Jan 1 2024 (happy new year!)
A mixture of Sophia and Colleen had this dream.
I dreamed I was the goddess Persephone - but I wasn't aware until later, navigating a mortal life with some insecurity.
I was in some beautiful seaside town, pink terracotta roofs glistening in the vivid sunlight. Flowers lined cobblestone streets with gas lamps, but this quaintness was interspersed with interesting modern things like cars and LED billboards, loud and vibrant. I was fumbling about my life as a youth, feeling a little lost, working at some mundane diner as a waitress. It wasn't until he came that I started to feel different.
The "he" in this dream was obviously Lalein, but as soon as I laid eyes on him, I recognized him as Hades. His long black hair trailed behind him, and his red eyes fixed on me as he entered this restaurant. I knew something was off because nobody else seemed to notice him, and despite the fact that we were strangers, he looked at me with such intense warmth, as if we'd known each other our whole lives. He wore his black cloak and walked through this real, bustling place like a ghost. I waited for him to come to me.
The dream blurs here a little. It felt like glass shards of other dreams speared into the space of this diner as he crossed towards me:
One shard showed me descending a staircase into a cave that pulsed with teal words in a language I don't recognize, but I knew I was going towards danger. However, I wasn't descending unknowingly. There was an urgency to my steps, as if I had to stop something terrible from happening before it was too late.
Another had some sort of pop song singing competition where a happy, chubby black man with a well-oiled afro put on a good show. He had a gorgeous voice, singing R&B while flying through the windy sky on a desk, with similarly chubby and diverse backup singers flying behind on other office things like chairs and tables. I was entranced by the song.
Another had me climbing to a bedroom upstairs, the black timber and whitewash walls dim in the twilight. I was crying, and I don't know why.
And a few more - some I can't recall anymore because there were so many in those few steps that it took for Lalein to come to me. He opened his arms and I fell into them, sinking into his warmth with a half-sob.
The dream changed. The camera shifted outside of me, showing the diner where I worked - one nestled in a plaza of other stores on that idyllic street. Except I saw flowers explode. They covered the windows, roof, upper patio, bursting through the pink terra cotta facade of this plaza and even covering the swirling barber's pole some stores down. They rained petals down on the surprised and excited shoppers on the street below. But while they roiled forth, growing like a tide, just as quickly they started to decay into brown soil. The soil dripped like mud down the buildings and began to sprout moss, rising with little dewy flowers and vivid greens, only to decay again into another soil and shoot sprouts. It was like life and death in rapid succession, so much so that the awe of the spectators became nervous murmurs as it kept happening. This sluggish progression of mud, flora, mud again alarmed anyone who watched, and it was in that moment that I was dragged back into my body.
This time I was told I needed my hair done by some... woman. I can't recall how she looked, despite having fully spoken to her face-to-face in the dream, but I had a feeling she was another Greek Goddess. It might've been Demeter. Lalein didn't speak at all in this dream, only looking at me knowingly as he led me places. I could tell he led me there by the hand, even though I could see my hands free in front of me. It was like I could feel his fingers. He brought me to that same barber shop down the street, where I had to climb under a canopy of flowers to get to this tavernous barber that was in the basement. A lovely black woman with deep, almost blue-black skin and vibrant golden eyes greeted me. She called Lalein and I "my king, my lady" and smiled with brilliant white teeth. It struck me that she wanted to call me queen, but a long time ago, I must've told her that made me sheepish, so just "lady" sufficed. As she touched my arm gently, I had a vivid flash of knowing her name. It was Nyx.
She sat me down in a barber's chair and I saw myself. The me in this dream didn't look like either Sophia nor Colleen. She had messy dark brown ringlets, easily manipulated by Nyx who worked quickly and gently. When I next looked in the mirror, my hair was done up in ancient Grecian style, like so:
I turned to Lalein, who looked at me with a raised brow. I ran my hands through his curtain of hair with a smile, asking Nyx if she'd wanted to do him too? But she replied something like, "Don't you think he looks perfect like this?" and I agreed. His clothes began to morph, rubies and gold floating to the surface of the black cloth as he transformed into Hades's regalia.
When we exited the shop, we were on a stormy shoal. We walked barefoot through vivid blue saltwater and sand towards a storm cloud. The sun was behind us and darkness was before us. I gripped his hand tightly as the dream world rotated, sending us reeling into the next scene.
I was suddenly transported to a mall where the central area was set up as a stage with folding chairs. People sitting there lit up when they laid eyes on me. They called me Persephone with deference, and I realized it was a public interview with believers. I climbed on the stage and began to thank my assistant, a mousy girl who had a clipboard and headset. She offered some microphones to the audience so they could field questions with me... but then one of them began to chant low into the microphone as others talked.
I felt fear and unease tear through me as the chanting continued. In the air, I saw the floating teal letters like in the earlier dream fragment. I knew none of the humans in front of me could see them, but they could certainly hear the chanting. We found the culprit, a young filipino who had his eyes rolled back in his head as his mouth continued. He began to foam at the mouth. The person next to him wrenched the microphone from his hands, but then his eyes rolled back too and the chant continued. Several people down the row also tried to wrench the microphone away, but it afflicted each one. Some brave people decided to pass the microphone back and forth, interrupting the incantation with each trade. It gave me time. I chased this dark and corrupting cloud, finally succeeding in stopping the spell from completion.
We were all shaken. Some people stood up, clattering chairs falling as they ran. Someone asked me if I was really a goddess, and I shuddered. I remember saying, "I am the reborn Persephone, and to be honest, I'm still not sure what I'm doing. I... I died."
Saying that out loud, I knew it to be true. I had died. The reason why Hades found me in a diner was because I had reincarnated into a human. Even saying the words out loud filled me with a tremendous grief. Another shard of a dream memory came in, the look of horror and panic on Hades's face as he held my dying form. A clump of tears stung in my throat as I remembered.
With both sadness and bitterness, I continued. "I died, and was reborn - but none of them will tell me how I died. I'm still filling in the blanks." That was what the shards were, nonsensical, divided, strange. They were different memories all jumbled out of order. I knew Hades wasn't answering my questions, but I also was too afraid to pry - not because I was scared he'd be angry, but because the pain on his face was too much for me to bear.
To appease the crowd, I asked my assistant to put on music and ask for some people to sing. A few willingly complied, taking the microphones and singing karaoke of choice. The renewed cheer drove out the last of that terrible cloud.
This is as much of the dream as I can remember. I took the last hour noting this down, trying to hold onto as many details as possible, but trust when I say there was much more. There were more dream fragments in that first walk. There was something in the bedroom upstairs. There was more to the stormy shoal. And there was more after this interview. But I'm awake now, and the dream has decayed to my dismay. But what a marvelous way to start off 2024, don't you think?
