Well, my Mythos takes on strange turns as a rule of law. The dream world of Rancho Nuevo is where I most often find myself when I sleep. There I receive messages from my subconscious, which seems to have this Cassandra-like knowledge of things to come and enjoys presenting it with the flair of the trickster-hero, which has become my guise these days. The trickster-hero, you see, tends to like looking at people's static and accepted norms of reality and then shattering them, and my trickster-hero persona likes to target me.
In the world of Rancho Nuevo, in my dreams, I have been for some time a wanderer. I go from place to place and am sent out of each place. There is no place in this world where I can stay, everywhere I go I am granted no quarter. The red riders pursue me from the river that divides the first kingdom from the third kingdom. They drive me out towards the third kingdom where I am told I have not yet atoned. From there I am driven out to the wastelands where I am told, "A Jack cannot remain in the wastelands for long," even though the bartender at the Blackjack Saloon, in the heart of the wastelands, is himself a Jack. Eh, he's the Jack of the wastelands, I'm the Jack of the third kingdom. It is a long story.
For months I have told them, "I am treading water, I am in limbo, and I have no move at this time other than the wait. The third queen has presented herself, but I am now unable to do anything."
Dreams persist, showing me awake in a bed watching her as she sleeps, and a voice tells me, for months now, "When you find yourself watching her sleep you will know the time has come to act."
Not bloody well likely, I tell myself when I awaken from these dreams. We are talking about a woman who is in the same building I am in for twenty minutes each morning, at a time when my shift ends and hers begins and we have no real reason to see each other or speak. Where we once made the most of that brief amount of time we now avoid each other, she because she's trying to reconcile her marriage and me because I must respect that. The chances that I would find myself watching her sleep are impossible to even consider as we have no kind of intimate relationship to speak of. We no longer have any kind of relationship at all, at least not in the tangible sense.
"When you find yourself watching her sleep you will know the time has come to act." The dreams come with more frequency and become more insistent. This has happened before and I know what it means. Once upon a time I was told when I found the first queen the sky would turn to gold. I found her working as a waitress at a restaurant on Golden Sky Lane. Trickster-hero hard at work.
Fine. I'm more than happy to go about my business, enjoying my days and my nights, doing what I do and being at peace with life.
This morning a friend asked me for a piece of gum. I was out, but he was really wanting a stick and I'm not in the habit of letting my illustrious co-workers down. I had to go out to my locker in the break room and get a fresh pack.
"Well," I said to myself, "Isn't that something."
The third queen had gotten to work early and she was sleeping with her head down on the table in the break room. And as I quietly obtained a pack of gum from my locker I wasn't sure whether to punch something or laugh. I stood there, for a moment in time that will last for eternity, and watched her. Part of me hoped she wasn't actually sleeping, but she was.
Damned trickster shattered my peace of mind again. I think I need a beer.
As I used to do, I keep these as time-stamped logs for future reference.