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coraaDream logs, more for my own benefit than anything else, but if you're curious.... One post-magical-apocalypse dark fantasy, one set in a strange valley where the sun has been stolen and kept captive. All relying rather much on dream logic, of course.
The first dream was a couple of days ago, but it still stands out clearly in my mind: it was set after a magical apocalypse that changed every living human into some kind of monster. I was a young woman named Sophia, a harpy. My boyfriend Alexander was a bloodsucker—not exactly a vampire, because there was a split between undead bloodsuckers (vampires) and living bloodsuckers (whatever Alexander was). Out other friends included a witch, a gargoyle, and a young man with horns.
Most of the dreams took place at night; since many of the creatures that people had turned into were unable to bear sunlight (it caused them searing pain), society had shifted to being centered on the night. (They didn't instantly die due to sunlight, but—for instance—gargoyles turned to stone a la the Disney cartoon, bloodsuckers had their willpower considerably reduced to the detriment of those around them, and a good number of creatures suffered searing pain in direct sunlight.) As a harpy, I wasn't subject to that restriction, and so could go about in daylight or in darkness as I chose.
One of the difficult things about the World After was that a sizeable proportion of the population had been transformed into monsters, losing their morality and most of their intelligence and becoming stupid and violently aggressive. Since they had, in living memory been perfectly nice, sane, intelligent humans, there was a significant taboo about killing them, but it was also necessary to keep them from killing you.
Most of the monsters took the form of what, in the dream, were called nightgaunts: blue-skinned humans with bodies twisted into a grotesque, emaciated, quadrupedal form, with long claws and horns but beautiful human faces. Despite their faces they could neither talk or reason, and often attempted to attack other creatures. (I know now that 'nightgaunt' is the name of a Lovecraftian beastie, and I assume my subconscious adopted the name; the nightgaunts of my dream were not quite the same, though: blue rather than black, with beautiful faces rather than being faceless, quadrupedal rather than bipedal, and no wings. Also I don't think that Lovecraft's nightgaunts were mindless monsters.)
Anyway, the five of us were traveling through the nighttime city when we were attacked by a nightgaunt. Alexander fought the nightgaunt off—but he deliberately killed it, a major taboo in two ways: one, as I mentioned before, the society had qualms about killing once-human monsters in deference to their humanity; two, bloodsuckers had a particular ethical code by which they never killed, and only fed on blood that was harvested nonlethally and paid a fair price for. (Most of us made some money on the side selling blood to the bloodsuckers.) In his shame, he fled.
We found him weeks later, where he'd taken up with a nolife woman. (The nolifes were among the undead, dead people who [unlike zombies] kept their mental faculties and didn't decay, and were generally quite beautiful [unlike bloodsuckers/vampires, who were no better looking than anyone else], but who lived on the life force of others. Energy vampires, I guess. I'm fairly sure I based the nolife, mentally, on the Velvets from Neverwhere.) He was living with the nolife woman because he was so ashamed of having killed the nightgaunt; a nolife wouldn't tempt him to violence because she had no blood to drink. So he could live "safely" with the nolife, and she could feed on his life energy while he did odd jobs and bought blood legally.
Had that just been it, that would have been all we could do: I missed Alexander, but if he'd chosen to live with her, well, that was his choice. But there was more to the story than that: the nolifes were trying to recruit the bloodsuckers, one by one, because they were afraid of a greater menace rising beneath the city....
And that was when I woke up.
The second dream was last night's dream, set in a strange, mostly-empty valley circumscribed by a wall of white light. I was staying in the Walled Village, an odd enclave made of stone, but stone formed in organic shapes as if it had grown, and all encircled by a great wall. Though the Walled Village was large enough to hold several hundred people, the only people I ever saw were the Gatekeeper and the Woman. There was never any proper sunrise or sunset; by morning the sky lightened to thin grey dawn, but never to the warmth of the sun, and stayed there until evening when it sank quietly into blue twilight and then the dark of night.
The Gatekeeper was one of two brothers, both sent (or born) to the valley to protect its secrets. He maintained the Walled Village and its visitors. Every day he fed me roast pork and cheese and bread, and every night he made up a bed of sheepskin for me, kindled my fire, and poured me a drink of warm wine and herbs. But he ate only broth, slept on a bed of dried nightflowers (to which he added another fresh handful every night, to dry and build the bed), and drank elixir from a stoppered bottle. The Woman lived in the valley as well, but she made her own bed, and kept her own counsel.
Outside the Walled Village were the Castle, its door bound with six locks; the Cathedral, empty and thin of air; the Clocktower, cold and silent; and the Hermitage, home of the Gatekeeper's brother. Since the Hermit was said to be even less sociable than the Gatekeeper, I was afraid of him, and stayed well away. And there was the Manor, a sprawling house with golden light pouring from its every window and from its courtyard.
"They've trapped the sun within that house," the Woman told me. "She is bound well. That's why there's never any sunrise."
"Who trapped her?" I asked.
She ignored the question. "The moon is still free, but not for long," she said, "and the sun lies dreaming..."
And then I knew without being told that I must free the sun. I must steal the Gatekeeper's nightflowers, broth, and elixir, and make my bed with them; I must befriend the Hermit, for though he was less genial than his brother he was more honest; I must find the six keys to the Castle and fill the vaulted ceiling of the Catherdral; I must restart the Clock; and then, and only then, I could enter the Manor and free the sun... if all went well.
But I woke before I could complete my quest.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth Comment here or there.
comments currently at DW.
