the dream spirit

The Neolithic river women hold spirits responsible for all emotions and mental states, including dreams. They believe that an unconscious woman cannot protect herself from invading spirits, leaving them free to fill her mind with surreal visions while she sleeps.
When women speak of THE dream spirit, they mean an ominous figure that inhabits dreams and turns them into nightmares. Unlike most other spirits, the dream spirit cannot be fended off by rituals or talismans. The only known deterrent is to not be worried about anything, and even that is far from reliable.

Manifestation

The dream spirit can take on the appearance of any person, often someone who has a close relationship to the dreamer. This can cause great distress, especially if this familiar figure behaves uncharacteristically, or is shown hurt or dead. Nor is the spirit consistent in its form, often changing into a different person, or even an animal or tree. Perhaps the worst trick it can perform is to inhabit the identity of the dreamer herself and prevent her from moving.

Motivation

Most unusually for a malicious spirit, the dream spirit causes no physical harm. It prefers to torture a woman's mind. If she has worries or troubles, the dream spirit will produce exactly the images and actions that will enhance them.

View from the future

12,000 years, The Ocean
Modern civilizations no longer explicitly believe in spirits. Valdians refer to some intangibles as named entities, such as Fortune and Mischief, and will attribute particularly memorable dreams to one or another of them. Cluster Islanders view dreams as the product of unfinished thoughts.
A very few people with high water sensitivity can subconsciously gather aura information from their surroundings during the day and sift through it as they sleep, resulting in dreams that potentially depict future events.