There is a lot I will not share here, because I want to be positive. Suffice it to say that I have been betrayed by someone close to me. I will forgive them, because I must. But trust will not come so easily, nor do I really want it to. My dreams were... stolen from me. My Master (note: Nick clearly does not like it when I call him Master) called it being Mindraped. I certainly felt wronged, cheated, and manipulated but I do not know if I would call it that. I don't feel... violated so much as denied my Will. As a Mage, you must understand that having control of your Will is important. It is significant. It is everything. My Ma... Nick, helped me get over the initial reaction, which was far less controlled than this one and I asked him to do something to prevent me from being so denied again. What Carter did to me was much worse and this reminded me that I needed to protect my Mind and Spirit. So I went to Nick's cabin for a few days. To better understand the Garou and what they can do, I asked him to teach me about the Spirit sphere.

We did just that and it was actually exhilarating! I hadn't touched the Spirit since my Awakening and this reminded me where it all began, with Val in the Umbra. Nick (so weird calling him that) is ridiculously powerful. He was able to thin the walls between the Realm and the Umbra. I touched that resonance once more that was the catalyst of my becoming. He thickened the Gauntlet in his sanctum again and kept going until I couldn't feel the touch of the Spirit any more. We went back and forth with this for some time. Eventually I realized that Spirit felt more like electricity than any of the other Spheres. It was like static building as I experienced it. I often felt that if I touched something, I would discharge a spark. This led me to an idea for a device. So I built a meter made from copper wiring and magnets. Basically a kind of flux wand. I can feel the charge, pull, and vibrations of Spirit through it.

Then I got home. Been busy. I've had a break through in multi-resonance Magick when I had an experience with Forces as they relate to Life. Forces and Life are interesting Spheres where they intersect. Life moves. It contracts and expands. It is constantly creating and destroying. This illusion of stable consistency is just that. Those two are the easiest to understand the direct interaction of. I'm curious where Forces and Spirit come together at a fundamental level. There has to be a way to test that... quite an experience it would be.

Since my time with Carter, I haven't had many dreams. Sometimes I'd think on it, and assume I must just be having dreams I don't remember. I used to dream a lot, before that time.

When the Awakening hit me, and it hit me hard, the dreams returned. My Avatar, this representation of King Arthur with a quixotic touch has been harassing me. I'm apparently not doing enough. I just am getting the hang of the idea that I am a Mage and he's on my ass to hit the road and do... something. He's vague about the actual part where I get to be told what it is that I should be doing.

Then there are the other dreams. The one where the robed figure appears to me. He's another Mage, clearly. He's been teaching me for a little while now, in my dreams. He gives me advice, instructs me, and warns me about... me. I guess. My potential and what could happen if I get too friendly with the Garou about what I am. He gave me a penny, a real one that was there when I woke up. It was a magick penny. Really. I studied the hell out of it, trying to understand that magick. I could feel the weight of the power in my hand.

I told him of that weight in the next shared dream. He was curious about what that weight meant to me and what I actually felt. This was good, because it led me to question my senses. I figured out soon after that dream that what I was detecting was actually just an energy. I knew it was there, cause I caught it in the corner of my eye. I tried a lot of things to focus on it. I used a magnifying glass and a microscope and all kinds of crap... then I decided to try drugs. Weed first: Nada. Then shrooms: Nada again... but I was tripping out hard and saw this bit of crystal in a rock garden I had been given as a gift. I picked it up and was looking at all the fractals of it when the idea hit me. I looked at the penny through it, and at the right angle I could see the energy. It was just as amazing after the drugs wore off as it was with them in effect.

Some time passed as I studied what I could of crystallography. I found various types of crystals helped me focus of different aspects of the true nature of things. I studied my daughter. She's Garou apparently, someday to awaken herself into a war which will expect her to fight and die for Gaia. I can't see it yet though. Perhaps if I had more understanding of Spirit magic.

Then, this last shared dream. It started as a this kind of nightmare. It wasn't frightening but it was disturbing. Damn Avatar was fighting the idea that I should be sleeping when there was "so much to be done". Then it all melted away. The robed figure was there again, in the desert.

Our lessons continued. I shared how I learned to use the crystals. He kinda laughed at me, said I shouldn't get offended if people started calling me a Crystal Waver. Guess there is a negative hippy connotation to using crystals as a crutch among the warpers. Though that leads me to believe that, like Carter had, I would develop senses that would replace my reliance on such tools. I'm curious how long down the road that will be.

He shared with me the fall of one of his other students to the Nephandi. Fucking hell. Had to kill one of his own. Just... sucks. I understand now why he has to keep me at a distance, just appear in dreams and so on. My essence is bent towards the Questing. So was this other student's. As the robed one said, "Some quests are simply not smart undertakings." I'll keep that in mind.

Since this all started, my studies of Prime, Matter, and Life Energies have born fruit. I can detect them all in the pattern now. I've yet to be able to really manipulate them, aside from a touch within myself. It makes sense that these aspects of reality came first to me. Prime is the heart of all Magick. Matter and Life are concepts we experience everyday. I'm pretty sure I know what's coming next on that front.