Dream: The King's Vigilant

Dream 20030603, 1:35 AM:

This is one of those dreams that occurs early in the night, and often lacks cohesive logic or smooth transitions. The front end in particular was odd and choppy. The last section was particularly cool, though – and seemed exceptionally real.

I am in the blue bedroom at the Kingwood house, naked, sitting on the bed in a mass of pillows and bedding; the bed doesn’t seem made up, but instead piled with all kinds of stuff. I am kind of half-covering myself with a pillow. Richard is sitting or standing near the bed, and his wife M. is sitting on the floor working on something. He is talking to me, and tells me to stand up. I do, and realizing that I have an erection, I stand sideways so that only my buttocks are facing M. He tells me to turn sideways (so that she’d see my boner), and I sit back down, and bean him with a pillow, telling him to fuck off, that I do have at least a little bit of moral fiber, and that’s not right.

(switch)
I’m sitting under a canopy of some sort, and looking at all these letters. They come down from the top, and seem to represent some sort of acronyms. The letters themselves are lighted, about two inches square, and plugged into old-fashioned backgrounds that remind me of old movie theater signs. They are some kind of merit award system, and I think that this is something to do with Richard’s work. Cousin Gretchen is here, and talking about how she figured out some of the combinations, particularly “Enthusiastically” – her mom lays out her letters each morning, and one morning it was “FUNBLEVMB” (from which she derived “fun”) and then “Enthusiastically” was just scrambled up, and she put that one together.

I’m watching, as a beautiful little hummingbird zips along among the letters, and now there are flowers above where the letters are; they’re very complicated and beautiful ones, like fuchsias. The hummingbird pokes its beak into a flower, then pulls it out, wipes the sides of its beak on the flower, and then opens its beak and sort of wipes the spots where it’s just swiped the beak clean. Then, it goes to another flower, and starts the same ritual, but squirts the nectar straight up into the air as if on accident. It watches for the nectar to fall back down, and with a sort of “Oh, crap!” expression, opens its mouth and catches the squirt. I fall over laughing. Then, I have to explain to someone who didn’t see it happen, that the bird usually has to do the wipe-and-lick routine to get the pollen from the flower, which has protein, and without the protein, the bird could eventually die. It apparently messed up, and squirted the nectar into the air on accident.

Then, I’m in love with a snowman. He looks like a yeti, covered in fur, but I know that on some level he’s actually made of snow. We are talking about what would happen if he got warm. We are in a little drift of snow, in sort of a hollowed-out room, and he is kind of inside the wall. The sun on the surface is warming it up, and I reach over and arrange the snow so that he will stay cool. I have a vision in my mind of him getting overheated, and dying (or melting). I explain to him that he needs to make sure to stay cool and protect himself from melting. Then, I’m getting up and walking around a field, which is cold and drizzly and covered in a couple of inches of watery mud. I say something about how it wasn’t exactly in my plans to be slogging around in the mud in the cold, but this is where I am, and I’ll just keep doing what needs to be done.

Then, somehow I find myself a prisoner. I feel like I’ve been conscripted – I’m not held in a cell, but instead pressed into service. I’m standing with a group of others before a big and complex head table with multiple levels of dias, and someone is giving us positions to stand in. They put me in a spot behind an odd-shaped thing that looks like a cross between a bell and a covered platter, and announce that I am the King’s Vigilant. There are also plates of food, but I’m not eating. No-one eats during this process. The dishes seem arranged in a very symbolic way, as if they’re not actually dinner so much as regalia. I lean quietly to a slender young woman on my left, and ask what I’m supposed to be doing here – what I’m to be vigilant *of*. She explains that I’m to watch for direct insubservience. It seems like I have to referee the conversation somehow. The King is holding court, with people coming up and giving reports and talking about problems; it seems like he is at war, and they are giving battle details and strategic plans. The place where I am standing is behind the King and to his right. There are probably a dozen people in various positions on the several tables. I listen carefully, but don’t hear anyone actually being insubservient, so I don’t strike the bell in front of me. The King is a powerful man, ruggedly handsome, with curling blond hair. He is very tall, and has a lot of charisma. He reminds me of one of the Ansteorran kings, but I can’t remember his name. The surfer one, maybe it’s Mikael.

Then, the King gets down from his throne, and starts walking around, giving an explication of the place we’re in. It is a training ground for the army, and it appears to be in some sort of other space, like it is magically separated from the real world. He is leading a group around explaining, giving a tour. We approach a barrier, a shimmering in the air that indicates where the space is different; it’s visible, but everything on the other side is quite clear. Someone asks where it’s actually located, and the King explains that he can’t tell that. It is forty-three acres, inside of walls – we look out through the barrier at very sturdy stone walls, and I comment that they are exceptionally strong-looking. We walk on. At another area, the King mentions that this is a space of sheer primal terror. The ground outside the barrier looks like muddy short grass, and there are torches burning along the walls. The King does something that moves the barrier back beyond where we are standing, and I feel a strong sense of dread, like a mouse suddenly finding itself in the middle of a large room when it thought it was safe along a wall. It doesn’t seem insuperable, though, and I don’t feel like I need to scream or run. Some of the soldiers seem kind of freaked out, but they stand their ground. The king puts the barrier back in its place.

We are walking along an area that is full of stores of supplies. One woman is singing a song as she scoops multi-colored maccaroni out of a large bin into a bag she’s carrying that looks like a doubled-up apron. The tone of the song is almost saucy, and seems to imply that she’s stealing the pasta, or shouldn’t have it – I watch the King’s face for any sign that it is inappropriate, but he clearly isn’t perturbed, so I don’t call her out. We walk some more, and there are large plastic-looking containers of food that are somewhat disarrayed. I start to straighten them, but the King says that they’re all right, and walks on.

Now, we’re walking through a street that reminds me of a Renaissance faire, or more precisely, the market street in a fantasy city. There are booths and shops along the sides. The King says something about money. I begin to explain to him that I’m from a very different place – I’m not from around here. Where I come from, we have machines that are run by the same power that makes lightening, and we have machines that can add and make things – and we have money that is printed on paper. I realize that to him, it would be worthless, because it’s not made of precious metal – to him, money should be universal because of its innate value. I was trying to aim the conversation to a place where I could explain that I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing in his service – but it seems like it goes through a little loop and then I don’t get to what I wanted to say, but have to take a different tack. I don’t feel intimidated talking to the King, but I do feel like I have to make my conversation very polished,
as if making a presentation.