TOW 		             
Dreaming; Night of
May 17, 1986
       5:55              2Great! Right on the back end of another, totally unconnected dream. I and someone else discovered a particularly ancient section of woods, undisturbed for millenia yet not far from roads and civilization. We discovered a sort of cave that had been inhabited and built up a little a long, long time before. We discovered an incredibly old and decrepit person inside who came to life, as if activated by our presence. Initially, she (as she turned out to be female) was quite antagonistic and violent, but, though I was somewhat afraid, I tried not to show it and tried to reason with her. We took her home into town and immediately had to begin teaching her about everything, from computers and microscopes to machine weaving and table manners. She showed an incredible ability to learn, never forgetting anything, and soon began reading vast quantities on every conceivable subject in the library. As time went on, she became progressively younger and younger, until, at last, she was my age. We had, by this time, developed a strong love relationship. At one point, I thought she needed a break from reading so much non-fiction, so I got her a copy of Ender's Game. She said she'd read a little science fiction in her readings. I asked what and we overheard someone else mention Clan of the Cave Bear; she said that she'd read that and rather liked it. There was an earlier bit where we talked to Gramps (from Jeff's Collie; I think this portion of the dream was in b&w). He was ranting about a diseased tree. Later, we were coming out of a mall-type place into a parking lot, rather like the parking lot behind D.H. Holmes in Bon Marche Mall. We professed our love for each other and I admitted that there had been a time when she was visibly unaging (sloughing off the years) that I'd feared she was draining the youth from me, but that I hadn't even cared if she were. She, as part of her assimilation of our culture, had watched many old horror movies, so she understood how I'd gotten this fear. Obviously, though, whatever process she had for getting younger, it wasn't parasitic. I asked her, determined to find out finally, just how old she really was, when she'd entered the cave and gone into the hibernatory state. I tried to prove my willingness to believe anything that she might tell me by saying something like, "How long? Five hundred years? A thousand? Three thousand?" She sort of hinted that the true figure was longer ago than my last guess and then artfully changed the subject, not quite ready to reveal all to me. There was something else that I wanted to know but wasn't quite sure how to go about asking. When we had first found her, she had been quite grieved over someone from her past who, of course, would have been quite fresh in her memory. I wanted the story on this but didn't want to hurt her with a sensitive issue. We drove back to the same area where I'd found her, on rolling grassy hills with stands of ancient trees. She knew, of course, from her readings of the remains of an early man which anthropologists had found in the area and so did I. I mentioned something about him now, and she began a personal anecdote about him, correcting several of science's theories about him in the process. Apparently, he had been one of her neighbors! She continued talking and evidently was now ready to tell all. I didn't get to hear it, however, because I felt the dream begin to slip and, though I fought it, awoke to the detestable sound of T crying in the next room. It would have been fascinating to discover who and what she was, how she could live for so long, and what she knew of earlier ages. Else all through. (C)