Secrets in the Castle (school)

Date: 5/23/2020

I had a dream that started with my family being invited to go to this super pretentious school- it was like fancy in every single way you can imagine, and then some- and when we moved basically to the middle of nowhere to live in this super fancy village designed specifically for the people going to the school, we figured out the school itself was a ginormous castle. Basically Hogwarts minus the magic (or at least minus the more OBVIOUS magic like the moving stairs- because the castle definitely had some magical secrets to it). Anyways, it was actually really modernized in a lot of ways. The village itself was like Hogsmeade in comparison to Hogwarts, it was basically right next to the castle but situated in its own ‘area’ all the same. The houses and other buildings had rustic exteriors to match the castle theme, but the interiors were super nice. For houses, they were regular if not big- they had bedrooms enough for the family, a living room (complete with a flatscreen TV), dining room, kitchen, bathrooms, and a basement. And the decor wasn’t super old either, although generally the theme was still kept: we had red plush sofas with intricately carved wooden frames, fancy coffee tables, multiple TVs, and modern wallpapers and floors (although again, they stuck in the wooden, rough stone, and medieval-red sort of theme). My family moved all our stuff there too so we had our cats and dogs and their beds and stuff, we had our technology like the family Xbox, and so on. The other buildings, although super fancy on the outside, were basically the same inside. There was a mall which kept itself constantly restocked, an auto body shop, an IKEA, several supermarkets and CVS-like shops, etc, so you could buy pretty much everything you needed without having to leave this village. Which was good because it seemed to be situated in the middle of a bunch of natural (aka in-the-middle-of-nowhere) areas, with trees and fields and lakes everywhere for miles. Anyways, in the dream my family had been invited here because of my brother, sister and I’s ‘exceptionability’ which had ‘caught the eyes of some of the school’s directors.’ It was probably a mix of our grades, how we each acted in class, and the fact that all three of us tend to make an impression on the teacher; I’m the good kid who the teachers adore because I’m quiet, don’t talk in class (because I don’t have friends), I enjoy reading and do my work quickly and efficiently, et cetera; my brother is blind so he always needs his equipment with him, which means he ends up interacting with and getting to know the teachers a ton better than other students; and my sister manages to be a ‘popular’ kid while still doing her work and following directions to a T. But who really knows why we got to this school it was a dream after all. I think our family, in the dream, was just happy to get a free house and school for us all. The school itself was huge, like I said, and when my family moved there it was still summer vacation. Kids were still allowed on campus and stuff, and everything remained open because the teachers had their own bedrooms/living spaces inside of the school (usually next to their classrooms from what I can remember) so technically, you could go inside; it’s just that nobody really wanted to. After all, what kid wants to spend summer vacation in school? Well that kid was both my brother and I, him because he wanted to learn his way around the school by memory (since he couldn’t find his way by sight) before the beginning of the year, and me because it was a giant castle and I was super excited about it. My brother went off with one of the teachers to learn his schedule and how to get to other places like the cafeteria and stuff. Meanwhile, I explored and tried my best to memorize everything in the school. About a week at the school (it passed by quickly in the dream but I’m assuming it was at least that long) I decided to try and make a map, since I was good at drawing and had a decent memory and also wanted to make sure I didn’t get lost. So I started a map. It was a difficult process but I managed to map out the general layout of the entire school within the rest of summer vacation, with some time left after that. After I’d learned my way to all the different parts of the school, I explored a little bit further, looking for secrets. Because what castle doesn’t have secrets? Also, on my map I had noticed several places which seemed like ‘blank’ rooms; spaces between walls and hallways too big to just be unused space. I suspected several of these ‘blank’ spots on my map to be secret rooms. I think I should also mention that nobody knew what I was really doing or about the map. All my family knew was that I wanted to ‘learn my schedule’ with my brother, so I could get to classes or whatever. In the dream it seemed super important to me for the whole map, as well as anything ‘secret’ I found, to be kept absolutely secret. I ended up finding several secrets all within the span of summer vacation. After learning the general layout, I began going back to places in the castle- either a random place, a place that I remembered well for some reason, or a place nearby one of the ‘empty’ rooms- and inspected them closer. I looked at the stone brick walls and the wooden floor to check for any cracks that could be hidden doors or trapdoors; I checked every painting