I only remember three scenes from the dream. It opens with me standing on an exposed mountainside. The wind is thrashing the trees below as the storm seizes the sky into submission. I’m dressed in all black with my black overcoat and black hiking boots. A black feather is in my hair. I’m waiting for the storm. It is going to take me with it.
I’m led through the stone temple. All the corners are made to precision but rounded off due to millennia of hands sliding around then. I can barely see in front of me as it’s so dark. The sounds of the shadowy form leading me devours the light from the single torch struggling to remain lit. The stone temple has a taste. Iron and basalt.
The adventurer is pissed as hell. He wakes me up from my rest under the watching tree with his yelling. He sees I’m awake and throws a bag towards me. “That’s it! That’s fucking it! All that work for what? FOUR FUCKING PINE CONES!” He doesn’t wait for me to open the bag. He dumps it as I sit up. Four large pine cones, all completely closed, bounce towards me. Other than being tightly closed, there is nothing exceptional about them.
“It’s a symbol, jackass. We aren’t in Literal Land, you know.” The pine cones appeared too large to pick up single handed, but when I went to do just that, it became the right size to fit comfortably. “So what do pine cones represent? Or rather, what would they represent that is worth raiding a temple to obtain?”
The adventurer threw the bag at me. “I didn’t go through all that for a god damn puzzle! You figure it out and keep what you find. I’m done with this fucking place!” He left.
I sat under the thick foliage of the wide-leaved tree and collected the four pine cones into my lap. I knew they were connected with the stone temple and the storm, but I didn’t know how. Riddle, indeed.