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3rdragonI went to the shapenote sing last night. It was a wonderful, enthusiastic, wild roller-coaster of music. It reminded me of home. It reminded me of the first time I sight-read the Hallelujah Chorus.
I dreamed last night. The first dream was like checking into the Rialto for a Quantum Physicists convention. For those of you who don't get that reference, it was like trying to get a room at the Hotel Babylon. And for those of you who don't get that reference either, I suppose that I'll just have to explain the dream.
I was an artist named Helen staying at a posh hotel, and needed to talk to the front desk about something relating to my room. So I called the desk from the phone in my room, and told them that I was in room such-and-such and needed blah. To which the android at the front desk replied, "There is no occupant listed for that room."
My response was, "But I'm in it! I'm calling from it. You assigned it to me."
And her apologetic, android voice told me, "I'm sorry, but there is no occupant listed for that room."
So I said, "How about Helen Lastname?"
"There is no reservation under that name."
. . .
I fished out my ticket, or printout, or whatever, and gave her my second reservation number (the first one hadn't worked at check-in, and they'd given me a new one). "Why don't you check under reservation 244?"
"There is no reservation under that number."
I tried the first one, "Reservation 2476?"
"I'm sorry, that room is reserved for Helen, Original Designs by."
"But that's me," I protested, "I'm Helen, Original Designs by."
"I'm sorry, there is no reservation under that name."
And I woke up, and my feet were cold, and it was shortly before six.
The funny thing is that while I was Helen, and it was me doing and saying these things, emotionally I was entirely detached, and was, perhaps myself, but certainly an impartial observer, who was only mildly interested in Helen getting the whatever she needed. Good thing, too; if I'd cared about the dream, it would probably have been quite frustrating. As it was, it was merely amusing.
In my second dream I was some sort of adventurer-analog of myself, traveling with a trusty companion and a mook-with-backstory. The trusty companion was rather like having an extra shadow who had mass. He didn't do or say much except for when I needed a second pair of hands or someone to hold the horses or someone at which to explain relevant plot detail. The mook-with-backstory was of rather less than human intelligence and rather more than human agility, but I don't remember why because I've forgotten all of the backstory.
At any rate, I believe that we were dealing with some sort of Undead Menace. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I do know that people were showing up dead or unconscious, and if they were unconscious we didn't particularly care except to move them to somewhere where they wouldn't be in the way and wouldn't get hurt, but if they were dead - or would soon be dead - there was something particular that needed to be done or else Terrible Things would happen (only I don't remember what).
So. We were patrolling the city looking for dead or unconscious people, by which I mean that trusty companion and I were riding around and mook-with-backstory was clambering over walls and around obstacles and looking everywhere that wasn't easy to see from street-level. I was talking to trusty companion about mercy killings for horses, and honestly don't remember what my point was at all or if it would make any sense under the light of day, but it perhaps had something to do with horses being poor invalids. Then mwb called out that he'd found a woman, and I left trusty companion watching the horses while I went over to the wall up to the next level of the city (where mwb was_ and asked if she had any vital signs. Then I had to explain how people tell if someone is dead to mwb, and he said that she was. So I started climbing up the wall so that I could do whatever ritual needed to be done to dead people, and mwb dropped the second knife down to me because he wouldn't need it since she was dead, and therefore wasn't in danger of imminent death, and therefore didn't need to be killed so that she didn't die later and remain a corpse without the proper rituals. I paused in climbing to catch the knife, and trusty companion was very impressed, but it wasn't much of a feat because it was only a butter knife (it was, in fact, one of the two butter knives that I've borrowed from the Chapel kitchen and intended to return last night but forgot to), however, it was also a knife that would have been suitable for administering mercy killings to horses had such a thing been necessary. I'm not quite sure how that worked, but hey, it was a dream.
So I got over the wall while trusty companion led the horses up the long way, and sure enough, there was a woman lying on the steps of a veranda. I got out whatever materials I needed for the ritual (I think that salt was one of them, and perhaps fire was another). Then the woman moved, and it turned out that she had only been unconscious, not dead, and that mwb was really bad at reading vital signs. So I put away the stuff I had been getting out, and by that point trusty companion and the horses had showed up. I figured that we had better take the woman somewhere safe and give her some rudimentary instruction on how to protect herself because she was liable to get killed by the menace if she went around hanging out on exposed porches. So we convinced the woman to come with us, but she hadn't even gotten off the steps before she screamed and demanded to know how we had made that facsimile of a dead body. I was momentarily very puzzled, because while we had discussed facsimile dead bodies as a possible way to deal with the menace, we had decided that they wouldn't be effective and so hadn't made any. And then I realized that she was pointing at her shadow, and said to myself, ay yi yi, this is going to be a long trip.
My response to her reaction to sunlight and shadows is another reason that I suspect the menace may have been undead; I seemed to feel that being scared of sunlight was a hindrance in multiple ways beyond the fact that we needed to go through a sunny day to get wherever we were going to take her.
