions. But her expectations are so wildly different from my experiences that we're having trouble communicating - she seems to have a worldview straight out of Lovecraft. She asks me first about Old Ones, and I had no idea what she was talking about - the ancient beings that created the world, she explains. She describes them very specifically. That's something I've never come across, sorry. So then she asks about some other creature I've never heard of, and this one she explains as the demon lords that currently run the world now that the Old Ones are gone. This is hilarious. Again, sorry, no - if there are any demon lords running the world, I have yet to meet them. I start wondering if this story is actually a misinterpretation of some of my own past actions.

Recent dreams included a brief appearance from Bai Suzhen, and some good scenery - a trek along a lake covered in snow, watching fireworks in an amusement park.

Today's:

Sometime in the 1700s. Two women talking, one sitting in a chair, the other kneeling in front of her and holding her hands. The walls seem covered in gold and mirrors, with double doors in glass and a row of large windows opening onto the hallway. The windows shatter when I walk down the hall towards the doors - I'd only meant for the doors themselves to break. A cautionary sign. The woman who'd been in the chair is standing when I walk through the space where the doors used to be, shielding the other woman. She calls me Conte.

Two kids, a girl and a boy, are playing a video game. The boy's character has just hit something in the throat with a lead pipe, and the boy has an odd sensation of experiencing the same thing - not pain, more like a memory of someone hitting him just like that, in the throat and then in the side. As a disembodied observer, I'm thinking that's a pity - even after we finally managed to create a peaceful timeline, the deaths from the other timelines are still affecting them.

Yesterday's dreams included using abandoned tunnels running beneath a lake as a hiding place to sleep in during the day. There's one place that leads to a glass dome where you can look up and see the lake above you.

Today's: I'm trying to prevent some disaster, and I'm running out of time. At the moment I'm standing on a rooftop, watching several people in a field far below us. Along with me there's two people, a woman who I think of as my partner - she's on the other side of the roof at the moment, busy with her own efforts - and then this man. He has the power to make anything he says come true, but for his own safety and everyone else's, I made him forget about this power. This is an emergency. I force him to remember, and then I have him use that power to say that there's an earthquake. We all hold onto the roof and watch a crack open up in the field where those people are. The ground's still shaking, the people are scattering, but I don't think this will be enough. We should just bury this place beneath the sea, that ought to do it.

The place is covered in white mist now, blocking out everything below the roof we're standing on, and it's quiet, no more sounds of people below us. I'm walking back toward my partner on the other side of the roof, and I believe submerging this place and all the people in it has managed to avert the disaster. But then this dark spire rises up out of the fog directly in front of me, and keeps rising up into the sky.

It's this huge, gothic tower, a single immense spire composed of smaller ones, spire upon spire upon spire, all jagged edges. I think of a cathedral, but there's no religious imagery, just a sense of awe and horror; I think of a clock tower, but there's no face. It keeps rising higher and higher, I can no longer see the top of it. Flooding this place was a wasted effort.

And as I hang onto the edge of the roof and watch the spire rise, I hear an old man's voice in my head. "Here to keep your ledge, little boy, who once rared-"

Scotland sometime in the 1700s, I'm in the stables brushing a horse and speaking with a young man I've just been riding with. He's about to inherit some position from his father and he's extremely uncomfortable about it, particularly about how little education he's had - less for its own sake, and more to do with how others will see him. The conversation's wandered around a bit on the subject of education, and I've just mentioned Jim, a servant I grew up with in the American colonies who's devoted to learning, more so than anyone I ever knew. Brilliant man. The man I'm talking to asks how much schooling he'd had - none. I feel vaguely ashamed about that, for my home and for myself for not thinking about this when we were younger - Jim certainly would have wanted to go to school and it had never occurred to me to think about that. If he'd been white, he'd almost certainly have gone to a college.

Two dull scenes I'm noting for the character who appears in both - at the end of the previous scene I went to sleep and "dreamed" of a long-haired old man who was a teacher in a modern classroom, who said that the two times are only nine steps apart, so it's silly to make such a fuss. At this point I was fully aware the classroom scene was a dream and had modern memories, but didn't believe the Scotland scene was a dream - I considered the classroom dream a way of communicating with this man while I was in the past. Woke up (really), went back to sleep, and some scenes later I was forging a series of swords - masterpieces. The same old man appeared, this time as the master of the forge, and was so impressed that he insisted I destroy one of them by peeling back layers of metal so he could see the core, see what I'd done.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm reading a letter from an old friend. She's telling me she's spent the last six years in Vienna, and that she's devoting this lifetime (meaning however long this particular identity lasts her) to the study of music. She uses a word that specifically means playing instruments rather than singing, and she says she's giving her voice a break after "those swan songs" in Canada. She's studying the piano, which reminds her of me - she asks if I remember the old spinet I used to play for them.

