A Dream, My Dream

We all know that Robbie, we grew up creating realms, we cut our teeth on creating realms. We had to, in order to hide from one another playing mystic hide and seek, or running from mobs that chased us after the settlers came and tried to force their religion on us. Don't treat me like one of your students' brothers!" Karen flinched at the boom Stevens essence put into his words as he spoke. Causing House to shudder for the second time of the night. We weren't sure if Steven was truly annoyed or just tired. He did just return to us and ate or drank for the first time in who knows how long. "House, is my brother's room ready. Clean and set all that?" I asked, facing the hearth. The fire went green for a moment. Which was houses, "Yes." Answer. Soon Steven stood up and crossed the room to the door and opened it, walking into the hall, lined with an ancient rug Karen bought in what is modern day Morocco and tables made for us by some wood elves, flanked both walls and paintings oddly one of a single candle that took away any light brighter than a candle. We had no idea where the light went or even what magic was at work, the candle painting just did its thing, the only thing we knew for sure was that it wasn't an expression, and it cast a lite candle light itself. The opposite painting was a bit of an inside joke. The Grand Canyon when it was young and only a small stream winding its way on the ground away from a glacier and lake. As if we were old enough to have witnessed it, impling we were old enough to witness its creation. Karen, startelled spoke and pointed at the rug." Hey, that's mine! I've looked everywhere for it!" Steven walked over it and turned a corner, laughing. "House thought it looked better outside my room." He said simply and disappeared into his room, "Now I want a hot bubble and herb bath, a long one." Locked and shut the door at which point House pulled the door away from his room and filled the space with the front hall leading to the stairs to our library and the bedrooms.

The familiar light of our gasless, gas porch lights flickered in the true night outside. Inside House the day created by its magic had given way to an endless twilight across the grand entry while the world outside kept its normal, daily pace. "David, Matt, what are you both up to tonight? Or any of us. Larry, I assume you're going back to the war room?" I asked everyone I slowly pushed essence down and away, into the ground, the air into the warmth and cold of the evening and my body shrunk, the blue lines faded and my pale white skin started to blush with its browns and pink. The cold empty green of my eyes darkened to their normal brown and walnut. My dark blue expression grew smaller to fight my human form. "I'm tired and ready to rest brothers, sister. Whatever you do please ask House to help you keep it down or at least far away from my room and my window. It's been a long century." I said as I looked back at the night and the time in the essence born bubble of time. My mind could keep up with a lot, I could read faster, think faster, and process faster then even most Fey but this was a lot to take in and a lot to examine. Thankfully the day was over and I could lay down and just sleep, just dream, I could escape. "I suggest we all think about what brothers memory stone shared with us not just tonight but for a few days, I'm worried, worried that some kind of battle is brewing." Larry said as he slipped past us and into the attic space and his room next to the training room. He wasn't wrong, that memory stone gave us all a lot to think about no matter what guild we belonged to. We are the leading family of our prospective guilds and affiliates.

I could feel House settling down for the night and the minds of most of the family falling asleep and I could breath deeper as I layed down. House kept my bed from thousands of years ago, They made it into a bench at the foot of my now lavish, large bed. It was amazingly soft and firm at the same time. I was supported everywhere I need to be and felt smooth where I wanted it. I was never to hot, never to cold. The blankets are soft and plush with a pillow that just wrapped around my head like a hug. I cast my expression away and removed my mundane cloths and sank into my bed ready for the day to be over. I've always loved to get into bed, just to end the day that I struggle through so desperately. My mind is tired and weak by the time I lay down. I may be magical, I may have lived for ages and ages but I was still born, I still have a human mind and that mind came with its own illnesses and challenges. I didn't fear anything, I didn't worry about mortality or illness. It's just a body, a body I'm attached to, it's my current body after all but I don't fear losing it. Still my mind raced with all kinds of shoulds, woulds, and coulds about life. It wasn't worry about any single thing, it is just mental illness and stress in general. I even have a panic disorder and depression that I take human medicine for though because of my Fey blood I need much higher doses than an average human. Our Fey blood attacks anything we put in it that is mundane. Its eliminated in large quantities almost as soon as we take it or put it in our bodies. So my antidepressants and panic medication had to be larger, in addition I use herbs that Robbie gave me. He spent a long time studying human medicines and their interactions with magical systems. He was surprised and excited one day, "It's amazing, there are some mundane medications that interact with mystic beings, others can be augmented with herbs and potions to increase how much they can help." He was excited and when he told me he spoke faster and faster, as he handed me vials, herbs, roots, and the occasional flower. It was always nice to see his excitement. Passion was always exciting and we each have ours. Outside of leadership I have a passion for art, for music and it influences how I use the essence at my disposal.

