WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I CAUGHT UP
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7. Spell
“Sometimes the most gratifying dreams are those which take the form of wish-fulfillment. This one was of this sortL simple and powerful and evocative, the kind one wishes were prophetic.
I dreamt of myself, first and foremost. My body hummed, the universe drawing breath through me. My words dripped fire and light, and my hand-signs shaped life and matter indiscriminately. The object of my ire, I made him into a pillar of salt. Those close to the heart, I spoke spells into being that girded them from harm evermore. Everything in perfection, through magic, and my own raw power.
Like all fantasies of those laid low, it left a bitter taste in the mouth upon waking. A longing unable to be sated.”
8. Alchemy
“I made peace with the fact that some dreams are both composed of the mundane, and can be nightmares. Imagined horrors are not the only cause for worry. Sometimes the nocturnal mind shows us dangers entirely possible, and even likely with too much incaution. I comment on the following dream:
I was in the basement of my sister’s home, mixing various powders and liquids. One of the vials must have been improperly labeled, for when I mixed it with a certain clear liquid, instead of making a disinfectant salve, the entire room burst into flames. Scrambling at the door to get out as I was licked by flames, lung-burned screaming amidst acrid smoke, all to no avail. I was to die first, and my family to follow.
I woke in a cold sweat and re-organized our entire stock from top to bottom. Twice. “
9.Ornament
“A certain dim scrap of beauty can be witnessed piecemeal while asleep. A dim sweetness, ethereal and strange, almost immediately and entirely gone upon waking up. Useless to study, but the recipient of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ by a dreamer’s eye. This is one such scrap, witnessed during the course of a nocturnal wandering:
I was by the quay in Storm’s Landing. It was a market day, and everything was… intensely beautiful, intensely bright. Gold adorned every beggar’s fingers, diamonds and gems affixed to ears and the corner of nostrils everywhere you looked! Everything was of intricate craftsmanship, delicate and detailed.
I passed by a Jeweler’s stall, then. Before I could even draw breath to wonder aloud what a jeweler would sell to people already so wealthy, a voice rang out from a mass of precious gems and metal behind it: “STARS! SOLID LIGHT! FROST FROM THE BACK OF NOBLE GLACIERS! ORNAMENTS TO FIX INTO YOUR LOVER’S BROW…”
And where I turned my hand to gaze upon the shopkeeper's wares is where the memory of this dream ends. Maddening.”
10. Effigy
“An effigy is much like the images one is served up during a dream: Symbolic stand-ins and pastiches for things that exist, that we treat as real for the purposes of effects that we visit upon them. That is to say: we act on dream-images and effigies, and treat them both as the thing they represent for the purposes of fantasy. This thought occurred to me after this dream, and this dream occurred after reading several bits of folklore dealing with sympathetic ailments…
I dreamt I was looking at a doll. Not just any doll, but one that was meant to be myself. A light chip in the porcelain in the back of its head, a nose fashioned improperly. I frowned. ‘Is that right?’ I wondered aloud to myself, and tried to fix things. As soon as I set about fixing the later, a twist and pull to put things in place, I felt an intense pain in my nose. I let out a scream, and this is when I awoke.
Perhaps my sister is right. I should… get this nose of mine fixed.”
11. Occult
“Occult in the literal sense derives from a word meaning ‘hidden’. In common parlance, it can be spun to mean things that are normally hidden from mortal eyes. I dreamt of this latter ‘occult’ fairly recently, and it went like so:
I dreamt I woke up one morning with an extra eye. Stumbling here and there, about the place, it occurred to me that I wasn’t… seeing anything. There was no new visual quality in the stars above, but something was different. I could smell their movements, or taste their sorrow. I could hear their intentions, and feel in my chest their plans as they wove destinies. All of this or none of this, ineffable intuition. I screeched and i saw it, brushed up against the green confusion, and other equally unnamable sensations. Collapsing to the ground, I woke up shaking."