kimurho

In my dream this morning, I was doing data entry for a high-tech company. It was a clean, modern campus; cafeteria in a separate building; exercise room. Lots of space and light. The particular project I was working on was finishing up.

I got an email reminding me to clock out by 5 ... at 5:30. I quickly finished up and left my cubicle ... and in the way of dreams found no cognitive dissonance to step out into a forest. But I had forgotten to actually clock out. So I immediately turned around to do so and the office I'd just left was gone.

Worried now because I was remembering things from earlier in the dream, I managed to get home (my bike was missing - no surprise because the entire building/campus was an untouched forest), and contacted the boss.

The dream cut to the boss talking to someone about it and he mentioned the causality geese, which ...once the project was done and the data saved, it would return things to what they had been before and "edit" the memories of those involved. Because I hadn't clocked out, the effect of the causality geese hadn't affected me.

I've been learning bookkeeping for the past month and a half. As a result, I've been having dreams where I'm trying to read the reports and put the information in the proper spots but because it's a dream, I can't read the reports and when I do I can't remember what I read.

It amuses me that my sleeping mind will take a look at the unreadable pile of papers and declare (literally) "I don't have to do this. I'm asleep and at home."

In my sleep, while dreaming, I announce I'm dreaming and I walk away from the frustration dream brought on by fear of failure.

This morning, I had another bookkeeping dream. In this one, I was able to put the reports in correctly and prepare the deposits for pick-up. No problem. Well, except for some technical difficulties. My computer mouse wasn't working properly.

The difference was that I wasn't me and the bookkeeping wasn't for the store. Instead, I was doing bookkeeping for a small pack of hyena shape-shifters and ... I think I was one of them. Maybe.

I suspect that my dreaming mind let the dream go because (1) it was amused and interested in the situation and (2) I wasn't getting bogged down with fear about the order of the work. I mean, I was accomplishing what I was trying to do despite the technical difficulties. And if you've read Ilona Andrews series about Kate Daniels, then you know that tech difficulties are a huge part of her world building.

Had one of those hidden rooms dreams.

I was working at a daycare - new hire - and there was a hallway with a couple of rooms that was blocked from access. The doors to the hallway were standard school issue; the kind with thin, tall windows with wire on half of the upper half of the door. The more obvious door had the window covered, so you couldn't look in.

I was told that there was some issue with the rooms on that hallway, some sort of dangerous contamination, but we were very crowded so I was curious. Then some official showed up to inspect the hall and rooms. I escorted him to the office to talk to the director. On my way out, I happened to pass by a second door into the hall. To my surprise and dismay, I saw someone ... several someones ... at the door, slamming on it in desperation to get out. I tried to open it, but it was locked and one of my co-workers pulled me away. I cried out that there was someone inside, that they had to get out. I was told that there was no one there, I was imagining it. And, in truth, while I had seen them banging on the door, I hadn't heard anything. Plus, they had looked ... pale and insubstantial. Spectral, with open sores and staring eyes.

Kind of dead, in fact.

But they were dressed like young education professionals, the way we were instructed to dress at the facility.

I was creeped out.

I'm bugged with myself. There was a phrase that my dreaming mind came up with that I wanted to remember waking so I could find out what it meant ... in another language. But just at the end of the dream, I went looking for something in a book called The girl who put herself between her sister and Faerie which in the dream was about the Tam Lin storm of Jenny of Stuart Hall who stole her lover back from the Queen of Faerie. As a result, I brought the name of that book out of the dream and not the phrase that had been bugging me.

Cool name for a book, though.

Second try, first one the program crashed as I was saving.

I have dreamt of a team of ghost-hunters for years, probably triggered by the BBC show, Sea of Souls. Or else by a Canadian show that's even older (Beyond Reality 1991).

The format is always the same, the leader is an older male academic - late 50s, early 60s. There are a couple or three junior academics, some students - graduate and undergraduate, and civilian consultants/ talents. I am usually a student and a talent. Rarely am I a civilian consultant/ talent. But always a talent.

