Oh, what to do with those vivid dreams you get every now and then. These are the ones so realistic that you experience them with Dolby Digital Surround-Sound and impressive mind-graphics. I initially wrote this back in '03 (three years after the dream occurred) for my blog and posted later for posterity on Writing.Com. It starts out as an article, but turns into a story (as all things I write about seem to do). Though it's written in story form for better 'flow' the events are as they occurred in the dream, word-for-word. I'm posting this in the hope of spurring further stories written from dreams of others, since the dreamworld has so much to offer in regard to inspiration for writing.

Well, here it is:

The Killer Whale's Prophecy of Water and Fire

Most people dream in black and white, or so the experts say. The experts also say that dreams are just a jumble of images the brain uses to entertain itself while the body sleeps. Others say that dreaming is a way for the brain to purge itself of old 'data,' which is why (supposedly) we forget more and more things that occurred in our past as time goes on. The unconscious, however, records everything and forgets nothing.

Many cultures believe there's a lot more to dreaming than what psychologists might think. Native Americans, for instance, believe that visitors from the spirit world speak to them while they're dreaming. I never gave such a belief credence, until recently.

Several years ago, I had an extremely vivid dream with full color, sound and detailed imagery. When I woke up afterward, I felt that it had to mean something.

Here's the dream, as best I can remember. At the end, I'll tell what happened in the ensuing five years that has brought this dream to at least a partial reality:

The dream began on a train. I wasn't 'me' in this one; instead, I was about ten years younger than my then thirty-one years. I remember noticing my hair, which was suddenly long and black, curled in tight ringlets that clung to my face. My hands were a rich walnut brown and my fingernails long and beautifully polished. I could clearly see my hand rise up and touch the plastic curtained window beside me.

I looked out at the passing scenery. Nothing but flat, arid desert, the sand scorched white by the harsh sun. I began to feel thirsty. Wanting a glass of water, I got out of my seat and headed past the rows of other passengers, all of whom looked tired and sleepy. The train rocked and rumbled as I made my way to the rear door, and I pushed through it to the next car beyond.

I found that one completely empty, and I hurried through it in search of the dining car. Several cars through, I finally found a car that looked different. By 'different,' I mean that when I stepped inside it and glanced around, it appeared to be someone's home. Lavish red paisley drapes hung from the windows on each side of the car and sumptuous red velvet chairs and couches were arranged facing the windows. In the center of the car, an old but very beautiful Jamaican woman sat at small, round table which was stained a deep cherry wood color.

"I'm looking for something to drink," I told her, feeling afraid for some reason I couldn't identify. She looked up at me, and I marveled at her thick pile of white hair. She'd braided it into thousands of tiny, rope-like strands, each end capped with a solid gold bead. It was gathered up into a loose bun and decorated by a bright orange scarf that wrapped around the top of her head. It matched the vibrant, tie-dyed silk dress she wore. The dress itself seemed to be made of liquid fire.

"T'ere is nothin to drink 'ere,' she said, studying me. 'T'ere is nothin to drink anywhere..."

"But I'm thirsty," I said, as if that would change anything.

She raised a crooked brown finger and waggled it at me. "No, no. If you wanna some water, you must do what I tell ya." I noticed then that her eyes were the strangest, deepest shade of turquoise. Her features changed, too, and her hair straightened and lengthened, hanging down her back in a long single rope of deep gray. The dress and scarf faded, then was replaced by a woven cotton sack dress adorned with tiny cone-shaped twists of tin that tinkled together when she bent down to retrieve a worn leather bag from the floor. She brought it up and plunked it on the table. Then she looked back up at me. Her face had changed, too. I couldn't tell for sure, but she had apaprently become an ancient Native American woman. Her eyes remained the same, though, with their odd shade of indigo blue.

"What's that?" I stared as she stuck her hand into the bag and rooted around.

She withdrew a glass jar, with a small fish inside. I moved closer to get a better look and saw that it was a baby rainbow trout. It fanned its dorsal fins and turned to look at me.

