Episode 38: The Dream’s Waiting Room
I haven’t been well lately.
(Yes, this is the author, speaking in Author Voice)
My heart has been beating funny. My digestion has been irregular. I get strange pains that come and go. I’ve lost weird amounts of weight and gained it back and lost it again. I rarely sleep a full night.
It’s all quite worrying.
Unfortunately, the world is full of people who cannot help but die URGENTLY, so my worries will have to take their place in the back of the line for now.
I read a wise saying in an old book the other day-
“You are your own protector. How could it be anyone else?”
So I guess in the meantime I’ll continue to do my best to take care.
I’m eating well. I’m meditating. I’m surrounding myself with warm colors, nice smelling candles and hobbies that make me happy, like writing Alice & the Pale Horse.
If you need me, you can find me in my office, flanked by plushies and bowls of strawberries, the silence often obliterated by non-stop EDM.
I love writing Alice. I know that these external pressures should motivate me to get as much of Alice out into the world as possible. But I also want to give you all my best.
And after all, it’s far more likely that I’m losing my mind, as opposed to suffering from an actual malady.
So why not pace myself for now?
I’ll continue to write as long as I have the headspace for it.
But this next one might be just a bit short. Sorry.
ext. valley cliff morning
The Knight of Cups seats himself at the party encampment’s fire and begins to fill his pipe. The Pale Horse trots over to him. Before the Knight is a large yellowing map of parchment, which is spread out on the ground. The Knight takes a puff of his pipe, the thin smoke trailing from his pipe down to the map, creating a wispy finger which traces its way first to the West portion of the map, marked “MOON’S MEADOW”. It traces from West to East, through a section marked “THE HERMIT’S SWAMP and further still until it reaches the brown center of the “VALLEY OF BONES”. Immediately East of the Valley is a small city marked as “WAITE”. To the North is a cluster of trees marked as “SEAWOOD FOREST”.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Would it not be wiser to deviate to the North through the Seawood Forest? That’s closer to the realm of the House of Wands…
PALE HORSE
We must assume pursuit from the West by the Houses of Swords and Pentacles. We’ll lose valuable time deviating North and South is out of the question. So long as the danger isn’t immediate, the Valley is the most prudent choice.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
With a reasonable head start I suppose I can’t foresee any serious problems. We may be a slow party, but we can be steady. Love, like a gentle, rambling brook, will carry us to Waite.
Alice joins the group, sitting across from the Knight. She leans forward to look at the map.
ALICE
What’s in Waite, anyway?
PALE HORSE
Hell, in a matter of speaking.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
(coughing on smoke, consternated by the remark)
He means other people, naturally.
ALICE
(surprised)
Regular people?
KNIGHT OF CUPS
As close to your kind as you will find in this land, child.
The Knight pufs his pipe, the smoke taking the shapes of people walking, running, jumping, colliding into one another.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Dreams, young Alice. Living, waking dreams who look the same as you or I, living together in the city of Waite, only to leave when the Real calls them to duty.
ALICE
You mean…the things living in this city we’re going to…they’re…my dreams?
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Well, someone’s. Soon enough, I suppose. Waite is just that- a place to wait. The Dream Beings who reside there are all the dreams that will-be- someday they’ll be called forth by their dreamers into the Real, at which point they leave Arcana for good.
PALE HORSE
(uncomfortably)
And if you’re thinking to yourself “why don’t I take that portal home myself”, don’t. It’s built for Dreams only- even if a Card like ourselves attempted to use it, we’d be destroyed in an instant, as would you.
A severe look crosses Alice’s face.
ALICE
I wasn’t thinking that.
The Knight of Cups scratches his head for a moment, smoking his pipee.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Well, don’t be troubled, child. Dreams are lovely things, creations of love. What is of love cannot be harmful.
ALICE
Oh, I wasn’t worried about that. I just wondered what would happen if I ran into a dream I hadn’t dreamed yet- but someday might.
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Well, it’s quite simple, Alice. Very simple. If you meet a dream you’ve yet to dream, and it isn’t a happy meeting, you simply have to, why…..well…
The Knight nods off a bit at this- all this talk of dreams has lulled him into an inadvertent sleep. Alice shakes his rattling armor and he starts awake.
ALICE
Wake up!
KNIGHT OF CUPS
(shaking loose his drowsiness)
Oh, right. I should have thought of that.
(yawns)
Yes, right, that must be the correct answer. Who ever heard of a dream you couldn’t wake up from.
A SOFT ANGELIC VOICE
I believe we would call that a nightmare…
But who was this voice? Someone new! We’ll find out just who it might be next week…
