The Sand-Man

Dream
May 10 2013
There are parts of this drean that are jumbled but there's quite a bit of cohesion still.

I dreamed I went with two friends to Mcdonalds in the middle of the night, supposedly after classes. We were walking in a utopia-like city with futuristic elements, with silvery streamlined lights and aerated gardens next to the roads. Between the bluish moonlight we also saw things lit up by the white streetlights and the pea green tealish colour of the floating mini gardens, and we were surprised no hovercrafts and rail vehicles were out at that time of night.

The two friends with me were Sijia and Emily and when we walked in to the McD, which was furnished in salmon and brown colours typical of the franchise in Canada, there were masses of people sitting inside. We couldn't find any seats so we turned left into a small area closed off by a glass door overlooking the children's playplace. We had troubles opening the door and found it was locked on the outside but openable on the inside, a new measure to protect the children from predators so that only someone inside could open the door. A woman playing with her kids in the ball pit opened the door for us and we went in. There was an empty table right there with four seats so we sat down, and I read the label on the wall which said "This room cannot exceed 9000kg."

So Sijia and Emily decided to go order and asked me to stay in the room to open the door for them when they got the food. I asked Sijia to pay for me and I'd pay her back in a second. I sat cross-legged on the floor for some reason and grinned up at my friends, saying something funny that I can't remember now. The two of them ran off laughing at my jokes and Emily had to round back with her usual sweet, curious expression to ask me what I wanted to eat, so I said big mac.

At this point more people came into the McDonalds and it was getting really crowded. I turned around and found an Indian family consisting of a skinny, slightly balding, moustached father and a long soft-haired, kind-eyed mother with a small bindi between her brows sitting with an adorable little girl in her lap. They appeared beside the seats where me and the girls left our backpacks. The father looked concerned that we were there because apparently they were here in the room first and he made a bit of a fuss until a worker--a teen boy with pimples and orange hair--came in to tell us that it was fine with our numbers. The father was distressed because he was worried all of us would exceed 9000kg like the sign said and that made me feel self conscious. I huddled near the wall and tried not to feel fat.

At this point the dream changed a little. The Indian family fled the restaurant with the others because apparently a curse was coming. I could hear the people through the walls murmuring "A curse, a curse..." and I watched through the glass enclosure as they all filtered out. The Mcdonalds was rapidly decaying into a moldy colour and the people fled it in fear, but I realized I had comrades to wait for. So I stuck my twin knives (suddenly I had some) into the ground and waited patiently.

My two male comrades came back and I tensely told them we were running out of time. At this point I think they were swapped with Sijia and Emily. One of them was a human hero, a young man with shining blue eyes and brown hair and dressed fit for an rpg, broadsword and red cape and all. The other held my attention. He was a tall, muscular man with deep brows and a severe expression. He looked like he was dressed like a pharaoh with the cobra-like headdress and white loincloth, and his eyes were just white with no brows or lashes. He was a gorgeous man, with something that drew me to him. He was a bit emotionless looking, serious and a bit like a fierce animal. Also, he was made completely out of golden sand.

The sandman and I were the hero's retainers. I didn't yet know how I looked like in this phase of the dream but my legs, from where I could see, were a shimmering dark violet-blue with the texture like sleek, taut whaleskin under a white gauzy wrap I wore. We made a fire out of the remains of what looked like an ancient civilization's belongings (me and Sijia and Emily's backpacks, now reduced to fossils) and we grimly wondered how we would defeat the curse on the pyramid that has been causing mischief since a thousand years ago (so I assume I am now a thousand years in the future).

I was sitting near the sandman and I shuddered. The hero looked to me, concerned, while the sandman's stoicism melted instantly to worry. He gripped me by the shoulders so that I would not fall over and then he frantically checked my hands. My fingers on the right hand, which used to be so long, were dissolving. I was also turning into sand, but unlike him, I was not retaining shape. He held me in his smooth-yet-gritty arms and I was too tired to reassure him that I was fine.

Here in the dream, I saw a flashback. It turns out the sandman used to be an archaeologist's son in the era where me and Sijia and Emily existed. I saw him as a fine young man, hair flowing in the wind and excitedly helping his father's team search for an entrance into the Egyptian pyramid that they were excavating. His father was a bit of a reckless, energetic connoisseur relentlessly pursuing a legend of how the pyramid had magic to turn everything to gold. So he and his son were excavating the front of the pyramid temple (which looked more like a roman temple facade attached to the pyramid) and that's when his father accidentally broke a gem that released the giant curse. It actually was a curse that turned everyone to golden sand, and the father was obliterated immediately. The son--the sandman--instantly turned to sand but he was in the right spot to absorb the powerful wave of magic. He stumbled out, his entire body now sand but with his consciousness, only to find that all of his father's group were screaming in pain as their bodies turned bluish violet and crumbled away in seconds. Anything organic was also turning that bruise-like colour and crumbling away, and the sandman couldn't even cry for them anymore.