"This girl will take you back to the waters," the old woman said to the fish. She lifted the jar with both hands and gave it me.

"I don't know where to take it," I said, holding the jar up to look at the trout. It still watched me, and I felt the sudden sensation of something moving about within my head.

The trout spoke, but only in my mind. "Go to the dam and release me there," it said.

The old woman rose and pointed at the jar. "Do as he says."

"But I don't know where I am. How can I find a dam in a place I've never been?"

The old woman grinned, revealing a set of yellow, jagged teeth. "When the train reaches the next station, get off there. When you see the children, follow them."

The dream shifted then (as dreams are wont to do), and suddenly I was back in my original seat. The train lurched to a stop. The jar with the trout in it now tucked under my arm, I got up and left the car, stepping down into what appeared to be an old-time train station from the late 1800s. The air was hot and dry, and the wind blew, carrying sand that chafed my arms, legs and face. I turned to look for some sort of sign or message board that would tell me where I was, and couldn't find one. The train's engines started up again and it pulled away, leaving me alone in the station.

I ran through, trying to find a way out. A door at the far end led outside, and when I stepped through it, I saw nothing but miles of barren, flat desert dotted with tiny brown bushes. The sun was still high, and now thirstier than ever, I set off into the desert with the jar in hand.

I walked on, noticing that my feet were now bare as I crossed the burning sand. The heat was unbearable, but yet I kept moving. Before long, I spotted a huge, rounded metal building in the distance and I broke into a run, heading toward it.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and I glanced up to find clouds filling the sky. They were thick, oily and dark grey, but somehow I knew that no rain would come from them. I reached the building, which looked like an airplane hangar, opened a crumpled metal door and went inside.

Though the room was dark, I could see hundreds of children huddling in the center of the huge place. I moved toward them, and they cowered from me. They seemed to be a mixture of different races, some Native American, some black, some white, others Asian. A little girl with light brown skin stepped forward. I watched in silence as she limped toward me, her tiny legs bruised and cut. She leaned slightly to one side, a hand clutching her belly as though she were in pain. She was mostly bald, with only a few sprigs of dark hair remaining on her scalp. Her large brown eyes were bloodshot. A little boy followed her and he came up beside her and took her free hand.

She stopped before me and looked at the jar in my hand. "It needs to go to the river behind the dam," she said, and looked back up at me. "Wait for the windstorm to pass, first."

"What windstorm?" I asked, but as soon as I said it, the building shook from a blast of wind outside. The crowd of huddled children squealed in terror.

I went the door and reached for the handle to open it. "It's just a thunderstorm-" I began but my voice was cut off when the door was grabbed by the wind and jerked all the way open. Outside, the sky was dark and roiling clouds passed overhead. Thin, ropelike tornadoes reached down and touched the sand, snaking back and forth across the empty landscape. One twister wound its way in my direction and I grabbed the door, pulling it shut.

"We have to run!" I screamed. "Tornado coming this way!"

The sound of the twister was nightmarish - a combination of a woman screaming and a freight train coming right toward us at high speed. The building creaked, shook and groaned from the pressure of the wind outside. Then, several pieces of the metal siding tore off overhead, disappearing into the swirling cloud mass above.

I ran for the large door on the other side of the hangar, and the children followed. The dream shifted once more, and I found myself sprinting across open desert. On either side of me, children were running. A gold-colored mist made of sand and light rain hit us with full force. Here and there, several children were plucked off the ground and hauled upward by invisible hands, disappearing into the mist. I screamed, and tried to run faster.

Before long, the mist disappeared, and the only children left beside me was the girl and the little boy who still held her hand. She still looked very ill, but she could run pretty fast. Her brown, stick-like legs moved lightning-quick.

"Follow us," she said as she and the boy hurried by. I kicked it into high gear and followed them. Then, the dream changed completely.

