Black and White Birthday, with Zombie

I was out looking at critters in a pet store, and there were several of my friends with me. We left without me buying anything, as I was concerned about the pool in the back yard (the fish were taking over) and the zombie in the basement. I really didn't have room for pets, and hoped against hope that they weren't thinking of getting me a new pet, as I was having trouble keeping up with the koi in the garden pool. The house wasn't ready for a party either, every horizontal surface was filled up with Lego based game prototypes that needed to be broken down and stored away. After photographing them, I figured, I checked my phone, over 8Gb of memory left, so no problem there. I slipped out of the store and headed home ahead of the crowd, they said they were going to stop somewhere for lunch. I cleared out all the Lego constructs surrounding the pool so that my birthday friends could use the pool area if they wanted. I kept dropping pieces off of the contructs into the pool. I tried fishing out the Lego pieces I'd dropped - a bunch of 1x1 round and cone-shaped bricks in long antennae-like chains, mostly yellow and light blue. (Everything else in the dream seemed to be black and white, mostly.) The fish (Beautiful black spots on white koi) in the pool kept hitting the chains of bricks, knocking them even further apart. After dropping an entire space shuttle model and watching it carreen down the stairs into the basement, bouncing and knocking bits off as it tumbled from step to step. I decided to head down there and deal with the basement zombie so that my guests would have some place to gather. The zombie, wearing a black and white checked clown outfit, would stop attacking if someone agreed to play a card game with him. It was a collectable cardgame sort of thing, and he had the two decks already made up. As long as thew game was in progress, the zombie wouldn't bother anyone. If you lost your game against the zombie, he would eat you, of course. I started the game, then left to finish cleaning up the dropped Legos. As I was taking the Legos back upstairs to my room, I was a little worried about leaving the game table after my turn, but figured the zombie would just have to wait. I heard the house manager saying my guests were arriving and they offered to usher them into my room - which I knew was way to small for everyone. I explained the issue, and as I came back from dumping a few pounds of Legos in various states of contruction, or destruction, into my room, I realized I wasn't even going to have room for me in there. I could only barely make out the fact that I had a black an white checked bedspread and pillow shams. The zebra patterned rug on the floor was barely visible between the desk, printer stand, office chair, file cabinets, book cases, piles of Lego and paper models and my bed. I sighed, wondering how it had gotten all so crowded. I shouted down to the house manager to ask my guests to wait in the frontroom until I could get the fish out of the pond and the Zombie settled. I was a bit worried about the zombie, as I was pretty sure he cheated. I found a couple of decks I'd made up myself many years ago and decided to bring them down. Maybe we could get him to play a four-hand game and that way he couldn't cheat by rearranging my deck. A part of my brain realized that the Zombie had picked the cards for the second player'd deck, so probably didn't even need to rearrange the draw pile. Heading back down the stairs, I discovered that my friends had brought me two black and white kittens from the pet store, they were adorable, and friendly. Also, a black and white puppy (looked like an English Bulldog, too cute) two guinea pigs (also black and white in their little white cage with a black exercise wheel) and a small very musical voiced black and white bird. I protested that I not only didn't have enough room for all of them, but I had no kitty litter, training pads, cat, dog, rodent or bird food for them either. They didn't seem to care about that, and started taking the cages downstairs into the basement. I hoped the zombie was fully engrossed in our game and wouldn't be a problem. The uncaged critters stayed in the front room, playing on the black futon. The little black and white bird fluttered up to my shoulder and sang a cute little song in my ear as I went down to face the zombie, and all of my guests, not sure which I was more frightened of at that point.

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.

All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Dream In a Dream In a...

I was dreaming of an alien creature, radially symmetrical, very intelligent, and covered with spikes. Instead of clothing, the aliens wore paint, and would keep it on for long periods of time, as they had an exoskeleton. They liked the idea of bracelets and rings, however, and I was bartering with them for various bangles.

I woke up, in the dream, and told my partner that I needed to write down this dream, as it might be useful.

She asked if I meant the dream I just had or the one I was now having....

"I don't know," I answered and then woke up again. There was something bumping up against the hull of the boat, I reminded myself that I needed to write down my dream and hoped whatever was bumping the boat was just something boring or I would be sure to forget.

Then I woke up again, this time with Giles and Ember in my face asking for breakfast.

I just don't get my brain.

Fever Dreams with Robots and...

The fever dream started like any other dream, a nice normal seeming classroom of ten year olds taking my "Robotic Programming" class. I was working a two hour a day shift at a private elementary school, teaching the very fun class with robots and then supervising the playground in the afterschool hour while waiting for parents to come get their students. All in all a very good gig. It was paying the bills while I used my pension to make board games. It was one of those classes where I had as many parents in the room helping as I had kids.

One afternoon, as the classroom began to empty out, the Principal arrived to tell me that they were cutting the class. I pointed to the parents still straightening up the room and kids still excitedly reviewing what they'd accomplished. I didn't understand the decision. She reassured me it didn't have anything to do with my teaching or my class, it was that the board had decided to purchase a new turnkey curriculum and my course couldn't be fit into the new system. She handed me an envelope with my current pay and two weeks extra. I said thank you, but pointed out that I had a contract for the full school year that would have to be bought out. "Unless we can find you another position, which we're trying to do."

I was still mighty unhappy about the situation, but resolved to deal with it another day. I stuffed my anger down and went back to helping clear out my classroom. One of the moms was a labor attorney, she handed me her business card, "just in case you decide you need me." I thanked her and went out into the playground to fulfill my after school supervision. Kids eventually got picked up. Several of the other teachers had stayed behind and we all went into the school, having to duck between the movers who were packing up everyone's classroom in neatly labeled boxes, even taking apart the school's furniture. We watched in disbelief as box after box with our class names on them went out of the building to be loaded up on big trucks. The Principal arrived to let us know that the board had agreed to let us teachers go through the materials from our classrooms to keep what was ours and any thing else they weren't using before it was all sold at auction. A couple of my colleagues were shouting and upset that the movers were packing up their private stuff, including one who's purse and car keys (thus her way home) had already been packed. We managed to intercept the box from her room before it got put on the truck and rescued her personal belongings. I went to my room and grabbed my hat and coat as well as my computer bag, figuring I had the time to go get anything else later.

Saddened by the state of things, I asked why the Board hadn't retrained their current staff, and she started to tell me that there was no robotics... I cut her off, and asked about all of the basic education teachers, some who'd been at the school for decades, weren't re-trained.

"That doesn't concern you."

I put on my coat and hat and stepped out into the stormy afternoon. The weather had changed to match my mood, dark threatening clouds, hints of thunder in the distance, the thick smell of pent up rain. I walked out into the public park.

A row of Thundermen appeared and gathered in front of me, grey fedoras, beige trench-coats, black shoes with wide white spats, immaculately tied ties over white shirts. They stopped my progress. They lined up behind the leader, and a row of apparently meaningful gestures began to form behind him. While I couldn't make out what they were trying to signal I mimicked the gestures as best I could. My Beige trench-coat and fedora (green instead of grey) seemed to confuse them a bit. Finally, after exchanging some pleasantries, and commenting on the delightful lightning and thunder that had begun in the sky behind the school, the leader of the thundermen told me I could be locked in the bathroom until the storm passed, or I could re-enter the school through J-3. I had no desire to be locked in the public restrooms, so entered the classroom, which was still having its desks assembled, oddly, in the desks that were already put together, there were students, or some sort of simulacra of students already seated and working on their lessons. I had a very uneasy feeling, the teacher looked up from her planner and I apologized for the interruption, moving through the room into the schools central hallway. There I ran across the Principal who was beaming at how efficient and trouble free it was all going to be. I started to worry about what was going to happen to all of our students. Were they being replaced, too?

I made my way through the faculty room, and out onto the little patio that faced the open hillside behind the school. Lightning filled the sky, thunder rolled across the valley and shook the windows of the school, I could hear them rattling all down the length of the building. I looked out to see the fluffy pink bunnies and leaping unicorns lightning struck and suddenly come to life. The plastic cavorting turned into the real thing, accompanied by a tinkling and high pitched whistling music, they danced under the darkening sky until they seemed as one, to notice me watching. They lined up facing me, much in the same way as the lightning men. I started to make the same gestures and then stopped myself, speaking directly to the head unicorn instead.

She blinked. Obviously not expecting me to actually try to interact with them. At first she seemed to think I was a Thunder man, and wanted to run me through, but I somehow managed, by taking my hat off and bowing, I think, to convince her that I was just a former teacher who'd been replaced. This saddened her and she raced away, leaving me to watch her fluffy bunny and unicorn minions cavort to unearthly music. Eventually she returned, accompanied by a large pink and white dragon. The dragon had to be as big as the school she surveyed from end to end with a single sweep of her long neck. She settled over the hill and curled around her bunnies and unicorns, shielding them with one giant wing. She began to shoot the unicorn who'd spoken with me, jolt after jolt of pink lightning.

"Stop" I shouted. "She hasn't done anything wrong!"

"You live, Thunder man, that is not to be tolerated, I will get to you in a moment."

I don't know where the courage to do so came from but I stepped in front of the unicorn, letting my wet trench coat drag the lightning to the ground. I felt the tingle on my feet, but though painful, it wasn't in any way debilitating.

"If you kill her, how will she learn and become an even better leader for you?"

