This is a real recurring dream I have. Please analyse 'til your face turns blue :)
I have had a series of strange dreams ever since I was little. I am sitting in a sort of outdoor conservatory, like a semicircle of glass, with a glass roof. Plants are all around the edges on the inside; hot, bright, tropical plants. They are reaching up to the ceiling and creeping along the floor, which seems to be made of crushed stone, quartz and obsidian. I am sitting on a cushioned bench that runs all along the inside edges, warm red velvet flowing and bruising beneath me. Ahead of me I can see the flames licking and spitting over a house that I know somehow is mine, and in which my family are having one of their lame cocktail parties. I can hear the music streaming out, dancing and talking even as it roars and snaps with the fire burning it to the ground.
It is as if the fire is seperate; they are determined to party until they die and don't appear to notice that they are asphyxiating slowly on carbon monoxide. But I am sitting and swinging my legs like a little girl, enjoying the warmth and not really concerned about them. It is as if they are just figments of my imagination and I don't feel anything. I am looking down at a beetle (brilliant red and black) crawling at my feet when I hear a faint whiffle and somehow know what it is.
As the creature at the door breathes softly, I look up and feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to prickle. I do not actually see him, but I get impressions of the soul: dark, musky, humorous (but with a dry humour), warm. Thick-furred, chocolate brown and black. Glistening white, square, teeth. Sharp, curving horns. Thick brass armlets, engraved with the dead and dying. Eyes of a dark red, almost black; flashes and whispers and sighs. A great anger, a bitter disposition, a silent sadness so deep that it will never be seen or felt, only present. And over it all my favourite smells... musk and cinnammon, ginger, vanilla, dark earth and black coffee, cool water running deep, jungles damp and warm and cosy.
And fire. Over it all hangs the soft ash of Vesuvious, the hard slabs of obsidian in the Baltic, lightning as it strikes and atmosphere burning.
I feel as if these impressions are a wave, tearing me off my feet and drowning some small, bright part of me. But the strangest thing of all is that I welcome it, I get to my feet and move to stand beside what I now know must be why I have been waiting and we stand and watch the fire quietly, his broad, strong hand on my shoulder and his breath flowing around us.
I am being swallowed by the dark, and I welcome it. I want it. I am breathing the fire in, and my lungs are shouting for joy. But all is silence, and we simply stand and watch as the music and the fire work together to devour the last remnants of my house, bathing us in a white ash so pure it is blinding. One strong finger puts a slight pressure on my arm and I understand... A new start, not in the light, but further into the soft, warm, accepting darkness.
Then I wake up and have to get out from under the duvet, eat breakfast, and get on with my life. But always the thought and the feeling is with me: the Fire and the Minotaur.
I don't know what I have done to deserve a comfort like this, but I'll not be found ungrateful for it.