Athame versus Wand

Sibling, Mahadevi, Anjie, and a couple other dream characters, were on a road trip to the beach. I had a deja vu moment, in the dream, and "remembered" the "dream I had before" (waking life note: I never had such a dream) that made me have that deja vu moment: It was a dream that we murdered someone.

We came up to an abandoned mill, came in, explored it. Somehow, Anjie's hat caught fire and I burned my lower back. We went to apologize to the proprietress of the inn/mill, and she... ran off to get a knife to kill us with.

She must have been silly enough to announce what she was planning, or maybe Mahadevi read her mind, or I recalled my "precognitive dream" again-- whatever, we just started running. When we came into the kitchen, Mahadevi and I began scanning the place for some reason, and from there we gleaned that the woman had been abused by her husband. This was why she was reacting so violently, because she was used to the violence by now and would be lost without it... since her husband was deceased.

I relayed the message to the rest of the group, who all stood in awkward silence-- and then the woman burst in through the kitchen door, screaming, and leaped for Mahadevi. As Mahadevi wrestled to turn her knife away, both her arms were occupied... I found I had a wood pencil in my hand. Under the ribcage and angled up into the heart, once and again, and again-- I stabbed her, quick and desperate stabs just to make sure she stopped attacking us.

There wasn't much blood, but she died anyway. I felt stunned and horrified at what I'd done, and a little annoyed with myself-- like I'd made a mistake that I'd been reminded not to make before.

We carried the body to the room above the stairs, empty but for a window-seat, by a window of lightly-stained glass that took up a whole wall. It looked a little like a home-cathedral. There we laid the body out, and I called for the angel from the falsely recalled precognitive dream I had of this event, "Isolde!" (waking life note: Isolde? ...Seriously? Couldn't have been Virgil? Or, a name that ends in -el, that gives some ancient Kabbalic oomph...? No?) Isolde didn't come.

On the bus ride to the beach, I watched out the window and thought about how little free will we have when an attack like that comes so suddenly. Sure, we were warned that we would commit a murder, and that she would try to attack us, and even that she would do it because her husband was abusive... but the moment of choice itself happened so suddenly, in a situation so high-pressure, that I couldn't think of it happening any other way. Still, I felt, I should have been more... more constructive and compassionate, and proactive. Even if, my logic still maintained, she just had to be stopped.

On the boat ride to the beach, we went around trying not to look suspicious. It was a small harbor-town, after all, surely someone must have noticed she was dead. Nobody had. They noticed a fire (Anjie hid her hat)... but it seemed safe enough that I could talk with Mahadevi about contacting the woman's ghost that night and making sure she made it peacefully to the other side. I kept a lock of the dead woman's hair in my pocket, to link with.

Resting at the actual resort, Mahadevi told me how stupid that was-- I wasn't an experienced ghost-channeler like he was, And he is, too, in waking life I didn't know how much psychic energy it really takes out of you...

"The blossom was ready to fall," said Mahadevi. "We merely pruned it for the good of the vine."
"You're just saying that because she attacked you," I said, "But she should have died a natural death. At least we should make the effort to give her a peaceful rest in the after--"
Mahadevi called over to our host: "What happens when people die a natural death, like of old age, in this town?"
"It's their eyes..." our host replied, shaking his head, sad and haunted, "They go either cross-eyed or wall-eyed. It's a good thing these islands have animal predators like sharks, to give us a dignified passing."

I looked askance at him.


We spent the rest of the day in the dream touring the islands. The sun was shining, the waves were easy, the sea-salt mild... the day faded into night, and veils of stars settled in a sort of dome around the beach-resort. I remember we walked through this star-veil dome, and I could feel the coolness of the diamond-lights spackle the skin, so it was no longer dry from the sea air or oily from tanning lotion and sweat. We looked back at the curtain of stars we walked through to see the marvelous illusion of bright constellations filling the royal blue sky. It had been a lovely trip -- too good for murderers. Okay, technically I was the murderer.

I went to "sleep" "that night," and I don't know if this counts as lucid, but I deliberately used this dream-within-a-dream to meet with the ghost of the woman, and for both of us to explore what would have happened if I did it another way.

