He stands staring

I dreamed of a figure bending over my bed. Its body was male; its face was an antlered horse's skull. There were fox-fires sinking in its sockets. Awake, I look at that image and think, Well, that's the nightmare baby of Prydain and The Dark Is Rising, but in the dream I don't even think I was surprised.

(Then I dreamed of a Dickens-quoting nonexistent childhood friend with whom I had reconnected after fifteen years. The novel he liked to quote most was also nonexistent, unless Dickens really wrote about Lord Nelson's illegitimate daughter. He liked bubble tea and orchestrating other people's conversations. The apartment where we were staying had a permanent drip from the ceiling whether it was raining or not, but the walls were painted with old blue and green murals, flaking off in traces around the molding. I remember a singing bird, but that might have been in the novel.)

I am definitely not awake today.