Recurring Dream

[rowyn]

In the dream, I'm a single woman with two young children. The setting is fantasy; I'm a servant in the service of a powerful lord with immense magical powers and political influence. I'm a lowly servant, so I have little direct contact with him; he's always been kind to me but he's definitely not the kind of person you want to bring your "petty" problems to. He gives off a vibe of danger. Moreover, he's holding a party for hundreds of people of great political or magical power, and I don't want to interrupt it.

A rival (but much weaker) lord blackmails two other servants into kidnapping my children by threatening their children. I go through two iterations of this dream, with the same elements at the same places. I discover the plot to kidnap my children, return to my home to find them already gone, follow clues to the home of the servant who took them, and get them back.

So when the third iteration begins, I recognize the pattern and realize what's going to happen next. I start trying to short-circuit the situation. I tell one of the already-blackmailed servants, "You should talk to your partner; you need to get a better deal," because I feel sorry for her. I know she's not really a bad person. I get through the minimum of my duties at the party, including serving drinks to my lord and some of his guests. As soon as I get a break, I rush home to try to get to my children before they're captured. On the way, I dispatch a couple of friends to take care of other plot points so that I don't have to. (There's a side plot involving a fire, for example). I still get home too late. Since I already know the servant who has them, I skip looking for clues and go straight to him.

Then things go wrong. My children aren't at his house. Frightened, I demand of him to know where they are. He tells me the rival lord has hidden them himself.

I don't know what to do now; I know I can't storm into the other lord's manor and demand my children from a lord the way I could another servant. I return to my lord's manor, frantic and uncertain about my next action. I see my lord speaking with one of his guests, the spirit from inside a statue. (I can tell this because the little statuette the spirit normally inhabits is moving its lips as the spirit speaks to my lord.) I decide to ask my lord for help. Yes, I didn't want to bother him, but this whole plot has spiralled beyond my control. I can't fix it but I'm sure he can.

I rush after him as he bids farewell to a man in a French noble's attire. "Your grace!" I call out to him as he walks away. The other noble looks at me querulously. "No, I meant the other grace," I say, and rush past him to catch up to my lord. "Your grace!"

He turns, and looks at me in his usual manner, a sort of tolerant paternalism. "Yes?"

"Your grace, my children have been kidnapped!"

My lord smiles. "Good." He turns and continues on his way. I stare after him, blinking and bewildered, not having expected indifference much less approval. Then it hits me: He knew this was going to happen, too, but he thinks it's happening in the old way. He thinks I can handle it. He doesn't realize it's gone wrong, that I messed it up by trying to warn the other servant.

I dash around the corner after him. "You don't understand, your grace, I need your help, it's all gone wrong -- "

Then he turns back to me and I break off. His eyes have gone a solid milky blue and he looks drunk, unsteady. I step back, terrified. Then the servant I'd tried to warn earlier steps around him, with an evil smile at me. "What have you done?" I whisper.

"What have I done? You're the one who brought the drugged drink to him. I'm just getting a better deal." She takes my lord's elbow and leads him past me.

At this point, I realize that the dream had gone hopelessly wrong for me. My lord, whom I was confident could do anything and take on anyone, has been taken instead. I can't conceive of being able to handle anyone who's got my lord under his control. Seeing no way out of this situation, I wake myself up.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

The first part reminded me a little of "Day Break": Our poor protagonist has the "upper hand" in knowing what's going to happen next, but he's so focused on the things that he needs to do (that he didn't) that he ignores the things he did "right" the first day - and actions (and inactions) have consequences.

It's definitely an interesting dream. My dreams are too fragmented as of late for me to even pretend there's much of a story in them. (Either that, or they're just so mundane.)

Your dream seems to exhibit a little more connection than my usual dreams - that is, the bit about how the wicked servant comes back and says, "I'm just getting a better deal." It implies that there were actions going on in the background to which you, the dreamer, weren't privy: a fine illusion, since my general experience with dreams is that things rarely go on in the background without my being directly conscious of them.

Though my dreams seem to conjure up the illusion from time to time in their own way by "retconning", so to speak. That is, something happens, and along with it comes the sudden realization that - oh yes! - I saw this person before and this or that happened, and this is a continuation of that. A lot of my "story" dreams, if I were to present them "chronologically", in the way that I dreamed them, would appear as a sequence happening "in the middle of the action" or even after it all, with a sudden burst of exposition and flashback narrative that happens in an instant: I just know all this, for some reason.

Anyway, I can see why you would bother to jot this one down. It so aggravatingly demands curiosity. (What happens NEXT?!) And that's one of those annoying things about dreams: The interesting ones, the ones that I remember, are typically those that end with unfinished business, and no matter how hard I wish it, I can't demand for the dream to continue once I go back to sleep.

[rowyn]

One of the things about this dream is that I didn't want to find out what happened next. I don't think I adequately conveyed the magnitude of my dismay at seeing "his grace" mind-controlled by my enemies. It was like "OK, I couldn't handle my enemies BEFORE and now the most powerful person I know is HELPING THEM. I am SO DOOMED." I woke myself up deliberately, because I couldn't see anyway to make things better from there. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Now there's a trick I could use! Deliberately waking up seems to be beyond my power. More likely, if it occurs to me, I'll just dream about waking up - and then realize that I'm still dreaming, whereupon I "wake up", whereupon weird things happen and I realize I'm still dreaming ... until finally the real thing happens, and by then I'm quite frazzled.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Huh. Wow.

I'll have to think about this one for a while.

[hotspurre.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Seems to me that your dream is trying to punish you for trying to "meta" it.

[rowyn]

They don't usually revenge themselves upon me for that, but ... yeah. Does seem that way. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff! Definitely story fodder. I picture her having the 'Save/Restore Game' magical talent...