autumnalwalker

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Formality Of A Warning

I stand in a lavishly gothic bedroom with an earthen balcony looking out into a misty canyon covered in greenery.  I lean on the balcony’s black iron railing and my host, the towering gaunt owner of this great house, warns me not to lean too far forward or, even worse, step over it.  That thin metal bar is all that stands between me and the fairies.

“No mortal arm is strong enough to overpower their might.  No mortal mind clever enough to outwit their games.  No mortal heart immovable enough to resist their charms,” he reminds me as if I didn’t already know.

I thank him for his concern and hospitality then bid him leave me to settle in. Once I am alone I unpack my implements and begin a spell that will prevent me from being able to speak my own name.  If I am incapable of saying it, then I can’t be tricked into giving it away.

My host and I both well know that if I had any other intent — indeed, any other choice — than to go into that other realm.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Reunion Gone Sour

I am working for a large corporation and collaborating with a department that I have not previously interacted with.   One of the members of that department seems strangely familiar.  I realize that he is an old friend that I was once quite close with but drifted apart from over time from life taking us in different directions.  It has been so long I almost didn’t recognize him.

He doesn’t recognize me either.  To be fair, he knew me before I transitioned and I’m not sure he ever found out about it.  I take some time to enjoy playing with his impression of previously having me before I finally spell it out for him. 

He is excited once the revelation hits, happy to cross paths with me again after all these years.  He congratulates me on my coming out and transitioning and how well that seems to have gone for me.  In retrospect, I had a number of conversations with him a decade before I accepted myself that should have been big clues for us both.

It’s a joyful reunion. 

And then — utterly without malice — he begins repeatedly falling back on referring to me as he did back then and my heart breaks a little. 

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Wistful Confession

���I want my presence to feel like coming home,” she said to the one she wished to love. 

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Frightful Kindness

There was a great and terrible empire, the source of many of the world's woes and recently brought down in no small part by the actions of a certain hero.

In a forest at the far edge of the empire's now-former colonies a group of men that once thought themselves up-and-coming masters of the world are attempting to turn a young boy – the distant-yet-nearest-living relative of the toppled emperor – into a figurehead and living symbol capable of starting a counter-revolution to take back what they believe to be rightfully theirs.  But the child is still ultimately a child, no matter how much they attempt to burden him with fine robes and silver crowns and glorious purpose.  And, as children are notoriously wont to do, the boy slips free of his keepers and into the woods.

A certain hero – celebrated as a living legend in some places and feared as an unholy terror in others – is on vacation and taking a walk through the woods.  Their travels have yet to take them to this part of the world.  The hero finds a young boy playing in a glade and joins in on the game of make believe until the two grow hungry and sit down on a mossy log to share the lunch the hero brought.  The hero, consummate do-gooder that they are, begins to ask after the child's family and caretakers.  Sympathy is expressed from one orphan to another, but seeing as the boy thinks well enough of his caretakers despite wanting a break from every now and then (and what child doesn't need that?), the hero walks the boy home.

After the hero returns the replacement-emperor-to-be to his alleged guardians and goes on his way, the men who thought to rule the world are left in terror.  Did the hero genuinely not realize who any of them – child included – were?  Or was that a warning hidden behind those easy smiles and cordial words?  Mercy shown today, but only this once.  It is enough to make anyone pause and reconsider plans for world domination.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About House Rules

I am trapped in an old hotel — the House — with six other people.  There are also seven vampires making the hotel their lair.  The vampires have thus far been too caught up in their own interpersonal dramas to do much to us, but they have made it clear that we are not allowed to leave and that they will get around to feeding on us eventually.  Most of the vampires have chosen a specific mortal to focus their attentions on.

Each of the vampires carries a large antique silver key.  We believe these keys to be our ticket to escape.  With some limited communication and assistance from some people on the outside we hatch a plan to get one of the keys and quietly slip out while the vampires are distracted.

While the plan is being carried out I return to my crumbling, mildew-infested hotel room to act as if there is nothing out of the ordinary.  I take a moment to consider which of my things to take with me when we make our escape.  To take my full suitcase and backpack with laptop would unfortunately be far too conspicuous.  The loss of data on the laptop will be felt keenly, but better than dying trapped here.

