Dream Journal
A lot of dreams, veering from epic (The cosmos in danger! How do you evacuate the populations of entire galaxies?) to mundane (student life, baking, Elvis impersonators, a costumer who was perpetually stoned on paint fumes).
Just before waking I dreamt I was reading, or trying to read, a book called something like The Immortal and the Undying Hunter. The main characters had unpronounceable fantasy-genre names, but I could see them; one was a rising star in a guild of story-tellers. I think he had some kind of glamour on him -- he looked like a young man with dark, shoulder-length hair and a handsome face that struck me all wrong. Occasionally I could get a glimpse of some sort of damage to his right eye, and then the image would cover it over again. The other character was a humble repairman who also liked to tell stories into the bargain -- one day he'd been called to the headquarters of the Story-tellers to do some work, and had ended up entrancing them. I suppose he must have stolen the other one's thunder or something, and he'd vowed vengeance. He was the Undying Hunter, though I can't remember how he or the repairman became immortal.
Years passed. The repairman prospered, married his sweetheart, and was renowned for his hospitality, surrounding himself with houseguests who looked similar in general type to himself or his wife -- the real reason for this, of course was to confuse the storyteller, who continued to stalk him.
Around this point the book stopped abruptly -- I began looking around for other copies, suspecting there ought to be more to the story, and found a larger copy, collated from many different editions of the book, but the pages weren't quite in the right order, and many seemed to be on the point of dissolving into sludge as I read them. Some kind of war or disaster had broken out -- the repairman's foster-daughter (the daughter of two of the lookalike guests) was a doctor on the front lines -- the storyteller's hate which by now extended to everyone around the repairman was slightly mitigated by hearing of her good works, but would it be enough? -- his hate grew fiercer as he drew geographically closer to his targets, so any mitigation only kept it level...
Just before waking I dreamt I was reading, or trying to read, a book called something like The Immortal and the Undying Hunter. The main characters had unpronounceable fantasy-genre names, but I could see them; one was a rising star in a guild of story-tellers. I think he had some kind of glamour on him -- he looked like a young man with dark, shoulder-length hair and a handsome face that struck me all wrong. Occasionally I could get a glimpse of some sort of damage to his right eye, and then the image would cover it over again. The other character was a humble repairman who also liked to tell stories into the bargain -- one day he'd been called to the headquarters of the Story-tellers to do some work, and had ended up entrancing them. I suppose he must have stolen the other one's thunder or something, and he'd vowed vengeance. He was the Undying Hunter, though I can't remember how he or the repairman became immortal.
Years passed. The repairman prospered, married his sweetheart, and was renowned for his hospitality, surrounding himself with houseguests who looked similar in general type to himself or his wife -- the real reason for this, of course was to confuse the storyteller, who continued to stalk him.
Around this point the book stopped abruptly -- I began looking around for other copies, suspecting there ought to be more to the story, and found a larger copy, collated from many different editions of the book, but the pages weren't quite in the right order, and many seemed to be on the point of dissolving into sludge as I read them. Some kind of war or disaster had broken out -- the repairman's foster-daughter (the daughter of two of the lookalike guests) was a doctor on the front lines -- the storyteller's hate which by now extended to everyone around the repairman was slightly mitigated by hearing of her good works, but would it be enough? -- his hate grew fiercer as he drew geographically closer to his targets, so any mitigation only kept it level...