I saw for anything that would suggest a passageway behind it; I casually grabbed and pulled at every candleholder, hanging wall decoration, and anything else I seemed capable of being a secret switch; and I looked at every single statue and set of armor (yes, the castle had those, although they weren’t dangerous because the hallways were so wide it wasn’t even a concern for kids to accidentally touch a sword or something). One secret I found was in a bookshelf that was a hidden door. Which, real original brain, but anyway. I had been snooping around in the classrooms, both unused / spare / empty classrooms and teacher’s classrooms, and had found a suspicious classroom with three bookshelves against one wall. The reason it was suspicious was because 1) it was a completely unused classroom and yet it was decently sized, and 2) it was right next to a ‘blank’ room on my map. Using my map I located the wall closest to the ‘blank’ room and sure enough it was the wall with the bookshelves. So, I shut the door behind me and started checking all the books. Inside one of the books, that was sitting with the cover facing me (which should’ve been suspicious because nobody stores books like that) opened up to reveal a false inside; the pages flipped back to reveal a switch halfway through, against the wall, replacing where the other pages should’ve been. When I flipped the switch at first it did nothing. But then I realized the switch wasn’t a switch, but a type of doorknob; the bookshelf was the door. I opened the door (closing it securely behind me) and walked down a short hallway to a well-lit living room area. The candles were all brightly lit, but it wasn’t mysterious or anything because all the candles at the school were electric, so these were probably just connected to the lights back in the ‘real’ room behind me. There were several comfy sofas and wooden end tables, there was an unlit electric, fireplace, and there were a bunch of bookshelves lining the walls. The books on these shelves were definitely ‘secret’ books; they were about all sorts of mysterious things, some of which bordered on the side of magic. Things like, how to create concoctions labeled as ‘healing remedies’ or ‘poisons’ but which seemed to basically be potions; things about strange creatures which were ‘rumored’ to exist, and yet which went into amazing detail on these creatures; stuff like that. I read a few books then left the room, marking it on my map. Another secret room I found was in the library. This room was definitely magical. In order to get there you had to make it through these rows of bookshelves (which all towered super high with ladders to reach the top shelves) which all formed basically a maze. The trick was, instead of going to the back of this maze like a normal person, you took strange turns until you get to a different part of ‘the end’ of this maze. It still ended against the same wall, with bookshelves everywhere, except it was walled off (or bookshelved off) from the rest of the ‘maze,’ and was situated in the corner. On the wall to your left there was what appeared to be a dead end- just blank stone bricks. It was weird because everywhere else was bookshelves. Also, it was next to another ‘blank’ room. I found several displaced bricks pretty quickly and although they didn’t remove to reveal anything (other than more brick), I noticed after a little bit that they formed a pattern when turned to their side. The pattern was a star with three triangles between the points- so a weird hexagon basically. After a little bit more of checking everywhere near that wall, I found another secret beneath the carpet. There was this huge ornate rug covering the entire maze floor, making almost a pathway, but it was just a rug and could be lifted up at the corners and stuff. When I lifted the rug up from where it was sitting right near the corner, the wooden floorboards revealed a little area beneath the floor: a sighs loose board could be pulled up and beneath it was an area, maybe the size of a shoebox, made of stone. The bottom of it seemed to be shattered or broken, but I realized it to be a puzzle. This part of the dream was probably because of the amount of ‘escape room’ puzzle games I’ve been playing recently on my phone... After messing around for a bit (and quickly replacing the board and pretending to look at books when the janitor came by), I rearranged the pieces to form the weird hexagon shape. When they were arranged like that, they could suddenly be pushed downwards like a button. I pushed the ‘button’ and heard a click, and the wooden boards next to be revealed themselves to be a masterfully hidden trapdoor. I replace the original board (the one with the puzzle underneath) and climb down. When I pull the trapdoor closed I hear a crumbling sound of stone falling and get super freaked for a second, before realizing that it was probably the puzzle resetting itself somehow. I go down a stone brick hallway (fully lit by ‘candles’) and arrive in a large room with a low ceiling. However the ceiling doesn’t seem so low once you spot the pool/bath, which takes up the majority of the room (there’s some regular floor on all sides of it to make a path). I say pool/bath because although it’s huge, the water is super hot- you can see the steam- and there are several faucets coming from the opposite end of the room, where the little spouts stick out of a slightly raised edge