The Refuge

[ablelba]

20140406 -- Dream -- The Refuge
8:30 DST -- 20:28 LST

I dreamed that my wife and I were leading a normal life. I was working, we went to church on Sundays, and went about the normal business of living during the rest of the week. Then someone began speaking to me. It was like sitting in the living room watching TV, and then a second TV screen (that you never knew was there) suddenly turns itself on, and starts giving you information.

A Voice was saying, "Disasters are coming. When the first one is near, get in your car immediately and drive. You will know where to go. You will know where to turn. Go to the refuge and wait for instructions."

Not long after that, a horrific rain and wind storm slammed into the city. And we knew it was time to go. We got in the car, and I was driving through rain so hard I could barely see the road.
Just as I was wondering if I was a complete lunatic, I knew I had to turn right at an exit. We went down a 2-lane road, nearly being blown off it. Miles later, I knew I had to make a right turn into a driveway that went up a hill. There was a wall around the property with posts on either side of the driveway that held statues. The one on the left was broken off, but the one on the right was a statue of Mr. Peabody (Yes, the scholarly dog with the Wayback machine and adopted boy named Sherman from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show).

As we turned into the driveway, a ghost rose from the ground as if to pass into the car. The Voice from the second screen said, "Drive through. It is only for security. It will not harm you." We drove through it, and it vanished.

We drove up the hill on the old driveway and parked on the side. There were several cars there already. A middle-aged lady came out of the house. We had never seen her before. "Welcome," she said. "This is your refuge. Come inside and have some dinner." There were 10 to 12 people around the table, and a full dinner was set. We ate and talked about our plans and dreams. It was like coming home. We all stayed overnight-- The rooms available matched the people who had come, no more, no less.

The next morning, our hostess said, "Danger is passed, you may go home now. You may find that you can't remember much about the refuge or how you got here. That is a security. When the next disaster comes, you will be able to find the Refuge again, don't worry." And it was true. We got home and vaguely remembered the Refuge, but did not speak about it to anyone, not even each other.

A tree had fallen through the roof of our house, taking out the Master Bedroom and the dining room. Our neighbors had similar damage to their houses. Some were worse. Yet when we talked with them, they acted like there was nothing unusual about living in a partly-destroyed house.

"Since everyone in the neighborhood had this kind of damage," our next-door neighbor told me, "my realtor says the property value is not affected."

"The anchorman says all the home damage will be good for the economy," said the man across the street. "Maybe it will bring us out of the recession. I'm going to buy stock in construction on Monday."

Everyone continued to live in their half-destroyed houses. We tried to fix ours, but we were the only ones. People began to think of us as eccentric. A blue FEMA bus came by one day, with a Homeland Security emblem on it. They questioned us about where we had been on the night of the storm.
"We mostly just drove around, I guess," I told them. I couldn't quite tell them about the Refuge.

There were two more disasters in the dream, but details are lacking. The second involved seas of mud everywhere. Some just coated the ground and roads, some was many feet deep, as in Oso, Washington. We made it to the Refuge again, following the navigation of the Second Screen Voice. The air was rainy, and mud covered all road markings. When we got home, most of the house was gone. Many of our neighbors were simply sitting in the middle of their muddy lots, still not understanding that they were in disaster.

The third disaster came soon after the second one. Extreme heat set the forests on fire and baked the mud to terra-cotta. It was in hexagonal scales an inch thick, coating everything. We still made it to the Refuge, even though the smoke of the fires made it impossible to see anything through the windows of our car. When we turned into the driveway, the smoke was cleared from the Refuge, but the statue of Mr. Peabody was coated in terra cotta scales. So was the driveway. The Refuge house was gone and so was the hostess, yet it was still somehow the Refuge.

One other person was already there, so we parked, and sat next to her on the terra-cotta scales near the top of the hill, watching the smoke blow by the end of the driveway. None of us were particularly concerned.

"What happens next?" I asked our new old friend.

"Maybe the Voice will tell us," she said.

Dream ends here.
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Comments;
This disaster dream has elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Not sure where to put it. Despite the craziness and disaster, it had a hopeful and confident feeling (ie., no feelings of dread or foreboding associated with it)