Polka will never die!

Gotta love Dresden--

*****

"Calm down?" He waved a shaking hand at the door. "They're going to kill us. Just like Phil. They're going to kill us and we're going to die. You, me, Thomas. We're all going to die."

I forgot my bad leg for a second, crossed the room to Butters, and seized him by the front of the shirt. I hauled up until his heels lifted off of the floor. "Listen to me," I snarled. "We are not going to die."

Butters stared at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?"

"No. And do you know why?"

He shook his head.

"Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on his shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die."

He blinked.

"Polka will never die!" I shouted at him. "Say it!"

He swallowed. "Polka will never die?"

"Again!"

"P-p-polka will never die," he stammered.

I shook him a little. "Louder!"

"Polka will never die!" he shrieked.

"We're going to make it!" I shouted.

"Polka will never die!" Butters screamed.

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Thomas muttered.

The Dark Tower Dream

It was cold. Bone-chillingly cold. Absolutely freezing cold. It was night. We had to survive the night.

I was in some sort of circular room. There was no way out of this room that I could see. From what I could tell, there were tapestries on the walls, and a dais at the front end of the room.

There was another man there with me who was alive. I don't remember his face. There were also other people in the room with us. They looked like they could have been automated, if they weren't practically frozen already because of how very cold it was in that room. Their faces had a bloated sort of look, and they were turning slightly blue. All of these other bodies were strewn all around the room on the floor, some of the bodies on top of one another.

The man I was with I understood to be someone I cared for. I believe he was a 'significant other', though if it was a fiancé, or a husband, or just someone I had strong feelings for and who in turn had strong feelings for me, I do not know.

The only way we knew how to survive was to huddle close together under the thinnest of thin blankets. Somehow, our body heat would be enough to sustain us, despite the shabby blanket.

****

I woke up at approximately 1 a.m after having dreamt that, frozen solid, despite sleeping under 9 blankets on my bed. After I went back to sleep, I dreamed the same thing again. I woke up one other time during the night, and when I finally fell back asleep after that, I dreamt it a third time. I was still in the process of dreaming it when my alarm went off this morning.

When I woke up this morning, I was frozen solid. It's now bed time, and I'm still chilled to the bone.

Now, if I buy into the theory of The Dark Tower, then what I dreamt was either a past event or a future event, or else something that belongs to a parallel universe of sorts, a universe in which I have a double, since dreams allow us to look into parallel universes (or at least, this is my understanding of what I read).

I've also had the theory as I contemplated over this dream that it could possibly be another 'unknown' scene from the book, a scene in which a horn-less Scudamour (he having somehow managed to get of the filthy thing) and I (as Camilla) had been found out as we were trying to escape back to Normal Time and were thrown into a room in the Dark Tower to await a fate worse than death, if we could survive.

Obviously, I much prefer this second idea to my dream, instead of one in which I'm forced to sleep in and around frozen dead bodies and freeze to death myself. That, and not to have nightmares over any more C. S. Lewis fiction.

And to somehow manage to warm up.

The Magician's Nephew

"Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out - single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

"'Glory be!' said the Cabby. 'I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this.'"

****

"'Child,' he replied, 'that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.'

"'Oh I see,' said Polly. 'And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won't work with her. I mean it won't make her always young and all that?'

"'Alas,' said Aslan, shaking his head. 'It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want: they do not always like it.'"

- The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

Caspian is Coming

"To know what would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever told that. But anyone can find out what will happen. If you go back to the others now, and wake them up, and tell them that you have seen me again, and that you must all get up at once and follow me - what will happen? There is only one way of finding out." -Aslan, Prince Caspian

The Tales that Really Matter

Madeleine L'Engle has passed away.

I read her book, A Wrinkle in Time, many times while I was growing up. I always loved it. And it stayed with me. There are some books that become a part of who you are, no matter how old you get, and so it makes me sad to hear of her passing. Thank you Ms. L'Engle, for your books, your time, and the legacy you left behind.

"We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes." -The Rock That is Higher

"Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist." -A Wrinkle in Time

"You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you." -A Wrinkle in Time

EDIT: I just heard that Robert Jordan has also passed away. I haven't read any of The Wheel of Time books yet, but I have intentions to read them. The world has lost yet another influential and prolific fantasy writer.

White Shores and a Swift Sunrise

"Though they rode through the midst of the Shire all the evening and all the night, none saw them pass, save the wild creatures; or here and there some wanderer in the dark who saw a swift shimmer under the trees, or a light and shadow flowing through the grass as the Moon went westward. And when they had passed from the Shire, going about the south skirts of the White Downs, they came to the Far Downs, and to the Towers, and looked on the distant Sea; and so they rode down at last to Mithlond, to the Grey Havens in the long firth of Lune. ...

" [said Gandalf], 'Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.'

"Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard [the ship]; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

Welcome to Gryffindor

be sorted @ nimbo.net

I finished the new Harry Potter book late Monday night, and I would give a review of it here, except that I do not want to spoil anything for those who still might be perusing it. If you want to know what I thought of it (other than the simple fact that I really loved it), drop me a line and we can discuss!

Odds

So what are the odds that you'll run into a friend, on more of a whim rather than planned, and you'll find that they are reading the exact same book as you?

What are the odds that, when asked where they are in the book, they'll be in exactly the same part of the book as you?

And what are the odds, when wanting to know exactly what page they're on because this is just too much of a coincidence, that you'd both be on the exact same page?