Dream

Man, they're getting more and more complex. I think it's the sleep deprivation.

We had to hide from the soldiers. This wasn't the first part of the dream, but it was the first part I remember. Our group in the small room included JY, SW, a few other unidentified friends, and Charles C (one of my high school friends whom I immediately lost touch with coming out of high school, and whose last name I won't mention because shockingly he's the first few hits on Google). We were all very quiet, and I peeked under the door at their boots. I held up two fingers indicating there were only two of them. Someone sniffled and they turned to us, and I saw that there were really four, and held up four fingers. I frantically waved everyone to be quiet, and they got distracted by a sound down the hall - our other friends were hiding there, but there was nothing we could do about it. The soldiers started to leave, and we considered making a break for it. Charles and one of the others were having sex in the closet, but quietly.

The soldiers came back, more of them, I counted at least 20 and was indicating this by flashing my hand between "two" and "zero". They had some sort of seige engine and were backing its ramp over/through the door to our room. We all scuttled under the ramp as it unfolded. I told everyone else to get out scissors, they were confused, and I said "hamstring them." We couldn't do much else to fight back. The person next to me (looked like a student this semester) whipped out a Swiss Army knife, and when I said "hamstring" switched to a better blade.

Lots of children were killed in the fight, kinda like Les Miserables, but I do not remember it. We were dragged as prisoners down the hall by guards. My captor was Melique (pronounced "muh-LEEK"), a fictional high school classmate from the finishing school I didn't go to. She was a princess of a different nation, and her father was conquering mine. I wanted to escape, but I no longer had a nation to go back to, so I simply performed minor disobediences. We were in The Mall and I kept looking for a bathroom, and trying to evade Melique. She was hurt, asking weren't we still friends. No, not after she killed my friends and the children of my nation. I didn't want to fly, didn't want to tip my hand about my wings too soon, so I didn't.

I managed to get into an elevator ahead of her and she shoved her boot into the door, thinking I'd pop the door open so she didn't get hurt. I didn't, and the elevator started going up. I saw her boot travel with us, past the level of the next floor. When the door opened the (presumably empty) boot fell out onto the next floor. I didn't have much reason to escape, so I wasn't running fast. I put the boot down on the stool I'd accidentally taken with me, and wanted to leave it, but I was worried that someone would take them. So I cast a minor spell of protection or a shield so that only Melique could penetrate it and get the shoe and stool. (Well, people without magic couldn't penetrate it, but it was a simple one and people with magic could easily do so, but for them it was like leaving a note saying whose it was. I was thinking along the lines of locks in the Vlad Taltos HQ.)

I walked on, not looking behind. Ahead were tacotortoise and some others doing some sort of synchronized DDR for exercise on a raised platform (still in The Mall). He peeled off the group to come talk to me, asked how Melique was doing. "How could we still be friends after she killed my countrymen and children?!" "Oh, so that's their story." He expressed surprise at Melique's and her father's modus operandi, not sure if it was that they didn't used to be conquering sorts, or they were so secretive the stories of the deaths never made it out.

I woke.