I've always sang, I mean half the story telling in the Inuqpiat culture is told through song and dance but music really called to me. I could feel the need to sing in my bones, in my heart, I could feel it deep inside my mind where inspiration comes from, then it just burst out of me when I was emotional. Karen's passion of course was with animals from all the realms. She was the head of the mystic veterinary affiliation. Her mastiff friend was either at her side or nearby. After he died he took his place at her side, faithful from the healing she tried, loyal from her dedication to him. Even without a guild she found her passion and worked to lead the affiliation. It was technically under the healers guild, but Robbie knew well enough to treat her passion with respect. It was amazing to watch the affiliation take shape over the millenia, first it was just healers helping mundane animals that contracted a Fey illness from other fey beings, some of them catching things just by chance. It grew into helping Fey creatures, then into research about mythological animals and creatures of all kinds. Of course any being capable of language and higher reasoning where under the preview of the healers guild. In the magical world not all animals were animals, if there was a cultural and not just herd mentality or instinct were treated as equals or in some cases as near equals to other beings.

Back when humans and Fey lived side by side and animals mundine and mystic alike lived everywhere, with everyone. Some distinctions were made between those beings that had higher functions and those that lived by instinct and herd mentality. Classification had really been drawn until Karen's affiliation so her passion sparked a whole branch of science and study for both the human world and the realms alike. Some were harder to classify then others. Mundane animals and fey creatures could mimic a lot of actions that higher functioning beings could do and they can be trained so the first five hundred years war, fun I think some would say, others would call it crazy and chaotic. There are lions that look very much like human and lions from the realms but the difference was that on lived in prides and hunted and bred as often as they wanted but couldn't talk or learn complex ideas. Fey lions on the other hand were capable of mimicking speech like mundane parrots. It wasn't enough to make them sentient but its took years for the affiliation to figure out if it was truly conversation or just things they learned and taught one another to mimic like birds teach their young and fellow birds to do. Over centuries the classifications grew and some changed as the creatures grew and evolved. Soon there were thousands then hundreds of thousands with some crossovers as common evolutions became linear evolutions, then replaced by new breeds altogether.

I know the basics of the breeds and families, some mundane creatures' hair, feathers, scales etc were just as useful in spells and formulations as fey breeds of the same nature, some more potent then fey breeds in configurations of the same spell, potion or situation. It isn't a surprise, animals have always been and will be more in tune with the mystic nature of essence. Cats from the human world were especially in touch with essence and mystic beings. The only animal in any realm that escaped classification was Squid and Octopi. For some reason no lore could be found pre-human or fey stories. It's suggested they might be of this realm, the human realm but outside of human understanding. They didn't communicate with fey born, fey, nor fey creatures. The question was, where are they from and why and how are they here? Questions to be answered at some point for sure but the sentiment has always been that those answers would come in their own time and when they were ready to talk to us or to humans, it's nice to have some kind of mystery in life and not be able to classify or identify everything within our reach.

Fur or an eye are needed to create cloaking spells. Mundean cats without access to essence could see right through a cloaking spell or to help see what is hidden. Of course the vet affiliation had created laws to keep the acquisition of any body part no matter what family of beings it fell into, be obtained with ethics No just taking what you want, no using anything without permission. An entire new commerce in ethical ingredients trade was born after the laws were passed, ensuring that there was enough for everyone and that nothing was done without consent or being taken with permission from family pets that had passed. That was a place where fey bloodlines among the human world came in handy, their family pets were kept after passing and the parts needed sold out for works that were important. Like any commerce there was a black market that trafficked in black market things that had questionable means.

It's not often there are dark fey beings breaking the laws that our family enforced or dark magic being worked but it did happen and some believed that items obtained through trickery or against the grain of ethics were more potent than everyday items but it was rarer and rarer than ever before. Whether it was the laws or enlightenment that pushed the dark arts away it was becoming less and less commonplace. Potion ingredients drove most of our economy in the realms. Our commerce interacted with the human one more and more and started to look more and more like it. As Aunga, our grandmother would say that everything changes or it dies. It was true for beings, creatures, cultures, and economies.

I suppose it's easier to remember the past than it is to relive it. Thankfully none of us has had to relive the past in any meaningful ways. At least no ways outside of memories and dreams. As I lay there ready to slip into sleep I felt the ever present brush of my family's connected thoughts, it's a light weight that settles into place as easily as a lock of hair or blink of an eye. It was never intrusive, sure always feeling the pressing of your family's minds can be annoying at times, even more so after three thousand years. Still the gentle hum of their minds is a reminder of what it means to be a part of a tribe, a clan, a village. It has a comfort that I do not think that people outside of that feeling could ever understand. Most of us fell into dreams, David, Mathew, and Robbies minds still felt over active. As a group we slept, we dreamed our separate dreams and House fell into resting for the night, growing ever so slightly smaller, losing some of its vitality and some of its plasticity. As House dreams the wall paper and paint shift around like an octopus sleeping, halls and floors faded in and out, shifted size, shape, and placement. One moment there were three floors, then ten, and later in the night 2, then a tower of floors as high and low as the sky and the core with steps that would take hundreds of years to descend or climb.