This time I was a strong medium.

( the story )

And I woke up.

working to get refugee kids settled in a new school. One boy, 4th grader, was upset that the school didn't offer Latin. I offered to help him continue to learn it, but of course he wanted the grades. Spanish was suggested as a viable alternative (in my experience, it is NOT an emotionally acceptable one). He seemed to reluctantly agree, but then decided to take me up on my offer as well.

School day ends, I meet up with a group of others because we need to find someplace to stay as well. There's a Stephen Strange (comic book, not cumberbatch) type wizard, two rough looking men, two women -one big, one little, and me. The wizard leads us to a barn/shed looking place - double doors in the front and another couple of doors further back, high windows in a row ceiling high. Looks like one room but I think there's a loft area. Almost immediately another group shows up, contesting our occupation of the space.

The wizard slams the door closed, takes out chalk and at this point, I'm the wizard and I'm running through runes of protection but I can't remember any. Doesn't matter because my dream self draws simple crosses on the doors to bar the way. Then breaks the chalk in half and throws it to the two men who are now in were-wolf ... halfman/halfwolf ... form. Orders them to draw crosses on the the other two doors.

Then I take up my staff and turn around, the left hand door is off, a man in a black overcoat and black fedora stands there, holding his staff. We stand there for several minutes, pushing at each other with magic attacks and defenses, then I do a Gandalf-like rise and slam with the staff and physically push the other wizard away. The world goes dark for a moment and when the light comes back, the would-be intruders are gone.

After that, we set about making the shed/barn habitable and my overmind remembers its supposed to check the time. The clock reads 3:05, I've overslept 20 minutes, so I get up.

Took half a Benedryl at work Thursday and got hit by the filk fairy. Here's what I came up with.

to tune of Karma Chameleon

Trolling, trolling, trolling for survey scores
They come and go, they come and go
The getting would be easy if they came up every time
But it one in five, it's one in five.

I turn the screen, they turn it round
I look to see, it's gone to ground.

The magic-user in my story has a pukis familiar.

In Latvian folklore, a pukis is a household spirit that is a cat on the ground and a small (cat-sized) dragon in the air. It steals from neighbours - grain, food, treasure - and brings what it steals to its master.

Shortly after I first wrote the pukis into the story, I had a dream about one named "Pennypacker". I don't usually remember names from dreams and this was a pretty unique and interesting name, so I used it.

Last night, for the first time, it occurred to me that "Pennypacker" was a great name for a creature that goes around stealing coins.

The ship's name was Helena. She was a smart ship, intelligent and sapient, with a complex neural net. Unfortunately, she was insane.

We didn't know it when we boarded. Not immediately, at least. One of the physicists recognized the name once we were on board and balked. I remember his response. "The Helena? The one with the malfunctioning neural net? We can't ... " But by then it was too late. The University was under attack; we had to evacuate and ... she was already underway. With a cargo of academic types; scientists, mathematicians, some liberal arts types - doctors, researchers, professors, a few assistants. And Boots the cat.

The first incidents were minor. Could have been accidents or mistakes. A door that wasn't there one day but was the next. Or that led somewhere else. Somewhere dangerous. A release of gas that caused euphoria or put us all to sleep.

One of the assistants got into the habit of using a chute to get between levels. For speed. He liked to sleep late and cut it fine. Oh I wish I hadn't written it like that. The last time he jumped into the chute, it took him down into waste disposal. It took us a while to find out what had happened.

That could still have been an accident but what she did to Boots the cat ... was not an accident. She owned up to it proudly. Boots the cat was a mouser and the Helena was infested with rodents of all sorts. Boots the cat proudly brought his kills to his owner who made much of him.

She tortured him over several hours and left him for the rats to finish off then presented her "kill" with a flourish.

The worst of it was, she wouldn't let us go. She sealed us in whenever she made planetfall so we couldn't escape. Her rationale was that we had been given to her to protect and she was going to protect us whether we wanted her to or not, from everything and anything. Except herself.

