Making separate posts for clarity and tidiness.
OK, so last night I had another Nausicaä dream. I fucking love when this happens; my Miyazaki dreams always have amazing imagery.
This one didn't have any flying sequences unfortunately but it had some very neat dream architecture. So Nausicaä has left the Valley of Wind to travel to one of the other nations of the Periphery for some reason, possibly to escape some kind of danger. She's greeted by one of the king's daughters who leads her through the village to the castle, which for some reason necessitates traversing an obscenely dangerous platforming section inside a giant aqueduct. Along the way they make small talk. The girl mentions her estranged brother and Nausicaä thinks about how none of her own ten older siblings survived past infancy because throwing in a bit of lore trivia is important for absurdly apocryphal fanfiction!
Finally the two girls reach the end of the insane Escher-like narrow catwalk dungeon and have to use the water elevator to get down to the ground level. This "elevator" consists of a vertical chimney filled with water, with a series of flues that open into a side chamber on each floor. The user must swim down this claustrophobic well until they reach one of these flues and go inside, at which point a steel portcullis slams down behind them because for some reason it's vitally important that they are now trapped inside this water-filled cell. The cell contains a mask attached to a hose that can be used to breathe air from outside, and a chain that must be pulled which rings a bell corresponding to the floor the occupant wishes to get off on. When a guard outside hears the bell, he turns the appropriate rusty crank, the metal grate opens and the well drains to the level of the destination, a high pressure torrent of water flushing the occupant down the shaft with the idea that I guess they will somehow survive and float down to where they want to be.
After Nausicaä almost drowns in this death trap, my mind goes "yyyyeeeeaaahhh... or I guess there could just be some stairs" and suddenly the entire horrible insane contraption is replaced by a comparatively safe and sensible spiral staircase.
So the king's daughter leads Nausicaä down the stairs and it has now become clear that the theme of this city is "water". It's built right on the edge of the sea and is clearly inspired by the city of Isa from Windaria, but all the buildings are made of dark, almost bluish-grey (stone? ceramic?) bricks and have a flowing, rounded look caused by erosion from the constant flow of water over centuries. The aqueducts and sea gates are the technological pride of this post-apocalyptic city, but at the same time, they're also causing it's slow destruction, as the water (which in the Nausicaä universe, let's be honest, probably isn't exactly pH-balanced in the first place) wears away at the very foundations of the city, smoothing and erasing all of mankind's works like one big sand castle.
Finally we get to the castle, which is right on the water's edge, and Nausicaä is told by a servant that the king is in his meditation room. This is a chamber in the lowest level of the castle to which the king retreats when he is feeling melancholy. It's a large, perfectly cubic room, absolutely devoid of any furnishing except wet sand. Wet sand covers the floor and cakes the walls. There are small grates in the walls and ceiling that admit a steady trickle of moisture, just enough to keep the sand damp. The sandy floor is littered with delicate towers made of this mud, and in the centre of the room stands the king, the silhouette of a strong, well-built fellow, completely covered head to toe in the same mud, looking almost like a sand sculpture himself. His arm is outstretched in front of him, and from it drips a handful of watery sand, forming a fragile stalagmite beneath.
The king greets Nausicaä warmly when he sees the two princesses enter, and he turns out to be quite an affable middle-aged gent despite his totally batshit hobby. Feel free to picture him as a somewhat subdued Brian Blessed, it's not that far off. He explains that making sand towers helps ease the troubles of his mind, and invites Nausicaä to give it a try. Curious, she scoops up a handful of sand and starts to pour it out in a lazy spiral. But as she focuses on the zen experience her mind starts to get foggy and she seems to enter some kind of trance. She begins to twirl slowly as if listening to some inaudible music, and the spiral of sand widens into kind of a sand galaxy. She starts to get feverish and suddenly collapses, the king rushing to catch her. The king and his daughter stare with amazement at the sand that has fallen from her hand; instead of a lump of plain mud, there is a glittering pile of sand rubies, a single one of which is worth a king's ransom by itself.
"What is this," mutters the king in sheer wonder, "what power does this girl have...?"
The dream ended there with the vague implication that making sand rubies is why Muska and his airship goons were after Sheeta I mean Nausicaä and that was it. Not very eventful but damn pretty.
