The Raven Trap

Date: 5/7/2019

This dream mainly focused on a rebellious teenage boy and his very (outwardly) patient mother. I don't remember much about the details of how it happened, but the teen boy somehow ended up in a place very far from his home. In another dimension, I think. In this place, he changed. He transformed, and in the swirling magic of the transformation he split apart. He became a flock of ravens, each individual bird a part of him and tenuously connected by a sort of hive-mind. He was mostly aware of himself in one particular raven. It was slightly taller than the rest, and so it wasn't terribly difficult for outsiders to tell it apart. He was always aware of the others, their senses and their behaviors and a little bit of their thoughts, but he mainly stayed in this one taller raven. As a result, I think it was usually the only one capable of talking, though I'm not sure how he did that with a raven's body. Telepathy, maybe? He was struggling. Having a bit of an existential crisis as he tried to piece his own identity back together. He had to figure out who he was, reform into a single human being, and find a way home. He explored a place that reminded me of a Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away in particular. Half industrial buildings with skeleton crews of people (presumably also trapped, also changed like him) just barely keeping them from falling apart entirely. Half green grass and blue skies and hills that arc softly down onto warm, gentle beaches at the threshold of the sea. Half labyrinths and half open fields. A place that would have been relaxing, if it wasn't so empty and so impossible to leave... and if the boy wasn't so preoccupied with his situation, though I think a few of his ravens did in fact choose to just enjoy the scenery and live lazily while he did most of the work. At some point, his mother found her way into this place. She was scared that her son had run away from home because he hated her. Maybe he had run away, he was in a particularly rebellious stage of life; but I don't think it was fueled by hatred of her. Just frustration. Confusion. The need for independence. She tried to understand that he wasn't just one raven, but all of them. She tried to understand that he couldn't just follow her as the tall raven and leave the rest behind. She tried to understand that he was trapped until he learned to understand who he was as a person. She tried. It was hard, and frustrating, and confusing. She ended up just living in that place with him, though she never gave up on trying to find a way out. He tried alongside her, sending various ravens to keep an eye on her and keep her safe. Something seemed like it was out to get them -- or at least remove her, and so he kept her hidden as much as he could. As she spent time with the ravens, she learned more and more about sides of her son she'd never known. She learned what his favorite music was, when at home he'd never told her. She learned what he worried about, when he usually just said everything was fine. One day, they almost got caught by whatever was after them. The boy, through his tall raven, told his mom to be quiet after hiding her in a room with a lot of old, steel pipes and a water boiler of some kind. He held a wing across his face and shushed her, and she suddenly realized how much he worried about her. She was still confused and still felt like she didn't know her son as well as she wanted to, but she knew he didn't hate her. She believed, in that moment, that he would find himself soon. I don't know if he ever did. I have a few vague memories of them hiding under a pier, him flying over the hills, and all the ravens being together in a kind of aviary that had been made to model a jungle for some reason. I don't know how this story ended. I just know that he needed to be a flock of ravens, and never would have even started to ask the right questions about himself otherwise. That's all I can remember, and a lot has probably been shored up/altered by my writer's brain after the fact. Until next I wander.