Convention Surprise

       I dreamed I met an Angelic Freckled Woman. AFW had shoulder length dark hair and light blue eyes. She was wearing a sun-dress cream or white with a diagonal grid of small flowers or another design in black, so it was almost like polkadots. I'd call it polkadots with character. It was lust at first sight.
       "You are painfully beautiful. To see you is to understand the full meaning of longing."
       That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Most people hate my freckles.
       She was so freckled that it made her face and shoulders look mottled with spilled ginger. Up close I could see that her eyelashes and eyebrows were also ginger colored, and the thinest band of her hair roots.
       I feel instantly and fully into infatuation. Oddly, for me, she seemed equally taken with me. We strode into the convention center arm in arm.
       The convention center is the same center from many dreams before. We enter the lobby near the stairs and are processed through registration. I wonder what sort of labyrinth has been cobbled together for us this time. I am pleasantly surprised to enter the dealers' room and see that it had been arranged as a single large room, with meeting halls around the outside edge of the room.
       "Nice, much better arrangement. It forces the seminar and panel traffic to go outside or through the dealers' room."
       "Very clever, I wonder if they charged extra for the booths facing the panel rooms," AFW asked.
       We hadn't gone far when I came across a dealer of old antique looking stuff. He spotted us and called us over. He showed me a drawing, a drawing of me and Sera Prim and AFW together. "I'm holding a purchase for you, from another convention. Here," He handed me a double scroll and a pair of tickets. "I was told to tell you to put the tickets inside your shirt and don't let anyone else touch them."
       He shrugged as I took the envelope from him and, unbuttoning one shirt button, put them in the pocket of the pocket T-shirt I was wearing underneath.
       "What's on the tickets?" I asked.
       The dealer looked uncomfortable a moment, then shrugged again. "I," he looked around, I think trying to see if Sera was around. "I couldn't bring myself to open the envelope, I promised your other lady."
       "Other Lady?" AFW asked.
       "Sera," I said, pointing to the drawing.
       "Oh," AFW puffed her chest up a bit to make herself look bigger than Sera in the drawing. I noticed that sometime during our stroll into the dealers' room that she'd unbuttoned a couple of buttons, also.
       I chuckled to myself. I'd all ready been won over, but then when she offered to buy the drawing, I realized the cleavage had other benefits. The dealer was really still just a geek like the rest of us, and her charms were persuasive. He took off the "not for sale" sticker and let the drawing, with its frame, go for twenty dollars.
       "I think I'd like to meet her, in person." AFW walked with me, looking at the drawing. All three of us seemed happy in the drawing. AFW's hair was drawn lighter than Sera's and somewhat longer than she was currently wearing it. In the drawing I could see that her freckles went down over the top of her breasts, as she was wearing something with a scooped neck.
       "I think that looks like a computer photo manipulation. It was a photo converted into a drawing."
       "Interesting, when was it taken?"
       "Sometime in his past, but in our future."
       "You believe in stuff like that."
       I thought a moment, then looked at the scrolls in my hand, felt the power surging around in them. "At the moment, yes. Yes I do, I don't have much choice, you see."
       We stepped outside the convention, walking through a nearly empty seminar room. The few people who were in the room were using it to sort through the fliers, buttons and posters they'd grabbed from the freebie tables. In the sunlight I held up the posters, and there, across the street on a previously blank brick wall was an opening with stairs leading up to a dark landing.
       I can't describe the symbol over the door, but I knew it meant that I needed to go into the place. AFW didn't see the entrance until I grabbed her hand to take her across the street with me.
       "Oh! I see what you mean. I guess we don't really have much choice other than to believe."
       We went up the stairs where the doorman searched us for weapons, making AFW take off the dagger that was hidden in a garter high up on her very freckled legs. I almost started to drool as she lifted her dress so only I could see her shapely calves and thighs with their spilled ginger decoration.
       The doorman took the dagger and placed it in a small tube and gave her the key from the top of the tube. He determined that I would have to leave the scrolls behind in a similar tube, they seemed, to him, to be magically unstable. That bothered me, but I decided we would be able to get out and get them if the people in this place weren't helpful.
       Inside the front room there was an orangutan, wearing glasses, a plaid vest and a kilt behind a sort of circulation desk. He turned to speak with us and in the process of turning I could see that he would appear as a normal, though large, red-headed man, which is apparently what AFW saw him as.
       "We're here to get some help on figuring out what's on a scroll we recently acquired."
       "Ah! good, then let's see it."
       "Your doorman has it." I realized that I'd wanted to say it was in a tube in the entry hall, but something in me knew that wasn't true, so the other came out of my mouth. Even though I wouldn't have normally come right out with such an accusation, allowing events to determine that obvious deduction by leading the Oranguman out to the entry way to find out for himself, I found I couldn't tell even the leading little white lie. I knew that we were under the effect of very powerful magic. I turned to AFW, thinking I would take advantage of this.
