Dream Post - Buffy and the Psychic Alien Invasion

[elanya]

I wish I still remembered more of this dream on waking up - I know it was a lot more elaborate, and I can't really connect the plot threads any more.

I kind of was Buffy and kind of was watching Buffy. It was post Dawn but there were not 50 million other Slayers (pls note: I never watched all of season 7 ;p). It did not fit into any kind of coherent Buffy continuity, and was not set in Sunnyvale, but it was still about her.

For some reason, we were in a small town/remote camp. Nearby there was a quarry, possibly that was known to be of archaeological interest. Something started digging there, and then strange things this stated happening - people went missing, etc. Sadly I don't remember a lot of the early build up :/

I do remember some archaeologists coming to investigate some of the things that were starting to show up, because of course. One of them was named Twatchman, or something similar. The other I don't remember. They were both older white dudes. Watching-the-dream-me had a lot of Things to say about their assumptions and also their archaeological techniques!

The revelation of the dig was also drawing other kinds of people - people with insectoid or bird features (like some kind of combination of the swamp people from Mad Max and the bird-mask dude from True Detective). Some of them were maybe some kind of alien, some of them were more 'normal' to the setting, but possibly with some kind of historical connection to the aliens. This connection had been a long kept secret, but those walls were starting to crumble as the aliens were becoming more active.

The archaeologists did some preliminary digging to see what the Quarry diggers might be after, and maybe went to investigate the dig - I don't remember that part clearly now.

I do remember some things from the end of the dream *more* clearly.

One was dreaming about getting dressed for something - maybe to go out and meet someone? Try and talk to people? There were a bunch of other people who were trying to help me decide - I think I (Buffy-me) asked Giles? I got some opinions - there was a discussion about whether I could wear a dress I wanted to (and that someone suggested) because I didn't have tights - it was a vertically banded black, white and grey scoop-necked/sleeveless fitted dress that would have hit mid-thigh - I actually have a similar cut one in green and brown. Instead of that I chose a long patterned black and white cotton sun-dress with a very full skirt - but it had stains on in that I hadn't realized were there (pls note - it was the dress dream-me wanted, dream people were not really policing my clothing, just helping me decide ;p).

Then I switched over to being someone else who went to the 'store' where my clothes were all hanging on a rack like at a Goodwill to find a white skirt I could layer under the first dress. There was one 'advertised for sale' - but it wasn't out. The guy who was, uh.... selling this stuff (I'm not sure how that worked exactly - dream logic!) was cagey about the existence of this smock (it was definitely called a smock though my dreaming self thought that was wrong). Buffy-me had left, not having found a suitable skirt to layer. But then me-as-supporting dream cast girl (I felt like this character has secret knowledge, though dreamer-me didn't know what. She'd been quiet and over looked, and this was her quiet moment to be awesome) pressed him about it. He wound up revealing that there was a secret button that revealed another room where some of this stuff was kept that he hadn't wanted to show/share. The skirt, which was among these things, was more like a white cotton jersey slip (???), but dream-girl me said that was okay, it was mostly for a slip (at which point dreamer me provided some imagery of how this outfit would all work). Buffy-me and some friends were on our way back to the warehouse, though I *was* wearing leggings then, somehow, and had decided the banded dress was fine anyway. The important thing about the white skirt was the revelation of the secret storehouse - which I think was meant to have some kind of connection to the mysterious excavations.

Conscious brain wants to read it as an implications that local people were in some kind of cahoots with these aliens, but I'm not sure if that was actually dream-true, of if all of the above was just a more random segment. Definitely the setting of my wardrobe/warehouse and the existence of Buffy-me were the strongest links to the rest! I think partly my subconscious wanted to remind me that I had to get stuff out of the dryer before I got dressed - that's where my actual leggings were at the time ;p

Anyway. During these clothes related shenanigans, the alien excavation had progressed. They had exposed this underground complex of crumbling brick ruins underneath the old quarry (don't ask how that makes sense - dream brain). It was really cool looking though! I wish I could share dream imagery directly, because I sure can't describe it properly. The buildings were almost like brick frames - there was a corner of one exposed that I could see most distinctly. I think that the invisible aliens may have been looking for or recreating something they had before? It wasn't super clear. I never saw them. Possibly my brain is drawing on some various fictional things I've encountered lately - creatures excavating in a dead city form one of the Raksura stories from the recent short story collection, and the invisible attackers from a Diablotin session a while ago. And I was looking at archaeology firms yesterday.... anyway.

Meanwhile the archaeologists were poking around at some of the things that had been revealed. They found this low stone chamber with these really interesting sarcophagi looking things made of this dark material that was sort of like smooth polished stone, or maybe some kind of cast metal. They had rounded embossed designed on them. They appeared to have three sections - a cover, a middle unknown bit, and then the bottom part where a body would actually lay if they were sarcophagi. The two archaeologists - Twatchman (dream named for artist John Henry Twachtman, I believe - we had one of his paintings in the Forsyth collection) and the other unnamed dude were marveling over them, and because they were more like 19th C archaeologists, decided to try and pry one open with a crowbar.

This was a bad plan - they were magically booby trapped!

As they tried to pry open the section with a body in it (or not), the middle section lifted up the top bit on these little pincer claws (two claws on each rounded end of the sarcophagus), and started to rotate the top. The middle section (under the top) had these two shallow depressions - there was an eerie bright light, and the archaeologists both got absorbed/sucked in to the beam (one sarcophagus each) - the beam from the second depression sucked in something else - their greatest terrors, to be psychically trapped with them forever!

Somehow, we learned all about this. Buffy-me was listening to Giles (I think) explain what had happened. We then realized that my worst fear was losing my sister, Dawn, and that since that had already happened (err, subconscious show recollection fail?), I was totally ready for whatever these aliens had to throw at me! I was pretty chipper about it, really, though I was not entirely sure what I was going to do about it yet.

Next we flashed to a child playing back at the archaeologists' camp. Not just any child though - it was my littlest nephew (whose birthday is today! Happy birthday Nugsy!) He was playing with these lanterns he'd found that were made of squares of multicoloured glass, and dream-me somehow realized that these were related to the prisons where the archaeologists were trapped - in fact they *were* the prisons, and they were miniature people stuck in them.... My brain decided this was too ridiculous and not cool enough to fit with the rest of my dream, and the fact that the kid was a: my actual nephew and b: alone at the camp (he just turned 3!) was too much for my suspension of disbelief, and then I woke up.