Azria and a Gebbeth Dream
I had an unusual dream last night. It was set in the Inherit the Earth world...humanoid animals in a post-apocalyptic earth. In this world, there are different tribes/countries/kingdoms inhabited by different species, and I was in what looked like the temple of the wise, feline high priestess of the rabbits, Elara. I could be wrong, though...it felt more like a castle than a temple to me. Anyhow, I forget why I was meeting with Queen Elara (for queen she was, whether or not she had the title), but for some reason I was there, and she was clearly displeased with my presence or my message (or both). Neither do I remember her stated reason, but she summoned her oldest, slowest, most battered servants, the ones who had fought long and hard for her and clearly showed the damage (mentally and physically), yet refused to stop serving their queen. She had them line up along the walls, and was closing in on them with a paw-sized slab of some translucent off-white rock material when she announced (or I realized) that she was going to kill them. Now as mentioned above, Elara was a wise, gentle (queen), so I was shocked by this turn of events, and needless to say, I, my companion(s?), and a few of her more loyal handmaids tried to stop her, which was exceedingly difficult since her victims were proud to die for their queen and were fighting back...against us. Somewhere in the midst of all this someone got a hold of the stone, or Elara droppeds it, and it broke in half. There was a "whoosh" and something whitish and almost transparent wafted, and I suddenly realized what was happening and grabbed at the broken pieces in terror, fitting them back together on one fluid motion. They fused instantly, but it was too late, the monster had been freed.
At this point, a young girl of indeterminate species I had not noticed before seized the stone from me and exited into a courtyard or breezeway of some sort, myself in pursuit. As I exited the room/building, I saw her a few steps ahead of me almost-but-not-quite skipping, and when she turned to look at me, I was nearly overwhelmed by the purity and innocent peacefulness of her gaze. In that moment I knew without her saying a word that she knew more about what was going on than anyone else (Elara included) and she was our only hope. As if sensing my lack of understanding, she began a beautiful, haunting song: On the night that she almost got cast into Azria.
And then I woke up. One line into perhaps the most beautiful song I have ever heard (certainly the best my mind has ever produced), and I woke up! And I still have no idea what an Azria is or even how it's spelled. I looked it up on the internet and "Azria" seems to be a last name, and "Asria" an acronym, neither of which are any help. But I got the impression from the young girl that Azria was something like hell and Elara had made some sort of deal in order to escape it.
My dream self could sense that whatever Elara was going to do to her faithful-but-worn-and-kind-of-dim servants was going to be more than simply culling the herd, but the ethereal ghost-like mist that came from the broken stone was an interesting turn of events, one likely borrowed from the "nameless" monsters of the Earthsea series, by Ursula K. LeGuin. In Earthsea, a "nameless one" is an immortal ghost-monster that, once released, can possess and destroy the souls of people until it finally finds its mortal twin and possess him/her, becoming a corporeal "gebbeth" of immense power and near-immortality.
As soon as my dream self saw the ghost-monster, I knew that this was something very like the nameless ones, and that now that it was released, it would murder innocent people (morphs, they're called in the Inherit the Earth world) until it destroyed its twin (Elara) and everything she stood for...then it would inhabit her and the world would know terror. But this had not been its plan...it had been controlling Elara somehow through the stone, and wanted her to do whatever it was she was going to do to those servants (I'm not quite sure what, but it involved placing the stone on the victim's chest). So the greater evil had been averted when the stone was broken, but now we had the problem of a lose monster in the castle and a bunch of really confused (i.e. potentially mutinous) servants.
I don't think I've ever had a dream that actually demonstrated the Zeigarnik effect (which, according to my Psychology teacher, says that as you sleep, you continue to think about whatever it was that you last thought about before you went to sleep) before this one. Usually if I was thinking about astrophysics before I went to sleep, I'd dream about meatloaf or something about as pertinent. But in this case, I had been thinking about Nari's Halloween costume (she went as a princess this year--I tried to get her to wear the seawitch (Princess Cruises logo), but she wouldn't go for it) before bed, and I'm pretty sure that this was responsible for at least the castle setting, and possibly even the young girl, since I generally think of Nari as the essence of innocence/purity (for some weird reason). Also, in A Prairie Home Companion last night there had been a random otherworldly young girl that popped up in the last thirty seconds of Lake Woebegone that seemed to know more about the situation than anyone should be able. Just like the girl in my dream.
I've no clue what it means, and I'm not sure there even is a meaning (it isn't sticking in my mind like my important dreams generally do), but it seems to have a lot more grounding in reality than most my dreams, so I leave it now to you.
At this point, a young girl of indeterminate species I had not noticed before seized the stone from me and exited into a courtyard or breezeway of some sort, myself in pursuit. As I exited the room/building, I saw her a few steps ahead of me almost-but-not-quite skipping, and when she turned to look at me, I was nearly overwhelmed by the purity and innocent peacefulness of her gaze. In that moment I knew without her saying a word that she knew more about what was going on than anyone else (Elara included) and she was our only hope. As if sensing my lack of understanding, she began a beautiful, haunting song: On the night that she almost got cast into Azria.
And then I woke up. One line into perhaps the most beautiful song I have ever heard (certainly the best my mind has ever produced), and I woke up! And I still have no idea what an Azria is or even how it's spelled. I looked it up on the internet and "Azria" seems to be a last name, and "Asria" an acronym, neither of which are any help. But I got the impression from the young girl that Azria was something like hell and Elara had made some sort of deal in order to escape it.
My dream self could sense that whatever Elara was going to do to her faithful-but-worn-and-kind-of-dim servants was going to be more than simply culling the herd, but the ethereal ghost-like mist that came from the broken stone was an interesting turn of events, one likely borrowed from the "nameless" monsters of the Earthsea series, by Ursula K. LeGuin. In Earthsea, a "nameless one" is an immortal ghost-monster that, once released, can possess and destroy the souls of people until it finally finds its mortal twin and possess him/her, becoming a corporeal "gebbeth" of immense power and near-immortality.
As soon as my dream self saw the ghost-monster, I knew that this was something very like the nameless ones, and that now that it was released, it would murder innocent people (morphs, they're called in the Inherit the Earth world) until it destroyed its twin (Elara) and everything she stood for...then it would inhabit her and the world would know terror. But this had not been its plan...it had been controlling Elara somehow through the stone, and wanted her to do whatever it was she was going to do to those servants (I'm not quite sure what, but it involved placing the stone on the victim's chest). So the greater evil had been averted when the stone was broken, but now we had the problem of a lose monster in the castle and a bunch of really confused (i.e. potentially mutinous) servants.
I don't think I've ever had a dream that actually demonstrated the Zeigarnik effect (which, according to my Psychology teacher, says that as you sleep, you continue to think about whatever it was that you last thought about before you went to sleep) before this one. Usually if I was thinking about astrophysics before I went to sleep, I'd dream about meatloaf or something about as pertinent. But in this case, I had been thinking about Nari's Halloween costume (she went as a princess this year--I tried to get her to wear the seawitch (Princess Cruises logo), but she wouldn't go for it) before bed, and I'm pretty sure that this was responsible for at least the castle setting, and possibly even the young girl, since I generally think of Nari as the essence of innocence/purity (for some weird reason). Also, in A Prairie Home Companion last night there had been a random otherworldly young girl that popped up in the last thirty seconds of Lake Woebegone that seemed to know more about the situation than anyone should be able. Just like the girl in my dream.
I've no clue what it means, and I'm not sure there even is a meaning (it isn't sticking in my mind like my important dreams generally do), but it seems to have a lot more grounding in reality than most my dreams, so I leave it now to you.