One of the vampires appears in my bathroom while I am changing clothes and tries to seduce me, but I thwart him with the power of asexuality.  Confused and frustrated, he leaves me alone to finish getting dressed and make my way down to the lobby as casually as I can pretend.

At the last minute, in a fit of spiteful self-destruction, one of the other captives uses his own laptop to write out a post on the monitored internet connection explaining our situation and gravely insulting the vampires.  Not only the vampires but the House itself is angered by this.  The entire building begins shaking and only one of us manages to make it out the front door before a chunk of the ceiling collapses, cutting off our escape.

Once the rumbling of the House finally stops, the oldest of the vampires, who has up until now remained aloof and unconcerned with everything and everyone, appears before us and explains that we never had a chance of escape to begin with.  The keys are a false hope and the vampires are just as much prisoners to the House as we are, if not more so.  In truth the House is a seemingly sentient extra-dimensional space of which this hotel is but one layer or level.  The House likes its tests and games, and we will play them whether we want to or not.  Our joint cooperation in hatching and executing an escape attempt was merely us passing the first test before being “allowed” to go “higher” to the so-called upper levels. On very rare occasions like this one the House will be merciful and let the initial escape attempt succeed for a single member of a cohort (and yes, even now other groups of seven are making their way through those upper levels), but there will be no other chances for escape until the very end.  The elder vampire projects visions of the increasingly surreal horrors and death traps that await us into our minds and we see those who came before us struggling and dying bloody and terrified deaths.

At the end will be a simple, empty chamber.  Should any of us make it that far, we will be able to progress no further until only one of us is left alive. 

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Wedding

I am being married to a mafia boss.  This is not a matter I have much choice in.  My hands are very literally tied.  After several rounds of standing up and sitting back down on church pews through the pre-wedding service, the small derringer pistol hidden in the back of my dress falls out.  The woman who is supposedly my handler to make sure I don't cause problems merely slips the gun back into place with a smile.

The mafia boss – my husband-to-be – walks down the central aisle towards the altar.  An angry woman whose name I do not know stands up from her place in the pews and shoots him.  She is shot by his bodyguards in return.

Frankly, I had planned to shoot the man myself as we were making our vows, but now, seeing him desperately stumbling towards me as he bleeds out, I am moved by something like pity and go to him.  I allow him to slip the silver ring with its art deco design and blue gemstone onto my finger and I return the gesture.  But then he takes his ring back off and puts it onto my other hand.

He manages to gasp out his vows before he dies.

My brothers arrive and a gunfight breaks out.  One of my brothers reaches me,  and hustles me outside to the waiting car.  My hands are no longer tied and my briefly-husband's ring keeps threatening to slide off my finger.  I move it onto my thumb where it will stay put.

I wind up in the driver's seat of the car.  I ask my brothers if they would like to stop to pick some oranges from the nearby trees since we won't be able to come back here for a long time, if ever.  My absurd question is met with the incredulity it probably deserves.

My phone begins erupting with incoming messages.  It seems that as the mafia boss's widow I have been added to the various chat groups that he was using to manage the organization.  It occurs to me that there is power to be found in the position I am now in.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Night Shift

I awake from a dream about finding pirate treasure in space and warding off robot skeletons and instead find myself sprawled across a pile of toilet paper in a Wal-Mart in a tiny town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest around midnight.  There is a black bear wandering the aisles.  It had been sleeping not too far from where I was and woke up not long before I did.  I do my best to slink around and not disturb the bear on my way to the employee break room where I find my only night shift coworker.  We decide we're not getting paid enough to deal with a bear and to just let it do its thing until morning.

The lights suddenly cut out and we hear a feral shrieking sound that definitely did not come from a bear.  We decide to lock the door and barricade ourselves in the break room.

We reconsider our choice once we hear the sounds of shouting and gunfire.  My coworker gets the bright idea to pull the grating off an air vent and climb through to safety.  I observe the dust-choked hole in the wall and comment that these things really aren't as large or suitable for climbing through as they are in the movies.  No way either of us could possibly fit in there.

With that plan out, we take a chance on leaving the break room and heading for the back exit as quietly and unobtrusively as possible.  Along the way we catch scattered glimpses of men in tactical gear fighting against some kind of alien clad in a slick black carapace.

