Dream Fragment 2: Hot Stoves

There was once a time when my brother, with whom I did not get along that well in life sadly, presented himself to me as my Shadow; a dark figure haunting my nightmares.

Well, that was until I told my Shadow, flat out, that it was no longer to appear in that form in my dreams. "Come as anyone you like, be as menacing as you like, but if you put on the appearance of my brother in my dreams again, I will hurt you. I will be your Shadow." My words.

Since then, my brother has come to me in my dreams as more of a brother to me - the brother I wish I'd had while he was still alive. Someone I could talk to, without him starting an argument all the damned time.

I was at home. I presume I'd managed to get back from Connection Station. It was night outside, and the house was not the usual place I have in my dreams - my usual home in dreams looks more like the old house I grew up in; I never dream of my current lodgings.

No, this place looked like a bigger complex, with many rooms and a spacious kitchen, done up in an old-world style. There was a massive fireplace, with a fire burning away in the grate; and there, on a grid over the fire, was a pot of some sort, with food cooking. Sean, my brother, was sitting beside the fire on a small stool, watching the flames and waiting for the pot to cook.

And beside him was a much larger stove, on the kind of industrial scale you associate with hotel and restaurant kitchens, roaring away. I have no idea what was cooking inside that stove, but it could feed an army, or a giant.

This was a new place to me, because I asked Sean about the stove, and he told me he'd found it and turned it on to cook something. I was amazed to see it; I had no idea it was even here when I took up ownership of the place. But it looked as if whoever had owned this place had used it to feed a hell of a lot of people at one time, because you could run a catering business from products made in that stove.

And that was the second dream fragment.