We - the girl, the boy and I - found ourselves at the top of what appeared to be Hoover Dam, looking down at the massive slope of rust-stained concrete that was the spillway. Far down below, the water from the lake sparkled bright blue in the clear daylight. The sound of the rushing Colorado River filled the air. The little girl tapped the jar (still in my arms).

"Let the fish go to the water." She nodded toward the spillway.

I stared down and shook my head. "It'll bounce off the concrete and it will die before it gets there. I have to find another way."

She blinked at me. "Just let it go."

I held the jar up to the sunlight, and looked at the small fish inside. The fall would kill it, and I knew that for a fact. But then, as I twisted the jar's lid open, the fish spoke inside my head.

"Pay attention to everything you see here," it said, its words echoing throughout the insides of my skull. "It's very important."

Not knowing what else to do, I went to the edge and held the jar over it as far as I could reach. Because of the sloping concrete, the fish slammed into it, just as I'd feared it would. It flipped and rolled all the way down and then made a tiny splash as it hit the water below.

I looked at the girl. "Do you think I did the right thing?"

She smiled and nodded. Then, she winked out of existence, taking the small boy with her. I turned and looked back down at the water, and to my amazement, it began to rise.

It boiled upward, climbing the spillway and flooding the surrounding banks some distance away. I backed away from the concrete ledge, fearing some sort of tidal wave hitting me and sweeping me off the top of the dam. The water rose and swelled, churning and bubbling until it reached almost to the ledge where I stood. Then, I saw the fish.

The baby trout leaped out of the water, as if trying to snatch a fly out of the air, then it twisted and grew right before my eyes. Its tiny, silvery body elongated and stretched, turning a deep black. Just as it hit the water, I saw that it had turned into a killer whale.

The whale swam to the concrete wall that separated me from the water and it paused there. I waited for it to speak, like it had done as a trout, but it said nothing.

'Pay attention,' I remembered the trout saying. The whale studied me for a few seconds with its deep, dark eyes, then it turned and dove beneath the water.

A buzzing sound filled the air, and it grew louder and louder until I woke. I found myself in bed with my sheets and blankets kicked away. My alarm clock screeched mercilessly and groping around in the dark, I slapped it off.

I was terribly thirsty, and with the dream still fresh in my mind, I got up, went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. While I drank, I thought of the dream. I'd had vivid ones before, but never like this. It was movie-like in quality and unlike 'normal' dreams, this one seemed to have a point to it, I just didn't know what it was. Two images were lodged firmly in mind as I headed back to my room to get dressed for the day: 'Killer Whale' and 'Trout.'

Somehow, my still-tired brain put two and two together, making words from the images and I spoke the conclusion out loud.

"Killer Drought." The words seemed to fall out on their own, and suddenly all the things I'd been shown in the dream (my thirst, the desert, the starving children, the dry storms) made sense. I went to my bedroom window and peered outside. Snow had fallen overnight, and there was now better than two feet on the ground. The winter had been a wet and snowy one, following a wet and rainy summer.

We weren't about to go into a devastating drought, were we?

And yes, as it turned out, we were - and still are.

Months passed and the winter snows ceased and dried up early, around mid-March. The Northern Arizona monsoon season came with its usual heavy rain and thunderstorms around July, but it too petered out early - in August. In 2000, it didn't snow much at all. In 2001, the snows came after September 11th, but didn't come again for the rest of the winter. The local Din'eh leaders called for rain dances, but to no avail. The rain steadfastly refused to make an appearance of any significance.

Bear in mind, in northeastern Arizona, we normally get up to one hundred and fifty inches of snow every season. (Yes, it does snow in Arizona).

That winter, we got less than a foot of snow. The forests became tinder boxes, and when the following summer came, the cities began rationing water as the wells began to go dry. One small town near Payson, to our south and west, had no water at all. City officials had to bring in truckloads of water from Phoenix so that people could have it to drink. In our area, high up in the mountains, we weren't allowed to wash our dishes in more than a gallon of water. Washing cars, watering lawns and refilling pools was totally out of the question. And all around us (though we didn't realize it at the time) the forest began to die.

