Ring Shopping ~ 11/30/2018

I dreamed that I was newly engaged, and shopping for rings. We were in Australia, and had to take a helicopter to the jewelry store. It was remote and hard to get to, br it was the closest one, and it was world famous.

We flew across a desert flat spotted with a few sparse, dark green trees, then over a bare, bone pale karst highland. Finally, we wove through jagged peaks of rust red streaked with ochre gold to land in a tawny landscape, dry and dusty, with a few palm trees clustered around an oasis spring, and a large red clay building that was the jewelry store.

I had brought two small sapphires I had from my grandmother, mounted in a mock-up of a ring design I’d come up with. I wanted to have them flanking a slightly larger center stone, nothing too big, and NOT a diamond. The ring would be in platinum, and would be molded such that the prongs holding the stones wouldn’t just stick out of the band, but would sweep out of it like little blades of grass bending up around flowers.

The salesperson we had our appointment with took one look at my design and completely vetoed it as too plain and dowdy for their store to be associated with. She tried instead to sell us a ring from a collection of mixed yellow and red gold, where fans and frills of thin golden strips swept up from the bands, like butterfly wings, or the swirling fin of an ornamental goldfish, or a sailfish sail. I was not at all interested, as I wanted something small and low profile. So we left.

We were planning to stay for a few days in the town, so I gave it some thought, and we went back the next day with no appointment, just to browse the store. I decided I did like their signature red and yellow gold streaked metal. It was unique, and echoed the mountains around the town. I thought maybe a delicate band with a few very small rubies might be nice. But when we walked in, the first ruby rings we saw were huge stones set in platinum. To me they looked an awful lot like the ring the sales lady had said they wouldn’t make. I was going to keep looking, but then I woke up.

TBTT#39 The Affairs of Dragons ~ 4/30/2018

I dreamed I learned I was a member of a secret magical order. There was a hidden world of lush, emerald mossy rock and ghostly pale marble ruins, a land of mist and silence and hidden depth. There was a certain pool, at the top of a rocky hill, surrounded by marble columns supporting an arched roof. Broad marble steps descended in concentric rings down into the dark, still water. If members of my order came under the shadow of this temple roof and bent to drink the water, most would become black-robed warriors, but a rare few, maybe one in a thousand, would become dragons.

I found myself in this world for the first time, having slipped in sideways somehow while running from some men who were trying to attack me. One moment I was pelting down a grimy sidewalk, and dodging into a dark alley, when suddenly I was in a valley like a shallow jade bowl filled with cloud. The light was like silver and pearls, and I was drawn into the mist until I found the pool. Seven other people were there, all looking just as bemused as I felt, we felt compelled to drink, and then we changed.

My companions drew weapons and charged off down the hill and up out of the valley to combat invaders that were menacing villages and markets in the American Southwest, and I… I spread vast crimson wings and rose into the air above them. We burst out of a cave into a desert canyon lined with stalls of daub and wattle and thatch. Dark haired villagers were running for cover as armored attackers tore down their stalls, upturned their tables, scattered and trampled their goods.

Then they saw me, and began to shout. I inhaled deeply, then sent a blast of blazing golden flame across their ranks. I dove down, bent my head down, and skimmed my jaws along the narrow streets, smashing them into stony cliffs, scooping them up and throwing them down into rocky ravines, and the ones that escaped me still had to face my shadowy companions.

When the invaders were routed, we melted into the darkness of night, and faded back into our normal human selves. From that day, we answered to the call, soundless but profound, impossible to ignore. We moved among the members of our order in a hidden cavern compound. I found a place in the vast library, became steeped in the ancient lore of our order. And when we were needed, we knew, and when it was our turn to fight evil, we were called back to the pool.

TBTT#38 Fabulous! ~ 3/30/2017

I dreamed it was take your daughter to work day, and two little girls were designing a new type of valve that I was supposed to write up for them. It was like a gate valve, but instead of a metal plate sliding up and down to shut off flow, they wanted to use a bisexual unicorn centaur. He had gleaming silver flanks, a pearly unicorn head, impressive abs, and a luxurious rainbow mane and tail. It was pretty fabulous. Then I woke up.