of the pool. Behind that raised edge is more floor space/more of the little path around the pool, and that path leads down another hall where I see another set of stairs, just as steep as the ones I’d come down from. On either side of the room there are openings, doorways that lead to smaller room, with smaller baths inside and shows heads coming from the ceiling like rain. Everything is turned on and the water is running, but it must have a drain or something because it’s not like it’s overflowing. Or maybe it’s magic. The more magical bit of this room, though, are the girls in the main pool/bath. I say girls but they’re definitely not human, I think they’re sirens of a sort. They’re nude, but the bottom half of their body seems to shiver, and despite the water being perfectly clear the lower half of their bodies was distorted by the water to the point where you couldn’t make out even their legs- much less any detail. Their hair was long, and seemed luscious, voluminous, and dry, even though they were clearly wet and underwater half the time. Also, they seemed to have essentially unlimited breath- I didn’t even see them breathe, yet they managed to stay under the water for scarily long amounts of time without breathing once. It would’ve been scary but honestly in the dream it was barely enough to even weird me out- I was like, yeah, whatever, this is normal. I was more concerned with the fact that I could see their boobs to be honest. And they were indeed very pretty- one had suuuuper dark skin, smooth and silken, with hazel eyes and curly black hair that fell to her shoulders; one had olive skin and green eyes and straight black hair down past her ribs; and one had tan skin with wavy red hair past her chest and freckles. There may have been more but I can’t remember; what I remember above all is their eyes. They were otherworldly. Too bright to be human; too staring, never blinking to be human; too saturated, with way too much color to be human (the greens were lime, the color of emeralds, the hazels perfectly brown, like in the movies). They were their most prominent feature. I don’t know why but I remember these siren girls a lot better than the rest of the dream, I can even remember their voices- which, of course, were all very alluring. The girls looked about my age which was suspicious too. But as soon as I came down they swam over to the edge of the pool and started talking to me. They said, it’s been so ~long~ since we’ve had visitors, and they asked me for my name and how old I was and what I was doing down here. I told them carefully, you can call me Ella, because I knew enough about Fae and magical creatures to know it’s very dangerous to actually give your name to a creature. I told them I was sixteen (I’m fifteen in real life but I’m almost sixteen so maybe that’s why I said sixteen in the dream?) and I said that I had been exploring and had found this secret passageway. The girls responded by saying that they were glad I’d found them, and they’d been down here for SO long, it had been so lonely for them! and they told me that I should join them, that the water was warm and so was the air and it was nicer down there in the pool- and less cramped, since the ceiling was a bit low when you were standing on the ground above the water like I was. I was like, um, thank you so much but actually I uhh have places to be, I’m just gonna go explore some more now, but they were like aww, don’t go so soon, you should join us, the castle has too many secrets for me to try and find them all. At that last bit I was like, you guys know about other secrets of this castle? And they seemed happy that I’d been hooked by something they said. They responded quickly that they knew all about the secrets of the castle, most of them as old as the castle itself, but a few of them created after that throughout the years- and they’d tell me a few maybe, if I got in the water and kept them company. To myself I was like: Ella, don’t even think about it. They’re sirens or something. Dingdingding that’s the alarm in your brain telling you it’s time to get the fuck away from here for now. You know all about their tricks so you should be able to avoid them easily. But then I was also like, I have nothing else to do really, and also they say they know more secrets! And also they’re very pretty, it’s not like I’d MIND getting in the water with them... So, naturally, I ended up taking off my hoodie, shirt, and jeans (wrapping them carefully around my map and setting them aside right by the exit/entrance that I’d come down through) and agreeing to get in. The sirens were super happy and as soon as I got in they all swarmed around me and started talking and stuff. But they had zero cares about personal space, like seriously, they were all over me- I was quite literally surrounded by them. Again, not that I exactly minded, but still it was hard to focus when you’re that flustered and also hot because of the steaming water. They started telling me about some secrets- mostly they talked about how ‘the castle had been built around its secrets, you had to look within its foundations to see that’ but I kinda already had guessed that with the whole blank-room thing. They also talked about how symbols were hidden in plain sight, puzzles were right in front of my eyes disguised as decoration or patterns or even just walls; about how every statue had purpose beyond what it seemed. But