When a ponderosa forest is starved for water, pine bark beetles become destructive. The trees can't fend them off like they normally can because they're weakened. The beetles went crazy, taking out millions of trees from eastern New Mexico all the way to southern California. People driving through the area during the summer of 2002 saw mile after mile of dead brown trees dotting the once solid-green mountainsides.

Then came the massive Rodeo-Chediski fire. Half a million acres of forest were burnt to the ground, and when the rains finally came, the charred ground gave itself over to mudslides. People died and hundreds of homes were destroyed.

The drought didn't stop there, either. In 2003, forests all over southern California (where I grew up) were leveled by fires that made the national news. In 2006, we've already been warned that it's going to be another dry year and they've begun water rationing yet again. Fearful of fire, we sold our home and moved to the east coast of the U.S. I have since learned that the neighborhood where my old house stood had been hit by a nasty wildfire this past June. I wonder if the house still stands?

Was this what the dream warned me about? I don't know, but it sure seems that way. Something tells me that the worst is yet to come. The forest surrounding the mountain community I lived in didn't burn during Rodeo-Chediski. We were lucky that year. I recall looking out at the dried-up lakes and the empty stream beds, surrounded by millions of acres of ponderosa and thinking, 'It could so easily happen to us.'

This year might be the one. If fire erupted nearby, outside of town, it would be burned to the ground within hours. Because of the way the roads are set up there, people couldn't escape in time. It would be a Katrina-style disaster, only with fire instead of water. The horror of the possibility of it still keeps me awake at night.

I really do hope dreams are just random mind-junk and don't mean anything, because lately, I've have nightmares about hundred-foot high walls of fire. The drought seems to have followed me here to the southeast coast like a curse. This area is literally carpeted with pines, oak and brush. It's already drying out over the past two years of very little rain. It seems that the entire southern half of the U.S. is experiencing this problem. Even verdant, moist Florida is burning every summer, just like the Southwest.

Was the dream about Global Warming? Maybe so. I think often of the poor little girl in the dream, and I realized as time went on that she was a burn victim.

Scary? Maybe not to some, but it is to me.

*****
end

Jillian,

The woman we discussed via PM said something very much like this during one of my phone conversations with her:

"Instead of water, this time it's going to be more like fire. We don't have much time."

Was she hinting at global warming? Nuclear war? I have no way of knowing, but her reference to water was the flood noted in The Bible, not Hurricane Katrina.

Try not to let it scare you too much. If either event is forthcoming, it's out of our control.

Take care,
Brian

I believe that something related to fire and drought (of unprecedented proportions) is coming - and sooner than we think. I have several reasons for believing this, but I won't get into it here. There's another prophecy similar to your friend's, referenced in a poem written during the dark ages. I found one time by accident while googling Nostradamus & Cayce predictions in reference to the recent tsunami event. I'll see if I can find it again and post a link to it here.

Best wishes,
Jillian

I found that poem - it was written by someone named 'Mother Shipton' around 1488 or so and contains some very eerie passages that make sense if you look at history from the late 1400's and on to today. Here's the part that my dream and your friend's comments remind me of (link to the entire poem found at the end of this post). Though some claim Mother Shipton never really existed, SOMEONE wrote this poem over 600 years ago, and whoever they were, they rival Nostradamus in terms of the most accurate 'hits' in terms of prediction:

"For those who live the century through
In fear and trembling this shall do.
Flee to the mountains and the dens
To bog and forest and wild fens.

For storms will rage and oceans roar
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore
And as he blows his wondrous horn
Old worlds die and new be born.

A fiery dragon will cross the sky
Six times before this earth shall die
Mankind will tremble and frightened be
for the sixth heralds in this prophecy.

For seven days and seven nights
Man will watch this awesome sight.
The tides will rise beyond their ken
To bite away the shores and then
The mountains will begin to roar
And earthquakes split the plain to shore.