I have today off, so I stayed up late last night stringing a necklace. Consequently, I slept late this morning. And I had a dream during the time that I would normally be up writing Trouble on Candlepin.

I dreamt I was a Borderlander in Mortalrie, working with a group of Mortals to discover who or what was attempting to open a rift in the Border from this side. We were working out of a small house being used as a business. I guess I was working as ... what is it called? Spiritual advisor? Anyway, I had clients for whom I was using my divination talent to assist but I was also checking them for any "whiff" of Border energy or magical ability.

Among our group was an ex-lover, Jacobus Zephyrus ... that was his name, because I couldn't remember the name Severus Snape. How could I have imported Snape into a dream and not remembered his name? He was dour, disapproving, superior, sarcastic, insulting ... and not precisely welcome but so powerful I couldn't reasonably refuse his help or force him to go away.

One woman carried contact traces of such energy, as if she'd been with someone involved in opening the rift. During the course of our session, I performed a summoning to call the source of the contact trace to us. He came and it was her son. A 20-something black man with street cred, tattoos and attitude. Dangerous attitude that was threatening. I yelled for "Jacob". He popped in and ...

Either the dream changed or I woke up. Probably the latter.

I've been slowed to blocked the past few days. The section I've been working on (Chapter Fetch) has already been moved once because while it made sense to write it when I did, it didn't belong where it was. Other things had to go first.

Fetch describes what Murdock does in the Borderland to which the Gate of the Wailin' Post takes him. But ... Time passes slightly differently in the Borderland. This Borderland is the Land of the Dance and it's basically a bubble in reality that isn't much bigger than a few acres. {Odd thought just occurring to me ... might that be the reason for the Dance?}

Murdock has passed through the Wailin' Post in order to retrieve two motorists who went missing on a mountain in western Virginia. One of the motorists ended up in the Dance, the other was moving away at the end of that descriptive chapter (Ch. 3 - Dance).

My subconscious wants me to go back and follow the second motorist for a bit before coming back to Murdock ... because of timing.

Actually, I'm not sure if it's exactly my subconscious. It's not a conscious part of my creative process but I suspect it's the part of my mind that controls my dreams. I don't exactly dream lucidly most of the time but I also always dream lucidly in that I know I'm dreaming. There's a part of me that is watching or reading what's happening. And a part of my mind that orders the dream in a logical plot with one course of action following rationally on another. My mind created these dream filters as protection against the nightmares that use to afflict me, and I have never regretted them because ... Wow! The dreams!

I should be working on Snowfall, but I'm caught up in a new book atm and reading that on my day off. And thinking about my writing process.

I'm at my high school graduation and my boyfriend and best friend tell me that they are now a couple. I'm furious and walk away, looking for somewhere else to sit for the ceremony because I don't want to be around them. One guy offers me a seat next to him but it's already "taken" and the next seats are wet for some reason. I'm about to sit on the driest of them when I spot a large Arabic-looking swirl in golden flame over a side hall. I go down it and find an Middle-eastern looking man sweeping up in a large empty space. I ask him what the letter meant, but he insists that there was no letter. He's obviously trying to get rid of me, so I turn to go back to the graduation ceremony. As I do, he gets an odd, considering expression on his face (my "overmind" knows that the glowing letter was put there by a djinn and that the man knows it as well) ... and the dream shifts suddenly to me opening my eyes to bright natural light.

There's a young European-American male looking down at me with an expression of concern - dirty-blonde well-cut hair, tee-shirt filled out very nicely, jeans ("Andy" from the show WKRP in Cincinnati). I am in an old gas station converted to a day care and he's the care-taker. The kids are all ages from very young to barely teen. One little boy almost breaks my heart. He's about four or so, Downs syndrome, and he's fascinated by the toy jewelry. He picks up a bracelet and puts it on. Looks at it, then with tears in his eyes, he takes it off again saying "No no no". He does the same with other pieces of jewelry.

I'm not too upset about the change in circumstances because (1) I'm still upset about my boyfriend jilting me for my best friend and (2) the guy is way cute and seems interested in me. I start helping and bonding with the kids.

