I sidestep from wakefulness into a lucid dream in which I'm outside, on a hill, on a bike;. Stationary, but balancing on two wheels, I hop and make the bike clear the ground by a foot.

I do it again.  Two feet.

Again. Three feet. 

On descent, I feel my stomach rising, that thrilling sensation of falling. I find it unpleasant, but there's something compelling about bouncing,

I bounce onto an old stony wall that separates the garden I was in from the rest of the world. The rest of the world is no less green or lush, but it goes on further. The land slopes downward for a long way and ahead I can see the bottom of the valley and then another mound of earth rising in a great hill, not quite a mountain, on the other side. 

Still on the stationary bike, I hop down to the ground, landing on the "rest of the world" side. My stomach rises into my chest, giving me butterflies.

The sky is red. Beautiful. It looks like something somewhere is on fire and the sky is gradually reflecting the colour and movement of flames. The clouds are slow, black shadows. In the distance, trees are silhouettes.
.
I bounce higher so I can see more.

I bounce higher, to see how high I can bounce.

The butterfly sensation becomes so intense that I can't stand it anymore

I wake up.

"LEAVING"

There's a beautiful woman at work. She might be Iranian. She's tall and sullen. We've never seen eye to eye, I don't know why, but when I see a crowd around her and I hear her saying googbye to people, I go over.

She's wearing a denim dress with a short jacket. Her hair is naturally brown and blonde, very short and curly.

When I'm near enough for us to hear each other and we make eye contact, I say:

"It sounds like you're leaving for a long time."

"I'm fired," she says with no hint of emotion.

"Oh," I say. "Look, I'm sorry we didn't talk more, but ..."

She raises one hand, like a police officer stopping traffic.

She moves on to the next conversation with the next person.

Delighted by my humiliation, my boss smiles at me from her podium.

"​ANIMALS"

I check on the animals. They are in a field, penned into a small area by electric fence wire. 

The goat has a great capacity for kicking things and is currently kicking a bail of hay over the fence line so that the animals can't eat. 

"Why are animals such assholes?" I ask myself.

Later, the goat challenges the bull to a fight. The goat soon charges, but instead of butting heads, it jumps, runs over the bull's back and jumps off the other side.

"BACK IN THE OFFICE"
​
I try to get on with my work. I fix a computer screen. I chat to an old friend I used to work with IRL; she too is spiky and uncommunicative, as if she is upset with me. 

Later, a female colleague I don't know sidles closer and closer until she is clinging to my arm. A man is staring at us, distressed. 

"If you want to break up with him," I suggest to the woman, "you should probably be more direct."

After thinking it over, she relinquishes my arm and breaks into song. She sings to her partner about how she feels. Trapped. Like he doesn't appreciate her. 

He sings back, operatically. He loves her really. He just doesn't know how to show it.

"That was great," I say.

They look at me blankly, until I sing something like:

"That was great
what you said;
put the past
in its bed."

The happy couple beam at me.

"BREAK"

In the toilets, a white, enamel sink that stretches the length of the room. By the chrome-plated taps, there is a 6-octave piano. 

I don't even pee. I just wash my hands and play the piano. Everything I play on this piano sounds beautiful. The sound reverberates and swells, pushed around by the dank, grey-brown walls.

I play a sad song with deep, sorrowful chords and a wistful, heart-rending melody.

​I worry that anyone hearing this outside the toilet will worry about my mental state, but I'm ok. I just need some time.

A prophecy says the Hound can only be killed on Valyrian soil. When he stops a caravan on its way to Highgarden and demands that the occupants come out, therefore, he thinks he is safe.

From inside the caravan, Ser Loras Tyrell fires two arrows. 

The first arrow merely pierces the wall and sprays the Hound with dust. 

The Hound looks at his already soiled cloak and realizes that this new dust is from Valyria.
"Oh, fffuck!" he says, more pissed off and disgusted than afraid, though he knows what is coming.

A second arrow pierces his armor and thumps into his chest.

He drops to his knees.

The ground drinks his blood.

Dee from Battlestar Galactica is on a date with an astronaut.

He underestimates her, like everyone else. She tells a witty joke about opening the emergency door on a space shuttle, but her heart isn't in the conversation.

She ends up alone, at a table in the middle of the bar, tapping on her forehead with a pen.

I'm writing the scene, putting words in her mouth and mind. I too am tapping my forehead with the end of my Biro.