25.3.09

The Last Night on Earth (dreamtime)

It's the night of December 20th, 2012. I'm at a huge party in a downtown hotel in my dream city. Everyone I know is there, even people I knew in high school and haven't seen since. I spot MHZ in the crowd at several points, although as usual, he's avoiding me and / or being dragged around by the latest psycho girlfriend who's attached herself to him like a leech. I'm shocked at how badly he's aged.

Midnight is fast approaching, and although the exact time of whatever's going to happen is unknown, midnight is as good a time as any to cut loose. We spill out into the parking lot outside and see that the entire front wall of the hotel (a seamless sheet of mirrored, reinforced glass) has shattered into diamond-like cubes all over the pavement, mixing with the snow and glitter from the partygoers.

In less than 10 seconds, I've got little bits of glass in both of my shoes. In less than 20 seconds, the glass bits have put runs in both of my (outrageously expensive) stockings. I sit down on the hood of an expensive-looking sports car and shake the glass out of my shoes. The hotel employees are hanging up giant sheets of mylar (I assume it's mylar - it's got that sort of shiny quality to it) and trying to keep out a horde of people spilling over from another party in a skeevy strip club / swinger bar down the block. Some cops show up and attempt to stop the incipient orgy in the parking lot.

There's a sudden flash of light, and I think this is it, with a weird thrill of mingled anticipation and dread. But it's just the fireworks starting - starbursts of white and violet and green breaking open the sky and glittering in the windows of the skyscrapers and the broken glass on the pavement. The booming of the fireworks is drowned out by a rushing noise, and I turn to look in the direction of the river and see the water creeping up the banks and hundreds of boats floating past with people crowding the decks and waving at everyone onshore.

S. grabs my hand and grins at me.

"Here comes the flood," he says.

22.3.09

Down in the Valley-O (dreamtime)

I'm staying in a village in an isolated valley with a group of friends. Most of them are warriors, and I haven't seen them since we arrived. I assume they're keeping busy hunting and trekking around the valley. For some reason, we can't leave - the villagers are afraid of something on the heights that they won't speak of. Every time I try to walk up the paths towards the valley walls, I get this sick feeling like something's crushing down on me, making it impossible to breathe.

The village has no contact with the outside world. They grow wheat for bread, raise sheep for milk and wool and meat, chickens for eggs, and have vegetable gardens and a small orchard. I have no idea what date it is, only the time of year. There is a small church or temple, but there are no symbols to indicate what faith these people practice, and I can't read their language, although I can speak it, or we speak the same one.

I am getting impatient - we've been stuck here for so long because I burned out all my power in a fight, but now I have recovered, and we should leave. I go to talk to one of the healers, who tells me that my friends have spent the last several weeks at his house after they tried to climb up a ridge. He says he would be happy to let them stay, but he's running out of food. I haven't been aware of any of this, and after giving him pretty much all of the rest of my money, I go off and try to get some answers from the other villagers about what the hell is going on in this valley. Predictably, they close ranks and in a few cases become openly hostile.

The POV switches to a sort of omniscient perspective at this point - I'm with a friend (nobody I recognize from waking life, but I've met her before in dreams) in a big room cluttered with old toys - action figures, Lego pieces, model vehicles of various kinds, and scenery from wargames and dismantled train layouts. I'm looking for fantasy-medieval action figures and accessories to represent my group. Unfortunately, most of the figures are mechs or based on films (Batman, Star Wars, etc.) and are therefore the wrong genre.

Just before I woke up, we were starting up a narrow path zigzagging up the valley wall, and there was a greenish tinge to the sky and a weird crackly feeling in the air like the moment before a lightning strike.