Scene changes when I think about when and where that had been. There's an image of a little room, dark for just a second, then lit up with this golden light in shapes created by a lantern - this incredibly intricate fantasy scene, silhouettes of people and leaves, and an impression of bars, as if inside a birdcage.

I'm standing on an empty stage, going over some papers for the show currently in rehearsals. My soprano calls down to me from one of the boxes - she calls me Mr. Bevelle or Deville or something similar-sounding. She's got black hair done up like a Gibson girl, and an unusually high speaking voice, but in a way that I find pleasant. However, we're both aware her singing voice isn't going to last - she's only going to be able to perform in a few more shows. Because of that, she keeps coming to me like this with demands on how to run her last shows.

Scene changes to show her at rehearsal. I'm disembodied this time, without Deville's sense of background information, and I only catch three notes of her singing - lovely clear tones - but I recognize Lohengrin.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm disembodied and observing a setting based on China some centuries ago. Literally just observing the setting - I'm outside of the timeline. Nothing is moving, not even the waves, and the colors of everything are incredibly saturated. I'm on a path with the sea to my right after a long drop, a long single-story house directly in front of me on this path, and several two-story buildings off to my left, among green fields. Far off in the distance I can see the shine of a building decorated in gold. Following the path, it curves to the left of that long house, and off to my left there's a man and a woman standing in a field, embracing, yellow flower petals frozen in the air around them. I know of them, though I don't know them personally. There's something secret about their relationship.

I retrace my steps back to the entrance to that long house, where those two live. I look in briefly, noting the room where she stayed off to my right, with a window looking out to the sea. I leave the house again and circle around to the right, hovering over the sea, sticking closely to the side of the building. There's a door hidden here - she escaped through here, sometime after that embrace in the field among the flowers. It becomes difficult to cling to the side of the building. I float above the water, following the path she took, until I come to another building and look inside - there's a pallet on the floor where she stayed for a while. A doctor looked after her here.

I'm on a ship in a storm, approaching a whirlpool, almost certainly about to sink. None of this affects me, I'm only passing through, but I know one of the men on this ship. I talk to him, asking if he's familiar with a certain infamous pirate - I name a name. He doesn't recognize it. That's a pity - in actuality he's quite close with the woman I named, I was just trying to find out where I am in the timeline. If he doesn't recognize that name for her, that means we're so early in the timeline that she hasn't gone to sea yet. If this had just happened a little later, I could have brought her here to save him. But there's nothing I can do for him here and now. I step up onto the railing at the edge of the deck, looking for the portal in the storm.

As Rumpelstiltskin (in name and appearance at least - mentally, I'm still halfway the version of me from that storm scene), there's a small group of men who've retrieved the witch bottle in which I was trapped for a very long time. They've retrieved it from a point in the timeline when I was still inside it, so as I'm watching them from hiding, I catch sight of that past version of me inside the bottle. He looks so incredibly young to me, though I haven't physically aged since then. It's all the emotion on his face, the fear. I focus on the pebbled skin, new to him - I realize they've taken the bottle from almost immediately after I first lost human form.

When I realize that, I become agitated, anxious, a sort of coldness around my heart (such a strong emotion that it lasted a minute after I woke up - that hasn't happened in a while, I enjoyed that). The emotion is partially from forcibly remembering how it had felt when I'd been in that bottle myself, a sort of flashback feeling. There was something I'd been desperate to avert, but I'd been unable to do anything about it from inside that trap. But remembering isn't the only reason I'm so worked up - if I take that bottle now, there's a chance I could change how things unfold in his timeline, save his version of the person I'd wanted to save. Nothing that's happened since that time has mattered to me as much as this. But I hesitate to act - I'm terrified of how it could go wrong, of wasting this miraculous chance.

As I follow the men with the witch bottle - I'm walking on rooftops or listening from behind stone walls, out of sight - one of them is talking. He's not the leader of their little group, but he's the one who was able to retrieve the bottle from the past. They hadn't been aiming for the bottle specifically, they'd just been trying to capture me, and time can get a bit fuzzy when you're reaching between worlds. You have to be specific. He's saying, "It's the wrong time. He has little power now." It's the present me they wanted, or at least a version of me with a few more centuries behind him than that frightened thing in the bottle.