Finally outside, we make a mad dash for my coworker's rusty pickup truck, climb in, start the engine, pull out around the squad of government vehicles surrounding the store, and speed up the hill and across the bridge into the night.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Flight Preventing Flight

I am being pursued through a large airport that is also a shopping mall by an unnaturally huge and muscular man and a pair of nearly identical looking women with long black hair.  I think I knew the man as a child, although I cannot recall his name at the moment.  I am not sure if he is angry at me for something I did way back then or for my more recent dabbling in witchcraft.

Somewhere along the line I misplaced my backpack, and with it my cellphone and ID.  I am alone in a foreign land and without means to call for help, board my flight, or leave without rousing suspicion and possible arrest.  Still pursued, I double back to where I'm sure I left my backpack, but it is long gone.  Perhaps I could check with an airport customer service desk about a lost-and-found, but that would require standing still in line for longer than is safe.

One of the black-haired women corners me inside a fancy restaurant that I tried to cut through.  She is not unsympathetic to me.  She offers me a deal in order to get her boss off my trail.  I accept.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About A Rude Awakening 

I am woken up in the middle of the night by my dad knocking at my bedroom door and asking me to come out.  Something feels off and I keep the door closed.  Men in black masks and tactical gear break down the door and drag me out of the room while one of them stays back and keeps a grip on my dad. 

I am brought down to the living room.  I am told that my family is not in trouble, only me.  No one will tell me what I have been accused of.  Vague references are made that leave me wondering if it might be a mistake regarding things that I have looked up on the internet or people I am friends with.  

No one will tell me what I have been accused of.

I am sat down at a table.  A bald man in a suit hands me a red pamphlet with funeral preparation options inside.  He politely tells me that my trial will be a mere formality. 

I am shaking and barely able to breathe with fear and anxiety.  I dare not cry for fear that my tears will be seen as an admission of guilt.

No one will tell me what I’ve been accused of. 

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Hero Worship

There was a disaster.  A flood, or maybe a dragon.  From all around we gather into an untouched village, expanding it into a town.  The village headman, balding and bearded, throws open the doors of his great house to share all that he has with we dispossessed.   A cult of personality springs up around him, praising him for his wisdom and his charity.  He is continually uncomfortable with this development.

I leave the village-now-town on an errand and when I return later that day the headman is gone, fled to who knows where from the unasked-for burden of adoration and expectations.  It was only a matter of time, really.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Train Hopping

The old white-bearded veteran watches the young girl get off the train.  Light blue.  Military train.  No way a child that young was supposed to be on it.  Stowaway probably.  Running away from home?

He decides to keep an eye on her for a little while.  It’s not safe for kids to be alone like that.

The veteran discreetly follows the child to a sushi restaurant near the train station.  A ruckus ensues as the girl learns the hard way that the sign advertising “Kids under 10 eat free*!” requires that an accompanying adult also purchase a meal.  He steps in to comfort the now-crying child and pay for her meal.

Once she calms down and gets some food in her stomach she tells the old veteran her story.

At another train station many miles away I am frantically talking to a customer service representative over a counter.  A phone behind the counter rings and after a moment she hands it to me.  I listen, provide reassurances, hand the phone back to the representative, and then rush to find my brother and tell him that someone found his daughter and she wants to come home.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About An Investigation

I am in a cramped building that is hidden away down a twisting alleyway in a crowded warren of a city.  This building has been many things over the years, but it is currently an avant-garde restaurant decorated all in stark whites, strongly at contrast with the chaotic swirl of black and neon paint that characterizes the rest of the neighborhood.  

I do not belong here – or anywhere else this fancy – but there is something here I need.

Unfortunately, the thing I need is in a room that's been sealed off by the most recent round of renovations.  I decide to try breaking open and climbing through the ventilation system.  I'm in something of a hurry so I set off the fire sprinklers to get people to leave and then take the risk of using magic to try to force the vent open.

One of the waitresses is staring at me.  She keeps scratching at the left side of her torso as if she has some sort of terrible itch or rash hidden beneath her clothes.

Another, deeper, more ominous alarm sounds.  This one is city wide.  The great Thing in the sky will soon be here.  All who are able to begin evacuating the city.  I attempt too, but soon realize I cannot.  I pull out my phone and call my friend to see if they can get me out of here.  They have their own loved ones they need to prioritize.  I understand.  They wish me luck.

The great Thing appears over the city and reality melts into surreal chaos.

I can't shake the feeling that this is all my fault.