This Is the Way the World Ends ~ 8/11/2018

I dreamed I was a high level executive in an important business meeting that had run late into the night. My colleagues and I were gathered around a glass table in the hotel suite of the competitor CEO who had called the meeting. I had just set down the heavy glass tumbler that held the iced water I was drinking when some sort of strange cataclysm happened.

There was no thunderous noise, no flash of light, but suddenly every glass surface filmed over with a strange white scum. Every tumbler, even the ones on a tray by the minibar that we hadn’t used, suddenly held a pulsing little blob of translucent white gel, like a jellyfish condensed to the size of a large marble.

The CEO ran a finger over the filmed glass of the table, trying to find out what the stuff was. He rubbed his fingers together, then raised them toward his face to smell them. Slowly he slumped back into his chair, and his face went slack and still. His eyes glazed, and he spoke the right words to continue the meeting as though nothing had happened, but his voice had gone as flat and expressionless as his face.

We couldn’t see out the windows because they were filmed over, but we began to here skidding, crashing cars and panicked screams floating up from the streets, and the little jelly lumps pulsed and wiggled in our glasses. From a corner of the windows, a band of what looked like rusted metal began to spread over the walls of the room, leaving a coarse, brown residue over every surface, not just the glass. At that point, I bolted out of the room.

I ran and ran, out of the city, until I was up into high meadows where no glass windows or metal beams caught the soft light of the rising sun. There was just soft, green grass, rippling in the breeze, and I slumped down on a hilltop to rest. My heart rate and breathing slowed, the sun rose higher above the hills, and the only sound was the gentle swoosh of the long grasses in the wind.

Theeeeen it occurred to me that it was odd that there was no birdsong, no butterflies or grasshoppers, that I was literally the only creature stirring as far as I could see. And as I looked back the way I had come, the green horizon began to dull, going dead and dark and brown like the edges of a fallen leaf. The blue sky was filming over with a white scum that wasn’t mist or cloud, and a strange, faint rattle could be heard from the base of my hill. It got louder and louder, but at first I couldn’t make out what it was in the haze.

Then I saw them. Thousands of dried up skeletons were running up the hill toward me. I leapt to my feet and began to run again, but there was no way I was going to escape. Then I woke up.

Least Relaxing Vacation Ever ~ 8/8/2018

I dreamed I was on a long holiday in the UK with my mother and sister. We'd traveled in the south of England, and up into Scotland, and we were traveling down through northern England on our way to Wales. We were in Nottingham, and we were supposed to go to Sheffield, then the Village of Dean, then Stoke-on-Trent, but somehow we were still in Nottingham, and I couldn't seem to get them to understand that we needed to leave.

The town itself was all red brick and dark slate, with golden tan bricks laid into the walls in decorative patterns. We were staying in a half timber cottage southwest of town. We were supposed to go into town to see the cathedral, then take a train west from the Common Street station, which was not too far from the cathedral. But when I told them, they said we'd just go see the cathedral tomorrow.

I tried to explain that we couldn't stay any longer. We were in an Air BnB, and the next guests had been waiting outside for us to leave all morning. I was all packed to go, but they hadn't packed, and couldn't seem to hear me when I said anything about leaving.

I finally left the cottage to go for a walk to calm down and figure things out. I confirmed over and over again that it was August 8, and that this was the day we caught the train to Wales. We had already been supposed to do Sheffield and Dean Stoke, but somehow we'd stayed in Nottingham too long and had completely missed our days to do that, so we'd have to go straight to Wales.

I was trying to make sure we'd make all of the rest of our stops when a group of cyclists came down the road and I needed to step up onto the verge. Then a battered white car came by close behind them. Then, as I gazed back toward the cottage, a huge black mushroom cloud of dirt and ash billowed up into the sky out of the field beyond it, followed only an instant later by a deafening BOOM. Another and another sprang up, and the entire world seemed to shake and thunder with the blasts. The cottage wasn't hit, but the high whine of aircraft droned overhead and the bombs were getting closer and closer to me, and I began to run south, trying to get out of the way and not get blown up. Then I woke up.