The dragon stopped mid breath. Her great head lowered down to my own, her eyes, as large as myself, took turns looking at me. I felt like I'd been put in a giant MRI or CAT scan machine.

"You are not a Thunder man."

"Thanks, I think."

With that she picked me up and flung me high in the air over the hill and above the clouds. I don't know how every bone in my body wasn't broken by ahd acceleration. I found myself cresting the top of my arc in the clear sky overlooking a vast ocean and a road, suspended in the air. There were small figures, moving, single file along the road as I flashed overhead. A rope was tossed to me and I managed to grab it as I dipped below the road. I crammed my hat on my head, and held on with both hands as the rope curved my fall into a pendulum swing just below the roadway. I pumped and at the crest of the next swing back, managed to grab the hands that were being offered down below the road edge. The large scaled arm pulled be up past the road and let me down on my feet.

It was an assortment of characters, I think from my own gaming past. The large spear toting Lizard Man, a pair of spindly hobbits in all black kit, and an elf of surprising beauty with two longswords on his (her?) hips. The only one I didn't recognize was a nearly topless scaled woman with short curled horns and long nails. Like the Lizard Man, she had a long tail, whip-like rather than trunk-like. They greeted me and one of the hobbits asked if I was a Thunder Man. The Lizard and Demon Girl looked like they were ready to throw me back off the skyway.

"No" was all I could manage to croak. I checked my bag, somehow it hadn't dumped anything. I took off my hat and bowed, that seemed to convince them. I surmised at that point that the hat was part of a thunder man, so they couldn't do that.

"Where are we going?"

"To the other end of the road!" chimed in the hobbit twins, getting disgruntled looks from their companions.

The elf spoke, explaining that they were on a quest and had traveled on the skyway for the better part of two days. They believed they were much closer to their destination than their beginning, which was, though civilization, nothing the matched what I knew. Plus I only had a muffin and a half bottle of water in my back, so didn't fancy going that way until I could replenish my supplies. The Hobbits were the only two in favor of letting me travel with them, but somehow they managed to convince the demon girl after the two women had a hurried conversation out of earshot of the rest of the group. They resumed travelling, single file, except for the hobbits who trotted ahead of the group hand in hand.

"They are a cute couple," I volunteered, trying to make conversation.

"They're twins." The Lizard man grunted, shouldered his spear and leaned forward to pull away from me. The elf had dropped back far behind us and only the demon girl stayed close enough to converse with until we met the end of the road.

I had to explain that I wasn't flying but falling, as I'd been thrown by the pink and white dragon. The hobbits looked at the elf and said "your prayer must have worked!"

"I doubt that." The Elf had barely spoken to me the whole trip, he seemed to have something against me from the very start, but never revealed what he was thinking or feeling.

It had been much easier to befriend the Lizard man, I taught him tic-tac-toe, and despite there not actually being toes in the game, he was quite taken by it.

The Hobbits seemed to love everyone equally, and the Demon Girl, seemed to be practicing sultry on the Elf, and not succeeding, ignoring the Lizard Man, who seemed all too interested. I had the impression that there was some history there best left lie. She would at least converse with me, explaining her own world and listening intently to tales of my own "crushingly boring" world, which the hobbits seemed to enjoy.

We sat at the end of the road, obviously not what any of us were expecting. I noticed that there was a large blue square with writing in it, but I couldn't make it out from where we were.

Soon I found myself being lowered on the end of the rope. "Press to Call" was what the writing said. I asked them to pull me up and we looked around, but didn't find a button like it in the covered bridge area, at least, not on the side we were on. One of the hobbits took the rope and tied it around her waist. The Lizard man tossed her over to the other side. She landed with a giggle, and found the button, but it had been smashed in and wasn't working. They hauled her back over, and I thought of an idea.

The rope wasn't long enough for me to swing over to the skyway support column, though. I then thought of another idea. We filled up my water bottle and unraveled the knitted border of my sweater to lower it towards the button, again not long enough, until they lowered me on the rope. The bottle landed on the four foot square button, and the elevator shot towards me. the team started pulling me up, but I still slammed into the platform. The bottle rolled off the button and the elevator slowed to a stop and began to fall. I managed to recover enough to pull the bottle back up and roll over to the button. Whoosh, the elevator slowed and then accelerated skyward.

It took a few tests to figure out how to raise and lower the platform smoothly enough not to launch me into the ceiling, or more importantly to land at less than terminal velocity. Apparently whatever controls were supposed to be in operation were no longer working. I drove the platform up to the team and they let me fly them back to the ground. The elf looked greener than usual after the trip down, but the hobbits wanted to stay and see how fast they could make the elevator go back up. As we left One of the hobbits had put a rock on the button I turned in time to see the elevator platform crash through the roof of the bridge structure at the top of the skyway, and then come fluttering, obviously no longer under control back to the ground. We all ran out of the range of the falling debris. When the Elf started to chastise the hobbits they just pointed at each other.

Somehow they convinced me to come with them rather than build a hundred foot ladder to climb back to the roadway. (Even though I was pretty sure the roadway didn't lead back to where I needed to go, I felt it was at least closer to home.) There was a short barrage of other travel stuff. Something to do with a big blue glowy thing, and a pretty wild celebration party that ended with an acrobatic naked tangled celebration between the Demon Girl, Hobbit Girl and myself. The team asked the pink dragon to send me home. Good thing I hadn't tried going back by the skyway.

There was a knock on the door. The police were looking for me, as I had gone missing. I explained that I had been playing a video game the whole time, and was right here. They looked dubious. I noticed the figures on the screen were the Lizard Man, Demon Girl, Elf and Hobbit Twins with a Long Coated stranger in a Green flat brimmed hat. They were waving good-bye as the stranger headed into a pink and white portal and the rest of the team, escorting a wagon with a strange blue glow coming from under a tarp, headed into town, they turned and waved, not at the portal, but at the screen. I was at my computer, but dressed in the clothing I'd been wearing since my "disappearance" including an adventure's worth of wear and tear. Not to mention a bag of gold coins and semi-precious stones that I might have some difficulty explaining.

Houseboat and Star Wars Sequel

"I'm too old to do this" I said as I walked the gunwale of the houseboat we'd rented. I was trying to keep us out of the floating logs on the riverbank. J was wearing one of her white cruise-ship robes and a white captain's hat. She was steering the houseboat from the top of the cabin. Her son and daughter-in-law were there as well as their four kids, only, they were all about ten years older than they are now, so the youngest was a teen. All of us but the youngest were manning poles, helping pole the houseboat up stream. We could have gotten a tow, but it would have cost us $800. We were making good time, but it was a lot of hard work.

Before that I had a Star Wars dream, something to do with rescuing Bothan spies, avoiding TIE fighters and slogging our way through giant creature infested sewers. It was all very light sabers and flashing blasters at some points, and dark sneaking through the muck at others.

Short Stuff, Working, Space Survival

Many little dream snippets.

Two featuring miniature people. The first was a vacation trip. Couldn't afford to go our selves, so sent miniature versions on the vacation. We got to be there, but in miniature form. It was like visiting a beach in 'Land of the Giants' mode. While at the beach one of the avatars dropped the room key down a sewer grate. In climbing down after the key, the avatar started growing, good, in that the long drop wasn't long any more, bad in that there was no going back the way we came.

Lots of large stacks of boxes and crates and a dark damp wall full of fist sized hollows, one of which had the key, which had morphed into the key for my old Plymouth Satellite. I had to slide down a pipe, then scale down a stack of moldy crates and boxes to get over to the wall.

---

In the second Little People Dream, the avatars were back home, and they were now living independent of us. They had developed their own personalities and shared our home. One evening there was a glass soup steamer over the fire pit. The steamer rolled off of its stand as the last of the soup dried up. The little man avatar threw himself in front of it where it rolled out into the room, absorbing the shards of glass as the tube shattered. I don't know how he knew the tube would shatter, but had moved faster than any of us. The female avatar raced to his side and collapsed, sobbing, and then shut herself off.

We put them in a series of sarcophagi on a shelf with statues of birds, because, as the avatar's instructions indicated, "There shall only be birds at our grave site." The avatars personalities had been backed up, but we knew that even if restored from that backup, they wouldn't be the same.

---

In another dream I handed in a couple of spreadsheets to an accountant, who was just raving about the quality and speed of the work. (Which mystified me, as it was something that took about twenty minutes.) She was cute, though, so I didn't mind the fuss.

I was sitting at another desk across the hall, and after my last appointment left, my old boss came in to express how disappointed he was that I had taken these other jobs. "All for what?" he asked.

"Less stress, and eight percent more per year in my retirement check."

I was trying out both jobs to determine which one I would keep, if either at the end of the year. One job was full time to half in the second part of the year, the other was half time to full time at the end of the year, so they complemented one another perfectly to make me full time. Both paid considerably better than the previous job.

My old boss wanted to know why I hadn't promoted in his department, so I had to explain that the education cost to do so was greater in terms of time and money, neither of which I would have gotten back on the job, not to mention it was only a five percent raise, not twelve percent.

"It's a waste of your time and talents."

I pointed to the happy accountant and the family that was just making their way out of the lobby, "not to them it isn't."

---

In the fourth little snippet, I was floating in space, having been ejected from my vessel by pirates. I jetted off into orbit near some asteroids and set up my emergency shelter. There was enough ice in the nearby asteroid to flood the cotton candy like walls and get the greenery growing faster than normal, that would scrub the CO2 from the air and in a few days provide food. I had enough emergency rations to make it that far.