soon they started getting all touchy with me, rubbing their hands all over me and stuff. As soon as one of them tried to put her hand somewhere private I was like YEP OKAY THANKS FOR THE INFO, IM GONNA GO NOW and just pushed through the water (and past their reaching, grabbing, soft-as-hell hands) as fast as possible to get to the dry land. I was like SUPER flustered, I normally wouldn’t have minded at all but I had my heart set on exploration in this dream. Horniness could wait for later I guess. They only partly tried to stop me, saying aw, come on, they’re so lonely, can’t I stick around for just a bit longer? and, please don’t go yet, you’ve only just been here a little bit! and I was like I’m really sorry, I’ve gotta go, but I’ll come back I promise okay?, and that last bit made them happy. I got dressed, careful to keep my map inside of my hoodie’s pockets so it didn’t get wet, and leave through the other trapdoor- which opens up into another unused classroom, right next to a statue, hidden behind the depiction of some night in the corner. I mark the spot on my map and leave. To make a long story short I find a bunch of secret rooms in the castle throughout summer vacation. A lot of them are just regular-ish rooms that’d been hidden; like, hidden living/common rooms, hidden libraries, hidden bathrooms/pool areas, hidden storage rooms, and so on. However they all had a touch of mysteriousness or magic to them; like, if the secret room was a library, then it’d have books about low-key magical things, and stuff like that. A few rooms stuck out above the rest- the sirens room I’d described above; a huge weaponry / armory room filled with suits of armor glinting strangely, in all sizes, and swords, daggers, bows, arrows, crossbows, maxes, and more, all hanging neatly from the walls or racks and shining brightly; a huge library room with books about definitely magical stuff, including (basic) spells; a room that was, by all appearances, the outdoors (grass instead of flooring, walls covered in vines, the ceiling painted- or was it?- to look like the sky) and which had strange little puffball creatures floating around in the air; and finally, a hidden kitchen with a bunch of super young kids working there. When I found the kitchen room a bunch of the kids greeted me and what happened after that was basically the Harry Potter scene with all of the house elves in the kitchen, except instead of house elves it was a bunch of children, and none of them were as miserable (or as enslaved) as the house elves were. The children gave off a fairie or Fae vibe not gonna lie. They offered me some food and I relented and took a little bit when they somehow offered all of my favorite foods right off the bat. After finding all the secret rooms during summer vacation the dream moved on to the school year. I don’t remember that as well, all I remember is that there was a play or musical and the school wanted me to play one of the main roles because I could play the violin, and the girl in the play/musical was a violinist who needed to play some difficult stuff during the story. I agreed but wasn’t happy about it, however I remember rehearsing maybe halfway through the year and I was enjoying playing my violin- plus, it turned out I wasn’t as bad of an actress as I thought (in the dream) so I was doing fine. But playing the violin as well as practicing it was taking a lot of my free time because of this. The rest of my free time I spent going through my secret halls and whatnot, or searching for more secrets, which there were a ton of to find- there were even secrets within the secret rooms! It was super exciting, at least for me in the dream, and I began to wonder at one point why nobody else had thought to search for secrets like I had. I also wondered if anybody knew about any of the secrets- and if so, how many did they know about? By all appearances I seemed to be the only one (apart from the creatures who lived within the secret rooms) who knew about any of the secrets. One thing that was super useful about them was that a lot of the secrets were essentially just shortcuts- secret hallways that led to various rooms, but which had another hall leading out of the room and back out into a different part of the school. I could use the secrets to get around super quickly and efficiently. Somehow nobody ever spotted me coming or going from these secrets spots, ever. The classes themselves were forgettable, literally I forget everything else, I’m pretty sure it was just regular if not fancy school. Which means that I was doing well as usual. One part of the dream I remember really well. I had finished rehearsing for my part again, and had played really well so I was feeling satisfied. I come out to a stairwell area- and I remember this scene vividly. There was a square hole in the ground, framed by ornate railings, which provided a view downwards, towards all of the stairs. The stairs went upwards past this balcony like area as well. The ‘balcony’ or floor surrounding the stairwell was very wide, and in the corners and on the sides of the walls were a few bookshelves (holding things like paper and empty notebooks, or spare textbooks) and one or two plush chairs, situated in the corner next to a bookshelf or doorway or something, but at the same time kept out of the way of the walkway. I came out from the stage area where I’d been rehearsing; I had some free time between