Crazy Dreams

I had two crazy dreams this morning.  In the first, I was given something very special and told I was "to protect it with your life" while I was traveling with it to a specific destination.  In the dream I had several adventures in which different people were trying to steal this wrapped six-inch cube from me.  Somehow, I always managed to escape and save the package.  When I finally reached my destination, I asked what was in the package.  I was told to open it and look.  It was a small fine porcelain sugar pot, that would hold, at most, 3/4 cup of sugar.  It was white with yellow and orange roses painted around the bowl.  There were small highlights of gold on the petals and a few of the stems and leaves.  The top was almost flat, and had a round "button" handle.  I awoke very puzzled, and I'm still wondering why that sugar bowl was so very special....
   The other dream seemed to last a life-time.  I awoke in a place unknown to me.  I was dressed in clothes that I didn't recognize as mine.  I was lying in a bed in a small room, and there were several children looking at me.  I must have made a sound, because a woman appeared behind the children and said, "Ah, good. You're awake.  It's time for you to leave, then."  I started asking questions - Where am I?  Why am I here? What is this place?  Who are you?  Who are all these children? The woman wouldn't answer and just made brushing away signs with her hands.  One of the girls said to another, "She doesn't know.  She doesn't understand that she is no longer who she was."  And all the children giggled at that thought.
   The woman pulled me up and walked me to the door, pushed me through it, and closed the door behind me.  I was in a rural area, heavily forested, with a few ramshackle old mobile homes tucked here and there under the trees.  There was a pathway to walk upon, but nothing wide enough to have accommodated getting mobile homes into the area.  People were peeking at me from behind curtains.  I turned in circles, calling out, "Hello?"  Finally, a few children came crawling out from under tree roots, and gathered around me.  A few could speak, and they told me they were "throw aways," youngsters that were no longer wanted by anyone.  And they said they guessed that I was a "throw away" too, since I was being kicked out of the mobile home and into the forest.
  That made me angry.  So I started organizing the children into groups, and we set up our own society.  I taught them how to find edible roots and berries, how to make traps, how to cook, what plants made good clothing, how to sew and make clothes....  Somehow I became the leader of several groups of "feral" children.  And then the people who lived in the mobile homes decided we were the enemies, and they drove us away, burning and looting and stealing what we had built for our own comfort, with our own hands.
  We finally decided we had to move.  I don't know in which direction we traveled, but in a few days, we came to places where there had been great destruction. There were craters in the earth, and rubble from large stone buildings all around us.  We took shelter one night in the ruins of a building - two walls were partially standing, and we were using them as shelter from the wind.  We fell asleep, and were awakened by bright blue and white lights that were shedding sparks all around them.  We were all very frightened - and then these gigantic shadows started to appear on the edges of the building...  And then I woke up with a start.  (I can't imagine why....)
    What was weird, to me, was that during the dream, as I gathered more and more "throw aways" and taught them to take care of themselves, I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin - but in reverse.  Crazy.