Dream (no slayers)
Apr. 14th, 2003 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDisturbing, lingering, haunting.
Waive, if you will, the complete unlikelihood of Mirrorthaw and me going camping. We don't and we wouldn't. But nonetheless, there we were out in the woods, at night. With, as it happens, a bunch of other people, and I have no idea who the fuck THEY were.
I had to leave our underground campsite (and I did once go camping in a cave when I was a Girl Scout--and that part ISN'T a dream--so the inherent implausibility quotient has not actually gone up) to find a portajohn (and thank you so very much, subconscious, for rendering THAT as realistically as possible). On the way back, I see these ... things, darting on and off the path. They're ugly, deformed; they have the heads of animals. Also? Not friendly.
I don't know (either in the dream or now, awake and thinking about the dream) why they don't attack me. They mob the campground owner and pull him down. I get away, hide. The owner sees something out of my line of vision and starts screaming. Really screaming. I'm afraid for Mirrorthaw, and I bail. I get back to our underground campsite, and Mirrorthaw and the other campers are gone. Signs of struggle, yada yada. I escape into the woods. These animal-head creatures aren't very bright. They seem to know it and be frustrated by it. They're scary and repulsive, but also intensely sad.
In the morning, I set out to rescue Mirrorthaw. The first person I find to help me is a folklorist, who tells me that these creatures are "The Skin of the Seasons." Southern folklore is full of them, according to what he tells me; they are ... not ghosts, but avatars, embodied nightmares, of animals which humans hunt seasonally (which so far as I know is everything except fish). Also, their leaders--the ones with the ability to plan--are creatures with the heads of wasps. I figure that's what the campground owner saw.
At that point I was starting to lose the dream, so my lucid dreaming instinct took over. I rescued Mirrorthaw and woke up.
I'm not sure if I'm conveying how UNSETTLING this dream was. It wasn't scary--I was never in any real danger, and I knew in the dream that I'd rescue Mirrorthaw all right--but these hunched, squat creatures in the dark, with their misshapen, unnatural heads. They were abhorrent and sad, sort of equally. They hated us (humans), but they took no pleasure in what they were doing. It was what they had to do, because it was what they were created to do. It was upsetting to them, and frustrating. That's really what I think is staying with me, the sense that these creatures were acting out of frustration, bottled-up anger, centuries of helplessness and suffering and not understanding why they were dying. Killing humans wasn't satisfying to them, but they didn't know of anything else they could do.
If this looks to you like it's about Baghdad, you're probably not wrong.
Waive, if you will, the complete unlikelihood of Mirrorthaw and me going camping. We don't and we wouldn't. But nonetheless, there we were out in the woods, at night. With, as it happens, a bunch of other people, and I have no idea who the fuck THEY were.
I had to leave our underground campsite (and I did once go camping in a cave when I was a Girl Scout--and that part ISN'T a dream--so the inherent implausibility quotient has not actually gone up) to find a portajohn (and thank you so very much, subconscious, for rendering THAT as realistically as possible). On the way back, I see these ... things, darting on and off the path. They're ugly, deformed; they have the heads of animals. Also? Not friendly.
I don't know (either in the dream or now, awake and thinking about the dream) why they don't attack me. They mob the campground owner and pull him down. I get away, hide. The owner sees something out of my line of vision and starts screaming. Really screaming. I'm afraid for Mirrorthaw, and I bail. I get back to our underground campsite, and Mirrorthaw and the other campers are gone. Signs of struggle, yada yada. I escape into the woods. These animal-head creatures aren't very bright. They seem to know it and be frustrated by it. They're scary and repulsive, but also intensely sad.
In the morning, I set out to rescue Mirrorthaw. The first person I find to help me is a folklorist, who tells me that these creatures are "The Skin of the Seasons." Southern folklore is full of them, according to what he tells me; they are ... not ghosts, but avatars, embodied nightmares, of animals which humans hunt seasonally (which so far as I know is everything except fish). Also, their leaders--the ones with the ability to plan--are creatures with the heads of wasps. I figure that's what the campground owner saw.
At that point I was starting to lose the dream, so my lucid dreaming instinct took over. I rescued Mirrorthaw and woke up.
I'm not sure if I'm conveying how UNSETTLING this dream was. It wasn't scary--I was never in any real danger, and I knew in the dream that I'd rescue Mirrorthaw all right--but these hunched, squat creatures in the dark, with their misshapen, unnatural heads. They were abhorrent and sad, sort of equally. They hated us (humans), but they took no pleasure in what they were doing. It was what they had to do, because it was what they were created to do. It was upsetting to them, and frustrating. That's really what I think is staying with me, the sense that these creatures were acting out of frustration, bottled-up anger, centuries of helplessness and suffering and not understanding why they were dying. Killing humans wasn't satisfying to them, but they didn't know of anything else they could do.
If this looks to you like it's about Baghdad, you're probably not wrong.