I was floating in the center of the sixty foot diameter ball, watching the grass grow, as well as the gauges that showed the atmosphere percentages, the electricity production (the outer layer of the ball was solar panel material) and the positions of nearby ship transponders. Sometime during the second day, another commander drifted my way. He also had an emergency shelter in tow. I extended my airlock tube and the commander rotated to connect. I had still not completely gotten off of my suit oxygen as my bubble was still growing its atmosphere (I could have survived if I had, but didn't want to stretch the growing system.)

She introduced herself, and we compared seed stocks.  We traded some seeds, passing them through the tube. We decided not to visit one another yet. I could see that she'd been out in space far longer than I, her greens had grown more than a foot into her living space, and she'd trained some of her vine plants out into a sort of hammock, or nest. I indicated that there were good organic carbon solids on the asteroid I was orbiting, so we could grow some of the longer rooted plants in time.

She indicated that she was hoping to make a go out here, if she could just get a more permanent shelter. She then asked if she could keep my bubble when I was rescued. I had to admit that I'd been toying with the idea of tethering to the asteroid below and then hollowing it out. She let out a girlish giggle, and asked if I had two spoons. I pointed to my escape pod, explaining that I had my prospecting tools, including a portable mining laser. It was fully charged, still.

Tuesday before last I had great dreams.

Tuesday before last I had great dreams. I thought up two titles in the night to help me remember the  dream thoughts, as they would both have made great little stories.

No memory of either dream, or either title.

Curses.


In last night's dream, as I slipped out the side door of the theater to go home to J, I remembered one title: "Destiny Dogs."

I only remember the forest, the camouflage, the weight of my gear, the fear of being found before we could find the enemy. I came across a dog, or wolf, the dog was part of a pack of wolves, and we adopted one another as neither of us fit in with our "pack."The pack had been trying to avoid all humans, but their smallest member had bumped into me. I was glad they'd found us before our enemies.  My squad adopted all of the destiny dogs, Valor, Humor, Strength, Wisdom, Greatness, etc. I did get the impression that it might have been the pack had found us, not the other way around. (I don't think you can set out to find Destiny Dogs, I think they find you.) Being some sort of mission specialist, I wasn't really armed as such, but had a bunch of other equipment and tools. Cameras, medical supplies and the like.

The wolf or Destiny Dog that adopted me was a "Murphy" dog, pretty much anything we wanted to happen would go spectacularly wrong, or be complicated in some sort of unimaginable way.

The background of this was some sort of war, so the stakes were pretty high. However, we slowly discovered that we could mitigate or even control the bad effects by rooting for the wrong side, or even by simply taking a go along and get along sort of attitude. This latter approach seemed to trigger a frying pan into the fire sort of series of events.

After getting captured, and tricking our guards into tapping into the power of the dog, we escaped. I fired a flare into the air hoping it wouldn't explode and light the forest aflame around us, and that's exactly what happened, the flare burst just above our heads and broke into six pieces that flew in all directions around us like flaming arrows. The fires lit up the night. We hit the deck, hoping for the best. The rest of my squad saw it as a signal and arrived to take out the enemy camp. Our packs were surprised to find us alive and unharmed in the middle of the fire fight.

The wolf sat dejected, thinking I was going to rejoin my pack but abandon it, it's pack didn't look to happy about finding its lost member. I'd become pretty attached, so hugged the huge shaggy animal, "we're a team. You don't abandon your destiny, or your destiny dog." I had noticed, that no matter how bad things had gotten, the two of us always managed to think our way out of the mess, sometimes directly into another, but always coming out stronger for it, and, obviously by being part of the larger pack, eventually ending up on top of the situation. I decided that the wolf wasn't really a Murphy wolf as much as an "Opportunity Knocks" wolf. I felt like I could embrace that destiny, and destiny dog.

Trouble with... Tribbles?

I was on a survey team, or a recon team. We'd slipped into a run down city and were making our way down through the ruins of a hospital. (It had a place on the roof to land our helicopter.) as we got closer to the bottom levels of the hospital, we began to see signs of habitation.

In one room, I noticed that there were sealed food containers left out, but instead of food, they looked like they were full of swatches of fur. I prodded one, and the furry scraps took off, racing across the room in all different directions and vanishing into various vents and conduits.

"You shouldn't disturb them while they're sleeping, they get hungry."

I turned around to find a slender woman, hair pulled back, dirty clothing, but her face and hands looked clean. I offered her a water bottle, which she took, and then she refused food, saying "We can't open that here." She gestured for me to follow her. I called the rest of the team to let them know we had survivors. We followed her to a surgery, she led us in, checking our clothing in the "airlock" before allowing us into the room. There was a wind up generator in the room and she gave the large hand crank a few turns and then turned on some LED lamps.

She indicated that it was okay to open up the food here. We gave her the container and she eagerly ate its contents, nervously eying the the conduits above our heads as something rattled through them. One of my colleagues reached up to open a pipe before either the woman or I could stop him. A fluffy ball fell out of the pipe and I quickly sealed the ends back together before more could fall out. It warbled pleasantly. "Are you afraid of this?" the hazard suited leader of our group asked.

"No, just...."

As we watched the critter rolled into the food container and the crumbs vanished. A few moments later, the woman was petting it, and four little puffballs fell from its back. She showed us that if you picked up one of them and petted it, it would also pop out four smaller fluff balls. "They're born pregnant."

"Well, that saves some time."

The woman gathered them all up and stuffed them into the container (not too gently, either.) "They're not all bad, though." She scanned the room and with a last look at the conduit led us out and down the hall to the Physical Therapy gym. She had the food container full of critters tucked securely under her arm. Despite being squished all together in the container, they were all trilling or cooing a very relaxing chorus of happy little noises. I couldn't help but smile, even though I had the feeling that things were going to take a less happy turn.

In the PT room, there were a couple of injured folks, the woman put the box in the lap of one of an injured woman. The baby critters were released. They climbed over the woman, each of them stopping over her injuries. Soon they were warbling a different song, sadder, somehow, then each of them began to glow. The woman lurched back and the creatures seemed to fuse with the patient. After a moment the woman opened her eyes and gently brushed the now loose fur from her body. It looked like she had gained a few pounds during the process. Her injuries were gone. Lumps began to form under her skin, and a few minutes later, the lumps began to glow. Our guide and another thin gentleman in a lab coat held her down . The gentleman , mopped her sweating brow.

"It will all be over in a few moments, hang in there."

The glows were suddenly suffused with pink, and then with a small shake, each lump separated and puffed out. The woman yelped or groaned with each separation, but when it was done there were six little fluffy warbling creatures, their hair the same color as the woman who they'd been extracted from. Each of the "births" left a half dollar sized mark on the woman that looked like a second degree burn.

The man in the white coat bandaged up the woman's new, but less severe injuries while our guide rounded up the changed babies and stuffed them back in the box.

Our leader wanted to take some of the creatures back to our airship for examination, but our guide recommended against it. She indicated that we could help them best by helping clear the creatures out of the nearby fields and farmland, so they could reliably plant and harvest before they ran out of sealed foods.

Other Worldly Fall Through

I had one of those dreams that would take far longer to relate than it did to have. Myself and my cell phone were out for a walk when I crested a low ridge and fell right over the other side onto a different world.

I could tell it was different by how light I was, and the fact that the sky was full of nebulae and stars so close you could see they were small disks. There were no grasses, only broad leafed plants with leaves that turned to follow the brightest parts of the sky. I had no cell reception at all, so I turned off the phone completely to conserve the battery.

I wandered around a bit, coming across a path, whether made intentionally or a game trail of some sort, I couldn't tell. I moved down hill, figuring at least that might lead to water, eventually. The scents in the air were very purple and orange, with a touch of brine every so often. Insects flitted about, but I didn't see or hear any birds. There didn't seem to be any plants over about twelve feet tall, either. Everything had a pretty manicured look to it, though, so I began to think I'd wandered into some sort of garden.

I made my way down to the bottom of the trail, which curved along the edge of a steep slope. I looked over the slope and below me stretched out a nearly endless expanse of land and oceans. I knew in an instant it was a world far larger, and far different than our own little globe. As far as I could tell, it extended into every direction, blending in with the grey black of the sky. I could tell the little world I was currently on rotated slowly about an axis that would make this little trail eventually level or even feel like it was the top of the hill. I headed back away from the edge, hoping to find some signs of habitation.

I came across a camp of about thirty people. As soon as I entered the camp they asked what I was sent up for. It was a language that I had never heard before, so I don't know how I understood the question, nor how they would understand my answer.

I told them that I actually fell down. That was apparently the wrong thing to say as they all drew small makeshift weapons and advanced on me. As they drew close I noticed that they weren't all human, many of them had triangular ears and tails, puffs of fur grew from their cheeks like a lion's mane, and some even had whiskers and small flat noses.

"Look," I said "this is where I came from." I turned on my phone and opened up the photo gallery to show the pictures of myself and the kitties. That actually stopped them. They had never seen anything like it.

I tried to explain that it wasn't magic and the battery was not going to last long if I couldn't get back to my home to charge it.

