This one begins with a crowd of friends & acquaintances in my backyard, all recognizable as such, so I expect Big Strangeness. First, dream geography rarely intersects reality sharply enough for me to say, "it looks like my backyard." More often I just know it's my backyard despite total physical dissimilarity. Second, I don't have enough friends to make up a crowd, and few acquaintances visit my home even when invited. Dream crowds are usually composed of a Bunch of People whose identities are simply Known; they have the comfortable feel of friends, but sadly I never meet them in waking life.

Immediately after this dream begins, precisely four squares of my patio collapse in the course of a huge earthquake that fails to cause any other damage to my large quiet neighborhood of tree-lined streets and expensive houses.

That's when I know it's going to be a really entertaining dream.

The falling patio squares crush one friend's witchy mother-in-law. What this woman was doing underneath the patio tiles in the first place is a conundrum best left to my unconscious, but dead she is, and the sinkhole has a slippery rim of hard grayish slate or shale; the exact composition is a matter for some discussion. The death of the MiL is quickly dismissed. The earthquake and the sinkhole have our attention, as according to the news on the TV, which we can hear outside even tho' it's in the basement, the cave may be Important. Dream news is much more timely than real news.

Of course I Make the Brave Gesture of entering the cave first. What are dreams for, if not to exercise one's curiosity? Paul (Dream Paul, who looks nothing like the man I love, but who is, nonetheless Paul) wants to go, but he has to stay on top and talk to the police, who are Interested in what's going on, and who are Calling Higher Authorities.

Despite the sinkhole's creation as a straight-down drop, the slope is much more like a limestone canyon carved by water, and it's lit by a diffused foggy yellow light like a darkroom. Of course it's lit. This is a dream. Only Real World Caves lack illumination. Hollywood caves have mood lighting. Why can't mine?

The bottom of the cave goes on for a long way past my patio. Who knew my backyard was such an interesting place? Once I get down the rocky steps and around a corner, I can see bones. Lots of bones, all laid out in perfect fossil skeletons of interesting critters like mammoths and long necked sea beasties and little bird-like critters. I can't see all of them clearly due to my flashlight's limited range. (darn that dream lighting....)

the most exciting find: a chunk of glacier that juts from the cave wall nearest my house. (Well, why not? It's a dream cave. No one says it has to be governed by petty laws of physics.)

Preserved bodies are starting to emerge at the periphery where the ice has begun to melt in the warmth. (Did I mention it was summertime? We were out on the patio after all.) I recognize a mammoth and a couple of prehistoric people and fish right away.

Everyone becomes greatly excited, because fossils mean research and celebrity and riches for all of us. Then Rhyan points out that we might have a problem. See, while I was concentrating on looking at all the bones and bodies and such, I failed to notice the live prehistoric Neanderthals sneaking around behind me and climbing up out of the cave.

The cave people aren't hostile and they're not stupid even if they are Neanderthals. They aren't interested in us; they run away into the neighborhood, which is now a city in that twisty-scene-changing trick dream geography can play.

The earthquakes and other Unnamed Disasters have wreaked havoc on the buildings here. Much worse than at the house. We all, as a group, track down the Neanderthals, since we somehow know exactly where they're going: a park. With swingsets and slides and suchlike.

Turns out, once we catch up to them, that they speak modern English. (Of course they do. Why not?)

Apparently we need to remodel our house to make them happy. So...we do. We get the Neanderthals settled back in their cave, and everyone helps work on the house and the yard, and after everything's Fixed and the Scientists are done examining the cave, we close up the patio tiles, and the Neanderthals go away with the scientists.

I have no idea what happened to the dead mother-in-law. Kinda bugs me, but not really.

Strange, strange, strange.