Dream: Room of Prophesy

Lots of "Back to School" motifs; the standard "The homework assigned last week that I forgot about is due now!" sort of stuff.  I'm still trying to figure out what giving M.C. a massage on a school bus means (man, her left scapula was really tight).

Anyway, we join the dream in progress...

Two mean seventy-something sorceresses ruled the area... think Dame Maggie Smith only sterner and less fun.  I was somehow indentured to them... or at least they were my landladies.

I was in a house or a large Reed College Old Dorm Block style building.  I have a vague sense that this was a Doctor Who episode -- in the dream I wasn't quite me, and I wasn't quite The Doctor.   The layout of the house was short halls and suites of smallish rooms.   The floors were wood and the walls were brick.  As the dream progressed the setting changed from slapped-together 60's decor to Edwardian.

One of the rooms in the house was The Room of Prophesy.  I entered the room, and presently was joined by an older man (who was probably Doctor Who).  In the room was a day-bed with a dark brown quilt on it, decorated with a goldenrod colored fine vine filigree pattern.  The Edwardian decor kicked in very strongly at this point.  

Sitting on the day-bed in Edwardian dress was a twenty-something woman.  Her dress and bonnet were mostly brown, with darker brown piping.  Sitting next to her, or on her lap, was a eight-year-old boy.  He was sucking his thumb, and tied to his thumb was a white string that floated out of his mouth and disappeared into the dark recesses of an open closet.  

At some point, I made the mistake of closing the door to the Room, trapping myself and my older guide in the room.  We were stuck there.  Also in the room were tokens representing the Twelve Days of Christmas (yes, I'm still working on that particular Art Project), which we tried to use to open the door, but it remained fast.  

At last the door opened and a female companion poked her head in.  She wanted the Room of Prophesy to show her the father of her child, which is why she opened the door.  We gratefully exited and the dream went on to other things.

When I woke up enough to remember the dream, but not enough to actually rise, I tried to figure out how to make this a story.  The Room of Prophesy is fun, but as story characters, I wasn't able to solve the problem (getting out of the room) by myself.   And plot-wise, it's the dreaded, "two characters in a room talking" pitfall.

The string leading into darkness was very much like the string leading to darkness image I got once while skydiving, which in turn I first saw on a creepy "Alive from Off-Center" show involving marionettes.  In the show, the strings connected the puppet to the puppeteer, but the puppet only saw them disappearing into darkness.  During the skydive, I couldn't remember how to do a back-flip, and the image of a string leading into a dark hole superimposed itself over my vision (I think it was my brain trying to tell me, "Look, I have no idea what this 'backflip' thing is you keep repeating at me as we're falling 80 mph 5000 feet above the ground.")