They conferred a long time, and decided that I was some sort of wizard, and they really didn't want me there messing up their balanced society. Apparently they were all exiled here from the world below, they'd managed to scrape together enough resources to stay alive, but they were stuck as jumping off the world would likely be fatal, and they had received some supplies from below, as occasionally someone had jumped off and survived. The occasional survivor sneaked to the catapult that had put them there and fired up news and goods. The reports were also that survivors who returned to their home area were executed if caught. They knew this because their bodies had been launched up to the rock as a stern warning not to try it. I realized that the only people I could understand, and who understood me were the cat people. They had some sort of limited telepathy, it seemed.

They debated whether to strip me and take my stuff before throwing me off the rock, and during that debate I slipped away, heading to the edge of the rock, again. surveying the world below. Apparently that was not what they were expecting, as they headed for the uplands and the forests and caves to search for me. (At least what I could hear from when they discovered I was missing.) I would guess the whole rock was nor more than six or seven miles around, so a few square miles of fairly verdant territory. I found an area where there was a makeshift "Dock" at the edge of the rock. I guessed that this was the proposed drop-off point. I looked out over the edge and saw a huge water filled crater almost directly below me. I was really thinking a hang glider would come in handy right now. The sun came up, or, more precisely, the rock rotated into a position where the fiery globe in the sky that was this world's sun could reach where I was on the rock. I could see that there was a ladder on the side of the platform, so I climbed down. It turned under the rock and led down to a small ledge. I realized that if I slid down the ladder, and let go before the ledge I would be aimed right at the crater lake below the rock. So, not knowing what possessed me to do so, I let myself slide down below the rock and then let go as I neared the ledge.

Something in the mass above me seemed to counter my weight, and I didn't fall nearly as fast as I thought I would so I realized I was in danger of overshooting the lake below. I opened up my shirt and tried to use it as an air brake. That was partly successful, but wouldn't really have been effective. What was effective, however, was the force holding the rock up in the sky, it seemed to pull me into an orbit, or more accurately, a falling spiral centered on the crater lake below. My only regret now was that I had no way to protect my cell phone from getting wet. I balled it up in my shirt as best I could.

I don't remember hitting the water, but I woke in the bottom of a small boat, my shirt and phone balled up on my chest. I unwrapped it, and the inner folds of cloth were still dry. I couldn't have been in the water long.

"We fished it out first, it seemed really important to you." One of the fishing cats communicated to me quietly.

I thanked her. They dropped me off on the shore outside of a town before heading to their own village.

I looked up the street and realized that most of the signs were just pictures, but the few that contained text were completely unrecognizable.

I wandered up the street, looking at the various shops, realized that my cards and what little money I had were not likely to be worth anything here. I greeted folks as I walked, and they were friendly enough, but it was clear that no one but the cat folk were able to understand me, and even then it only seemed to be a fairly small subset of them.

I came upon what looked like a large town hall. I looked around for a seat, figuring I would just sit and watch for awhile, try to get a sense of the society, the way things work. It was pretty crowded and I eventually found myself in a little rectangular pen like area with several open stools. I sat in one, just to catch my breath and get my bearings a little bit. It was obvious after just a short while of looking around that the more cat-like cat people tended to be the less well off looking. There was a good spectrum of wealth shown among all the peoples there, but there were a couple of obvious trends like that.

I finally decided that I needed to move up to the gallery with the "poorer" folks, in the hopes that I would get some inkling of what was going on. Unfortunately, I had sat down in the "Defendants Paddock" and was no longer allowed to leave. I tried to explain what had happened but folks just laughed at me. A bailiff made me sit back down.

The judge/mayor came in, a red-haired woman who, oddly, I could mostly understand, even though she didn't look much like a cat person. I just assumed her words were so reinforced by the cat folk in the audience that I was getting them as a sort of telepathic overflow effect. There were a half dozen "cases" on the docket, not all of them criminal matters, some were civil matters. The Judge went through all of them, and then looked up to see me sitting there after all her files were done.

"Who are you?" she asked, and I could tell it WAS her that I was understanding.

When she realized that her audience couldn't understand me, and had begun wondering how she could, she had the bailiff remove me from the room.

I ended up in the police station, but not in a cell. It was obvious that I wasn't allowed to leave, but otherwise they brought me lunch and a light blanket when it started to get chilly. The evening shift came in, and one of the officers was a cat woman who was able to talk to me. The Judge arrived shortly after my interview with the officer.

The conversation, and another meal, was quite pleasant, and the Judge was pleasant, but very obviously concerned about my story. I could tell that she wasn't really willing to believe it, until I showed her the pictures on my phone, which sputtered and died after a few moments. It apparently had gotten some water in it after all. I had to convince her it wasn't magic, or at least no more so than the fact that we could understand one another.

After our long conversation about where I was from, she pointed out that she could have me arrested for being a vagrant, as I had no money and no place to stay. I could see she was weighing her options when the feline police officer rescued me, saying she had a spare room and I could stay there and help with the dogs until I found other work.

By the time the officers shift was done, I was bone tired and barely remembered the route to her home. I fell into her too small guest bed, and immediately fell to dreaming. (All I remember from the dream within this dream was sitting next to a busty woman in a blue linen jacket, immaculately tailored and with very shiny silver buttons.)

In the morning I got up and helped prepare the breakfast table and then washed up afterwards. Shortly after that the officer got up and took me out to where the dogs were. They were huge, about the height of a pony or small horse. She explained that the puppies were pretty tame, but their mother was still very feral.

She was indeed, and much larger than her children, the father of the puppies must not have been a particularly large specimen. I looked into the mother's eyes and immediately knew that she was much smarter than her handlers were giving her credit for. I jumped down into her pit. There were calls of alarm from the others, but we approached one another and greeted one another. I rubbed her face and ears and then took off the choke/spike chain from around her neck. She stood up and stretched. Then sat, looking at me. I gave her a roll I'd been saving from breakfast. I started walking her around the pit, stopping when she started to pull. (A lot like when walking J's dog Lucy.) We eventually jumped out of the pit and took a stroll around the grounds. The other handlers followed us with weapons and ropes, ready for her to make a break for it. I could tell she wouldn't as she wanted to stay close to her puppies. She kept looking at me like I was going to try to ride her, but I just ruffled her neck fur, gently rubbing down the injuries where the spikes had dug under her coat. Eventually we made our way back to the pit, and she willingly ran down the ramp and stretched out to nurse her newest litter of puppies.

I made sure I had more treats for her after dinner. As I walked out to the pit to feed her, the Judge fell into step with me. I was surprised to see her. As we walked, I realized that she was a cat person. "Did it hurt when your ears were docked?"

Her hand flew up to her ear, hidden by a tiara/turban sort of headdress, then she dropped it quickly looking around to make sure no one had seen. I also guessed that her bustle hid the fact that she had a tail, or at least the stub of a tail. I immediately felt sad for her. She could tell. I promised I wouldn't say anything, as her people adored her and were obviously prospering under her leadership.

Her conversation with me indicated that she would be much happier if I didn't stay in the area, and after seeing me feeding the "feral bitch" she lit upon the "perfect solution." When the puppies were weaned, I would take the dog and leave for a stint in the wilderness, find a feral mate for her so her puppies would be full sized next time. She also indicated that she would not be broken up if the two of us didn't return. Ever.

I told her that would be difficult, as I too was rather fond of the people of her village. I promised I would consider it, though. That seemed to strike her as true, and I realized than that the telepathy was much stronger between people who shared common passions. I think that very much disturbed her, but she knew I was serious about not being a threat to her village so she was content to let me free, but keep a close eye on me.

The dream continued on for quite some time. One night I went to a dance, like our English Country Dancing, except I had to learn the calls in a different language. I tried to dance with the cat women, as most of them could tell me the right (or left) way to go. It was a lot of fun, and everyone had good humor about my lumbering attempts to be graceful.

Another evening we had a huge bonfire and barbecue with story telling. Again I had to have "translators" for several of the stories. I showed my hippo photograph and described the San Diego Zoo. I tried to draw a picture of a giraffe, and that got everyone laughing.  I worked with the dogs, including the feral mom.

Eventually the dog and I were out working with the police, tracking large animals who'd broken into some chicken coops, or chasing after a lost child, or just patrolling the village after dark with my hostess. However, I never rode her like the police rode her grown puppies. It suited us fine. (It was then that I noticed that I was easily fourteen inches taller than any of the villagers, and bigger than all but the blacksmiths and warrior types.) I had little trouble keeping up with the pack, even when they were running. (They were a little faster, but I could run far longer.)

At some point my hostess actually paid me, and then told me about the kingdom'c bright city center, where there were rumors of magic looking glasses like my own, and people who know how to make them work again. I wasn't sure mine would fully recover from the water damage, but when I powered it up, it did come up, and there was no crackling. Still no signal, though. I agreed that a trip to the capitol was probably in order, so we spent my wages on outfitting me and the dog for travel. I was amazed when she allowed me to put a puppy backpack on her, but she seemed to be excited about the trip, too.

This was the point where I woke. I really didn't want to, as I wanted to find out more about this interesting world.

Water Damage, Virtual Damage

I dreamed profusely, but only remember two little snippets. The first was being pushed into the water at a lake. I got out quickly, but my medicine bag was wet. I quickly dumped the contents, but wasn't able to prevent the water from getting into the pill box. I didn't care about the Benadryl as I had a sealed bottle in my car, but the sildenafil I didn't want to go to waste, as they were the only one's I'd brought on the trip. I scooped them out before they were just mush and was going to take them.

"You can't take those NOW!"

"The effects last a while, we'll be back to our cabin in a couple of hours."

It was a pretty funny moment.

