People usually panic when they are in a falling dream; a falling dream is where you suddenly fall into a deep dark hole, either when you were walking or running in another dream, then suddenly you fall. It can sometimes occur the moment you fall asleep, but that is rather rare. Most of the time, you will be in another dream, where you fall into a falling dream.
The sudden rush of air, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't seem to right yourself. Completely unlike sky-diving, where you could after some manoeuvres end up facing the direction you are falling. In a falling dream, for those of you who are unfamiliar, causes you to fall in whichever direction your back is facing.
In most cases, the fear from the fall, would cause most people to instantly wake up in reality, bathed in cold sweat and cursing the abrupt end of a possible nice dream. It is said by psychiatrists that a falling dream signifies a person's loss of control over an important situation and that also indicates fear, terror and anxiety that comes with.
However, I have a different view, once you get over the fear of falling, you can just continue falling. One would also have to remove the anticipation of splattering at the bottom of the void in which one is falling. While you don't have control of where you fall, or when you will reach the end, it is fine. Because if you pay attention, you're falling past nodes in time. Who's time? I can't tell. But let me tell you about my most recent encounter with this enigmatic falling dream.
This night was no different from any other, I had gone to bed earlier than I would on most nights, my insomnia causing my entire sleep schedule to go haywire the past three weeks. Wasn't long before I dropped off to sleep and straight into a falling dream. I admit, I have lost control of my life at this point, so the fear factor is ever present and perhaps the source of my insomnia.
As this was not my first falling dream, the emotion of fear when falling was quickly eliminated. I did try to flip myself over, but try as I might, I was falling in whichever direction my back was facing. I still tried for a while, you have no sense of time or distance during the fall into the void. I guess you could also call it deep space, where not a speck of light is present, no stars, no planets, no suns.
But as I said, if you let go of the sense of fear, you will start to notice glimmering nodes as you fall. Perhaps you can call it lucid dreaming, but you're not truly in control, so it is not a full lucid dream. Don't get me wrong, you are aware that it is a dream, but just not fully in conscious control.
So yes, I fell. I don't know how many nodes I fell past, but after some time, I noticed an ever brighter node behind me, then I fell through it. Immediately the sensation of falling disappeared after.
The sudden brightness after being in absolute darkness disoriented me. After blinking over and over, my still fuzzy vision returned. I scanned my surroundings and found there to be no danger as I was in some mediaeval looking kitchen.
Right by my side, a wood rectangular table with matching benches, like those picnic benches you see in western films. From the rafters hung strings of garlic, preserved meats, ham and sausages, as well as various bottles which contained what I suspected to be spices.
Over the hearth, a large pot, with steam shimmering from it. The embers glowing lively, providing a steady heat source for whatever it was that was cooking.
As I blinked further, trying my best to steady my vision, I noticed her - a hunch-backed old lady, kitted in a stained white apron, and an ancient styled powder blue dress and a hairnet holding down her otherwise bushy white hair.
"Ahh a guest, I haven't seen anyone in a long time," she said finally noticing my presence. She turned to greet me and I was half expecting to see a gnarly face of a witch. But I was mistaken, she had a wizened face, one of someone who had endured for many years in hardship.
"Come now dearie, sit, I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but the stew is almost ready, the poor lamb passed this winter, so it provided itself to old me." She continued, as she turned back to stir the pot. It was then that I caught a whiff of a familiar lamb stew I once had.
"What year is it?" she suddenly asked.
"It's 2022," I replied.
"Which part of the cycle of that year are you from?" she asked again.
"It's the tail end of 2022," I automatically responded, slightly unsure as to why I understood her question. After all, who uses the word 'cycle' anymore these days; it's usually 'seasons' or 'months'.
Hearing my reply, she stretched her hand to the beam nearest to her then scratched something into it. Moving my sight to the beam, I noticed that my reply was her newest line added to a long list of words.
She must have noticed me looking, so she provided an explanation. "This is how I keep track of who has come to visit. At first I thought it followed a fixed timeline into my future, but over the years, my random descendants kept appearing at random times and the year's you and they were from were never linear."
"Who are you, ma'am?" I asked, clearly confused as I was most definitely of Asian descent, and this lady was clearly a westerner. I made a mental note to try out the ancestry search thing I saw on an ad the night before, if I could afford it - when I woke up later.
"Ah, look at me, I forgot to introduce myself," she mumbled as she handed over a plate of the stew, in which I accepted with a word of thanks.
"I'm the western matriarch of the House of Luxembourg, well one of the matriarchs anyway, I don't remember my name, but I remember my lineage. If you are here with me, then you most definitely are a descendant of my line. After all, I set up this node in the void to only allow my descendants to locate me." She explained as she introduced herself. "Go on, the stew won't bite, eat, you must be famished; and listen to my introduction."
With her instruction, I picked up the spoon, and ladled a piece of lamb into my mouth, careful to blow the steam away before consuming. It was the best lamb stew I've ever tasted, and it gave off a nostalgic feeling. I had clearly at some point in my life, eaten such a stew.
"This is a good stew," I complimented. The old lady just smiled, before continuing on.
