It was like some sort of post apocalypse world. It wasn’t a huge apocalypse, so maybe it was just some major thing, but it seemed that there was a sickness that was tearing the world apart, that was hurting people and appearing almost at random.

I was Luinbariel again, or at least I looked like her. The first thing I remember is touring the countryside where I grew up, and finding places I once knew (though the structures I saw never existed) being abandoned. I went by a farming operation with a kid I used to ride the schoolbus (for real) with, and his farm was abandoned. We were on our way to a safehouse somewhere.

When we get there, there are others I know. Some other guy I went to school with, my age, and many others. There is a large… house thing, full of small rooms that people are staying in. You really are just given a small tiny box of a room to sleep in. I ended up in a room that contained two other even smaller rooms that were attached by windows, not doors; everyone who was going to sleep had to attach themselves to a very secure brace on the wall with some sort of tough strap, so that if they got whatever this sickness was, they couldn’t reach any of the others in their sleep and maim them.

I was helping pick out a strap for myself, being very confused about what this sickness was; it seemed that I was not on this planet somehow, when it hit. I’m the only one who has no idea what it is or who has never seen it. I go to get the matron of this little house to help us settle everything and she sort of yells at me for being so stupid; she can’t believe that I don’t know how to setup a strap at my age, and wonders where the hell I came from.

Everyone is able to sleep now if they want; I am sharing the room with three others, one of whom refuses to sleep near anyone else and is in a small tiny room by himself; sort of a greenhouse. He sleeps on top of a shelf. The others in this room are two little twin boys, very young; but very good with language and very creepy. Their sharp blue eyes bore into me as they tell me about the disease and the need for the straps.

I leave the room and go outside; there is a large cart, the one it seems we came in on, a big wooden flatbed with some rails pulled by some kind of truck. They are re-fuelling it and I’m watching. It looks like they’ll leave again soon and I want to go with them. As I’m watching, someone says there is a spy nearby (oh, TF2) and we all get nervous; I say to my friend from school, who is right near the refuelling lines, that he should make sure that’s fuel going in. He inhales a little in one line and yup, its gas; we relax a little. He checks the next one and looks so surprised as he falls back, choking and coughing; it must be acid or something with a caustic gas. I look away because I know what’s happening to him; I look instead to the man all dressed up rather like a pyro, pumping the gas.

We chase him around a bit but he disappears really quickly, and everyone is on edge; the cart is not going to work with a corroded gas tank and lines, and their trip is postponed. I go into the house that’s there; it’s dark and its getting late. There are candles everywhere. The people are talking, making plans as to what to do, where to go, where hasn’t been hit and where we can hide from some threat I don’t understand. As I wander through the house I get to a young blonde-ish woman who’s making the choices; I ask her where we’re going and she says “We’ll to go Philidelphia” or something like that. I ask why, looking confused, and she nods to indicate something behind me and says “its so that so and so can’t hear us”.

I turn around and a man with startling blue eyes can be seen, only barely, hidden behind some strange grating on the wall… as I back away I can see more of him and he bursts through it, holding some sort of jerry can of gasoline. Everyone gets to their feet screaming, trying to run away, hoping that he won’t set them on fire but I see something in his eyes; I call his bluff, standing up to him. “It’s empty, isn’t it?” He looks at it slowly, then back to me. I don’t like the look in his eyes and I try to run but the second I’ve got my back to him he grabs me, and arm under my chin, and for some reason is trying to shove his fingers in my mouth. It gets kind of sexual because he presses me against the wall and I can certainly feel him grinding into me; I close my eyes tight and just make damned sure he can’t get his fingers in my mouth, knowing nothing else can happen here in this house with so many people close by.

I fight that for awhile and then he just gives up, running off with me. He’s got the most maniacal grin and actually looks a lot like Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in the first die hard (likely because I saw that on tv the other day). He just keeps running off with me and eventually we end up at some sort of … it must be some strange japanese themed brothel with all these little rooms in a seedy part of a nearby town/city. He’s looking for a safe place to hide us, not sure why; I escape him at one point and while I’m running, I find a handful of small stones on the ground, like moonstones and sodalite, among others i don’t remember. I pick them up.

As I’m trying to escape there is a tricky spot where I have to crawl behind where he’s looking for me, pretty much directly behind him. He sees me anyway and I run again; I am in a strange room where trees or something like them are growing horizontally out of one wall and you can sort of crawl up in them; its an enclosed room but they take up only one half of it. I’m hiding in there when he rushes in and can’t seem to find me. Another person crawls in behind me and is hiding as well, only because she is moving another man reaches in and finds her; when he says something like “so that’s where you were hiding” she replies “yeah right next to that royal girl dressed in crimson” and I swear. She ratted me out, though I had no idea I was “royal”.

My chaser reaches in and pulls me out, dropping me to the floor. I remember collapsing there and hanging my head, my silver hair everywhere; I remember him saying something that made me feel ashamed, probably something like “if you hadn’t hidden there, that girl would have been safe”.

I’m not sure what happens now, but some other girl ends up with us eventually and we are running short on supplies; we’ve been travelling awhile. While I’m making a distraction in a store so that my captor can steal something, I get an idea; I whip out all my stones and drop them on the table. The woman running what seems to be an everything shop, including a small mail service, is stunned and asks me for a certificate for one of them. I say I never knew it existed and she doesn’t seem to mind, though she’s a tad suspicious. She looks at all of them, then goes to look up a price for them.

My captor and this other look at me strangely, wondering where I got those, and I sadly look at the stones knowing that I’ll have to sell them for us to survive. I don’t hate my captor now for some reason, not really sure what happened, though I don’t really LIKE him, either.

A doctor comes in for some important mail, and a mailman comes and delivers more. Then I wake up, but not of my own volition….

There were two distinct knocks on my bedroom door, or something like that. That or it sounded like the hook hanging on the back of the bedroom door moved, but there is NO reason for that; it, and the door, are heavy and the hook at TWO housecoats on it. I jumped and got up, looking at the door; there was no one there. I thought that maybe there would be someone else in the apartment, that they were checking to make sure no one was home before doing work that that one time I had all the trouble with workmen in my house; so I got up to look. There was no one. Just incase I put the bolt on the door, and thought I would try to go back to bed and solve this dream.

I grabbed the sword from under my bed and partly unsheathed it, keeping my hands on it under the blankets. I felt a pressure change and looked over at one moment at the door and I SWEAR to god that I saw someone walking past, something big and dark. It went into the bathroom but I knew it wasn’t there… I think. I couldn’t sleep.

The kitty has been acting weird all morning since then, sitting behind me and guarding the bathroom door. I feel uneasy and weirded out by all this, but that’s what I’ve got.