-----

Just before waking I was playing a video game. The game was a sort of World of Warcraft and Defiance mash up with a little bit of Diablo III or Torchlight thrown in. There was the steam punk sort of vibe mixed with the gun show and over the top magic effects all thrown in. Characters could be "pure" or mixed, and the system seemed pretty balanced except for certain challenges. I was showing one of those challenges to J. A mission where you cleared out a cave and defeated the boss, but when you went to leave, there were nearly a hundred regular mobs outside, rushing the cave. If you didn't have an Area of Effect spell or ability, it was very difficult to get out. I showed her with a Magic using sort with big AoE spells, and it was easy to let the enemies bunch up and then blow them up, retreat, and repeat until you got out.

I then showed what it was like for a non-AoE character. I had beaten the boss, then was showing how you had to lure the bad guys in and then lead them through the tunnels to thin them out so you could take them on one or two at a time. As the first bunch approached the entry to the cave, I suddenly saw the flash of a green/gold enchanted blade sweep through my character from behind, killing him in one shot. I sat, stupefied, looking at the creature with the golden glowing name over its head, it was doing a victory dance on my corpse. J was asking "what's wrong, can't you just start over?" I'd done this mission a couple of dozen times, and something like that had never happened.

A rare champion creature had spawned, without notice, right behind me in the entrance. I hadn't even had the chance to notice it was there before it struck. The game popped out to the "Your Deeds of Valor will be Remembered" screen, where it displayed the one hundred forty plus hours and all of his gear as well as naming the mob that had killed me (a golden named unique creature.) This particular character was a "hard core" character, and his death was final, no restarting, except to restart from nothing and build back up again.

"Ah, Sweetie, I'm going to need a moment..."

Abandoned Pets

Dreamed I was visiting a friend, who mentioned that she had a neighbor who hadn't been seen around in a while. She was concerned about the abandoned pets. She mentioned that one was a bison and the other two were cats. I said I could probably adopt another couple of cats, but the bison might have to become burgers if we couldn't find a home. She said we couldn't do that, as the bison was a pet not a food animal.

We went to the friend's apartment and her two kitties came right to the door. They looked amazingly like Teddy and Ember. I wondered if there were a lot of brother,-sister, tabby-calico pairs out there. The bison, white, and tiny, for a bison. His horns and nose leather were black and there was a black cape of wiry fur down his back. I fell in love with the scruffy little guy, he was just so cute. I agreed to take care of all three of them on the spot.

When I woke up I realized that I was dreaming about Teddy, Ember and Giles (who I often jokingly refer to as my buffalo, both because of his size and the full coat of matted buffalo-like fur on his back end.)

I suspect I'm feeling a little guilt about not spending as much time with them as usual; a combination of dating, and the older kitties all have health issues and seem to be taking up more and more of my time.

Courthouses and Castles

Two great tastes...

The new RPG from...

Interesting evening last night. There were many and varied dreams but two of them had a bit of plot to them, and stick with me, even after a full day of work.

In the first of the two, I was at work, plugging away at sending out emails telling folks they forgot to push the "Publish" button on their sites, when one of my co- workers came down from upstairs with a couple of huge envelopes. Each one looked like a US Post prepaid envelope, but stuffed with what had to be a full ream of papers each. It was obvious that they had been opened and the pages rifled through, then put back, but. like many things, they didn't quite fit properly. Both envelopes were from the District Court and both had instructions that I was supposed to read the material and appear at the appointed time if I wanted to be present for the arguments of the cases. The nearest date was for half an hour from the time they landed on my desk, but at least there was a week before the next date. I showed them to my boss and ran out to the car, one ragged and inexpertly taped together envelope under each arm.

When I got to the court, the judge was standing by our president and attorney. She looked at me as I rushed in asking "Why are you late, sir?"

"I got these..." I set the envelopes down and pulled out my phone, "Forty six minutes ago."

"Well, you missed it, then."

"That was fast."

Our attorney explained that the other side had offered to settle, stipulating that everything we'd claimed was true, but not, somehow, admitting any malice in the events as detailed. I wasn't sure that was going to play so well for them, as it only left incompetence and stupidity to blame, not altogether a better characterization of them. (In the dream I knew what all this was about, but I can't remember now.)

The judge wanted to know more about my envelopes, and if I had received them in the condition they were in now. She then indicated that they hadn't gone out of her office like that, and had been sent over thirty days ago. She called her administrative assistant and they verified the return receipt had been sent back, three days after they had been mailed. It was my name on the receipt, but most certainly not my signature. I even pulled out my driver's license so they could compare them. The judge didn't look very happy about that, and gathered up her bailiff and assistant for a quick consultation. The bailiff left the courtroom at a run, talking into his radio.

Our attorney was smiling a very satisfied looking smile as the judge and her assistant vanished back into her chambers. "So, do you think they photocopied the whole thing?"

I shrugged, "I don't know why they would, wouldn't they have a full copy of everything, too?"

"Their attorney's would."

"So why wouldn't they get copies from them?"

Maybe it was someone who wasn't supposed to have them. I looked at him, thinking 'how was that even possible,' when he pulled out a document that was an order from the court not to discuss the contents with any outside of the governing board and our attorneys.

"Oh..."

The bailiff instructed the attorneys, who'd apparently not made it out of the building to sit back down, when they looked over and saw me, and my ragged envelopes they just rolled their eyes and both of them started calling people on their cell phones. I thought that was interesting, as they clearly weren't expecting to see me here.


In the following dream, it was another one of those where I was involved in playing a game, but somehow it was also happening at the same time. Sometimes I was traveling on my little brown pony through a deep, dark forest, and sometimes I was standing over a very detailed map, looking at a yellow meeple on a brown Lego horse. J and several others were at the keep as we adventurous few loaded up our supplies and mounted our mounts, my chocolate brown pony, TC on a white draft horse, like an albino Clydesdale, and our third member, whose identity kept changing, on a Dorse or Chocobo like critter. (The miniature for it was a keyfob, I think.)

We left the keep, waving goodbye to our companions and set out for the Castle of Perilous Perils on the the other side of the Mostly Impassible Forest. The dice were with us as we traveled through the forest, nothing of note was encountered, and finding myself the smallest of the group, no more than a meter tall at best, I was disinclined to go looking for trouble. During the forest travel the dream had shifted into the first person mode, so by the time we arrived at the Castle of Perilous Perils, we were dirty and smelled a great deal like our mounts and oiled leather mixed with week old Cheerios. In other words, not pleasant. As we rode directly up to the gates of the first tower, I offered to scout around the perimeter of the castle. Oddly enough, the castle was entirely made up of the one tower, and the scouting trip was so short that each of my companions repeated the journey, just to make sure I wasn't playing some sort of practical joke on them.

We considered for a moment that we weren't in the right place, I mean, a tower is not a castle, and a castle couldn't really be just a tower, right?

The game master, frustrated that we might just go merrily on past this place blurted out that the castle was mostly underground, then fudged up some knowledge rolls to say that I knew that. And so, suddenly back in the first person view, I said, "hey, I remember that most of the castle is underground."

My companions seemed completely unaware of the GM interaction and we dismounted to check the door for traps and to see if I could pick the lock. I had to remount to do that. Once inside there was a quick encounter with a couple of ghouls, each with a burlap sack full of limbs and mildly interesting loot. I peeked out of the entry room, and suddenly had a quick flashback of another adventure, the rooms to the right, I remembered, had been full of creatures well above our ability to handle, and the left had been nearly an empty and straight shot to the widget we needed. I asked my companions to hush and wait while I snuck out into the hall. I looked down the cooridoor to the right, more ghouls, and something in the distance flitted between the corbled walkways in flickering torch light. I could hear the clanking of metal on metal and deduced that there were many heavily armed and armored foes in that direction.

I looked to the left. The halls were pitch black, I waited for my eyes to adjust, I could just make out a sort of dim outline, empty halls, nearly a mirror image of the halls full of enemies opposite.

I reported what I had seen and we decided to head left. I think I am the only one who heard the disappointed sigh. We found a largish room down the ramp that could be barred shut, and the shifting character and myself barred ourselves off from the rest of the dungeon, er, castle, while TC took a heavy crossbow and a large shield and struck out based on a sketch I'd done to see if there was a path to our objective. I warned that it wasn't a good idea to split up the party, but TC promised that he would run back at the first sign of trouble.

We waited a bit, then I got fidgety and went outside to bring our mounts into the tower...castle. I used all of TC's extra shirts and pants to tie makeshift pads to all of the animals' feet. Stopping to admire my handiwork, and picture how TC would look when he found out, I listened intently to see if the coast was clear. As I did so, I stooped low around the corner to see what the critters on the right side of the corridor were doing. The ghouls were munching on whatever was in their sack lunches, and the armored patrols were patrolling further along. They'd obviously seen and heard nothing.

The four of us snuck back into the barred chamber. SCV (currently playing our third adventurer) asking how I managed to get past the bars. I just shrugged and carefully took off the rags, folding them neatly and putting them back in TC's saddle bags just as he came puffing back into the room.

"I got it, the McGuffin of Enormous Worth, let's get.... How did our horses get here?"

I grinned.

"Well, good, I might have angered a small mob back there." Sure enough, I could hear voices shouting in the hallways in the distance.

