Dream: Plausible (Except for My Heat Vision)
Thursday (?), Aug 6th 2009:
I walked backed from something with Alison in the open space between pines and buildings across a carpet of brown needles. Her steps bounced a little as we talked, and her hairbrown with a black cherry sheenhung to her chin (like it did when we first met), swinging with her every glance. She pulled her keys from her pocket as we approached her house; her brown coat flapped and her keys jangled as she gestured the completion of her story.
She unlocked the door and ushered me inside; the door opened onto the landing of a stairway or ramp that led gradually down to the left. A large room lay straight ahead, four yards below the landing. There was no railing, but the ceiling angled down from right to left in front of us, as if there were another flight of stairs around the corner, so we could only see the room below near our feet. Narrow strips of maple paneled the wall of the sloped ceiling. Alison grinned as if to say, "this is one of our favorite silly jokes," then stepped abruptly from the ledge, hurling herself across the half-yard gap and smacking full-front against the paneled wall. My gut barely had time to lurch, expecting her to fall, before she hit the wall and stuck, arms out, elbows bent up, hands splayed, just like a cartoon. She shifted her fingertips on the wood paneling and slid slowly down the wall, then dropped into the kitchen.
I walked down the ramp and joined her while she put things away. I got increasingly curious about whether her sisters were home and anxious that her parents might be in a room upstairs around the corner. I was about to ask her when I realized none of them lived here; she'd bought this house with Dan after they got married.
I sat with a few of Alison's friends in the den. Alison was doing something else tonight; Dan was supposed to join us, but hadn't arrived yet. I recognized a couple as friends from her high school, but couldn't place their names. The guys had a semi-regualr game night, and they'd invited me to join them, since I was from out of town and Alison was busy. They bantered jovially about which game we should play and who should run it. Everyone seemed resigned to the fact that they'd play more of [Bill]'s game, even though they kept complaining about it to him. I leaned forward a little to speak, my lips almost forced apart by the words, "I could run something instead," but I held them in check, wracking my brain for something I could throw together in half an hour with no books.
I held a spare piece of varnished floor molding, about three feet of quarter-round, carving game notes into the wood with my heat vision. Alyssa sat across from me in the other mustard-yellow armchair, flipping through a notebook.
"What should I play?" she asked. She wanted something new and different, and she'd been discarding ideas for a while. [Bill]'s game had been set aside; we would either play whatever I put together or Zach's animal game. We needed to come up with characters for Zach's game, but I was still busy prepping in case I ran the game, so I hadn't started yet.
I suggested something; she rejected it. I pondered.
"You could play a gnome were-lizard...."
Alyssa considered.
I walked backed from something with Alison in the open space between pines and buildings across a carpet of brown needles. Her steps bounced a little as we talked, and her hairbrown with a black cherry sheenhung to her chin (like it did when we first met), swinging with her every glance. She pulled her keys from her pocket as we approached her house; her brown coat flapped and her keys jangled as she gestured the completion of her story.
She unlocked the door and ushered me inside; the door opened onto the landing of a stairway or ramp that led gradually down to the left. A large room lay straight ahead, four yards below the landing. There was no railing, but the ceiling angled down from right to left in front of us, as if there were another flight of stairs around the corner, so we could only see the room below near our feet. Narrow strips of maple paneled the wall of the sloped ceiling. Alison grinned as if to say, "this is one of our favorite silly jokes," then stepped abruptly from the ledge, hurling herself across the half-yard gap and smacking full-front against the paneled wall. My gut barely had time to lurch, expecting her to fall, before she hit the wall and stuck, arms out, elbows bent up, hands splayed, just like a cartoon. She shifted her fingertips on the wood paneling and slid slowly down the wall, then dropped into the kitchen.
I walked down the ramp and joined her while she put things away. I got increasingly curious about whether her sisters were home and anxious that her parents might be in a room upstairs around the corner. I was about to ask her when I realized none of them lived here; she'd bought this house with Dan after they got married.
I sat with a few of Alison's friends in the den. Alison was doing something else tonight; Dan was supposed to join us, but hadn't arrived yet. I recognized a couple as friends from her high school, but couldn't place their names. The guys had a semi-regualr game night, and they'd invited me to join them, since I was from out of town and Alison was busy. They bantered jovially about which game we should play and who should run it. Everyone seemed resigned to the fact that they'd play more of [Bill]'s game, even though they kept complaining about it to him. I leaned forward a little to speak, my lips almost forced apart by the words, "I could run something instead," but I held them in check, wracking my brain for something I could throw together in half an hour with no books.
I held a spare piece of varnished floor molding, about three feet of quarter-round, carving game notes into the wood with my heat vision. Alyssa sat across from me in the other mustard-yellow armchair, flipping through a notebook.
"What should I play?" she asked. She wanted something new and different, and she'd been discarding ideas for a while. [Bill]'s game had been set aside; we would either play whatever I put together or Zach's animal game. We needed to come up with characters for Zach's game, but I was still busy prepping in case I ran the game, so I hadn't started yet.
I suggested something; she rejected it. I pondered.
"You could play a gnome were-lizard...."
Alyssa considered.