       I didn't get the chance as the Oranguman called us back into the entry hall. We followed him through a secret panel into a large sitting room. He had taken the scroll from the doorman and a couple of the rooms previous occupants were taking the doorman out through another door across the room from some very large windows that looked out to someplace not across from the convention center, where they should have looked. In fact, given the size of the room, we should have been in the furniture store that occupied most of the brick building.
       Oranguman saw me looking out the window. "It can be a little unsettling at first. You get used to it."
       "Dreamlands architecture." I said.
       "Or perhaps you are already used to it."
       "I'm not, but it is pretty cool," AFW said, going to the window.
       "Let's see what you have here." Oranguman unrolled the scroll and flipped the foldout open. He whistled, almost more of a hoot, really. "No wonder our poor doorman wanted this."
       "What is it?" I asked, moving to look at it. It looked, with the exception of obviously real-time moving photographs, like a college catalog and course listing. I said so.
       "Yes, that is it, exactly. Only in all of dreamlands (Another name was used, but that is what it meant) they only take three students a year." He looked at me. "You seem a little bit old to be a student," he looked at AFW, "But she doesn't."
       The room seemed to chill a bit. I could tell the vibe was changing to a more hostile one. AFW drew close and took my hand.
       "Do you have your ticket?"
       "Two of them, actually."
       His eyes widened. "You're not being invited as a student, you get to pick a student...you've been selected." He roared. "You know nothing! How could you be selected for the faculty!"
       While the Oranguman was tearing up a sofa cushion I rolled the scroll back up and headed for the exit. "Maybe they just need an IT person."
       "You have to get out of here first."
       We found ourselves on a small bridge leading to a room with a door marked exit. The door was barely visible, the wall decorations, animals of all sorts, blending from the wall across the door in a single mural. I heard a woman's voice in my ear, Sera, "In order to exit you have to kick the kids ass." At the same time I read the same words on an archway over the entrance to the bridge. Under the exit arch of the bridge stood a greasy haired teen.
       "Kick the kid's ass, fatso, or you'll never get out of here."
       "Let me." AFW almost flew across the bridge. The kid vanished and I felt him race by me. I pointed where he'd gone, AFW zoomed after him. I walked across the narrow bridge, thinking he'd try to stop me. At which point the two of us could trap him. I looked down. There was a slow black river rolling about twenty feet below us. It came from nowhere and lead to nowhere. Not reassuring. I made it to the other side of the bridge. I looked at the mural. Right at the height of a doorknob was the illustration of a young goat's tail. He was looking over his shoulder, winking.
       "Let's get out of here, come on!" I called back to AFW, not able to hide my laughter. I've got computers to fix and you've got classes to take.!"
       AFW raced across the bridge, the young wizard right behind her. I tapped the kid in the but with the toe of my shoe. There was a soft bleat and a click. "Sorry, hope that wasn't too hard."
       "Na-aa-aa."
       The door opened and the wizard let AFW go.
       "Damn, you figured it out faster than anyone has ever gotten it. I usually have to give several clues, after a couple of dunkings, of course."
       "You're really too old for this job, you're just not a kid any more."
       "Crap, you could see through the disguise the whole time?"
       "It's your truth spell, I just figured it would come in handy so I've stretched it along with me since I discovered it."
       "You're not going there as a computer tech, you're going to be a professor, would you let me be in your classes?"
       I could tell the teen wizard was sincere, I could also tell he was going to be an excellent AV/Computer nerd, because I suddenly knew that is exactly what I was going there to do, computers and technology, for wizards, mages and assorted dreamwalkers, by invitation only. I smiled at him. "Sure, you seem like a good kid."
       He laughed.
       AFW jumped down the stairs two at a time, her hair turning from ginger to black as she left the range of the truth spell. I though about breaking it off and taking it with me, but realized the people at this guild hall needed it more than I did, so let it snap back, filling the whole place rather than limiting it to just the front rooms. I heard screams from the rooms above.
       The young wizard looked up in the direction of the screams, then at me. He smiled. "That was great! Oh! Man! I gotta go see what's going on. See you later, Professor!" He ran over the bridge with a whoop.
       "Hey, Dad! I have some questions for you." I heard him yell as the door closed off the rest of conversation and sound from the building. I stepped off the stairs to turn and see a blank wall. A couple of passers by looked at me, then at the wall, shook their heads and continued on their way.
       AFW was waiting. "Can we go now!"
       "I have a four day pass to the convention, and I bought a hotel room this year, pre-paid. I'm not ready to leave yet."
       "Oh, OK. Can I stay with you, then?" She wrapped her arms around me.
       "We'll see."