We mounted up and raced out of the basement...castle. I was falling further and further behind, my pony being significantly less long-legged than the others' mounts. I waited until the pack was on my heals and then shot down a side path, hoping they would follow me and allow the McGuffin to be ensconced in its receptacle and thus solve the problem of the un-dead once and for all. By this time, however, the GM had begun tossing dice into the "shame" pool, skipping over the penalty box entirely. So he declared that they "didn't even see your diminutive form on the tiny pony" and raced after the group.

I stopped, and turned around, where I then began thinning the mob out one at a time from the rear with my Wand of Wondrous Webbing.

Even in the first person mode, I was sure I heard swearing and laughter coming from the sky. J's giggle was clearly audible.

Now that was a fun dream. I loved how even in first person mode, I could sometimes make out the grid lines on the forest floor or in the Castle. If virtual reality were like that, I don't know that I would ever want to leave.

Road Trip from Hell

Not to Hell, from Hell, as in, escaping in a little red car, but not my little red car. I was driving, bumping along over broken up roads and through the high grass stalks trying to lay claim to the path. Suddenly, large metal objects barely spotted in time to avoid them, my evasive maneuver caused us to bounce completely off the road and we ended up straddling a ditch. I managed to slow us down to a stop with the vehicle still drivable.

We'd seen no signs of pursuit, but I knew there were plenty of dangers lurking in the harmless looking woods nearby. We needed to find a way to get the car back on the roadway. The ditch ran alongside the road a good number of yards, and there it went into a culvert under a crossroad. We debated between going into the woods for lumber to try to make a bridge, or driving oh so carefully, to the crossroads in hopes that we could just drive up onto the roadway from there.

We decided to head to the crossroads with a couple people sitting on top of the car to let me know when to stop so they could move stones, or build up dirt to get over them.

It took far less time than I thought it would, and there were still no signs of pursuit. The ditch widened as we approached the culvert, and the flows had undercut the roadway a little bit. There were more discussions and while the team was up on the road above the culvert, I saw something moving in the culvert, blocking the entire thing, almost. I slammed the door and steered the car down into the ditch, then built up enough speed to turn it up the bank at the last second. I thumped up onto the roadway with some sort of half scorpion, half snake looking thing hot on my tail. I accelerated down the dirt road, slamming on the brakes and spinning around. I stomped on the accelerator back towards the creature, and then stomped the brakes and slammed into it (using the passenger side rear fender.)

With a sick sounding thunk I bounced up and over it, then raced back to the panic-stricken group. I unlocked all the doors and shouted for them to get in. This works way better in the movies than it does in my dreams. I saw the creature pulling itself back up onto the roadway, "get back!" I stopped short of the group and shifted into reverse, thankful that this little dirt road was both straight, and debris free.

I hit the thing full force and it shattered, smashing in the trunk and shattering the back window. I raced back to the group, who'd managed to arm themselves with sticks and rocks. They pulled the doors open and started shouting at me to get out. I looked in the back seat, and the top half of the creature was chewing its way through the back seat.

After we managed the kill the thing, no one wanted to get back in the car, so we packed out as much stuff as was still untainted by it's highly corrosive blood and started back down the road on foot.

It was then that I noticed that I was the tallest one of the group, and the oldest, and the fattest. There was a twenty something couple, both very clingy on one another and dressed similarly, like a fast food place uniform, and a younger person who I'm not certain was a boy, or a girl disguised as a boy. There was a middle aged man and woman, not really a couple, and of indeterminate relationship to the child, sometimes one or the other was sort of parental, and other times they ignored the kid. I had found the three of them together, so in my head I thought of them as a family, though they really didn't show any sign of that.

As we picked our way carefully along the roadway, I wondered what sort of world produced automobiles, but not firearms. The makeshift spear had me all sorts of worried about our odds of getting safely away from this place and back to some sort of civilization. I think I understood why there was no pursuit.

Cave Clanks and Werewolves

I was running on all fours, chasing through the forest with a lovely yellow Afghan looking (but much larger, still with the same slender proportions) companion. I could feel the leaves and branches crumple under my calloused paws, feel the saddle bags bounce against the mesh harness. We raced along the open paths, sometimes me leading, sometimes her leading. We'd occasionally catch wind of something interesting and would crash through the ferns and berry bushes to investigate. I could see the fur on my front legs and paws, it was thick, about two inches and mostly grey-brown with black patches.

On one of these little side forays we came upon a round opening in the side of a cliff. I transformed back to my human self and stooped down to see into the cave opening better. The opening would have been completely obscured were it not for the thick bat smell coming from it. I pushed aside the vines and roots and stepped into the entrance. The Afghan, Lydia I think her name was, transformed next to me, delicately sniffed the air. She bounced her breasts at me playfully, adjusted her harness and then transformed back, saying she was going back to bring the rest of the pack. I dressed and, using my wind up flashlight, proceeded deeper into the cave.

The bats only occupied the first large chamber, clinging to the roots and vines along the ceiling. I found that the cave continued past that chamber, a small rocky alcove contained a chiseled opening that headed down some narrow stairs. There were the remnants of wooden stairs in a couple of places, but it was only about four to six feet of a jump down to pass to the next rocky part of the path, so I proceeded by jumping over the wooden stairs, not trusting them to hold my weight even where they looked okay. I kept scanning the walls with the flashlight, hoping to spot some markings that might explain what I had found. I could feel air flowing gently down past me, so knew there must be another opening, perhaps at the bottom of the hillside where the spring pools on the opposite side of the mountain were located. We didn't spend much time over there, as that was Bai Yun's pack's range.

I came to a large chamber, split level, a large rectangular slab of material on one wall, with a square slab inset into its base. The square slab looked like it had been some sort of seal, but was now very pitted and scarred, as though something had been working at it. At the opposite side of the upper level was an adobe building that looked to be connected to the side of the cliff overlooking the lower level of the chamber. I could smell water at the bottom, and it very much smelled like the waters of the spring, so I knew that there must be another entrance somewhere below. I used the flash to try to pick out a path down to the water, but it seemed that the only way down was to jump, and hope the water was fairly deep, or to risk climbing down through the adobe building.

I turned back to the slab, and tried to make out what was etched into the surface. The slab was about fifteen feet high and ten or so feet across at the base. It was narrower at the top, about eight feet or so. It wasn't perfectly symmetrical, so I guessed that it had been carved out of something that was already here in the cave. I didn't recognize most of the languages on the slab, but about a third of the way down, discovered that I recognized some Latin words. I could tell the carvings were not literate Latin, as there were many case and number disagreements, and the verb tenses were all over the place. It was as though someone like myself had tried to put something together from memory, and oddly, it looked rushed. The whole thing looked rushed. There was a large pile of rubble at the base of the monument, and I could tell from the size and color of the chips that they were the debris from the carvings.

I could hear my pack coming down the trail, so headed up to greet them.

There was a huge thundering crack behind me, I turned to see the square chunk of stone pulverized and flying out of the base of the slab. Something mechanical stepped out on six legs, whirring and clanking. It lifted its middle legs up over its head, and lights flickered to life, it scanned the cavern, fixing a light on me. The other arm began to spin, like a Gatling gun. Lydia, still in Afghan form, with the rest of the pack behind her was highlighted on one of the slopes. The machine appeared to dismiss the wolf pack, but swiveled its gun back towards me, I instinctively shouted "RUN!" and turned back down the path as the machine opened fire.

A couple of the bullets hit me in the upper legs and right buttock, I rolled on the ground, transforming as I did so. The flashlight tumbled onto the platform, and the bullets followed its spinning path. I picked myself up, glad that the ammunition didn't seem to be made of silver or salt. I kicked the remains of my pants off, angry at losing them, as they were one of my favorite pairs. I heard my pack leaping up and away, I didn't want to go after them and lead the machines to them, so dashed from behind the rocks I was hiding behind for the adobe building. I glanced over to the opening, and two more clanking machines had scrabbled their way out of the monument, they lifted their middle legs and lights shot into the darkness, helping illuminate my path. I dove through a window into the adobe building, the ancient mud walls cracked and splintered as a fusillade of bullets tried to chew through it. I ducked down, feeling the heat of tracers as they sizzled through the air overhead. The building was essentially a stairwell, so I raced down the stairs, not really concerned about the possibility of a fall.

The metallic creatures made their way across the upper cavern floor, Each window I passed, I could see their sweeping lights, and hear the gravel crunch under their feet. Apparently they were looking for me, and even though they'd seen me go into the building, they didn't associate my wolf form with my human form.

The bottom of the building was bricked up, so I had to go back up two flights to a window. I squeezed through, and dropped the nearly twenty feet to the ground. I was really angry about losing my flashlight, as there was really no way to replace it. As I scanned the path along the underground pond, a light from above picked me out, and hesitated on me, I crouched to leap away, but the light swept on, apparently dismissing me. I headed back along what looked to be the freshest trail, though that was old enough to be nearly indistinguishable. I found myself in a twisting turning set of narrow tunnels, only one of which had any signs of traffic in it, though, again, those were old signs. I came to a curve in the tunnel where I could smell the outside, and thought I could just begin to see a glimmer of light. and there in my path was Bai Yun. He growled. He did not look happy.

I transformed, "Run, gun-clanks have come out of the cave."

I transformed back, he growled low, but nodded and waited for me to finish, then led the way out.

Ghost Adjuster

Dream City, some nights are as long as four nights. It had been days since I'd been to the office, the boss was probably angry. She needed to fuss like a cat needs cream. Sure it tastes good, but then it all turns to....