At one point, I go out of the building and look around. There's an old trailer home off to one side, covered with kudzu, sealed up with some plastic - with a warning sign "Warning: Sheriff Black", it's either on the trailer or as an open captioning for the show because at this point "I" am being played by Amy Schumer. I pull the plastic off the door ... and fall into a ditch as a result. While I am in the ditch, the door opens and a figure shaped like Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice exits the trailer home. Shaped like because his face and parts of his body are obscured with black tar-like substance. "Sheriff Black"

At this point, I am definitely watching a show because one of the children from the day care is sitting beside me and he's a little scared of Sheriff Black. I hug him and point to Amy Schumer, struggling to get out of the ditch.

"If this were really down in the South," I say, "She'd been covered with poison ivy." He giggles and I'm back in the middle of the action, being told what the crops were around the converted gas station.

I hear a news report about my absence and find out that my family is very upset over my disappearance, so I call them then hike out to meet up with my mother and aunt coming to pick me up. I am afraid that if I'm found at the day care, they would suffer because ... there's some sort of secrecy about it all, that the kids would suffer if the authorities find them.

But I feel like I'm abandoning them. And then there's that really cute guy.

I meet up with my relatives, they're going to take me home, but I have to say goodbye so I call the gas station. I talk to the cute guy, explaining and he convinces me to stay where I am and he'll come get me. It's a split screen at this point, with Amy Schumer on one side and the cute guy on the other. At one point during the conversation, however, he peeks over the dividing line and gives me a wink.

Lots of things lost in the confusion but two things I recall ...

I was a mermaid and something frightened me so much that I lost all sense of direction and ended up wrong way down on the top of the water and was drowning in air ... unable to right myself and swim to the bottom.

I was at work and a customer was contesting the cost of something. I checked several times and the system was correct. He pulled out a written list of prices from his wallet to show me my error and I was about to tell him to take it to customer service, they were open when he grabbed my wrist and said "Perhaps your mind is addled by your minimum wage job so look again." I tried to yell to Amanda and Dylan to come help but ... sleep paralysis kept me quiet.

I crashed after work today and dreamt of just after moving into an old house. I kept seeing a couple of young cats ... adolescents, not kittens ... playing in the autumn leaves of the yard. My husband never saw them. They were the colours of the leaves - brown and cream and a touch of orange, with furry pantaloons and fluffy cheeks. Great big surprised eyes.

Sometimes I saw a girl and an older, mother, cat with the two.

Then in the dream, I saw one ... named Pennypacker ... on the stoop outside the back door. I quickly opened the door, keeping my eye on the cat, but when the door was open, the cat was gone. Disappeared into thin air.

Chapter 1: Borderscry
Chapter 2: Reports
Chapter 3: Christmas Dance
"Chapter 4: Folklore
CHAPTER 5 - History
CHAPTER 6: White Hart Leap

Yule, 21 December
on Candlepin access road
Buck County

Sanderson was silent for several moments. Then she gave a sardonic huff of laughter.

"So that's it? We're out in a snowstorm on a haunted mountain chasing after a guy because he might be related to the ghost whose haunting said mountain and you are some sort of super-hero because you are also descended from this ghost." She blew a raspberry. "Okay Murdock, fun's over. Turn this car around and let's go back. I get it. Really, I do. All newbies get hazed and this one just happens to involve a freak weather pattern, but this ... this isn't the time or place for pranks." She waved a hand at the windshield, indicating the heavy, wet snowflakes hitting the glass.

( Read more... )

I work as a cashier at a grocery store and while I'm ringing up, I talk with my customers. All sorts of things - philosophy with some, history with others, state of the world, fandoms, politics, colour theory. And, of course, personal stuff - pets, children, family, parents, &c.

Yesterday a woman, about my age, wanted to relate to me something that had recently happened to her. She had two dental procedures in the last week. Going to the dentist frightens her (scares me too) and this was a new dentist so she was really afraid. She uses a meditation technique to help her keep calm - she closes her eyes and thinks of her parents; they come and help her get through it.

