Dream Dwarf Name Generator

The story

The lion's back end entered first. Hella could not see this happening because she was inside its head, trying to look regal through a nostril. She knew something had gone wrong when her intended terrifying roar met a floorboard at very close range. Behind her, someone said, “One, two,” with the steady patience of a person who had already said it several times. The dream audience laughed. The curtain fell before she could stand. She woke with her mouth open and a corner of her own blanket caught between her teeth.

Hella had performed solemn readings at her neighborhood hall for years. She could pronounce a dead king's name without smiling even when it contained three consecutive sounds like sneezes. People told her she had dignity. She had begun to suspect dignity was what they called you when they had stopped inviting you to enjoy yourself. At the last amateur theater meeting she had volunteered for the comic lion. The director asked her to try it at next week's paid evening rehearsal. Nobody promised her the part, but nobody laughed at the request. She had found that more frightening than being refused.

The dream was a recurring arrival, one of the peculiar local dreams in which the same entrance could be approached again but each return allowed only one new deliberate choice. She knew this convention from earlier harmless dreams about a staircase. After the cue bell rang, she could live through the resulting scene but not rewind it and replace every action she disliked. Waking ended the arrival. She wrote the first one down: chose the lion's front, charged too quickly, fell. Her notebook had no entry saying that the unknown person behind her was incompetent. She was proud of leaving that part out.

On the next night the same dream corridor appeared. The costume lay on a bench. Its neck frame had once split around the opening hinge. Within the dream's established history, Hella had restored the hinge with the small punch that taught her controlled fitting, the source of her fictional Tarn tool mark. Another maker, Istr, had opened and closed that finished repair and checked its seated pin before the costume entered service. That actual Inspection mattered: the neck could move as intended. It did not establish that two actors would walk together, tell a good joke or understand each other's instructions.

A thin person in striped stockings waited beside the tail. Hella could see no face above the costume rack, only a hand tapping the bench. “One, two,” the person said. The cue bell had not rung yet. She had one new choice available and spent it changing positions. This time she would take the back, where she could keep the whole creature from racing ahead of itself. The other actor took the head without protest. She retained her previous decision to charge at the entrance. She did not also change the repaired hinge, ask a question or alter the rehearsal.

From inside the back half, the route was a collection of heels and folds. Hella heard the counting begin and decided it would sound much more like a lion if they moved strongly. She drove forward on the second count. The head stayed behind long enough for the costume to pull itself diagonally across the doorway. Her shoulder met the other actor's hip. The repaired hinge squeaked, doing exactly the limited opening motion for which it had been checked. A paw appeared beneath the curtain. The audience laughed at the paw. Hella had the unexpected experience of feeling embarrassed by an anonymous foot.

She woke before the bow. In the morning she told her neighbor Runn that the rear of a lion was a surprisingly ambitious role. Runn was painting a kitchen shelf and said she had always imagined it as an occupation for a quiet person. Hella nearly explained that the other actor had confused her. Instead she read her two entries again. In both she had chosen the pace without asking. The costume had changed occupants, but not that fact. She could not learn a real stranger's thoughts from a dream notebook. She could notice the decisions she had actually remembered making.

On the third arrival she stood behind the costume again. The hinge had the same small repair mark; no new adjustment had been made between dreams. The person in striped stockings tapped the bench. Hella left the positions as they were and spent her one new choice on a question: how did the other actor want the entrance to go? The hand stopped tapping. A voice said that the joke was meant to be a lion taking itself extremely seriously while needing a very small sneeze. They could walk slowly enough to let the head discover its own tail.

This was not how Hella had imagined a magnificent animal. It was, however, recognizably how someone might imagine a comic animal. She said she would like to try that agreed entrance. Asking the question had opened a conversation inside this scene, not given her an unlimited series of replacement choices. When the bell rang they followed the arrangement just made: two measured steps, a pause, a cautious turn and a sneeze. Hella could see almost nothing. She waited for the voice instead of deciding that being unable to see made her entitled to take charge.

The sneeze turned into a cough. The head bumped the side of the curtain. Hella stepped on the tail, apologized from the wrong end and heard the actor laugh inside the cloth. Some people in the audience laughed too. Others were too far back to hear the apology. It was an imperfect entrance rather than a sudden discovery of genius. They completed it. At the bow the other actor lifted the head while Hella came out beside the tail, face uncovered. For once she did not arrange an expression suggesting that she had joined a ridiculous activity only to supervise it.

The dream ended without giving her the partner's name. She had no new professional qualification, no promise about the real director and no useful evidence that Istr existed outside that dream history. At the waking rehearsal she told the director she still wanted to try the lion. The evening cost her the ordinary room fee and the time she would otherwise have used to polish another solemn reading. Her actual partner was a short, cheerful woman named Dell, who knew nothing about striped stockings. Dell disliked sneezes on stage. She proposed that the lion become distracted trying to catch its own tail.

Hella almost explained that the sneeze had already worked. Then she asked how Dell wanted to count the turn. They tried three steps and collided on the fourth. The director moved a chair out of their path and asked them to try again. There was no audience to applaud this version, only two actors inside an awkward costume and someone keeping the room open until nine. Hella's face was hot when they finally came out. Dell asked whether she wanted to keep rehearsing the part. Hella said yes. Dignity, she discovered, had not prevented her from being terrible at something she wanted to do.