Dreaming and Waking

It's a bit weird, writing this.

I know I'm dreaming. It's one of these dreams where you know you're dreaming and you do it anyway, la? I can see where I am, and the people going by outside the window of this...room, and everything. I even know how to work this machine. I see my hands (which look too old to me) working away, and the letters are pouring across the screen. AND IT'S MY WORDS!!!!! What I'm wanting to say is said, written. By me, I think. But where do these old hands come from?

I can't see everything. The room is kind of shadowy and the light coming in the window is a funny color. I think it might be nighttime, though it is very bright. I turn my head and see a bed, not made, behind me. It's a funny kind of bed, like for one person, la? It makes me a little sad to look at it. The person who my hands belong to seems lonely.

I don't know how long I'll be here so I'll write as fast as I can.

Where do I start?

I've been having these dreams for a long time. Several moons, at least. Every time I had one I found myself staring at these hands - sometimes on the machine, sometimes holding a cup or a spoon. Usually very short dreams, just a moment or two. But I didn't know I was dreaming, until last night.

Last night, here I was again, looking at the hands on the machine. They were typing, a letter, I think, and there was a strange sound outside. A hooting noise came close and then passed by, and there was something about that noise that startled me. As if I woke up from dreaming and knew that I was dreaming. I've had these dreams before, haven't you? Suddenly you know you're in a dream and you can push things around a bit, make things happen. Or at least stop being frightened. So I told the hands what I wanted to say. They hesitated, and I tried again, and then they did something to the screen. It got brighter, and the letter went away, and suddenly they were typing my words!!!!! I could not bear the feeling, and I woke.

All that day, I did my work in a trance, thinking and thinking about what had happened. Why had I been so frightened? It was only a dream, only a pair of hands doing my work for me. Yet it had been so strange to make something happen so truly. I can't explain it. Always before, when I've had one of those dreams - my mother calls them halsa dreams, you know, the kind you can control - it has been funny, or odd, or simply crazy. But this time it felt so real. So, even though I still felt frightened, I determined in myself that I would stay there this night, and not be driven away by my own fear.

And so, here I am. Usually these kinds of dreams don't last long. Which is why I have to push these hands to write quickly.

I live in the top floor of the museum, in the Palace grounds. My father is the Curator, and I...well, I am what is known as a palace brat. Though really, I'm too old for that now. I used to run around with the other children, but since my twelfth birthday, for nearly two years now, I have been working with my father to learn the trade. It is a slow business, curating, and a different person would hate it. But I am like my father, and I like it. He is kind to me and does not make me spend the whole day inside, but sends me on errands or lets me go study light and shadow with my paints, so it isn't too bad.

On feast-days I -

I feel my mother calling! I will writ ag in lat