And flooding waters, rushing in
Will flood the lands with such a din
That mankind cowers in muddy fen
And snarls about his fellow men.

He bares his teeth and fights and kills
And secrets food in secret hills
And ugly in his fear, he lies
To kill marauders, thieves and spies.

Man flees in terror from the floods
And kills, and rapes and lies in blood
And spilling blood by mankinds hands
Will stain and bitter many lands

And when the dragon's tail is gone,
Man forgets, and smiles, and carries on
To apply himself - too late, too late
For mankind has earned deserved fate.

His masked smile - his false grandeur,
Will serve the Gods their anger stir.
And they will send the Dragon back
To light the sky - his tail will crack
Upon the earth and rend the earth
And man shall flee, King, Lord, and serf.

But slowly they are routed out
To seek diminishing water spout
And men will die of thirst before
The oceans rise to mount the shore."
.......................................................

The entire poem can be found here:
Mother Shipton


Interesting stuff...

- Jillian

The kings shall false promise make And talk just for talkings sake And nations plan horrific war The like as never seen before And taxes rise and lively down And nations wear perpetual frown.

Yet greater sign there be to see As man nears latter century Three sleeping mountains gather breath And spew out mud, and ice and death. And earthquakes swallow town and town, In lands as yet to me unknown.

And christian one fights christian two And nations sigh, yet nothing do And yellow men great power gain From mighty bear with whom they've lain.

These mighty tyrants will fail to do They fail to split the world in two. But from their acts a danger bred An ague - leaving many dead.

this is a quote from one of her scrolls......it sounds like what's happening now, Yellow men being the Korean. Kings, false promise, isreal's leader saying he's sorry could be false, or maybe it means Dubua, or Kim Jong Il's promise not to make nuclear weapons, but he is. Christian One? Palastinians! Christian Two? Isreal!
"An ague"? Ague means a deadly fever caused sever chill.

I agree - there's a lot to consider regarding this poem, even if written in 1687 rather than 1488, a lot of the stuff mentioned was still unheard of back then. A friend of mine on another forum posed the theory that the guy who published the writings of Mother Shipton actually used her name as a pseudonym - mainly because they were still burning witches in 1687. The poem states towards the end that the writer knew that it wouldn't be long before they would be burnt at the stake. Whoever 'Mother Shipton' was, she (or he) was more accurate than Nostradamus... I personally like the line that mentions that the world leaders will be 'talking for talking's sake' - which is true, and probably always has been.


EDIT: ON further thought, the mention of 'Christian One' and 'Christian Two' most likely refers to the Catholic Church (Christian One) and it's long, ongoing battle with Protestant Religions (Like Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc - Christian Two). The line that most points to Israel is this one:

"
And England shall admit a Jew [England supporting Israel politically]
You think this strange, but it is true
The Jew that once ws held in scorn
Shall of a Christian then be born.

[United States and the Allied forces of WWII were 'Christian' countries at the time the land was allocated for the formation of Israel in the late 1940's. In other words, the country populated by Jewish people was essentially 'born' from the so-called 'Christian' nations that supported it]

A house of glass shall come to pass
In England. But Alas, alas
A war will follow with the work
Where dwells the Pagan and the Turk

[This specifically refers to the ensuing anger and declarations of war by the Islamic nations of the Middle East after the formation of Israel]

"

- Jillian

Thanks for posting this, Chupacabra King.

I immediately thought of Yellowstone National Park when I read it. There are three calderas in the park that have formed due to eruptions. They've occurred in intervals of 600,000 to 800,000 years, and the last was 640,000 years ago. There's more information at the link below for anyone interested.

http://www.extremescience.com/calderas.htm

Agreed - I thought of Yellowstone, too, but also of Toba, the caldera that lies under the sea off of Indonesia, which has been seismically active lately (especially right before& during the Tsunami). Of all the calderas out there, Toba's the one to watch...