I was suddenly walking next to the great snake river, its clean fresh water was cool and refreshing. It rushed past with such force that it pushed the salty sea out and away from its mouth and fresh drinking water surrounded the Fjord that made out settlement. The water was so clean I could smell its purity hanging in the air and it was so clear I could see the depths of the river's bed. Every place the river touched was blessed with signs of life, a clump of moss embedded in clusters of rock, fish of every size crossed like a network of movement. Even in the winter months life could be seen under the perfect smooth ice, turned blue with thickness and density. For ages and ages past our people have used this river to drink from, to fish and hunt in, to play, and bath. Washing further down the river near the mouth. In the winter we ice fish and go crabbing. We cross from one portion of the settlement to the other part across the bay. What looked like to separate settlements was in fact one. We lived from the fjord to the beach across the water. We traded with the men that came from beyond what is called the Bering Strait.

Our two cultures have been trading for centuries, when we came out of ancient Mongolia. As we crossed the frozen waters from Mongolia many of the first five tribes started to spit. Some settled in Russia, before it was named anything, others like my family line stopped in northern Alaska. Others went further south becoming the native tribes of the Americas, some married into the peoples of south america and diverged even further from our Mongolia ancestors.

Our family was the first of the five tribes that left Mongolia to avoid war like nature, the five tribes favored healing arts and harmony, there are arguments about the way the five tribes left. Some say that it was a choice others say that the waring clans were to much for the first of the five, we couldn't deal with the constant need to heal the clans and our tribes, food ran low from over hunting to feed the growing armies as one war brought down settlements and the people absorbed into the clans army. Whatever the reason our tribes left we kept large portions of culture and history as well as genetic markers. There are very few stories that reach that far back but the ones that we still possess are detailed and don't mention the true reason the five thought that moving across the world and over the frozen seas was the best option available to us.

As I walked the rolling and rocky beach I saw an old ivory mask.I knew I waa dreaming but I felt like I should remember the mask but I couldn't place the ivory or its design. I knew I was dreaming, after a few hundred years I could always tell I was dreaming. Somehow most of my dreams still took place without any influence from me. All my dreams were a stage and I put an actor in them. As I watched the dream play out I kept noticing the mask, propped against a log washed up on the banks of the river. The face of an owl without a body was blankly staring back at me, river stones laying on the ground stood dark against the pale white of the mask. Two stone eyes looking back at me, the stones had a golden hue that seemed to be reflecting from some deeper space that I couldn't see. I came closer to the river side and the mask. I could see how thin it was, masks as old as this shouldn't be this thin. As old as the mask looked it seemed to have been tooled or worked with magic to achieve the thin eggshell like mask. I didn't just want to look at the mask I was overwhelmed with a need to pick it up, I had a need to hold it. The golden light reflecting off the rocks was now reflected in the river, with each step I took closer to the mask I not only saw the light but heard a hum filling the air. Before I knew what I was doing, the dream pushed me to bend down and pick up the mask. I no longer just wanted to inspect the mask I had to hold it, more important I had to turn it over. In the split second that it took me to pick up this owl mask I became aware of my mother and grandmother behind me, both watching me. It's the awareness that only dreams are capable of providing. I saw them as much in my mind as I did with my eyes. There was no warning or concern in their eyes. I didn't feel them reacting in any way, nor were they observing me. They could have just been out watching the river or the clouds as much as they could be looking in my direction. Time moves slower than the silent fluffy snow of a cold winter's night, the kind of snow that touches down with no sound, not even an imprint where it lands. Also, it moved as fast as a powerful river with new summer force born out of the melting snow from the previous winter driving the streams and natural dams to give birth to fledging rivers all joining into the grand force that made the late spring and early summers Snake River causing faster flows and flooding of our peaceful village along its shores.

Knowing that dreams have their own rules I understood that I couldn't do anything but observe as I picked up the mask and turned it over. Light, pure golden light was on the other side.

In the dream I felt others watching me.``Brother what is going on, are you hurt?" I could hear Larry screaming at me. I again saw with my mind as if I was looking with my eyes. I saw everyone standing there staring at me. "Steven, Mathew, David, Karen?" I whispered, looking around at my family floating in the space between waking and l sleep that I found myself in. "What are you doing here?" I asked further. I was still in my dream but there was a new interstitial space where my family stood now. "House has been up in a roar for over an hour Jones! They wouldn't even let us into your room. We had to step between realms to get in here, what the Hells is going on?" Robbie asked while he looked around my now wrecked room. I enjoyed a room that was part bedroom and part garden. "I have no idea what they were talking about, I couldn't think of why House would have panicked," more I couldn't understand how its been an hour of them trying to get into my room." I asked with a numb voice as I lay there assessing the room around me. The plants and flowers that dotted the ground around were torn from their roots, the bushes and young trees bald of their green lush leaves. Twigs strewn on the floor, the magic that created my room was blinking in and out exposing dirt and ground one moment and the worn plancks of the ancient floor. I asked House to make my floor out of the wood Aunga, our grandmother had used for the wall supports and the central log used to support the dome of earth and moss that was the roof of the home she had built for us so long ago. As my floors and trim of windows and doors it grounded me to the past, to the great House that came to life just to help us Unlike a house of mystery that many magicians normally call home, House just came into being as if they loved us so much that House just had to be a part of our family.