Dream Journal

I just remembered this dream, hours after waking.

I was a magic user. I lived in an upper apartment in a concrete-floored, cinder-block apartment building. The building was a block wide, and maybe 10 stories tall. It had warehouse-style windows, each with 9 square panes. One window in my apartment had a broken pane in the middle. This was where one would magically gain entrance. There had to be a breach. I repaired it a few times by putting paper on it, sometimes with a note to would-be intruders. The paper prevented long-distance entry, but if I were standing outside, I could punch through the paper and magically enter through the 10 inch square opening (apparently size wasn’t a consideration).

The most common form of magic was this: you’d point your wand to one point, tap it there, then point to another point, and tap it twice there. It would form an invisible path. At times something at the starting point would travel along the path to the ending point. At other times, the path could be traversed by walking or running — typically when the caster was at the starting point. A more complex form of this was adding a vertical dimension to this. With this I could walk into the air from the start to the end point. Fewer people could do this. I could also do completely vertical versions, launching things up and down.

There was a battle in a large sand lot. There were maybe 5 people involved, including myself. There was a stronger magic in use as well, like the travel spell, but it ripped a portal in the air for instantaneous travel. The portal started as a vertical line maybe 10 feet tall and the space around the line rippled the light behind it, more and more until it opened and a brighter opaque light came out. One would then enter it and appear elsewhere. I was capable of this, but it took a lot of effort, while I could do the travel spell effortlessly. The battle was a little more like a duel, chase and dodge.

Steve was the nemesis in the story. I remember him floating by outside my apartment window. We had a conversation, seemingly normal, but with great tension behind it.

I absent-mindedly used my magic in a crowded place at one point and attracted gasps from people around me. I was chided. This magic was not known by the public.

I got word from somebody in a panic that Steve had collapsed the entire apartment building that I lived in, which was an insanely huge escalation of the conflict, and made me so incredibly mad, I called him up on my phone and tore into him with a blistering screaming tirade. He was silent the whole time until I paused. He said, “That’s sad, and hilarious.” He said something else. He was mocking my pain. I wondered if any of the apartment building remained. Maybe it was just partially collapsed.

I returned to my apartment from outside, saw that my part of it was still standing. I saw a note covering the window opening with handwriting I did not recognize. I pushed the note off, cast the travel spell to go inside and ended up inside my room. Whoever had written the note had helped me by blocking the opening.

I began to look around for things I had when I was younger that boosted my magic abilities. One was a ring with a green stone — maybe my high school ring (which had the “one ring to rule them all” inscription inside). Another was something white and puffy, clothing of some sort? That one is vague. The other issue is that my wand had only one of its two internal crystals working, which was enough for my usual uses but not for the upcoming battle. I found the ring under my bed, but couldn’t find the clothing.

Then I went to see who had put up the note barrier. I left my apartment through the door and went to the darker stairwell. Someone was coming up. It was Dave! He’d put up the note in my absence. It was a happy reunion, my waking feelings toward him notwithstanding. It’d been a long time since I’d seen him, even in dreams. He came up with me to my room. But at some point my feelings must have returned, as I cast the travel spell vertically and bounced him up and down quickly, then slowly, higher than lower.

I had magical friends. There was a school. I wanted to go to the school to get a new wand that had both crystals working, but the thought of getting the right wand for me in time for the battle was daunting, since it took some time to find the right one. But nevertheless I wanted to go. My friends and I stretched our arms around each other and cast the spell. It was a two-word spell, like “Alamora Alamora”. It was a simple, basic spell that would take us to the school, but it only took us to a waypoint. I couldn’t recall the spell to get me exactly where I wanted to go. There were several stops in here, one of which was a busy area, partially like the school and like a mall. Maybe it was the school, but I recall the school feeling dimly lit and mostly unpopulated. Using the weaker travel spells, I would have to travel part of the way on my own.

Distractions or wake-ups redirected the plot. I remember being in a warehouse at one point, using the travel spell to move from my position to the top of a line of train box-car crates.