I was living in a society as a slave. We weren’t treated particularly badly – I don’t think we were beaten and we had good clothes and enough to eat – but we were still slaves. I was a slave for members of my family – an aunt, uncle and cousins, I believe. They also had a steady stream of slaves who would be here for a few days, and then be sold on, so I never really had a chance to know them properly. One night we were in the huge, massive hall for dinner. It must have been a party or something, for there were at least 50 people there. The slaves were on a raised alcove, like a big stage. It was me and three others – a boy and two girls – who had just come in and already knew one another. In the middle of the feast they walked to the middle of the stage and started singing. It was a powerful, beautiful, heart breaking song about slavery, high and loud and piercing. Everyone stopped eating and listened in silence. The whole roomful of people were so moved by this song that they watched the three slaves walk slowly through the hall in single file and out past the guards without doing anything. I walked after them and escaped too.

I stayed away for a day and night, and then went back. My reasons seemed myriad, and confused. Part of it was that this was my family and I felt a warped sense of obligation, but I had also decided to stay and fight slavery from the inside rather than escape to another land and leave my country with these unjust laws. It would be trite as a book, but as a dream it was awesome.

I need the help of people less retarded than me when it comes to popular culture - namesly, my beloved Flist.

I'm making a list of films and television series that have wolves and werewolves in them, preferably in a terrifying way. So far I have:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Werewolf of London

An American Werewolf in London/Paris

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

A Company of Wolves

Van Helsing

The Neverending Story
 

Can anyone suggest some more?

I don't usually post my dreams, but this was oddly real (in a completely fictional sort of way) and I want to remember. I was a 19th Century gentleman; Victorian, I think, judging from the clothes. I went travelling to Egypt - just me and someone else - and I brought back amazingly beautiful jewellery and artefacts - small things, no mummies or sarcophagi. Something of real me bled through, though, and I had the niggling feeling that I was doing something wrong in claiming them and taking them back to England, even though it was what everyone did.

There was an interesting sub-plot in the dream as well. I was travelling with the older brother of my best friend, whom I'd known from boarding school. This man had been an absolute monster to his little brother - and me too, by extension, in the times I'd stayed at their estate. As we all got older, the assaults had changed from physical to verbal and were still nasty. I didn't like him, but there was some reason I had to travel with him. I found out while we were travelling (we were in a carriage at the time of the conversation) that he was massively in love/lust with his younger brother and that was why he'd always been so horrible. Both brothers were attractive, the younger with red gold hair and whiskers, the older with dark hair and eyes.

I woke up just after the dreams became more dream-like and my travelling companion got his period and started drinking camomile tea.

It’s like reading an excerpt from a novel. I want more, especially if it includes steamy passion and conflict between the brothers. Stupid brain.

Children imitating cormorants 
are even more wonderful 
        than cormorants.