awakeFor reasons that aren't entirely clear, the public display of magic is generally forbidden. If threatened, however, a wizard can use magic to save themselves. In practice, the wizard can also use magic to prevent damage to their property or that of other wizards as well as to secure the persons or property of others. It is generally assumed that the wizard will be as discrete as possible.
On plot element involves the establishment of "schools" in Greece, Spain, Egypt and one other Mediterranean location that wasn't entirely clear. There's also a meeting spot for the leaders of these schools on Malta. I ended up in charge of the Greece school and was also the leader of all the wizards in some way.
At some point, I call a meeting of the heads of the schools and we begin to assemble. Most travel by helicopter, myself being no exception.
Inexplicably, the dream shifts location now and we're in Minneapolis. To get from where I'm at to the helipad for trip to Malta, I have to walk with my traveling companions from the south edge of downtown to some point near the Riverside exit off I-94. To accomplish this, we have to walk around the Lowry Hill tunnel. There's a ditch the prevents you from entering the tunnel as a pedestrian, I invented in the dream. It's named after a fantasy author, McAffrey, I think. to cross, we have to walk along the edge of this tunnel and then slip through holes in the decorative stone cap at one end. these holes are rectangular and set in a ledge the juts out over the tunnel. You slip through them vertically, getting your clothes mussed in the process, and drop to the ground just outside one mouth of the tunnel. The holes are gender-specific, though they don't have any indication of this from casual observation.
Before passing through these security holes (oh, there's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me), I have a chat with
fredcritter about why we hate going through these things. Apart from their size-ist construction (there's no way anyone of substantial girth would get through) there was something else that bothered us that I don't recall. While we were discussion, minnehahaK chastised us in a friendly way for taking so long. Once down and starting our walk to the helipad, I had a discussion with her about a couple of interesting things.One was that a car driving through the tunnel had apparently, in her experience, hit a piggy bank or jar of pennies at freeway speed. It made her think about the application of no-tech devices like these for terrorist purposes. The resulting flurry of pennies probably would do little direct, real harm, but would tie up traffic as drivers dove on their brakes. Then I thought, "OK, what would it take to make a similar device that would project small metallic particles high enough that they would cause a "cloud" on radar (which might be used to distract or obscure). I then related an anecdote about a "News of the Weird" sort of factoid about a new Army helicopter that, if left unattended for a period of time would begin to say, "beep." (Not emit a beep, it was clear that the helicopter was talking or at least using a synthesized voice.) The helicopter has a stealth capability, you see, and it would be feasible to "lose" it. So the Army, in its wisdom, built in a locator.
Finally, there was a discussion with
minnehahaB about how to get from where we were to where the helipad was. It involved going into the shops that, in my dream, are built along the tunnel on a second level, and following them around until they connect to the skyway system in order to avoid getting wet in the rain that was beginning to fall. I began to wonder why we didn't do this instead of going to the traffic level of the tunnel to get to where we were in the first place when I woke up. 