Watching a kid in an adult’s body tinker with a rifle. Immediately checked to see if I was dreaming and greatly relieved to find I was. Still backed away.
“Where you going? I’m not done yet!”
“You looked like you needed personal time with that… So…”
“You’re so funny! Look, it’s a magic gun! I can swap out parts to make any kind of gun I want!”
When he called it a gun, I internally winced. It’s a rifle. Not a gun. Both make pow pow noises but the internal workings are different. (And barrel length, and grip/stock, and bullshit legality issues.) Normally I wouldn’t care what John Q. Public calls a firearm. I do care if one is being handled carelessly in my presence, dream or not.
He swapped out many parts to demonstrate how magical this weapon is. And each swap was accepted by the whole as the weapon smoothed and melted the using pieces into a cohesive and usable weapon. Even if some combinations were shit ugly.
But I noted one attribute that never changed. The size of the chamber. He could reshape the exterior of the rifle as he pleased, but he will not be able to use any ammunition other than what fits the chamber.
“And so it doesn’t matter where I go, I’ll always ammo available!” He had been blathering on while I was watching. I only caught his last sentence. At his feet were boxes of different size rounds. Some meant for pistols, some for rifles. Some marked as factory manufactured. Some as personal experiments and reloads.
I backed away further. “Listen. That weapon you have is pretty neat. You can customize it to your needs, that’s good. But the chamber. It doesn’t change. You can’t shoot those, none of them fit!”
He pointed the weapon at me and dry fired while laughing. As soon as he began to turn, I transformed into my smoke form. I didn’t trust the little shit and I was questioning why I haven’t torched his ass yet. He stopped laughing when he saw I wasn’t “human” like him.
“I can too! I can take from any weapon and use any round! I can make it whatever I want it to be! You’ll see! You’re here to stop me and take it away! I won’t let you!”
“No. Stop. Dude! The chamber! You can’t change what is the core of the rifle! It will always be a rifle!” I heard my words and started questioning the dream. “You can change how others see it, change how it performs, change how it fits in your life, but you can’t change what it fires. Put the wrong round in and you’ll blow yourself up. Wrong barrel and you’ll blow it up. Wrong stock and you snap your wrist. You can’t just mix and match parts from a working system.”
Right. This isn’t about firearms. What is this dream really about? What do I abstractly know that can take the metaphor of a weapon?
Religion.
He had made a horrible monster of a weapon. One part heavy pistol, one part shotgun, and a massive six inch long round loaded. “Can’t fit, eh? I’ll show you what can’t fit!” What he didn’t see was while the body of the chamber could be extended to fit the round, where the chamber meet the barrel was still sized for a small bullet. “I can take from anyone, anywhere, and my magic gun makes everything fit. If you acknowledge my superiority, I might let you leave.”
I solidified my form into Weaver Ravencloaked and started laughing with gusto. “Do show me your might, oh warrior! Take my faith from me, if you can. That’s a helluva blunt club you have there. Don’t drop it on your toes.”
He frowned. “Know what’s a bigger bitch than you? Karma.” He squeezed the trigger.
It took a few minutes for my ears to stop ringing. There were bits and pieces of him scattered about. The magic gun shattered into curling chunks.
I thought about his last words and laughed myself out of the dream.