Where is that music coming from? Tempo change, sudden tonal drop, it's happening. Time to go to work.

I noted my surroundings, and then, bamf! I was two blocks closer to the trouble, the music changed as I walked in a circle getting my next bearing.

Bamf!

I heard the crumple of car metal, the plastic tick-tac of lens screens bouncing on pavement and the screams, the lovely screams. I went to work.

I appeared in the back seat of a nearby car as it was lifted into the air. The driver and his passenger were, of course, screaming. Scrumptious.

Bamf! The three of us stood in a sidewalk cafe three blocks away. The surprised waiter didn't react when I told him to get his customers inside. I faded away, a thin tendril of smoke and then appeared behind him. "Now would be a good time." I said.

He jumped, and the emotion was delicious.

Bamf!

Bamf!

Bamf!

There was now a beat up fellow in a spider man costume and the levitating villain above him was monologuing and adjusting his stubby winged hovercraft. It appeared to have been damaged in the fight and wobbled unsteadily. A thin trail of smoke trickled into the nearby air, pooling like blood in water. He wasn't my concern, as he didn't have a policy with us.

He spotted me, though and stopped. "What are you..."

"Public Damage Mitigation Adjuster. Just doing my job."

"Well you're going to have to do it in the afterlife." He wove around to me and unleashed a fusillade of tiny fleshettes. The metal razors lashed their way through my coat and hat.

"I really liked that hat."

"You're dead!" The villain screeched at me.

"Yes, that's generally the idea with a Ghost Adjuster."

I walked over to him and reached into his sputtering hover-board, then yanked on a bunch of wires and cables I found inside. They fell to the ground with two distinct thumps, one hard and ringing, the other flapping and wet.

"I thought you weren't supposed to interfere," the Spiderman figure huffed at me.

"I really liked that coat, too, it took a long time to find a ghost trench that fit. Think of it as a paid damage claim that won't affect your premiums." I drifted down into the rubble pile, pulling out the injured and delivered them to the ambulances that were pulled up by the dozens outside the nearby cafe.

When I got back to the rubble pile, my boss was there, helping assess the damage to the building. Our Spider Man and his villain were being loaded into separate ambulances. She glared at me. "I expect to see you in the office after this. Today!"

Her anger fueled me, reminded me why I still worked there. I resisted the urge to feed, I wanted that anger fully stoked for when we were at the office later.

I headed back to the office, there would be forms to fill out, depositions to arrange. Hurt feelings to sooth over and delicious delicious anger. I drifted through the locked front door and hung my battered hat up on a peg in the entry hall. I made my way over to my cube, returning the greetings of my co-workers, a singularly emotionless lot, as gray as the cubes they worked in. No wonder I hate coming here. My cube was empty. Seriously, no chair, no desk, no file cabinet (it was empty anyway, I figured if someone needed paperwork, they should keep it, I sure as heck didn't need it.)

My boss slammed in shortly after I arrived.

"Wondering where your desk is? Well they promoted you, over my objections...of course. You're in the West office now." She pointed to an office between her corner office and the kitchen, and sauntered towards it, not waiting for me to follow. I hung back, enjoying the hypnotic sway of her curves. I sipped her seething cup of anger and detected a taste of something else...pride, envy, affection? Interesting, unexpected.

"Nice." I wondered what the heck I got with a promotion other than an office. I wondered what I'd done to even deserve a promotion. I was rarely in the office; there was so much to do out in the field.

"I don't know why they bothered to move your desk, the only thing in it was an unopened company manual and these." There was a key ring hanging from a hook on the edge of the desk. I recognized them, they were the office keys. The front door, the file room and several file cabinet keys. I'd wondered where I'd left them.

"These were locked in the bottom of your file cabinet. I don't even want to know how." She picked the keys up and threw them at me. Instinct, I suppose, but I faded just before they hit and the keys sailed through me and out into the hall, jangled to a stop at the base of a cube.

I drank from her anger, calming her, feeding me. This was going to be a good office location, I might even come in to the office more, I thought.

"Get your ass in here tomorrow, we need to take depositions. Use your damned keys! That's how corporate knows you're here. For god's sake, get a new coat, that one looks like shit." She brushed past me on her way out, scowling, but I could feel her smile after she passed me.

I was thinking, "I might just come to work on time tomorrow." (And knew I was kidding myself.)

Scribe

In my dream I was traveling with a pair of companions, a tall muscular, armor clad man, a holy warrior, and a nimble leather clad woman of ethereal beauty, dark and narrow-waisted with shimmering golden eyes and slender pointed ears. As for myself, I was clad only in a robe and sandals, a satchel of writing materials on one shoulder and a battered sword over the other. We'd a fourth member, but there was an incident in the woods surrounding the ruins we now found ourselves standing in front of. That member camped just out of sight above a nearby fountain, hoping to heal while we made our way inside. Personally, I was of the opinion that his wounds were likely to be mortal, but had made him as comfortable as possible.

We entered the ruins, intent of reclaiming the paladin's birthright. I unrolled a map as we stepped out of the collapsed gatehouse into the great courtyard. He stood in the center of the yard, then reached out to touch a large sphere of stone. He was bathed in a golden light and the grime of our passage through the dangerous lands was blasted away, along with the straps of his helmet and shield. We were knocked back and there were tones and angelic voices from the air around us. The Paladin jumped with renewed energy, and raced back over the ruins of the gatehouse, and even without asking I knew he was going to use the energy of his new found aura to heal our companion.

I unrolled the map, and we began to discuss where we should go next, and how we should attempt to acquire the items our companion would need to complete his quest to liberate his home from its cursed state. While we pondered, a ragged trio, one of them quite badly lacerated, hastened from the western passage. Their warrior reached the stone and placed his hands on it. Nothing happened.

"Only once, that's what the riddle meant, you can only heal one." The warrior collapsed, breath coming in ragged gasps, I could not tell if he was exhausted or sobbing.

I was about to ask "what riddle?" when their group's bowman turned to me and handed me a battered journal. "I wouldn't risk my soul for this, but if you must, perhaps this will help you more than it did us."

I reached over and touched the sphere. I was infused with a golden glow. My female companion joined me.

I turned to the injured companion of the trio that were getting to their feet. I touched him and there was a flash, I relived the excruciating fight, really more of a slaughter, watching from a helpless vantage as the man swung at a beautiful woman, who was saved by a spectral man with black hair and blacker eyes. The spectre's talons lashed out and gutted first one and then myself, or rather the man I was holding.

His wounds closed, and the vision faded.

"Why did you do that!"

"He would have died."

"But now you can't save one of us!" I though for a moment that the elf was going to strike me.

"It was the right thing to do, Elba. He will just have to be more careful than usual" and with that our Paladin broke into a mighty roaring laugh. Apparently his comment was a joke at my expense, as I was so careful normally that I had only once drawn the sword he'd provided me. Having thought our way around all of our previous obstacles.

"Well, I'm not using mine on him, then."

The Paladin and our other companion both touched the sphere. Both were infused with a bright glow. I asked the other group to try the stone again, but there was no glow for them. I tried it, and there was no glow for me.

I opened up the battered journal, looking for the notes about the stone. There was a verse, and while it wasn't entirely clear, take in conjunction with what I'd seen, it seemed it would only allow one to heal once, and then the blessing would never be bestowed again, unless you were a scion of the house. I looked at our Paladin in a new light, it seems he was the real deal, after all.

The other group seemed to feel it, too, and quickly excused themselves. I swear the Paladins armor was now so clean it gleamed brighter than the fading sunlight. We agreed to split up to go east and west. The eastern task was supposed to require a test of physical prowess, and the new information I had seemed to back that up. There were notes that indicated that the previous group had succeeded there and brought their token back to the stone. I noticed that the token wasn't there now, however.

The Paladin slammed his mace down on the stone pommel first, a habit he'd gotten into to seat the head, which had started to come loose. I winced, thinking that wasn't probably the way one should treat a major magical artifact. There wasn't even a blemish on the stone, however. "No time like the present. I'll come help you when I'm done here. Be careful." He laughed again, knowing full well that I wouldn't behave any other way.

We split up. I looked to the northern passage before we headed west, it was identical to part of the path we'd entered several miles back in the woods. I pointed that out to everyone, but the Paladin insisted that we "not think on it until we return successful."

"Did he always talk like that?" the elf asked me as we made our way through the ruins of what had to be some sort of chapel.

"No, only the closer we've gotten to here."

We came upon the woman from my vision. She was tall, taller than myself by at least a foot. Her hair was silver, and the outfit she was wearing was beaded in what looked to be pure silver beads. She turned to us.

"I can take her," Elba reached for her weapon. I stopped her with a quick hand on her arm.

"Wait, this is not supposed to be a test of physical prowess."

"Perhaps, depends on how it's played." The woman whispered. "What if I am the lock that guards your precious treasure and you are the key." The woman had turned and bent down slightly to bring her face close to mine. There was the scent of flowers, and femininity, and blood, old and clotted.

"If I am the key and you are the lock..." I thought, was this a demonstration needed, or the answering of a riddle? I decided it was an answering that was needed, at least for now. "Would this lock be tight from lack of opening?"

"Excellent." The woman smiled, "But you have already lost your enchantment, so you must be careful in the opening."

I lifted myself up on tip toe to bring us eye level again. "If I am your key than I fear I am equally unused, perhaps what we both need is some lubrication."