And then my alarm was going off and the construction was in full swing outside, and it was time to get up.
I dreamed last night. The first dream was like checking into the Rialto for a Quantum Physicists convention. For those of you who don't get that reference, it was like trying to get a room at the Hotel Babylon. And for those of you who don't get that reference either, I suppose that I'll just have to explain the dream.
I was an artist named Helen staying at a posh hotel, and needed to talk to the front desk about something relating to my room. So I called the desk from the phone in my room, and told them that I was in room such-and-such and needed blah. To which the android at the front desk replied, "There is no occupant listed for that room."
My response was, "But I'm in it! I'm calling from it. You assigned it to me."
And her apologetic, android voice told me, "I'm sorry, but there is no occupant listed for that room."
So I said, "How about Helen Lastname?"
"There is no reservation under that name."
. . .
I fished out my ticket, or printout, or whatever, and gave her my second reservation number (the first one hadn't worked at check-in, and they'd given me a new one). "Why don't you check under reservation 244?"
"There is no reservation under that number."
I tried the first one, "Reservation 2476?"
"I'm sorry, that room is reserved for Helen, Original Designs by."
"But that's me," I protested, "I'm Helen, Original Designs by."
"I'm sorry, there is no reservation under that name."
And I woke up, and my feet were cold, and it was shortly before six.
The funny thing is that while I was Helen, and it was me doing and saying these things, emotionally I was entirely detached, and was, perhaps myself, but certainly an impartial observer, who was only mildly interested in Helen getting the whatever she needed. Good thing, too; if I'd cared about the dream, it would probably have been quite frustrating. As it was, it was merely amusing.
In my second dream I was some sort of adventurer-analog of myself, traveling with a trusty companion and a mook-with-backstory. The trusty companion was rather like having an extra shadow who had mass. He didn't do or say much except for when I needed a second pair of hands or someone to hold the horses or someone at which to explain relevant plot detail. The mook-with-backstory was of rather less than human intelligence and rather more than human agility, but I don't remember why because I've forgotten all of the backstory.
At any rate, I believe that we were dealing with some sort of Undead Menace. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I do know that people were showing up dead or unconscious, and if they were unconscious we didn't particularly care except to move them to somewhere where they wouldn't be in the way and wouldn't get hurt, but if they were dead - or would soon be dead - there was something particular that needed to be done or else Terrible Things would happen (only I don't remember what).
So. We were patrolling the city looking for dead or unconscious people, by which I mean that trusty companion and I were riding around and mook-with-backstory was clambering over walls and around obstacles and looking everywhere that wasn't easy to see from street-level. I was talking to trusty companion about mercy killings for horses, and honestly don't remember what my point was at all or if it would make any sense under the light of day, but it perhaps had something to do with horses being poor invalids. Then mwb called out that he'd found a woman, and I left trusty companion watching the horses while I went over to the wall up to the next level of the city (where mwb was_ and asked if she had any vital signs. Then I had to explain how people tell if someone is dead to mwb, and he said that she was. So I started climbing up the wall so that I could do whatever ritual needed to be done to dead people, and mwb dropped the second knife down to me because he wouldn't need it since she was dead, and therefore wasn't in danger of imminent death, and therefore didn't need to be killed so that she didn't die later and remain a corpse without the proper rituals. I paused in climbing to catch the knife, and trusty companion was very impressed, but it wasn't much of a feat because it was only a butter knife (it was, in fact, one of the two butter knives that I've borrowed from the Chapel kitchen and intended to return last night but forgot to), however, it was also a knife that would have been suitable for administering mercy killings to horses had such a thing been necessary. I'm not quite sure how that worked, but hey, it was a dream.
So I got over the wall while trusty companion led the horses up the long way, and sure enough, there was a woman lying on the steps of a veranda. I got out whatever materials I needed for the ritual (I think that salt was one of them, and perhaps fire was another). Then the woman moved, and it turned out that she had only been unconscious, not dead, and that mwb was really bad at reading vital signs. So I put away the stuff I had been getting out, and by that point trusty companion and the horses had showed up. I figured that we had better take the woman somewhere safe and give her some rudimentary instruction on how to protect herself because she was liable to get killed by the menace if she went around hanging out on exposed porches. So we convinced the woman to come with us, but she hadn't even gotten off the steps before she screamed and demanded to know how we had made that facsimile of a dead body. I was momentarily very puzzled, because while we had discussed facsimile dead bodies as a possible way to deal with the menace, we had decided that they wouldn't be effective and so hadn't made any. And then I realized that she was pointing at her shadow, and said to myself, ay yi yi, this is going to be a long trip.
My response to her reaction to sunlight and shadows is another reason that I suspect the menace may have been undead; I seemed to feel that being scared of sunlight was a hindrance in multiple ways beyond the fact that we needed to go through a sunny day to get wherever we were going to take her.
And then my alarm was going off and the construction was in full swing outside, and it was time to get up.
