Occasionally a dream is both intense and super satisfying. It's a change from dreams that are stressful, chaotic, and upsetting. During college I took a psychology course, focusing on dreams and the subconscious. It both improved my ability to remember my dreams, and provided lots of fun conversations with friends. Here goes:
A woman meets up with a party at a hotel. The lobby is designed like an atrium with stairs that ascend to terraces along the sides. Several terraces are the location of restaurants, set among the trees and cobbled avenues of this inside paradise. The woman's destination is a terrace restaurant towards the rear of the atrium. It specializes in small dishes of rare delicacies.
The party she is meeting more closely resembles an expedition force, only with two children tagging along. There are three men, two other women and a small boy and girl.
One man wears a long brown duster coat with an Australian cowboy or rancher hat. He face is angular, but very pale considering his outfit suggests a career of horses, dust and sunshine. Another man wears a beret upon his curly brown hair. He is dressed in a simple white button shirt and hiking pants with lots of pockets. Behind glasses his eyes are sharp, but turn kind with a smile as the woman approaches. The third man wears black with a sumptuous velvet vest over top. He tries to look arrogant, but comes across as slightly nervous.
The children sit quickly, as if they were expecting to be rebuked for causing the slightest disturbance, but upon the woman's arrival, they become slightly less withdrawn and smile and laugh together as they begin a quiet game. One of the women is obviously their governess or guardian as she sits close by supervising their game. The other is dressed as an art instructor. Long smock covered in paint, but underneath the woman arriving can discern a smart black dress with sensible shoes. A conglomeration of clothing items, that somehow work together to give the woman a bohemian, slightly cosmopolitan air.
Once arrived the woman is greeted joyously. Her journey to the atrium has been long and hard. She doesn't remember all her travels, but she remembers suffering loss and heartache. These people around her smile at her, asking for particulars of her travels, but understanding when she would rather remain silent.
There is one important piece of information that she shares. The house is occupied by a sorcerer or a demon. Their jobs will be hard, but not impossible. He has gotten complacent and merely let's his household traps maintain sefences without supervising.
The group finishes their meals and prepare to depart. As they rise their waiter returns to the table brandishing a knife at the smart cosmopolitan woman. From her frock she reveals a long blade, engaging with the demon as the rest of the party flees.
Somehow the groups escapes the atrium, but the cosmopolitan woman doesn't rejoin them. They leave her behind getting away in the cars parked outside awaiting them.
A short, or infinitely long time later (the woman can never remember) they arrived outside a dark house. Lights do not appear through the windows and ivy has been climbing the gate and exterior giving an abandoned look. But, it is not abandoned. It is defended. Well.
The man in black with the velvet vest approaches the gate with a key, it unlocks noiselessly and the party enters. Once through the gate shuts quietly behind them, clicking as it shuts. At least some in the party expected some loud and ominous noise as they breath slowly out in relief.
Approaching the door the party is distracted by lights bursting into illumination to the right side. Loud clanking noises accompanied by tinkling music are heard. The children grasp the reality first, that a carnival or amusement park has been constructed on the property.
While investigating this new construction (the woman knows it wasn't here before) the children ask to investigate the smallest roller coaster. Their guardian quickly discusses with the three men and they leave the group on the main path as they ascend to the ride. The ride starts without warning, somehow grabbing the children and woman carrying them along the rails in rickety cars that wail with every turning. The rest of the group can only watch in horror as the children and guardian approach a low hanging sign post above the tracks. The sign slowly moves down as the rides approach, falling the last few feet giving the riders no time to react as their heads appear to be chopped off as they pass under. Their bodies disappear and the group is left to mourn their loss. The two women and both children are gone.
The group quickly leaves the horrific amusement park, returning to the front door. Again the man in black and the vest is able to easily open the door and they enter. There are no lights. The man in the duster approaches a brazier to light it, a creaking sound is heard. Footsteps. Shuffles. A crowd is gathering upon the stair landing. Shambling down the little light of the flame reveals defiled monsters. The man in the vest reveals a glowing blade. Turning quickly back to the woman he hands her the key, he turns back to the creaturs and engages in ferocious battle.
The man in the beret and the man in the duster hurry the woman down and side passage. She finds a door leading to another staircase which she knows, somehow, will take them upstairs to the largest bedroom in the house.
The two men and the woman carefully ascend the stairs, no longer trusting the house. Upon the second floor they leave the stairwell, turning right towards the largest room.
A glowing light fills the hallway, at the very end of which, outside the doors, is a large glowing creature. It glows red, the color of anger, and it watches them. It appears to sense their intentions to enter this room, raising upon its haunches to growl a low threat. The woman and the men turn towards a smaller room and the creature sits back down appeased that they do not intend to enter its domain.
Inside the smaller room are chairs and a small bathtub behind a scream.
The loss of five of their companions has drained the woman's resources to continue on. She draws a bath and slips into the warm calming water. The man in the beret and the man in the duster sit in the chairs behind the screen.
The woman almost falls asleep, her head almost slipping beneath the surface. She jolts upright, causing the man in the beret to call out whether she is alright. Responding in the affirmative to two men continue talking.
The woman begins to follow their talk, hearing things of enchantments, a quest, the dangers of their road. As she listens the woman begins to understand. The man in the beret does not believe their companions dead, merely taken. The man in the duster believes their companions are being tortured to obtain information. It seems unreal. All these people that the woman knows as an acquaintance are being tortured. For what?
"Does she know?"
"That she holds the key, no. She hasn't realized."
The woman has a key. Whether she is the woman they speak of, she has a key. The man in black and velvet gave it to her before he saved them from the demons.
She rises from the tub splashing large quantities of water upon the floor in her haste. The quickly robes and rushes to the door of their room.
The two men hurry towards her, but she holds up her hand. Looks of understanding cross their face, looks she doesn't understand.
She opens the door, approaches the creature ... Instead of challenging her is slowly moves aside, allowing her to pass. Once through it growls at the men challenging their entrance to the same room. The woman puts the key in the lock, the key the man in black gave her. The key turns and she enters a room bathed in light.
Or darkness and red burning?
Or light ...
The woman closes her eyes and breathes.
A slow growl greets her ... But her nose senses a warm musty smell. A smell of wood, oils, fabric, and a familiar comforting smell.
The growl grows louder as the woman inhales over and over.
Lanolin. She smells lanolin.
The growl turns to a whine. She opens her eyes to a brightly colored and wonderfully light room in which sit baskets of...
Roving, yarn, half finished garments. A spinning wheel sits in one corner. A knitting contraption in another.
She beings to remember. This is her room. Filled with her passion, knitting, yarn, spinning. The warmth of the fiber in her hands - the smell of the sheep as the cleans the locks.
Somewhere a deep click is heard and feet approach up the stairs.
The door is thrown open wide by the man in black and velvet with the other two gentlemen behind.
She remembers.
Her husband.
Their household.
The children that are hers! Safe! As they had been trapped only by the malignant spirit which used her S the key to his enchantment. So long as she didn't remember, so long as she didn't know ... They were all under his power. He used her memories, leaving her with nothing. These memories gave him the power to take their house and begin building his power.
Her people found her quickly and began moving to return her to house in an attempt to overthrow the spirit or power.
Her room of yarn was again hers.
Her husband walked her towards a wall, covered with a carved tree. The wall moved at his touch and more passages were revealed more passages of glowing rooms that smelt of different crafts... Singed wood, warm butter and crusty loaves ... Their house was warm. It was filled with their wonderful passions. Her memory was hers again.
And there was yarn!
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