I stepped back, I could see her do likewise preparing herself for violence. Instead I opened my satchel and took out a bottle, gently working it's cork with my thumb. "I fear, dear lady, that I have no cups to offer you, but this is the last of a fine vintage, and I would share it with you."

She hesitated and moved forward, suddenly with two silver chased wine glasses in her hands. I poured. We sipped. I toasted her and her stalwart performance in protecting her precious treasure, I toasted our liege, and that got her attention. I explained that our companion was a descendant of this castle's great kings returned to restore the place of his birth and reclaim his birthright.

The conversation went on, and Elba began to grow bored, she slipped deeper into the chapel, only to be escorted back by the talon equipped specter from my vision. While she was gone I had managed to move closer to the tall woman, who had invited me to sit with her on a rock to continue our lock and key wordplay, the conversation had grown quite full of double and triple entendre. The smell of blood had long retreated and only her flowery femininity remained.

Her final question, and I could feel that it was the last question was what would be "done with the lock once it was opened?"

I thought only a moment, "A good lock is too valuable to leave unused, and it usefulness is not gone once opened, a key that has no lock to open is useless, I would think that my liege would want to put such a precious lock to use and keep it and its key close."

"Indeed he would!" the Paladin entered our little area, setting aside his mace and shield. He lit the room, and his golden light glittered off the woman's silver beads.

"I see," the woman leaned over and kissed me, deeply. After a rather surprised moment, I returned the kiss, and while so doing heard the sliding of the chapel alter. I opened my eyes and looked over to the noise. The specter led Elba by a nervous hand over the the darkened chamber below. She reached in and pulled out a reliquary. The wood had grown soft in some places but it was otherwise sound.

The Paladin set a small totem on top of the reliquary and the woman asked why he hadn't placed it on the sphere.

"I thought we should all be present for that."

"You are quite confident in your companions."

"Do you think it was misplaced?"

The woman looked at me, unsure.

I stretched myself up on tiptoe, still, my mouth was a few inches short of her ear. "Come with us, you and your brother. You deserve to be part of this."

"So, you are still thinking of a different opening."

"If you are a lock and I am your key, it would seem a shame to only be fit together once."

When we returned to the courtyard, the north passage was no longer a duplicate of the entry to the woods. I could clearly see the castle proper at the end of a long span of bridges, partly fallen, and alive with creatures of some sort. I could tell it was going to be a challenge still to get to the bridge. I started looking up into the ruins for alternatives to a long sword fight all the way to the castle gate.

The Paladin laughed at me, knowing what I was doing. "Not this time, scrivener. Sometimes evil needs to be confronted directly. We have this!" He tried to clap the specter on the shoulder, but his hand passed through.

"Only his claws are solid, my Liege." Elba said, the "my Liege" part only sounding a little bit forced.

"I knew that. Let's go." He slammed the pommel of his mace against the stone, seating the sometimes loose mace-head a little more firmly. I was thinking I could fix that with a few minutes at a smithy, but then realized our Liege wouldn't have a need for what I had come to think of as one of his signature habits. He even paused in battle to re-seat the mace head, usually on the thick skull of an opponent. No, the royal mace would remain un-repaired, a character in its own right.

We started for the bridge, as creatures were already massing and hopping or sliding towards us. It would be good strategy to meet them on the narrow part of the first bridge, and hope they didn't have bows. I would have explained that, but the specter and Paladin were charging into battle, and I could see that the forces would meet right where I would have chosen, so felt it was going to be okay. As I walked towards the battle, I felt a tugging at my sword, but it wouldn't come free of the sheath, come to think of it, it hadn't last time, either, and I'd had to use it like a club. The woman grimaced at me, "It's rusted shut."

"Yes, we're probably safer that way." I rummaged around in my satchel and pulled out a sling, I started to select rocks and handed them to the woman as we moved to the side of the where I would have a clear throw at the creatures on the spans further along the path.

Mount Hope and Dryad Bookworm

Had a pair of delightful dreams this morning. In the first dream I was driving, just travelling to see new places, not worried about a time committment, and unconcerned about the critters, as they were well taken care of. (Apparently I had a house sitter.) I had managed to pick up a travelling companion, a little younger than myself, hair still brownish red with only a few silver threads, the wrinkles around her eyes were in smile lines, and it seemed that her irises were not perfectly circular, so I found that intriguing. We rode up into the mountains one rainy afternoon, and decided to stop in a place called Mount Hope.

There were small cabins dotted all over the little hidden valley just near the top of the pass, and many of them seemed to be for sale or rent. We stopped and asked if there was a place we could stay for the night, and someone immediately offered us a cabin for no charge, as it wasn't ski season yet. We had a wonderful meal, and I noticed that my companion had only eaten the meat and green veggies again, leaving everything else behind. We walked around town, talking to nearly everyone we met, they were charming and friendly, and on more than one occasion I got the impression that they recognized my companion.

It began to rain harder during the evening. There was lightning, fairly close, and loud thunder that rattled the four small windows as well as the doors of the cabinets. We ended up together in the small bed in the loft of the cabin, she was very warm and snuggly, but insisted on there being no hijinks until we had a serious talk about that, first. She firmly moved my hand up to her ribs from her hip. I was too tired, so we agreed to have that conversation on the road in the morning.

At one point I woke, a loud very realistic purr in my ear. My hand was cupped around one of my companion's breasts. I gently removed it lest there be a relationship ending misinterpretation. The purring stopped shortly after.

In the morning, we made our way down the slippery rain and mud slicked roads in time to still have breakfast. We sat at a large table with about eight or nine others. I was sure that some of them had animal ears instead of human ears, and it made me suddenly curious about my travelling companion. She was never without her thick headband, even when we'd been snuggled up together in the bed she had been wearing it. As we paid our bill and left, I swore the lady behind the counter had an alligator head in the reflection.

A passerby smiled at us in the rain, "The Veil of Ignorance has been pierced; you're welcome back if you find the road is impassible." 

I thanked him then watched him head into the breakfast cafe, barely pulling his tail through the door before it automatically closed. I started to say something, but held the thought for now.
The trip down the mountain was even more dangerous than I'd thought. We'd slipped and fishtailed, even at the extremely low speed I was driving at. There was no attention for the rather promising conversation I had been promised.

We came to the bridge across a large gorge, and could see the torrents of water below had knocked the bridge's trestles askew. I could see cracks in the road. A dragon dove down and lifted a Mini Cooper off the bridge just before the trestles gave way with a groaning crack that rivaled the thunder. The Mini Cooper was placed on the road next to us and I could see the relieved faces of the occupants, furry faces, pointy ears, wet muzzles. We waved to them as they drove off, shouting their thanks up to the dragon who was now winging his way over to the other side of the gorge with armloads of warning barricades and "Bridge Out" signs.

"What did you just see?" My companion asked.

"I was supposed to see a car just making it across the bridge before it collapsed and a rescue helicopter delivering warning barricades."

"But, really, what did you see?"

"Same thing you did, I suspect."" I looked at my companion more closely, she had cat eyes, and cat whiskers, I was amazed I had not seen them before. She removed her headband. She had no ears where they should be, but a pair of tiger like ears further up her head, they flicked to and fro, free of her headband.

"It's not too late. We can probably find someone who can fix the Veil."

I decided I didn't mind seeing her as she actually was, and the fact that she had a tail explained, partly, her unwillingness the previous night to let my hand off her waist.

"Let's go see if we can find a place to stay until the bridge is repaired."

"Just until then?"

"We'll see, I think I could grow to like this valley, but there's lots other places to see." I managed to turn the car around and head back up the mountain.


In my second dream, after getting up to feed the cats. I was swimming across a fairly wide shallow stream with a surprisingly strong current. I was swept a hundred yards or so downstream from where I had intended to cross, but wasn't worried. There looked like there was a path or a very large game trail just at the top of the bank. It would have been an easy walk back.

When I climbed out of the water, however, I decided that I didn't want to walk back. There was a scantily clad Dryad sitting at the base of her oak, reading.

She was rather startled when I greeted her. I could see that her book was well worn, and quite old. I opened my pack. I had a couple of books with me, not as well made as the old book she had. They were in a waterproof bag that would certainly be large enough to also house her book. I had finished the books some time earlier in my wanderings, and so thought this would be a great opportunity to lighten my load a little bit. The Dryad was surprised, but delighted at the gift, protesting that she had nothing for me. I explained that they wouldn't be a gift if she had, that would be a trade, instead.
I agreed to camp under her tree until we could each read one of the other's books, and then discuss them. I wasn't sure that was a good idea, but it seemed only polite to agree. Apparently she had seen no one in many years, and even then, she hadn't revealed herself as she didn't think she could trust them.

I found the bones of the original owner of the book. She had tried to save him, but he'd nearly drowned, and then suddenly collapsed a few days later. She didn't know why. Her book had been new, then, and I looked at the date, March 1849. It was a book on Geology. Much of the information in it was now outdated, and more was known about the subject now. When that became known to her, she decided she would come with me.

I didn't think she could leave her tree. But she indicated that any healthy oak would do to keep her ageless, as long as it was not someone else's home. That was unlikely, she sighed. Most of the other Dryads had gone off to become mortal and live out their lives. She thought that might not be a bad idea, especially if she could become a Geologist, as that sounded pretty exciting. I found myself wondering how to enroll her in a college. While it would be easy to pass myself off as her dad, she didn't exactly come with a school record, SSN or any other way to identify herself to modern society.