Back to the present, I managed to sit back up with the hero's help as well. The hero was unaffected by the curse like certain other humans, but I wasn't so lucky. Because it's been a thousand years since the curse activated, now the effects were slowing down. My whole body was now that glittering, indigo stone colour because it was preparing to turn to sand, but the curse was eating at me slowly, as did a lot of other people who were coming to the same stage of the curse as I was. I had strong warrior's prowess so I've been helping the hero because we both wanted to find a way to stop the curse, no matter how watered down it was diluting. The hero was much younger than me--here in the dream I was almost thirty, and he was half my age--and I treasured him like a son. The hero had been asked for help by the sandman, who has been seeking people with ambitions like ours. And after we met, I became the sandman's lover.

The hero rested for the night and the sandman, an old and tortured soul bearing the guilt of all the dead people from his father's foolishness, rested with me in his arms a bit away from the hero. The sandman was exhausted. He was using his magic to keep me together and slow the curse as much as possible, but he simply couldn't give me the immortality that he had. I climbed on top of him and pressed my warm lips to his, like kissing a warm beach , and he wrapped his arms around me. He was gentle with me and I laughed, massaging the perpetual stony furrow in his brow and trying not to feel scared that my fingers were now shorter. I reassured him that it would be fine, that I would fix all of this with him, that he didn't have to be lonely forever anymore. His tongue was like a soft ribbon of water, flowing and clinging to my body. Having him inside me was filling and exhilirating, for he was hard like stone, and the sand of his body were so fine and packed that it felt like hot satin. He looked like a scary templar at first but Gods, he was so gentle, so firm with me, and when we woke in the morning, he stayed close for several minutes with that furrow in his brow before we went to awaken the sleepy hero.

Our only way to stop the curse forever was to destroy the pyramid. However, the curse was retaliating. So the electronics and mechanics around us were coming to life and attacking us. We were steps away from the pyramid now so its power was strong and the hero drew his broadsword and started slashing, and he yelled at us to go destroy the pyramid because I was lithe and powerful while the sandman knew where to hit.

A sandstorm brewed while the sandman and I leapted through the air. I slashed at the debris being thrown at us while the sandman blasted with his violet blue magic. We were like dancers through the storm and I prayed for both their safeties while the pyramid screeched at us. When we finally reached the temple facade I slammed my knives into the violet blue gem at the top and was blown back, but the sandman caught me, and we went right back into it. He whipped the sand into the gem and I stabbed it with my knife, realizing that one of my arms had wholly crumbled away in this mess with a twinge of fear. I was going to crumble soon.

I suddenly realized what I needed to do. I screamed at the sandman and that caught him off guard, and that's when I kicked him in the chest so hard, with both feet, that he careened out into the storm. I used the momentum and launched myself into the temple face, and with a satisfying crack, the gem was rended to pieces from my knife. All of a sudden, the sandstorm around us stopped and the temple face started crumbling away. I sighed in relief and let myself fall, knowing that now humans born in the future would never fear this curse again, and also knowing the hero was safe. As for the sandman, I kicked him away so that he wouldn't get caught in the destruction of the temple and resolved to die myself, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fly towards me between the debris and sand.

Before I could send him away again, he glared into me, and I realized his true eyes were back and they were yellow-gray. I was stunned by his magnificence in that moment, and I could not describe the squeeze of pride and sadness that overtook me when I found him racing closer. His headdress was gone and he was almost naked, but that didn't surprise me, and his golden body wove while also leaking sand in all places--he was dying, too. He used the last bit of his magic to throw a stun spell into me, and I screamed at him not to, but then my body was frozen. I wanted to save him but he wouldn't let me, and he knew that both of us would crumble regardless. My consciousness separated and I watched myself fall, paralyzed by his magic, with him behind me wading closer through the air. My whole body was the colour of bruises and my eyes were a clear blue, with soft black hair waving under an Egyptian lady's cowl. One of my arms was gone and the other was laid over my breast. The sand man, now also crumbling at a quicker rate, gently wrapped his arms around my shoulders and held me as we plummeted together.

We were shot into the sand below and then everything fell quiet. The hero fending off the machines watched as they died back to being scraps of metal and he panted, sweat coating his brow. For a moment my spirit went and inhabited one of the machines just to protect him, but I knew I needed to be with the sandman now. Once I knew the hero was safe I didn't want to worry the sandman or leave him alone any longer, so my consciousness slipped back under the sand, and wove into thr tapestry of the world's consciousness. He raced to the edge of the precipice where he was standing and looked for us over the edge, but all that was left was the pyramid and sand. He cried for us but smiled, too, knowing that's what we wanted, and that we succeeded.

After that I was a consciousness floating in the stream of sand. The dream becomes incoherent here. There was singing from the bones of the archaeology team (one of them sang "Colleen is a queen, a rose of the eve") and the sandman's soul gently took me aside and asked me a riddle. He showed me a conch shell and inside was written "Love 2, Originality 3, Tree 5." And some other things, but now I'm unsure. I saw the sandman's father in the trench made by the fallen stones and I was happy.

That was the end of that dream. There was a bit more but I can't recall now. It's been a while since I had such a vivid one, and I hope some more visit me.