Back in the dream of the dream-kitchen, she yowled like a cat and leaped for Mahadevi, who stopped her arms and tried to turn the knife towards her. There was a pencil in my hand.

"Look at me!" I shouted, ducking past the struggling pair and out the screen door that the woman burst in through. "Look, I'm escaping! Are you just going to let me escape?"

I looked back, to my dismay seeing Mahadevi on the ground with a fatal gash up his torso, and the crazy woman yowling and coming for me.

I flew, changing form as I did. It was a form I had fancied taking during astral projections but just never got around to shapeshifting into: a witch from His Dark Materials, in teal ragged silks instead of black ragged silks of the book, or the gray-blue dresses they had in the movie. Sometimes... though I wasn't paying too much attention... I'd find myself riding a cloud-pine.

I'm pretty sure I started flying a lot faster after taking on this form. I can't usually fly fast in dreams, I just sort of bob and sway. So, even if I got a little confused again whether I wanted to do an astral projection task or a lucid dream task... it's great that I discovered this neat dream-flying technique!

Anyway, she flew after me, with her knife.

"Isolde!" I cried out again, into the sky, "Isolde, to me! Come to me! Heal her with Love!"

This time, a wisp of an umber-winged humanoid form appeared between us. The woman cackled madly at the wisp and slashed through it with her knife. Isolde dissipated.

"Aw, crap..." I whined, very unlike the noble, elfin His Dark Materials witches whose speech I had just been imitating. I nocked an arrow in my bow, and started shooting while flying backwards, trying to get the arrows up the witch's arm so she'd drop her knife, but the arrows passed right through her. "Double crap." Yes, she was a ghost, but this was the dream-world, where we should have been on even footing! So to speak.

I turned my attention to flying away as fast as I could, but she overtook me, and we grappled each other high in the air. The point of the knife was being forced close to my face, as she cackled, yowled, and cackled again like an old fairy-tale witch. It was highly annoying.

"Would... you... STOP THAT!!" I shouted, twisting the knife from her hand. I stabbed her with it, but it seemed I didn't need to because as soon as the knife was out of her grasp, she howled and began falling to earth.

I looked at the knife in my hand. It felt ugly. I just wanted to drop it but I was afraid it would land on someone-- the kitchen knife's own evil, combined with the velocity of it falling from this height, could very likely strike through like a key and unlock an apocalyptic force inside whoever it hit.

And the woman's ghost still wasn't at peace.

I sighed, and reached my mind out into the dreamscape for Mahadevi.

"Can we try that again?" I asked.


We were back in the kitchen, our group standing in awkward silence. I thought I had formed it wrong when I saw myself standing there, but I walked through Anjie and sighed with relief, because that meant we were "invisible" -- these were just models, like pegs in a battle plan.

"Now watch this," I told Mahadevi, as the 'hologram'-woman yowled and leaped for Mahadevi's 'hologram'-self. Well, really we were the holograms... but anyway, "Fight or lure her away. What else could I do?"

Mahadevi, watching beside me, moved the 'hologram'-me to run for the front door rather than the kitchen door. "She's crazy and stupid, thinking she can catch you by going out the kitchen door and running around the house to the front. But, it's a straight path for you-- while she has to run around the house. You get away free. See? Smart."

"But you're still dead! What about Anjie, and Sibling, and Kara, and Zaine?" I exclaimed, scrapping the plan with my mind and moving all the holograms back into the original position. I sat down and pondered...

And woke up. I felt sad. Just sad. Very simple and pure, sad. Eventually, I began to feel much better, empowered as if it were a real lucid dream, because, hey, I beat the evil witch! Twice! This is my favorite dream!





Just like in Mirrormask, I can't seem to think up of anything cooler to do with my lucid dreams, lately, than give myself superpowers to use in a plot that's already there. I can't seem to change the plot itself. Whether that's my psyche telling me that I am "living lucidly" but using my new awareness for base reasons and forgetting the big picture, or... I'm just not that advanced yet, I don't know. Notably, I asked Mahadevi what he dreamed that night, and he said that he had suffered from sleep paralysis and dreamt of being imprisoned. So, except for perhaps the emotion of the dream, and despite that it was loaded with paranormal elements, this was certainly not a shared dream.