HILDEGARD WEDEKIND
The secretive matriarch with forbidden knowledge.
A wise elder who lost her artist daughter to an addiction to lucid dreaming. She now guards her grandchild, a fledgling student of dream architecture, with a quiet resolve.
Despite her protective vigil, she carries a mysterious acceptance that some fates cannot be altered.
Ripples in the Memory Lane
What's my weirdest dream? Tough to pin down, but think back to the time when my underground parking lot suddenly becomes a swimming hall.
There's a splash where there should be the screech of tires. I'm thrown right back into the memory of Maja's swimming competitions—she's like a baby dolphin, effortlessly cutting through the water. The crowd and the cheering were once overpowering, but here, in the twisted echo of my car park, it's just the gentle lapping of water and the soft creak of my yacht. Can you see it? The lanes are drawn out, ready, but they're for swimming, not parking.
It's all blending together, isn't it? The smell of chlorine from the pool mixing with the memory of oil and rubber from the car park. And the yacht, it's like a judge's stand now, overseeing the races. Maja could dive right off the deck, streamline into the water.
The thought's making me smile.
It's like two worlds colliding, her world of competition, my fanciful daydreams. The echoes in the hall, they're not just from cheers but from the imaginary waves against the yacht. It's a jumble, isn't it? All these thoughts, just tumbling over each other. But it's fun, letting them flow, letting them take shape in whatever odd form they choose. Maja's laughter, the splash of the swimmers, it's all part of this weird, wonderful mental mash-up.
SPLATTERED SOULS
Dreams are what we make of them
"I'm so tired." That's my go-to line now. A neat little deflection. But the truth? I'm not physically drained. My mind's sharp, buzzing like a live wire. It's their narrow thinking that wears me down. They cling to their charts and graphs like talismans, mistaking data for understanding. If they could access even a fraction of what lies beyond their blunt instruments. Ha, the sight would render them catatonic. It's a kindness, really, to allow them the comfort of their fragmented worldview.
Fragments
Maybe I'm too critical. They're just students, after all, confined within the boundaries of what they're taught. They often wander, lost in the maze of their own thoughts, clinging to those brief moments of insight in their dreams. They write off these revelations as just figments of imagination, not realizing they're catching a glimpse of something beyond their textbooks. They're piecing together a puzzle without seeing the bigger picture they're part of.
Torn
Here I am, neither a mere spectator nor a zookeeper, but torn between two realms.
How many times I've longed to enlighten Maja. Yet, it's a journey she must embark on alone. Find out who she is, what she is. As an Oneironaut, she has all the options.
I can see Maja in her fragile dream state, close to her father, yet susceptible to Ebbinghaus' sophisticated manipulation.
But I have to protect our family secrets. Ebbinghaus observes - he already shows far too much interest in our dream lineage.
I remember the pride in her eyes when she invited me into her first creation, 'The Red Staircase.' Back then, during those initial explorations, she hadn't grasped how to shatter the walls, break through the barriers. She was too closed off, clinging to the superficial layers of her dreamscapes.
Since locating Tobias, however, she has made significant strides. The progress in her ability to navigate and manipulate her dream environments has been remarkable. She's moving beyond the surface, delving into the deeper, more complex layers of her subconscious mind, where true freedom and understanding lie.
There's no *her* in it.
Maja and me, we're deep in her construct. She's perched on that purple chair, looking all sorts of disappointed. Like a kid who's birthday party has been canceled. She asks if we should stop, in that peace-making tone of hers. I enjoy visiting her dreamshifts, but to be frank, it's all about her work, her projects. She's so closed off. What's missing is a sense of who she really is. There's no *her* in it.
Then she hits me with a surprise – she's recreated my apartment in her dream. Even remembers the oval mirror, the sunflowers in that slender vase, the silly pink stuffed rabbit with the carrot. All of it, right down to the coffee maker. It's a little unsettling, honestly. Maja's got this knack for details, but this?
It's like she's picked my brain while I wasn't looking.
We're about to head up to this dream replica of my place when she clams up. Silence. I press her, and she spills: Someone else is here. A projection. Some guy from her university who's been stalking her. My gut twists. This isn't just your chill-out dream anymore. Her fears, her anxieties are bleeding through.
I reach out, brush her hair back. This is what I want to talk about – her fears, her worries, not just these surface-level dreams she's been showing me. But Maja, she's always been a closed book when it comes to her personal life. Never talks about her admirers, keeps her feelings locked up tight.
A soft smile cracks on her face when I mention her admirers. A hint of my old Maja, the one before all this mess started. I suggest we take the plunge, jump into the deeper parts of her mind.
We leave the garage scene behind, back in the lower part of this construct. I take her hand, and we head towards the red staircase. We're about to delve deeper, into the parts of Maja she keeps hidden away. It's a step into the unknown, but that's where we find the truth, isn't it? In the dark corners we're too scared to light up.
Silent Premonitions
There's this thing I keep to myself. Partly because I'm worried about Maja, and partly because I can't quite figure it out.
A premonition. It keeps playing over in my mind like a broken record. It's Maja and me, stucked in an unknown dreamshift. A battle inside this Rialto Konstruct, the academy's training ground. It's a nightmare, really. Every corner we turn, there's danger, armed guards in red jumpsuits, like something out of a dystopian movie.
Disturbing dreams of a pacifist
In that vision, I find myself holding a machine gun, something completely against my nature. But we're cornered, no way out. Each time this dream haunts me, it feels more real, more threatening. It's like a warning, a grim foreshadowing of something terrible on the horizon. I hate the violence, the sense of helplessness. But it's there, a sticky shadow I can't shake off.
Why haven't I told Maja? Because it's a nightmare with no good ending. She's scrambling for an escape from the labyrinth, insisting she'll leave me just for minutes. But those minutes stretch into forever; she never returns.
It's not the dread of being alone that haunts me the most. Rather, it's the thought, Maja will believe one day she will let me down.