classes, it was a break period or something. I sat down and reclined in one of the chairs; then, after glancing around, I used one of the spells I’d learned from the secret rooms to hide myself. It wasn’t a physically altering spell per-se, it was more mind-based than that. Basically, the spell hid me from anyone who wasn’t looking for me; it wasn’t that nobody could SEE me really, it was just that nobody even noticed me sitting in the chair at all- their eyes slid past me, or didn’t notice me at all- unless of course they were directly looking for me. The spell was just a few words and a pattern- which I traced into my forearm with my finger. After the spell was done I reclined in the chair as if to take a nap. A little while later my sister ran up to me along with this other girl, who was just a year or two younger than me, who was my sister’s friend. She’s not my sister’s friend in real life, just in the dream- I don’t even know her in real life. But she was very pretty, in an innocent kind of way. My sister (who was looking for me, to my annoyance) came up to me with her friend and started talking about the play and stuff. I kept my eyes closed and ignored her hoping she’d go away. Then I heard giggling and felt my sister kiss my cheek- right over top of a bruise I had. (I don’t know how I even got the bruise). I groan tiredly/annoyedly and don’t open my eyes. Then I feel the girl kiss my cheek which flusters me enough to actually ‘wake up.’ My sister continues talking about the play, and all three of us talk for a bit right there, but I’m more preoccupied with the girl, because I don’t really know her but she’s cute and she keeps catching my eye. She also seems very sweet. Then, a bell rings, and I say something like, “oh shit, I have class in five minutes- General chem- I’ve gotta go.” My sister tells me that I’ll never make it in time because the chemistry classroom is across the school, and I just grin. Then she says something like, “oh god, you and your secrets. When’re you gonna tell me about any of them?” I say strictly, “never,” and run off to one of my secrets. I make sure nobody followed and get in quickly, not being seen going in or out as usual. I get to class and when I leave I meet my sister at the library. Once again the girl is there, and we all talk some more- I keep catching her eye. Then I glance at the clock and say again, “oh shit, I’ve gotta go.” My sister asks why and I just shake my head. I think to myself, they’re gonna kill me if I’m late and broke my promise again. Then I head towards the library maze thing. I check briefly to make sure I’m not being followed but I’m in a rush and don’t check too well; I hear someone behind me as I’m getting ready to pull up the board. I stop and stare and after deciding it’s safe to go, I go down into the siren room. There, I strip and put on a bathing suit (I carried one with me now) and get into the water, where the sirens are getting all touchy again, saying how they missed me and stuff. They start getting really touchy like before but this time I let them, I guess I must’ve promised or something. But before they can actually take off my bathing suit one of them perks up and says that someone’s coming- I rush to get out, pull on my clothes, and go out through the other exit with my stuff, saying goodbye to the sirens. They make me promise to come back again and ‘finish what we’d started,’ and I’m like yeah sure whatever I’m just gonna go before someone finds me, in case it’s a teacher or something. I go out to the hallway near the exit and wait casually outside, so I can see who came in after me if they decide to come out this way- I’m mainly curious, but also worried, in case a teacher had caught on to the fact that I was using rooms I probably wasn’t even allowed in. The perspective of the dream changes and I’m in the girl (my sisters friend)’s POV. She follows me to the maze, per my sister’s request (“I wanna know what she’s up to, she never lets me see!”) and also her own curiosity. She stops when I turn to look near the end, and as soon as I go down she goes over and inspects it. She finds the puzzle because she saw me lift the board but it takes her a little bit to solve it. Then she finally solves it and lifts the trapdoor slowly, but not fully, so the puzzle doesn’t reset. She listens and hears the sirens (and myself) and then tries to open the trapdoor more, but it resets the puzzle and the sirens and I stop talking. Suddenly she hears our hushed voices. She replaces the original board, and climbs down, but she arrives just in time to see the trapdoor falling shut on the other end. The sirens act similarly to her as they acted to me, but they seem a bit irritated, probably because she’d interrupted them. They ask what she’s doing down there, her name, and her age. She gives the last two willingly which, she’s lucky the sirens weren’t ACTUAL sirens, but anyways she tells them her name and age. Then she explains that she’d seen me coming down- or at least, seen part of me coming down- and was curious. The sirens say that she should go and get me so I could come back down. They also say that she’d be ‘free to join us,’ and stuff. She politely refuses, a bit flustered, and exits. As she comes out from the exit’s trapdoor it goes back to my perspective as we make awkward eye-contact, with her halfway out of the trapdoor and me leaning across the unused classroom, staring at her.