My friends and I fight a sorcerer and his allies--or minions seduced by spells; we're not sure. Doesn't seem to be much in it for them, making us suspicious.

While some of us distract the enemy with a frontal assault, my best friend slinks up the edges of a long booby-trapped staircase to the Sorceror's apartment. She makes it alive--and searches it. She finds ten blue feathers shed by his most powerful familiar--a great blue eagle.

Those feathers, given to the magicians on our side, strengthen us a lot. With them, we defeat the Sorceror.

But the magical duel has after-effects lasting years. Those who got a blue feather remain magical guardians; they monitor society for similar thaumaturgical trouble.

I'm not one of the ten--instead, I coordinate and dispatch featherholders to check out complaints. I track all the reported magic and magic in town on a chessboardy magical map. Pairs and loners dot the grid--monitors blue, indies of many colors...

Why do featherholders patrol in pairs? Well, it turns out feathers just work best if their owners pair up. Feathers, after all, are used to working together.

In contrast, those of us born with strong magic generally need a lot of privacy and space to develop our own techniques. It turns out magic just varies too much for standardized spells--or tests, or courses, or a school like Hogwarts.

Sigh! Mostly you have to grow your own. And that takes time, thought, experimentation and privacy.

Sigh again! I'd like a partner, but I'm just not the featherholder type. Not because my magic's too weak to master a feather. Because it's innate.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Sorceror with allies who may be enspelled: Trump, of course. Love or hate his policies, but he's a wizard of a liar. Black is white, up is down? Millions believe!
• Great blue eagle: a dream by my friend Xanthe. I think it means natural grace--being guiltlessly in your body. Hmm. Trump's the least guilty critter in the world. Is that what his minions really envy?
• Pairs & loners, chessboard map: I tried a spatial puzzle in the New York Times--a 10x10 grid with 10 amoeboid shapes, each needing two eyes, and every row & column must have two (pairs!) but the eyes can't be adjacent, even diagonally (loners!)
• I think the dream warns... I'm a natural loner. I sense a lot, but the very fact I experience others so intensely means I need solitude. Can work with others, good with the big picture, with patterns, but couples? Intimacy?
• Magic: multiple meanings.
  1. Intellectualism. I was a child prodigy, so I got used to being mostly self-taught, from library books. School was just a warehouse they stuck me in.
  2. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome gave me not just physical fragility but autism, with acute senses that overload easily. I envy couples--but I need solitude.
  3. Literal magic. Second sight runs in my family. I sense auras and have predictive & telepathic dreams. ESP isn't something I believe or disbelieve--it's just my daily experience.
• ACTION 1: Find a self-reliant girl--or stay alone. This isn't welcome news--but I'm afraid it's realistic.
• ACTION 2: Fight Donald Trump. That lying mouth of his has shaken my faith in freedom of speech.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites