Power Dreams
Last night my Power returned to me in my dreams. It's been so long since I've felt in control that I've been having powerless dreams, in which someone other than me holds the key to my magic. For the first time in a long while, I dreamt about my own sacred light, and my own confident power. Maybe this is a turning point, or maybe it is only an instant... we do forget our dreams.

In the dream, I was the eldest in a line of Egyptian princesses and I knew that someday I would have a daughter and that she would be Queen. I entered a great room alone, I think it was a temple, and there were an odd ten men and women (concubines?) dancing in front of a sacred flame. When I came, I knew that they were all acutely aware of my presence, though they did not stop dancing. And I knew that this was to be a rite of passage. As I moved forward to the front of the room, one of the dancers behind me stepped forward and embraced me. Because I knew what was going to come next, I wasn't afraid. He was going to make me a Sybil. Effectively, infect me with a technovirus that made me into a sort of Oracle. (Read Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen for the source of this reference.) He kissed me and pierced my flesh with his teeth and my head started to swim. I know it sounds like corny erotica here, but it hurt like hell. I'm not sure if I walked to the flame or fell before it, but the light consumed my vision and then I found myself outdoors. I wandered the streets, looking at everything in a new light. I felt the pressure of madness in the back of my mind, as my body struggled to deal with the virus, but I was surprised how clear everything looked if I didn't concentrate on the running dialogue in my head. I kept wondering if I were really going mad and if I would reject the virus after all, and suffer the rest of my life with voices in my head. After a while, I realized that the places I was seeing that I thought I knew were really places I had never been before, and where I walked I had never seen. I knew that I had fallen where I had been chosen, and I had been taken to a room where I was being talked to while unconscious. I knew I would wake in a few days time and be able to control what had been given me but in the span of the time that I lay there, I would travel freely the paths of the universe and come to terms with my duty. For those few days I would spend a limitless eternity outside the bounds of my world.

When I awoke, there was blood on my lips.