I dreamed I was staying at a hotel in San Antonio, during a convention to decide who to support in the approaching battle for the kingship. I had gone back in time to the 1920's to help bring about the outcome that would be best for the future of the country. Robert Baratheon had died, and his son Joffrey had been pretty awful, so I went back to the time period to support either his brother Renly or his brother-in-law Tyrion, once I figured out which one was better.
The battle came before I was sure, but I joined in with one of the platoons massed against Joffrey. There I came face to face with my sister, who had come back in time and become Brienne of Tarth. We recognized each other just as the battle begun, and we were swept down a rock beach into the waves to drive off a force that was trying to come ashore by stealth and cut us off from the main body of troops. All I remembered of the battle was how beautiful the pearl-white foam was, that frothed and splashed around my ankles, before the water turned scarlet with blood.
After the battle, when Joffrey had been defeated, we set Renly up as king, but I had a sneaking suspicion that he might have had a hand in Robert's death, and that Tyrion would be the better choice. But of course, I couldn't be sure that it hadn't been Tyrion who had killed the king, either, so I needed to stick around to find out. It turned out that both Brienne and I had been secret daughters of Robert Baratheon, though we had known all along he was our father. When I told a story in a tavern of the nightmares I had about how my father had died, my sister became furious, because her nightmares were so much worse. It seemed like a strange thing to fight over, but I wondered if we might use the fight to our advantage. Maybe we could watch Renly and Tyrion as the rumors spread, and see which acted guiltiest.
But before any of that could come about, I found out that Tyrion had been captured by a sea hag, and was enslaved on her shrimp trawler, doomed to fish up lost souls and dead crustaceans. I sneaked aboard and helped Tyrion overthrow the sea hag, and we brought her ship back into port. It was full of the most amazing aquariums, that seemed empty at first, but then burst into life with dozens of small fish, all different shapes and sizes, but all shining silver, with dark or bright spots or streaks based on their kind. We carefully moved one old goldfish into a new tank. I had to reach in to free him from some gravel that had slid over his fins, and suddenly his tank blossomed with bright green water grasses, tiny iridescent snails, and fast growing hermit crabs.
There was another tank that had frogs in it, and one bright green tree frog kept getting out. We didn't want the free-roaming lobsters that skittered across the floors to eat him, so we kept putting him back and trying to figure out how to secure his tank. There was a tiny gap at the top, to let the water hoses in, that he kept climbing through. If we shut the lit tight enough that he couldn't get out, it slowed the water flow, and the level in the tank dropped, and that wasn't good either. I think we finally fixed things with duct tape.
I don't remember exactly how we fixed it, though, because night had fallen, and the full moon was rising, and the lobsters were coming into shore. We were docked at a long pier by then, and we went out onto the deck and looked out to sea. The water was still and calm with barely any waves, but there were small, triangular ripples on the surface, all pointing into shore. As each neared, I called my sister over and pointed to the enormous lobster swimming just beneath the surface. The smallest of them was a foot and a half long, and their tails were at least six inches thick at the base. As we watched them, my sister pointed to some pale shapes closer to shore, and we walked out onto the pier and up toward the beach to see what they were.
They were dead bodies, being swept in on the small current created by the lobster migration. At least one was a woman, her pale, bloated face and hands poking out of a pink sweater, and her blond hair fanning out on the ripples. The other two were just barely-recognizable limbs, and as we watched, another began to surface. Then I woke up.
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