In the aftermath, I return to that restaurant.  The pristine interior is now a ruined mess.

That waitress from earlier is still here, clearing the floor with a pushbroom.  Once again she stares at me and scratches at her side, but says nothing.

A wall has fallen in, revealing a short staircase to an unlocked door to the room I was seeking before.  This building has been many things over the years and this room has been untouched since it was a machine shop.    Steel tools remain scattered on workbenches, carts, and tables.

This room was also the sight of a murder that nearly everyone else believes was a suicide.  It was a family member of mine who died in this spot.

It takes some searching through the mess, but I find what I'm looking for.  Several tiny medicine dose sized cups still bearing the dried residue of a blue liquid.  The evidence I need to close a case that everyone refused to so much as give the most cursory investigation into back when it happened.

I exit the old machine shop and that waitress is still staring at me and scratching at her side.

Much, much later I am traveling through mountains on foot near an alpine lake with some close companions of mine.  It is nearing dusk as we approach the torii gate marking the last stretch where the stone road becomes a rising wooden boardwalk into the small town where we'll be spending the night.

Small, floating, ephemeral beings appear that look like spoked wheels made of light and move like jellyfish appear and try to alight upon us like curious butterflies drawn to flowers.  They're charming little things and most of our party are quite endeared to them.  One of my companions, a man in robes with long black hair in a high ponytail shoos the floaters off and tells the rest of us to pay them no mind.

As the rest of us pass through the torii gate my ponytailed friend tells the rest of us to go on ahead.  There's something he needs to handle real quick but he'll catch up.  Most of us give him the benefit of the doubt and continue on.

Just after we leave him, he steps sideways into a pale mist and the world goes gray for him.  There are suddenly far more of the floaters, and with sword and flame he begins to destroy them.  He downplayed how dangerous these things are to the rest of us so that no one would panic.  In truth these floaters drain the life from the living they touch.  He is very good at what he does, but he begins to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

I reappear at his side and begin ripping apart the floaters with my own violent lights, conjured with a mere gesture.  This is not the first time my friend has pulled something like this, nor is it mine.

We turn the tide and begin tracing the remaining floaters back to their source.

We find a familiar woman in an unfamiliar dress, scratching at the side of her torso.

I recognize her from the restaurant all that time ago and realize at long last that it was not me who brought the great Thing in the sky down upon that city, but her.  Guilt becomes anger.

The woman's side splits open and a hundred strand of thread from which the floaters are woven spill out.  Her rent body twists and warps into some sort of hybrid spider creature guiding those strands of light through what is at one moment a spinning wheel and at another moment a harp.

My friend and I steel ourselves for what is sure to be a hard battle.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Growing Pains

Two young superheroes tangle with an equally incompetent supervillain.  One of the young heroes expresses frustration that none of the orange spheres it is tossing at the villain are exploding.  The other one reminds him that he set all his explosives to require a remote activation to detonate.

From the sidelines, two veteran superheroes watch in bemusement, ready to step in if necessary.  They reminisce about their youth and how back in the day the one without powers kept insisting on following the more famous and powerful one around in order to hold him to a higher moral standard.  It took a long time for begrudging respect to become friendship.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Scaring Children

I am attending an event with my brothers and nieces.  There is a boy picking on others, for he knows that propriety and his family's wealth demand he face no consequences other than verbal reprimands that he can and will simply ignore.  I go over to the boy and grip his arm painfully tight and deliver a lecture about the importance of kindness.  Beneath those words are the thinly veiled warning that mere propriety will not protect him from the consequences of his actions forever.  

Once the child is sufficiently spooked I release his arm and sit down on a wooden chair that was not there a moment ago.  The chair grows chicken legs and carries me off into the woods as I cackle and disappear.  I am not seen for another three days.  I do not remember my time in the woods and everyone knows better than to ask.

[autumnalwalker]

Happy storyteller Saturday (glad we’re bringing this back)! Your characters go to the county fair! What do they eat? What rides do they go on? Who gets so into petting goats they forget to even look at rides? Who wins a questionable number of clearly rigged games? Who gets their face painted? Who overhauls their entire aesthetic based on booths of scarves and accessories? Who finds something hyperspecific to learn about while the others tap their feet impatiently? Etc.