Rotten Melons and Diner Donnie ~ 7/21/2018

I dreamed I was just getting back from a marching band road trip where I’d had an adventure. I’d gotten zapped into a dimension where I had to solve a mystery as part of a team of young Star Wars characters. We were looking for clues in this creepy old cemetery at night, and we became part of the legends of hauntings when the groundskeeper saw us.

Somehow I’d managed to bring back a coconut, two watermelons, and some potted plants from this other dimension, so I planted them in my mom’s back yard. The watermelon turned out awful, but the coconut started growing into a tree.

Then I went with a friend to 59 Diner, and while we were eating, Donald Trump came in. Apparently he planned to eat there between rallies. He looked over at my friend and me, and he must have decided we looked like trouble, because he asked the manager to have us removed. I decided I was NOT leaving until I’d finished my pancakes, and maybe I’d have a few cups of coffee after that, and if they called the police on me, I’d videotape it on my phone, and show the world how “Diner Donnie” was too good to eat at a table next to two liberal women minding their own business. But then I woke up.

TBTT#37 A Series of Batshit Crazy Events ~ 3/16/3017

March 16, 2017

I dreamed that I was staying with my grandmother, and a few cousins and I were hanging out in the garage at night with the lights off. I could see a large but vague shadow come into the garage. I was sure, from what I could make out, that it was a cougar. I reached for a pellet gun, just in case, and turned on the flashlight app for my iPhone. In the diffuse, cold light, flaming orange striped with black flared into visibility, and a tiger sprang up from where it had been lying on the cool concrete and sped out of the garage into the yard.

We all ran to the garage door, and I shone my light out into the yard, and there were more tigers, and lions, and bears. And we all said, “Oh my!” in unison.

The next day, I traveled to Castroville for a high school reunion. It was still early in the morning when I got there, and I was really hungry, so I stopped at a Burger King for some breakfast. But my order just wouldn’t ring up right, no matter what I tried to order, or what the cashier did. I *knew* $25 was too much for pancakes, though, and the line behind me was getting really long. As I left, defeated and unfed, one of the other employees started yelling at me about how rude I was to not make up my mind and let the line get like that. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault, but she just kept berating me. And somehow she told the whole town, because after that, I passed a number of my old classmates, and said hello, but they pretended not to know me, or only barely remember me, even when I told them who I was. One of them finally said, okay, we’ll say hello to you on the street, but don’t act like we’re your friends.

So I headed out of town and ended up at a big, gloomy old hotel. There was an Amish family staying there, and the mother wanted her daughters to have nothing to do with me. I had to stay there for a few days while I conducted some sort of business dealing, and I tried going back to the Burger King, too, and finally got my breakfast to ring up correctly, but the family just seemed to get weirder and weirder.

The girls seemed to really like me, and wanted to talk to me, but they’d run and hide if their mother came calling. Finally one night they showed up, and they had both cut their hair to be short like mine! I knew there’d be trouble after that, and sure enough, their mother came raging at me for corrupting her daughters. She was much taller than me, and she grabbed me by the shoulders and leaned down right into my face and starting yelling at me to confess my “unclean acts”.

I tried over and over to tell her that actually all my acts were pretty squeaky clean, and I certainly hadn’t *told* her daughters to cut their hair. Finally she seemed to calm down, and said, very quietly, “Okay. Okay.” She sighed and put her hands on my cheeks, holding my head, and then she began to change.

Her face stayed right in front of mine, but her body sort of unfolded around her, and began curling in thick tentacles across the lawn and up into the big old tree beside the hotel, that we were standing under. Her hands turned into wiry tendrils that were twisted strands of bright blue and green sinew, and ropes of the same sprang from the nape of her neck. These looped themselves in the branch overhead, and began to come back down to wind around my neck. I fought them off, and found I could pinch them apart in my fingers. I kept struggling and pinching and yelling, and then I woke up.