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Dream Log: the Dolphin in the Library
I seldom blog my dreams, but this one was worth preserving.
As a note, my dreams often have "point of view characters" who aren't me, per se. Yes, I'm looking through their eyes, and following (or even controlling) their actions, but they're distinct individuals, like the protagonist of a movie or a novel, or, at most, a player character in a particularly vivid RPG.
I note this because, in this case, the first PoV character was the protagonist of the movie I watched before bed: Wanted. My brain had combined the movie (which is about a league of assassins) with what little I knew about the comic (which is about a league of supervillains), and thus, the PoV character was played by James McAvoy. He was posing as a waiter, I believe, and infiltrating a business convention of cartoony, Pixarish supervillains and mad scientists. He was in radio contact with another mad scientist, and had to sneak out to some lab or office to gather some McGuffin or another.
The dream got interesting when the setting shifted slightly. I don't normally dream "in furry", but at some point, the PoV character became an anthropomorphic dolphin named Jan, and the meeting room/convention hall was now underwater -- and had been for a very long time. Kelp was now a significant part of the decor.
Jan was still in contact with the same mad scientist, though, via radio or more esoteric means, and was still on the way to his office/lab/whatever. Now, however, she had to leave the Deeps to go to the surface world -- and the passage had a Guardian.
The guardian was an anthropomorphic white tiger, obviously modeled on the photos of Odin that are well-known online. I do mean obviously; he had Odin's "grr diving" face on. Like most of Jan's segment, the detail on the tiger was incredibly vivid for a dream. I can still see the fur, matted down by the water. He was, oddly, even more an aquatic creature than Jan was; while she had legs, he had a mer-style tail, covered in striped white tiger fur like the rest of him.
The tiger was accompanied by a leopard seal of foul temperament, dark to his light, spots to his stripes, hostile and petulant next to his dignified nobility. I don't remember the details of the conversation between them, but the tiger saw fit to let Jan pass.
She strode up the stairs into a library -- a large building, well-lit, sun streaming through skylights (or perhaps holes in the roof). The stairs emerged into a fountain-pool, one of a series of connected pools at this end of the building.
The library was overgrown -- it was obviously long after our day and age. Wetland plants grew with abandon over the pools, and fins and shrubs filled the rest of the building.
Most remarkable of all, however, was that it was still an active library. People were still using it, browsing through books as Jan wandered past the shelves, leafing through card catalogs, unconcerned by the pleasant, leafy growth that covered the floor and draped over the shelves. I think there was even a table of computer terminals or microfilm readers, though I don't recall if anyone was using them.
It was a place of knowledge and life and peace, in a world that had obviously undergone dramatic, if not catastrophic, change. It was a place of hope.
I recall Jan describing this place to the person on the other end of the radio -- she was mildly surprised to see it in active use, as well, and was every bit as struck by its beauty. I heard her getting directions, in turn, but, alas, the image of that remarkable, verdant place is the last memory of that dream I was permitted to retain.
As a note, my dreams often have "point of view characters" who aren't me, per se. Yes, I'm looking through their eyes, and following (or even controlling) their actions, but they're distinct individuals, like the protagonist of a movie or a novel, or, at most, a player character in a particularly vivid RPG.
I note this because, in this case, the first PoV character was the protagonist of the movie I watched before bed: Wanted. My brain had combined the movie (which is about a league of assassins) with what little I knew about the comic (which is about a league of supervillains), and thus, the PoV character was played by James McAvoy. He was posing as a waiter, I believe, and infiltrating a business convention of cartoony, Pixarish supervillains and mad scientists. He was in radio contact with another mad scientist, and had to sneak out to some lab or office to gather some McGuffin or another.
The dream got interesting when the setting shifted slightly. I don't normally dream "in furry", but at some point, the PoV character became an anthropomorphic dolphin named Jan, and the meeting room/convention hall was now underwater -- and had been for a very long time. Kelp was now a significant part of the decor.
Jan was still in contact with the same mad scientist, though, via radio or more esoteric means, and was still on the way to his office/lab/whatever. Now, however, she had to leave the Deeps to go to the surface world -- and the passage had a Guardian.
The guardian was an anthropomorphic white tiger, obviously modeled on the photos of Odin that are well-known online. I do mean obviously; he had Odin's "grr diving" face on. Like most of Jan's segment, the detail on the tiger was incredibly vivid for a dream. I can still see the fur, matted down by the water. He was, oddly, even more an aquatic creature than Jan was; while she had legs, he had a mer-style tail, covered in striped white tiger fur like the rest of him.
The tiger was accompanied by a leopard seal of foul temperament, dark to his light, spots to his stripes, hostile and petulant next to his dignified nobility. I don't remember the details of the conversation between them, but the tiger saw fit to let Jan pass.
She strode up the stairs into a library -- a large building, well-lit, sun streaming through skylights (or perhaps holes in the roof). The stairs emerged into a fountain-pool, one of a series of connected pools at this end of the building.
The library was overgrown -- it was obviously long after our day and age. Wetland plants grew with abandon over the pools, and fins and shrubs filled the rest of the building.
Most remarkable of all, however, was that it was still an active library. People were still using it, browsing through books as Jan wandered past the shelves, leafing through card catalogs, unconcerned by the pleasant, leafy growth that covered the floor and draped over the shelves. I think there was even a table of computer terminals or microfilm readers, though I don't recall if anyone was using them.
It was a place of knowledge and life and peace, in a world that had obviously undergone dramatic, if not catastrophic, change. It was a place of hope.
I recall Jan describing this place to the person on the other end of the radio -- she was mildly surprised to see it in active use, as well, and was every bit as struck by its beauty. I heard her getting directions, in turn, but, alas, the image of that remarkable, verdant place is the last memory of that dream I was permitted to retain.