The first dream was a couple of days ago, but it still stands out clearly in my mind: it was set after a magical apocalypse that changed every living human into some kind of monster. I was a young woman named Sophia, a harpy. My boyfriend Alexander was a bloodsucker—not exactly a vampire, because there was a split between undead bloodsuckers (vampires) and living bloodsuckers (whatever Alexander was). Out other friends included a witch, a gargoyle, and a young man with horns.
Most of the dreams took place at night; since many of the creatures that people had turned into were unable to bear sunlight (it caused them searing pain), society had shifted to being centered on the night. (They didn't instantly die due to sunlight, but—for instance—gargoyles turned to stone a la the Disney cartoon, bloodsuckers had their willpower considerably reduced to the detriment of those around them, and a good number of creatures suffered searing pain in direct sunlight.) As a harpy, I wasn't subject to that restriction, and so could go about in daylight or in darkness as I chose.
One of the difficult things about the World After was that a sizeable proportion of the population had been transformed into monsters, losing their morality and most of their intelligence and becoming stupid and violently aggressive. Since they had, in living memory been perfectly nice, sane, intelligent humans, there was a significant taboo about killing them, but it was also necessary to keep them from killing you.
Most of the monsters took the form of what, in the dream, were called nightgaunts: blue-skinned humans with bodies twisted into a grotesque, emaciated, quadrupedal form, with long claws and horns but beautiful human faces. Despite their faces they could neither talk or reason, and often attempted to attack other creatures. (I know now that 'nightgaunt' is the name of a Lovecraftian beastie, and I assume my subconscious adopted the name; the nightgaunts of my dream were not quite the same, though: blue rather than black, with beautiful faces rather than being faceless, quadrupedal rather than bipedal, and no wings. Also I don't think that Lovecraft's nightgaunts were mindless monsters.)
Anyway, the five of us were traveling through the nighttime city when we were attacked by a nightgaunt. Alexander fought the nightgaunt off—but he deliberately killed it, a major taboo in two ways: one, as I mentioned before, the society had qualms about killing once-human monsters in deference to their humanity; two, bloodsuckers had a particular ethical code by which they never killed, and only fed on blood that was harvested nonlethally and paid a fair price for. (Most of us made some money on the side selling blood to the bloodsuckers.) In his shame, he fled.
We found him weeks later, where he'd taken up with a nolife woman. (The nolifes were among the undead, dead people who [unlike zombies] kept their mental faculties and didn't decay, and were generally quite beautiful [unlike bloodsuckers/vampires, who were no better looking than anyone else], but who lived on the life force of others. Energy vampires, I guess. I'm fairly sure I based the nolife, mentally, on the Velvets from Neverwhere.) He was living with the nolife woman because he was so ashamed of having killed the nightgaunt; a nolife wouldn't tempt him to violence because she had no blood to drink. So he could live "safely" with the nolife, and she could feed on his life energy while he did odd jobs and bought blood legally.
Had that just been it, that would have been all we could do: I missed Alexander, but if he'd chosen to live with her, well, that was his choice. But there was more to the story than that: the nolifes were trying to recruit the bloodsuckers, one by one, because they were afraid of a greater menace rising beneath the city....
And that was when I woke up.
The second dream was last night's dream, set in a strange, mostly-empty valley circumscribed by a wall of white light. I was staying in the Walled Village, an odd enclave made of stone, but stone formed in organic shapes as if it had grown, and all encircled by a great wall. Though the Walled Village was large enough to hold several hundred people, the only people I ever saw were the Gatekeeper and the Woman. There was never any proper sunrise or sunset; by morning the sky lightened to thin grey dawn, but never to the warmth of the sun, and stayed there until evening when it sank quietly into blue twilight and then the dark of night.
The Gatekeeper was one of two brothers, both sent (or born) to the valley to protect its secrets. He maintained the Walled Village and its visitors. Every day he fed me roast pork and cheese and bread, and every night he made up a bed of sheepskin for me, kindled my fire, and poured me a drink of warm wine and herbs. But he ate only broth, slept on a bed of dried nightflowers (to which he added another fresh handful every night, to dry and build the bed), and drank elixir from a stoppered bottle. The Woman lived in the valley as well, but she made her own bed, and kept her own counsel.
Outside the Walled Village were the Castle, its door bound with six locks; the Cathedral, empty and thin of air; the Clocktower, cold and silent; and the Hermitage, home of the Gatekeeper's brother. Since the Hermit was said to be even less sociable than the Gatekeeper, I was afraid of him, and stayed well away. And there was the Manor, a sprawling house with golden light pouring from its every window and from its courtyard.
"They've trapped the sun within that house," the Woman told me. "She is bound well. That's why there's never any sunrise."
"Who trapped her?" I asked.
She ignored the question. "The moon is still free, but not for long," she said, "and the sun lies dreaming..."
And then I knew without being told that I must free the sun. I must steal the Gatekeeper's nightflowers, broth, and elixir, and make my bed with them; I must befriend the Hermit, for though he was less genial than his brother he was more honest; I must find the six keys to the Castle and fill the vaulted ceiling of the Catherdral; I must restart the Clock; and then, and only then, I could enter the Manor and free the sun... if all went well.
But I woke before I could complete my quest.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth Comment here or there.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 07:55 pm (UTC)Last dream I remembered, a raccoon was trying to come in the window (the one the Pook looks at the raccoons from). It was a very funny dream, me trying to push away the little raccoons paws, but I had a strong suspicion that this was not actually my own dream, but stolen from my dawg, which added to the hilarity. I woke up laughing.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 08:04 pm (UTC)