I had a dream this morning with what I can only describe as a master storyteller on board.

The dream opened with him telling a story…like a narrator would and it was a cute little fairytale-ish sort of tale — one I could see Pixar or Dreamworks doing about a spoiled human girl and a cursed fairy boy who’s been banished to the human world. I wish all the details weren’t slipping away but suffice to say they were thrown together…hating each other at first but along the way they started working together to fix their mutual problems.

During the story beats (rises and falls) the master storyteller would “lean in” and whisper about the technique, how things fell together organically and how someone else could do “this or that.” He asked me questions such as what would feel contrived and other things to see what I knew and then…we’d be at the next scene. He would narrate again if the scene’s beginning warranted it.

The story characters were wonderful — full of troubles and idiosyncrasies, weaknesses and strengths. Their conversation felt edgy and truthful. One, because they weren’t looking to impress but then…

They fell in love. And some horrible thing was happening to destroy, I’m assuming the fairy world, because they were being attacked and they were now in Fairy. A land where truth is sacred but creative truth telling is rampant. This means subtext is in the foreground.

I wish I remembered more about this but next I remember came this…

I saw how a clue, a tiny innocuous piece from the enemy’s construction got swooped up by the bird the girl was riding. The bird knew it was important but not the girl. Unfortunately, the item was lost when they veered in the sky to grab one of the cursed fairy’s people who was falling (I don’t remember how he got there… But at the time it made sense) and the bird spit out the piece to catch him.

The fairy was slipping–hanging upside down with his arms wrapped around the bird’s neck. They almost lost him before they made an emergency landing in a tree. But that piece they lost? It was found wedged almost out of sight within the tree’s canopy. The fairy spotted it, realized what it was and all of them decided what they would need to do.

The Master Storyteller leaned in again. “It isn’t enough to simply have the protagonist find a clue. They may be clueless and have to find that which unlocks the clue.”

The story evolved to where the fairy boy lost the feelings he felt for the girl. Human emotions and fairies mix strangely and it wasn’t that he fell out of love. He wanted those feelings back but they were lost to him.

The next part I remember … the girl, no longer spoiled, is ready to pass back into the human world. She is resolved to heal somehow from knowing such a true intense love. Her heart is breaking and she’s trying to be stoic. She said goodbye to him inside his tree home. They are not alone. His servant is there.

The fairy boy may not love her anymore but he is compelled to ease her suffering. He has found a way to get back his feelings but it can’t be just his…it will be both of theirs (just like the girl is doing at that moment).

He said “it’s better that way.”

The servant said, “I do not understand how you can say that. Your life is eternal and hers is fleeting. She will heal of it being human.”

The fairy boy said, “If I must live a life forever and never love, I want to know I did have love once and it was real.”

The whole thing was making me cry.

The Master Storyteller told me to wake up and to write this down… Which I’m doing now but I had continued dreaming. I was now inside an old medieval German house with a small library.

Someone was pounding at the door. I answered it only to find a skeezy little man who said he needed to ask me a lot of questions.

“Can you come back in half an hour? I need to write some stuff down,” I said.

Nope. He argued with me while I tried to keep the memories of my previous dream from dissolving into mist.

He barged in and said, “I’ll wait.”

I look for something to write on but all the notebooks in the house were full.

I finally picked up a book. Though I shouldn’t…I figured I could, at least, write quick shorthand notes in a blank page and transfer them over when I found a better place to put them.

I felt electricity go through my arm as soon as the pen was on page. I wrote. I had to.

The skeezy little man screeched. He had a book in his hands, one he had grabbed from one of the top shelves. It was an old book totally written in German.

New letters were forming inside his volume as if the books were linked.

Pandemonium broke out. Lights. Explosions. Villagers flooding in screaming about witchcraft.

The last I know I was desperately trying to hold onto the pieces I wanted to save from my dream.

Anyway I woke up…I reached for my iPhone where I usually put dream notes or notes on the fly only to discover I left it downstairs. I never leave it downstairs.

Despair, the house is awake.

I snuck down, retrieved the phone before the family noticed and barricade myself in the bathroom. And yes, you guessed it. I typed furiously to save as much of it as I could.

Interesting dream but I can’t help feeling like I had been plunged into battle to save…story ideas and writing tips. Alas, there had been more. So aggravating and sad but I’m hoping my subconscious will let it seep back.