Dream of Insanity

In a classroom, a group of about 8 students sitting on the floor around the teacher sitting on the stool. She’s given out Oracle cards, one per student, and has us read the meaning. Then she passes around another card, and has us connect the two cards meanings. The first card I received is Night’s ___ [cannot remember], and the common card is Night’s Witch. Night’s ___ always wears blue, and is of sky and tempest and star; Night’s Witch never wears red, is of copper and silver (alchemical associations of beauty and purity respectively, and both are considered feminine) and blood. [Retrospectively, it makes more sense to my logical brain to have the one named Night and the other named Witch, and even in the dream I was confused as to why there were two cards of the night] I drew them together saying that they are very similar but fundamentally different, and that they could be snapshots in time (past and present, present and future), outcomes of a choice, or people in your life (as not even the court cards cover all aspects), concluding that I could not tell for certain- “But you would know”, the teacher says, wearing the body of my old high school English teacher but having the voice of the moon (smooth and cool and  uniquely feminine, with a timbre of amusement).

She then passes around a book, and has all read bits of the following fairy tale… [Which I experience as the boy, even afterwards, as he was a ghost]

Once upon a time, two best friends went wandering in the forest. The elder girl wore a dress of cotton, while the younger boy wore a suit of silk. While they were playing. the boy saw a pretty little silkworm, and he was so enamored by it he caught it and tied it around his beltloop. His friend was upset by this and kept asking him to set it free, but he refused. The next thing he knew, he was laying naked in the grass, and a butterfly flew out of a cocoon woven into the tree in front of him, right in sight. Amazed by this apparent miracle, he ran back to town to tell them of it. But when he arrives, the townsfolk instantly gather around and stone him to death.

Wait, what? By fairy tale logic, the pretty little silkworm wove it’s cocoon by the silk he was wearing. Though you may have noticed that he never questioned why he woke up in the grass, nor where his friend was to be found; or indeed, why she was so upset at his capture of the silkworm.

See, the girl was trying to save his life. She knocked him over the head so she could remove his pants, and then stole the rest of his suit so he wouldn’t suspect. She ran the silkworm over to the village healer, but alas it had already died. She convinced the mayor of her innocence, but maintained that it twas a stranger who has done this… then the boy showed up and all knew his crime. She kept the little silkworm until it started to rot, and when she went to bury it, the silkworm left a dark stain on her fingers that never went away for the rest of her days. At the end of it all, “He got his, and she got hers”.

I hand the book back to the teacher, and say the moral is to not disturb what isn’t yours, whilst the others say things like greed and justice and guilt. Teacher simply smiles at me, as if she thinks I only got half the point.

At that point, I wake up, fully awake and with the dream fresh in my mind, a good 15 minutes before my alarm was due to ring, and scribbled down a bunch of disjointed phrases, enough to keep the memory alive, and then I went about translating it into words and logical sense. [What's in brackets is shit I thought of retrospectively], (and the stuff that's in parenthesis is dream knowledge, the sort of thought that layers the action but doesn't take up narrative time by itself). Yes, I did remember the main alchemical associations of copper and silver whilst unconsious... hush, I'm not a dork for that :P

Not sure if that dream happened because my sleep schedule was completely fucked up… See, I slept til 1800 Saturday, stayed up all night, grabbed breakfast with a friend and then crashed at his place at 1100, slept til 1500, made my way back home and promptly crashed again. Then I woke up a 0200 Monday, decided to try and sleep again, ended up tossing and turning enough that I thought I never slept at all until I woke up with that dream in my head XD.