She was on the dentist chair, eyes closed, expecting to "see" her mother ... and I appear! I talk to her and help her through it. Both times.

She said she was startled, it was completely unexpected.

I feel honoured and humbled both.

This was a ghost-squad dream.

We were trying to determine the origin & meaning of some magic medallions, round disks ...clay or wood? ... with figures on them that my sleeping mind recognized as from the zodiac but my waking mind does not.

We were at a very large, very old-looking research library. Lots of unnecessary decorations, heavily carved shelves, stone walls. It may have been in a college, but the people running the library wore monks robes. Some of the unnecessary decorative touches were depictions of the medallions.

We discovered a vault under the library that held a large stone altar, around the top were the mysterious medallions ... and more that my character did not recognize, that did not belong to the zodiac figures of the dream. What I remember are a dragon/ reptile, a warrior in an animal skin, a tree like Yggsdrasil.

Leaving the library one evening, we encountered a large number of people leaving an athletic game ... football probably. One man, surrounded by several sons and holding one toddler-sized little girl by the hand, speaking in a heavy Louisiana accent, asked me what I thought of a nearby college. I responded with something innocuous because I didn't know much about it. He replied "The Gators are a real good team. Real good." As he walked away, I noticed something green snaking out from under the little girl's dress ... an alligator tail. That made me look at the boys and their father and I could tell that they had more in the backs of their pants that normal.

We headed for the college town he mentioned and found ... well, I'm not quite sure what we found but that man's family had been cursed with alligator tails at that place long ago. Somehow the church had obtained the altar ...probably had broken up the coven. I had a vision of the little girl on the altar while we tried to the remove the curse from her ... and only her?

I'm thinking that my sleeping mind planned that the family felt that the alligator tails were fine for the men in the family but that this was the first girl in a long while and the father wanted to give her as much of a chance at a "normal life" as he could.

Chapter 1: Borderscry
Chapter 2: Reports
Chapter 3: Christmas Dance
"Chapter 4: Folklore
CHAPTER 5 - History

Yule, 21 December
Buck County

Sanderson waited until they were underway before asking, "Wanna tell me exactly why we're investigating a report of snowfall?" When Murdock didn't answer immediately, she added, "It's not exactly a crime, you know. Even in the South. And if it were, we can't exactly arrest Jack Frost."

( Read more... )

White Hart Leap

Chapter 1: Borderscry
Chapter 2: Reports
Chapter 3: Christmas Dance

CHAPTER 4 - Folklore

Yule, 21 December
The Broom Closet
Bowling Green, Buck County

It was the evening of the longest night of the year and I was looking forward to a quiet Solstice celebration, my second alone. The shop was full of Christmas shoppers, looking for unusual gifts for the hard-to-buy-for.

One of the really nice things about the here and now is that we don't have to hide. Witchcraft is a religion in this section of Mortalrie, protected like any other. I called my little place "The Broom Closet" ... with permission ... after the ubiquitous supply store in the Borderlands. Unlike the real store, my stock consisted of the pretty and delicate charms and sigils. Jewelry, decorations, candles, incense. Very few potions or herbs.

I was assisting a customer when it happened.

( Read more... )

Chapter 5: History

Chapter 1: Borderscry
Chapter 2: Reports

Chapter 3: Christmas Dance

Yule, 21 December
Buck County

Christmas music pouring out of the radio, Buck bawling out the words, keeping time slapping his palm against the dash in front of him. Snow hitting the windshield, fat and wet and heavy. Jace Walker wondered how he'd gotten sucked into making the liquor run for Big Mike's Christmas party.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it SNOOOOWWWWW!" Buck roared, beating a rolling rapid tempo to end. He let himself fall back against the seat, snorting with laughter. Turning around, he dug into the crates and came up with another bottle. "Hey Jace, ol' buddy ol' pal, you wanna snort?" he asked waving the bottle of whisky toward him.

"Naw, I'm good. Snow's coming down hard."

( Read more... )

Chapter 4: Legends

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kimurho

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