I can't be channelling Peter Beagle. He's not dead.

Most of the time my dreams take the form of stories, in which I am the invisible spectator- TV for the brain, except without little things like continuity. (But with color!)

Anyway, on occasion I remember enough on awaking to put together a coherent story, so here- edited to make it linear- is my dream:

Boy asks girl to marry him. Girl refuses.

Naturally, because of this, girl is cursed- she changes each night into a Snow Queen, essentially another person completely. The boy, likewise, is caught in the curse, changing into a soldier with the head of a horse. The boy has to find the Snow Queen's castle and propose to the girl during the day to break the curse- and this time she has to accept, but she doesn't know this. Meanwhile, the horse soldier's goal is to destroy the evil Snow Queen- so the curse and its cure are working at odds with one another.

A quest follows, with what amounts to Seelie and Unseelie taking an interest, to say nothing of the people in all the countries the boy travels through.

What with one thing and another, the boy finally gets to the castle of the Snow Queen, which is under siege. He finds the girl on the field between the castle and the siege lines... but it's sunset, and the two spend their last moments blathering before the curse kicks in. The armies and the boy's allies witness the change, and this triggers a free-for-all.

In the chaos the horse soldier, rather than slay the Snow Queen, tries to defend her. He is slain and vanishes, and the Snow Queen melts into nothing. Boy and girl have failed, and once the fighting dies down enough for people to compare notes and get the whole story, there's a good bit of mourning.

Last scene: hundreds of years later, in a fairy version of the corporate world, we see a mail boy with a rather horsy face- horsy in the human sense, big jaw with protruding teeth, big flattish nose- diffidently approaches a young female manager...

... and that's it.

I don't know whether or not to write this. It seems like a potentially strong story, but (a) it really does sound like something either Beagle has done (or would do), or Hans Christian Andersen (that bastard). Plus, there's enough grief in the world- I don't like adding to it.

I can't be channelling Peter Beagle. He's not dead.

Most of the time my dreams take the form of stories, in which I am the invisible spectator- TV for the brain, except without little things like continuity. (But with color!)

Anyway, on occasion I remember enough on awaking to put together a coherent story, so here- edited to make it linear- is my dream:

Boy asks girl to marry him. Girl refuses.

Naturally, because of this, girl is cursed- she changes each night into a Snow Queen, essentially another person completely. The boy, likewise, is caught in the curse, changing into a soldier with the head of a horse. The boy has to find the Snow Queen's castle and propose to the girl during the day to break the curse- and this time she has to accept, but she doesn't know this. Meanwhile, the horse soldier's goal is to destroy the evil Snow Queen- so the curse and its cure are working at odds with one another.

A quest follows, with what amounts to Seelie and Unseelie taking an interest, to say nothing of the people in all the countries the boy travels through.

What with one thing and another, the boy finally gets to the castle of the Snow Queen, which is under siege. He finds the girl on the field between the castle and the siege lines... but it's sunset, and the two spend their last moments blathering before the curse kicks in. The armies and the boy's allies witness the change, and this triggers a free-for-all.

In the chaos the horse soldier, rather than slay the Snow Queen, tries to defend her. He is slain and vanishes, and the Snow Queen melts into nothing. Boy and girl have failed, and once the fighting dies down enough for people to compare notes and get the whole story, there's a good bit of mourning.

Last scene: hundreds of years later, in a fairy version of the corporate world, we see a mail boy with a rather horsy face- horsy in the human sense, big jaw with protruding teeth, big flattish nose- diffidently approaches a young female manager...

... and that's it.

I don't know whether or not to write this. It seems like a potentially strong story, but (a) it really does sound like something either Beagle has done (or would do), or Hans Christian Andersen (that bastard). Plus, there's enough grief in the world- I don't like adding to it.