(that last one is based on me going to the county fair and becoming so engrossed in a local history lecture at the museum exhibit I did not even go check out the rides)

I still live other than dreaming! (Even if Empty Names is very hiatused right now while I deal with IRL stuff.)

Thanks for including me on this. It's a fun prompt.

Empty Names crew at the county fair:

Food:

Ashan consumes a shocking quantity of various iterations of fried dough covered in sugar considering his figure and general health consciousness and ambivalence toward taste and texture. This whole county fair thing is one giant nostalgia trip for him from the little bit of childhood he remembers from before getting isekaied into a magical otherworld for a decade.

Given that if they're all at a county fair there's probably something weird and supernatural afoot (and also because she's a bit of a germophobe) Lacuna's hesitant to eat anything, but eventually Eris talks her into getting a slice of pizza that was probably frozen and microwaved. Eris gets her own couple of mediocre pizza slices in solidarity.

Sullivan finds some sort of sausage or burger made from highly unsettling mystery meat that may or may not be of this earth and may or may not be the reason they're all here. He makes a point of making sure everyone is there to watch in horror as he swallows it whole.

Road gets split from the group and is found again with an empty paper plate and-soggy-but-beverageless paper cup. Everyone gets distracted by something before it's revealed what they ate.

Rides and petting goats:

After remembering that Ashan's midsed out on a lot of Earth stuff, Eris makes it her mission to take Ashan on every single ride at the fair he didn't meet the height requirement for as a child.

Lacuna's being distracted by petting the goats is one half genuine and one half an excuse to not go on the more intense rides with Eris and Ashan.

Road and Sullivan go into the house of mirrors because that's a prime spot for weirdness to leak through and cause problems, but all the reflections give Road an existential crisis that Sullivan has to pull them out of.

Face painting:

Not really something any of them would go for. Unless things escalate with whatever monster/villain of the week they're at the fair for and Ashan, Lacuna, and Road need to commandeer the booth to start painting esoteric symbols on people's foreheads for psychic protection or something.

Aesthetic overhaul of scarves and accessories:

This one's going to be Lacuna, but only if it's taking place post-catgirl transformation. New confidence and new body demand a new look.

Engrossed in hyperspecific local history:

This might actually turn into a group activity, or at least be equally likely for any of them that happens to wander into the opportunity. Lacuna's kind of a nerd like that, Eris and Road both just generally like to learn about new places, and Sullivan and Ashan are both genre savvy enough to realize this is where one finds the key plot-relevant details about the spooky local legend (Eris and Road too, but they'd be interested even without that).

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About An Honor Guard

I am walking through cliffside ruins when I am attacked by walking corpses, their flesh gone purple and green with putrescence.  These are not the fragile animated skeletons I expected to find here and the hefty mace I brought along with those foes in mind does little to deter them.  Frantically searching for an alternative weapon, I pick up a long spear from the ground.

To my surprise, upon raising the spear the undead soldiers attacking me stop and stand at attention.  They speak and ask that I - as one of the living - march with them as an honor guard to their final rest.  I oblige, standing side by side with them in formation, my new spear pointed toward the gray cloudy sky.  Together as a unit, we march until we reach the cliff's edge.  I stop, but they do not and I watch them step off and fall into the fog below.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About An Abbey Beneath A Lake

There is an abbey built beneath the bed of a lake that was boiled away, scalding and melting a demon horde that once assailed the land.  Of late, the water has begun to return to the lakebed.  It is barely an inch deep, but it has begun to drip down into the abbey's halls.  In a few years it will surely be flooded and all those monks and nuns will need to flee or drown.

As I wander the dark stone halls of the abbey, I repeatedly cross paths with a particular nun pushing a black metal cart.  Her skin is blue, her lips are black, and her eyes are red.  The vestments of the nuns and monks here are all solid black.  More robes with hats sewn into their hoods than habits and wimples.  We cross paths one last time as I approach the door to the stairs to leave and she asks me why I avert my gaze every time I see her.

I blush, clap my hands together, take a breath, apologize for being about to say something she may not want to hear, and then tell her it is because she is very pretty.  The words are fast and nervous.  

She takes that better than I would have expected, but she does not believe me when I tell her that I am a great lord from the world above, come to see what I can do to save this place or at least its people.  I invite her to come with me so that I might prove my claim of lordship to her and – perhaps – at least save her from the drowning that all know is coming.