dreaming like a warrior queen

anyone who's read my blog for a while probably is aware that i have strange dreams. dan generally just shakes his head when i recount my inter-cranial night time epics.

around the full moon, they get more vivid. sometimes more wild, sometimes more real--i can't describe what it's exactly like. but it's always very visceral. being as we're only a few days from full moon, i expect that i'll have the normal range of strange.

i can control my dreams, ie, if i need it to stop because it's too scary, or wake myself up, etc. often i just watch things unfold, to see where my unconcious mind wanders.

kind of like putting a radio tracker on a moose, and then watching it ramble around on the gps.

***

last night i dreamed that i came home from work and there was a gathering in my living room; everyone in our normal gaming group, some just arriving, some camped on the sofa. dan, eero, corpse, and an old gaming buddy, terror. and sitting off to the side, serena.

i stopped when i came in. walked into the kitchen. dan came in and said, "i was just as surprised as anyone else. she just showed up." i said, "why is she here?" and he said, "i think she thought she could just come back like nothing had happened." as he walked back into the living room she said something about where everyone else was; dan replied that it didn't matter because darin wouldn't talk to her anyway, when he and cathy got here. which was the case. they walked in, looked at serena, and darin asked dan to go for a walk. corpse and i were to meet them somewhere else along the way and go out for dinner, as corpse had just helped us move something heavy.

i tried to stay away from that side of the room. chatted with cathy, who left soon after darin took and dan took a hike, with the understanding that i would drop him off at home when i found them.

corpse and i got in the car and went looking for the boys. across town, we found them sitting in this huge group of people, on the ground at a low table. they'd found some kind of training camp; dan was sitting eating bean-less chili and some cheese bread. i asked him what he was doing--he said that it was free, all he had to do was show up every day and they would teach him to fight. behind me a man was pounding a heavy stake into the ground, about as big as a fencepost. darin said he would demonstrate; he stood up and squared off with the post, and then slammed his hand into it. dan joined him. i could hear the smack of their skin on wood, hear the shouts of encouragement from people behind me, see little splinters flying off into the cold night air.

darin decided to go home for the night; he was going to walk dan to the restaurant, which was some distance off in the woods. corpse headed off with them. i went home to change clothes. i dug through my laundry basket in our living room, looking for something clean. serena moved over to sit nearer to me. i picked out my clothes and got up to leave. there was no one else in the living room, so she followed me outside. "do you want me to come with you?" she asked. "no," i said. "you can take the picture in the living room and your coke bottles in the garage and your shoes upstairs." and i walked away.

when i got to the restaurant and relayed my tale, dan asked me why i wasn't more of a bitch to her. i said that i couldn't be. there was no point in wasting energy. i'd wasted enough, waiting for her to want to talk. i'd wasted more, when she made the one effort to make contact, and i responded politely and heard nothing more. i felt i was done waiting, i explained.

after dinner corpse went home. (it's a dream, who knows how he got home...) dan and i walked up the lakeshore to meet my mom, who was cleaning out my grandma's house. the rest is blurred; there was something about some painted stones that were worth a lot of money, and the stones were lost, we recovered them but there was a fight with some kind of water demon or something.

at the end of the dream, just before i woke up, i was walking across a parking lot with a child. i told the child to go into the motel; it was one of those one-story places, light blue siding, black trim. the child went in the door and a pale gray bird flew into my hair, the size and shape of a barn swallo. tangled up and flapping, pulling little hairs like pin-pricks on my scalp. i swung my hair around; it was longer in the dream, just as curly. the bird tangled further up, closer to my head. that whole part was quiet--the bird made tiny struggling noises, i could hear my breathing, and hear the lake lapping shore in the distance, my feet stepping on the pavement.

finally it was free. it flopped around on the ground, and then shot me a panicky look, and flew off.

i laughed with the people in the motel room--dan, my mom, her sister, some cousins i think. and then i woke up.

***

i don't feel any different. the only two things staying with me are the explanation i had to give dan as to why i wasn't more mean to her, and the bird, tugging in my hair.

do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. in more witchy terms, do as thou wilt, an it harm none--other people, the earth, your cat, your self. i don't want to cause harm to serena. it would get me nowhere, except ashamed of myself for acting at that level.

before battlestar galactica last night, i watched a two hour presentation on the history channel about boudica, the queen of the iceni. back in the day (60 ad, to be exact) her husband was ruler of the iceni people; his pact with rome was peaceful, his lands offered tribute. in his will he deeded the land to the emperor of rome, and his two daughters, as was common practice: women were equals of men, most taught weaponry and war. prasutagus died; rome stepped in. they flogged boudica when she resisted, and raped her daughters.

in retaliation, she raised an army of over 50,000 celts and ransacked the nearest roman town, then the next, and the next, until she came face to face with the last few roman legions on the island, where they fell in defeat, victims to a significantly advanced military.

the program ended with the caveat that while she did what no other uprising had or would ever do, boudica also caused her people devastating losses.

i don't want to find that, in my self. i don't want to purge myself to the point of taking damage for my own actions--i'm aware, and it's pointless to do so. i identify all too well with boudica's need for blood, need for revenge. part of me wants to lash out and cause pain, wants to raise my fists and steel against what caused me grief. but in the end, i don't want my actions to stain my internal landscape to the same point.

if you dig down deep enough in london, you find a layer of red soil; that is the era of london burning at boudica's hand.