*buzz* *buzz* *buzz* My phone? But I left it at home. Because I’m dreaming and I’m quite sure ain’t a soul around that is going to find any signal bars here. I remember that I left the phone on silent before going to bed, so any buzzing my physical body is hearing is not my drama to answer.
I chuckle and turn my dream body’s attention back to the bauble I’m cross examining. A dream representation of something I have physically had for several years, like most woo things I acquire, it has slumbered all this time in passivity only to suddenly thrust itself into my awareness.
I just don’t know why.
*buzz* *buzz* *buzz* This time, I feel a vibration next to my right knee. I’m sitting cross legged on the ground so if I fumble the bauble it won’t fall far and will fall into a mound of soft sand I pulled together, just in case. (Sometimes physical instincts are hard to ignore, but Anxiety will accept a token action of appeasement.) I look over and see… the stick.
That same stick that surprised me at work is here, represented almost perfectly true to the physical form, except for one thing.
Sticks don’t vibrate unless they have an insect inside. And I had checked the physical stick for such ingress and found none.
But this is a dream, so fuck the rules. The stick is vibrating like a desperate phone. Now that I am giving it my attention, the vibration becomes a constant buzzing, causing the sand around the stick to jump in response.
I look around the dreamscape to see if anyone is pranking me. To all my senses, human and otherwise, I’m alone here as planned. Okay. Fine. I pick up the damn stick with my right hand, keeping the small bauble securely gripped in my left hand.
As I hold up the vibrating stick to better look at it, the bauble starts vibrating as well.
What. The. Fucking. Hell.
I put the stick down. Both items stop vibrating. I pick up the stick again. Both items start vibrating again. I put the bauble down. Both items continue to vibrate.
The bauble is passive, but does have a use that must be activated. When the task is over (regardless of success), the bauble becomes an inert pretty again. I activate the bauble. Both items stop vibrating. I release the bauble. Only the stick starts vibrating again, but it does so very weakly, as if a battery was giving its last drops of energy.
The dream representation of the bauble has not been altered by the experience, so I send it away, just in case. The stick’s vibration strengthens, as if a heavy load had been removed.
Holding the unworked stick, I am reminded of when I had held tuning forks while my classmates practiced on their instruments. When they played the same pitch as the fork I held was attuned to, the fork would vibrate in my hand. The stick felt passive like the tuning forks. Something about the bauble was activating it, making it react.
“What put you in my path? And why? I have so many questions now.” I stuck the stick upright in the mound of soft sand before me, with the sliced knot end pointing up. When I released the stick, the mound collapsed under it, causing a wave of sand to ripple away from the point of contact. The stick remained upright, but now a pattern emerged in the settling sand around it.
A blank geomancy chart was self-inscribed into the suddenly flattened sand. Small pinches of sand spun and turned in place in the 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th houses. Each pinch resembled one of the polyhedral dice I used with geomancy throws. A tetrahedron (1d4) in the 1st house. An octahedron (1d8) in the 4th house. An icosahedron (1d20) in the 7th house. And a cube (1d6) in the 10th house.
“Earth for the earthy things,” I muttered. Immediately after I spoke, the stick fell over (so that the knot was now pointing away from me). Its collision with the ground caused another wave of sand to ripple out, but this new wave completely erased and flattened the diagram surrounding the stick.
“Right. Fucker.” I sighed, consigning myself to another damn wild goose chase. I picked up the stick, stood up, placed it in my pocket, and left the dream.