The Striding and Stalking Cloud Horrors

The dream started as I walked through the central part of my childhood town. The air was heavy with impending rain, but I knew the actuality of rain was still a distant promise. I looked towards the east, where the rain clouds had begun to darken in earnest. The rain began to fall, but then stopped to swirl and take on the ink in water appearance filling out into thick misty shadows. One a tall manlike shape, that upon its feet reaching the ground, began to stride North across the edge of town. Its footfalls rumbled like thunder, and likely to were taken as such by any who didn't see the apparition responsible. It strode on, completely indifferent to the chaos that exploded in the shadows of its footfalls. A second shape started similarly, but shorter, then bent over, long fingers of smoky blackness curling down into the edges of the down, stalking along the pathways between buildings and silently into then through open doors, windows or chimmneys. There the being found and turned a being here and a few there amongst the terrified souls who huddled in the shadowy tracks of its larger partner. Instead of the wise course, running far away, I found myself compelled to race towards the growing sounds of terrified people and animals in the wake of the two cloud horrors. I found myself drawn to a church, now crowded by terrified people, all milling about, many fallen to their knees, many arms raised to the ceiling all wailing in fear and calling out to various gods and saints, their religions fused into a single grasping need. In one corner of the crowd was a single small woman who was, to me, a single golden glowing figure, transfigured by an otherworldly power, but frustratingly incomplete. I looked down at myself, I too was suffused by an incandescent light, silvery but not as bright as the golden glow that was somehow still bound up in the shape of the woman. I straightened and strode over to the woman who was being stalked now by members of the impromptu congregation who'd been touched by inky dark tendrils that had diffused down from a ventalation shaft over the choir loft. I offered a hand on a shoulder here, a touch there and a word to those I approached, they moved out of my way, and grew still as I passed. The choir members, eyes now filled with a shimmering creamy emptiness, shrank back from me, confused and confounded. I reached out to the glowing woman, who was both relieved but still terrified. Her golden glow flowed through me, and, as the woman collapsed into my arms, radiated out into the space. Those who I'd touched, stood, and reached out to their fellows, offering comfort, support, and even leadership. Those touched by the smokey tendrils, howled and struck at their fellows until finally being overpowered by the recovering members of the crowd. I cradled the woman in my arms and stepped out of the building, growing and striding across the city for the next shadowed footprint. This one was a school and its immediate neighborhood. We shrank back down and the woman came to her senses, still frightened, but in control, she slipped her hand in mine as we enetered the parking lot. "Not the children, no..." she cried. I held her agains my chest, the top of her head barely reached the top of my sternam. While I still radiated the silvery light, almost like distant lightning, or moonlight, the woman's golden glow was not present, apparently depleted. I refused to abandon her when she suggested that I should find another. "We will find another." We entered the campus and I tried to find the adults to calm them so they could begin to protect the children. Eventually we exited the building and strode across the playground, now empty save for the stalking shadows that raced towards the handball courts where a small golden figure huddled in a group of sopping wet children. We broke into a run, hoping to reach the terrified mass before the shadows. We had dropped hands so that I could run faster, but when one of the shadows detached and swung back towards the woman I turned backn racing against the tendril. We reached her at the same time, The tendril massing around her face, trying to find its way in. She held her breath and stifled a scream. I grabbed her outflung hand, which drove the smokey tendril away. I could feel its frustrated curiosity and a casual poking-ants-with-a-stick cruelty as I passed through it. I looked up to see the stalking horror pulling up the rest of its tendrils and it hesitated as though debating what to do with this new development. Then it "looked" north across the sky, and lifted, turning to catch up with the striding horror that had moved a couple of long strides ahead of it. It reminded me of a small child who's stopped to play with something in the dirt, but then suddenly realizes that their parent has continued on without them. We were completely forgotten to it, dismissed. I realized the striding horror didn't care about the chaos and terror it left in its wake. The lights, both golden and silver, were something else that followed, feeding on the terror. We were just their hosts. The golden light seemed to leave its hosts intact, but I was not so sure about the silver light that inhabited me now, as I had very obviously been changed. I don't think I could step through walls and stride a half mile at a time before the silver entity empowered me to do so. I knew, however, that it was not its intent to empower me to help my fellows, that was just a side effect of absorbing the terror.