"My sister and I were the last two descendants of the House of Luxembourg, you are most likely unable to confirm this now, but you can look up your history books when you return. Or perhaps that witch of a sister of mine, might have erased traces of me. Anyway, while I am from the Luxembourg house, my blood carries more of the Germanic and Saxon while my sister has more French-Saxon in her. Actually I'm not even sure if we had the same mother, we definitely had the same father." she started, trailing off here and there, but mostly sticking to her story.
"It started with a civil dispute on who's lineage should be the main core of the House of Luxembourg, my family insisted that our Germanic-Saxon was the correct path, and that French witch insisted that their Franca-Saxon was the correct way."
"Unable to come to a consensus, our land was split into Eastern and Western Houses of Luxembourg. Her family and descendants took to the East, and mine to the West. But the civil dispute soon evolved into a full on civil war which tore my father's lands to shreds. In the end, my family was weaker in magic and in physical. I alone managed to escape into a void, partly due to the ritual being interrupted by my sister's people."
"At first I wallowed in despair and loneliness, unable to take my own life, the ritual to protect my family turned into the prison which keeps me away but alive."
"I had no inkling of how much time had passed outside this node in the void. But as the years went by, my powers grew and stabilised. I made the node to be reachable to my lineage's descendants should they be still alive."
"After making the change, no one came and I once more fell into despair but the thoughts of anger kept me going, anger for that sister of mine who was so merciless and wiped out my lineage."
"Then something miraculous happened, a descendant from the year 112AD, showed up. Just as you had, back then, it was just an open field, and no roof above our head. They didn't stay long, at first I thought it was because either their or my magic wasn't strong enough to keep them here, but many visits later, did I learn that there was no more magic in the world my descendants came from, replaced by something called technology. The void as I call it, is nothing more than a dream-plane for future descendants. Subsequently, I had visits from descendants from the 1100's, 1300's, 700's, 1500's, 1800's, 300's, 2800's and finally you from the 2000's. The gap in time between each descendant is so long that besides me, it would be impossible for any of you to know each other." she added with a long sigh. "Also time is something not to be messed with, so I won't tell you what I learned from the descendants from the 2800's, time is something even I don't dare to mess with so don't even ask!" She sternly added after looking at my face.
Yes, I was going to ask her about the future, even though I would most probably be dust or fossil fuel by then. But I held my tongue, as a fantasy novelist, a fan of the isekai genre as well as the isekai religion, I knew that time was not something humans could play around with without consequence.
I ate more of the stew as she continued with her story.
"As I was saying, each time I met one of my descendants, after they leave, I would be able to understand and learn their language and their memories of technology after they are gone. So even if you can't describe your time to me, it's alright, I can spend the next few years before someone else visits to learn about your time."
"So what is your name, my descendant from the 2000's?" she asked.
"My name is Brian," I replied.
"Hmm.. that name is of Irish origins mixed with the French… but you're clearly from my lineage, otherwise you would not have reached my node between the dimensions via the dream void." she muttered under her breath.
I only understood a little, the dreamscape is probably just another layer of the many dimensions our world sits in as I understand it. And this ancestor of mine, was hiding in a node she accidentally made in the many layers of dimensions; and due to the changes in the world, the only way her 'descendants' could reach her was via their dreams. Another equally least understood concept of humanity.
"Well it seems that your time is up," she said, sighing as she pointed at my body.
Looking down, I first saw my feet turn incorporeal, and it crept up my body. I was fading away from this node.
"Thank you for the stew, Matriarch of the Western House of Luxembourg. May we one day meet again," that was my final words as I was expelled from the node. I did hope I could meet her again, to learn more about her version of time. But I knew deep down that it would be impossible. Not that I wouldn't try.
I was expelled from the node then woke up in bed, at 5.30am. I did try to reconnect, but I could not. In some dreams, I could wake up, go to the toilet, then come back to bed and fall back into the dream where I left off. Usually that occurs when the 'me' in that dream goes to sleep, and I get to continue from where I left off after that 'me' wakes up in the dream.
After failing to reconnect, I immediately picked up my phone from the bedside table, then keyed in 'Luxembourg' to try and find out about her. As she mentioned, there was no trace of a matriarch for the House of Luxembourg, which mainly had their lineage records following the males only.
Reading the rabbit hole which was the wikipedia page, I learned that the 'House of Luxembourg' didn't exist before the 1300's. So either she lied, or she had hidden her true age. Members of the House of Luxembourg were descendants of another family's branch - namely the House of Ardenne from the 10th century. Which are said to be descendants of Charlemagne - but you can learn more about that down the rabbit hole called wikipedia.
As far as mainstream history goes, humanity had never seen an era of magic, and that magic was either parlour tricks or sciences that were not understood by man of the time.
My opinion however, would be a bit out of this world, due to my experiences in the dreamscape. It is my opinion that she was not from my world, but another parallel Earth in which magic does or did at some point exist.
After all, who's to say that our world can or cannot connect to other parallel worlds - or if they exist or not in the first place. It's not the first time I've connected to a world not mine, call it having a great imagination if you will, but to me, it's proof that we're not alone, it's just that we can't connect with the others.
There is not a way in which I can prove that she was an ancestor, I highly doubt that the ancestry test would show that far in the past, but it would be cool to think that somewhere deep in my bloodline, I have traces of the Great Charlemagne - despite clearly being of Asian descent.