And there is the matter that the Dream hasn't changed for Aria, and the Dreamers haven't indicated others have shared it just yet. In the re-read, I did note a couple things. I now have three possible interpretations at hand now.
But to get the first, albeit one I find unlikely. We need to go back to when Aria first met Dahnai, in Conviction Chapter 14:
“Hello, pippy,” Dahnai said in an instantly tender voice, the voice of a mother. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Aria gave her a long look, then gasped. “It’s you! The other face from my dream!” she blurted.
“I am? What did you see in your dream, pippy?” Dahnai asked seriously.
“You’re the Valkyrie!” she said. “The woman in golden armor riding the dragon!”
“My, that sounds impressive,” she said, leaning over a bit. “And what do I do in your dream?”
“You have your dragon eat the giant,” she replied.
Remember, most of her visions are part of a dream, they’re couched in metaphor and symbol, Jason warned privately. “Is it a good thing or a bad thing that her dragon eats the giant?”
“It’s a good thing,” she replied, looking at him. “The giant was about to step on a village, but her dragon eats it before it does.”
Jason put that together quickly. It was a stark warning to him that he needed Dahnai’s help to save the Dreamers. The dragon had to be her Navy, and the giant the Syndicate. “Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m here,” Dahnai smiled.
“Mah. You’re like Jason and Jyslin,” she said, pointing at Jason. “I know you from my dream, just like I know them. I know you’re nice.”
“You’ve seen me in your dreams, sweetling?” Jyslin asked.
“Mah, but I didn’t recognize you at first, because you wear a mask in my dream,” she answered. “But I figured it out.”
“What does she do in your dream?” Jason asked.
Aria sniffled a bit. “She loves me and takes care of me, like my own mother would have,” she said.
Jyslin’s eyes just melted, and she collected up Aria in her arms. “That already came true, my sweetling,” she cooed to her. “I already love you.”
Well, that certainly explained to Jason why Aria warmed up to Jyslin so fast. She must have seen her in her visions, Jason’s wife and her foster mother. But why the mask? That seemed unusual, and it also seemed strangely important. “Do you know why she was wearing a mask in your dream, Aria?” Jason asked.
“Neh,” she answered, which was her word for no. “I take the mask off in my dream, I just don’t remember what’s behind it. She just smiles at me and puts it back on and tells me that I’ll understand when I’m older.”
Jyslin's Mask in that instance was probably a reference her own transition to being a Generation, which hadn't happened at the time of that meeting, but plans were already in motion. Now that Aria is older, and also a Generation, the mask has been removed, and she can understand the reason for the deception. But it hints at the possibility that if Jyslin's becoming a Generation in that dream is connected to the current dream. Of course, with that interpretation, there's a problem with "the dragon" in her recent dream being the Medical service, at least if you presume the two visions are connected to each other.
But it is entirely possible the two dreams are not connected at all and the specifics of the metaphor used in one doesn't mean it applies to the other. IE Just because she saw a dragon as representing one thing in one vision, doesn't mean that every time she sees a dragon in a vision from then on, it means that thing is involved. Rather it may just be that a dragon indicates a large, powerful entity/group/thing with the ability to cause significant damage or change.
I still favor the medical service being at issue this time around though. Revolution chapter 5 brings us both the introduction to the dream:
She keeps dreaming about a village being burned to the ground by a dragon. You and Mom are in the dream, you try to fight the dragon, but the dream always ends before she learns what happens to you. She said the last thing she sees in the dream before it ends is you and Dahnai jumping from the back of winged animals with swords in your hands, hurling yourself at the dragon’s face as if you’re going to try to kill it. But she doesn’t know what happens, or what it even means. She’s not sure if she should tell you or not, because she doesn’t know if the outcome is good or bad. Since she doesn’t understand what the dream means, she’s afraid to say anything, that if she makes the wrong decision, you and Mom will get hurt because of it.
And shortly after that discussion, Jason is briefed on Kevin Ball by Cyvanne, something which Cyvanne had been aware of for a couple of days, but more particularly while Aria had been having the dream for "several nights." The event that really caught Cyvanne's attention had occurred 5 days earlier.
Which would indicate Aria probably started having the dreams shortly after Kevin's fight happened which set the dominoes in motion for Cyvanne to find the camera footage of the fight, and for Cyvanne to notify Jason.That in turn drew their attention the FMS and what it had been up to with regards to the Farm Workers(which
could connect the metaphorical destroyed village back to the Subjugation--maybe even Charleston? But that only works if
this Dragon is the Faey Military, which doesn't work well IMO.
Or the more likely form is that the village being burned to the ground might be a metaphor for the release of the retrovirus and "not being able to go back" from that because everything has changed as a consequence. You can't go home again because "home" in the form of the Village has been destroyed. Which leads us to interpretations #2 and #3. Interpretation #2 remains that the Dragon is the FMS. However, Interpretation #3 is that the Dragon
is the Retrovirus itself, and the chain of events caused by Kevin Ball made the retrovirus release inevitable.
Then we get to Chapter 8 (12 August 2022):
Truth be told, the last month or so, once they’d dropped the hammer on the DFM for embezzling the money meant for the farm survivors, he’d had plenty of time to work on his rating. Outside of the whole Medical Service thing and the distraction of Zach’s betrothal to Dara, things had been fairly quiet. The Kimdori still hadn’t broken into Ward Six, despite a lack of trying…which had become something of a holy crusade for Zaa now. She was going to crack their security even if she had to level the annex with an antimatter bomb. Since there was nothing he could really do about that but wait, it gave him time to work on rigger training once he finished the paperwork that came with his day job.
Well, there was one thing that was different, and he’d been thinking about it most of the day. Aria’s dream had changed.
It was still mostly the same. He and Dahnai were fighting a dragon, but before, when the dream would end before she knew what happened, last night, she had seen more of it. When, in the dream, he and Dahnai hurl themselves at the dragon holding swords to kill it, the dream would end before they struck any blows. But last night, she’d seen the dragon swipe down Dahnai with its paw, sending her plummeting towards the ground, while Jason drove his sword into its upper neck, which made it roar in pain. But the dream ended before she saw if the blow killed the dragon, or if the dragon struck him down in retaliation for the blow.
It also was the day that the retrovirus went "active" so another choice had been
made likely in the crossroads dream Aria was having as per Chapter 6:
“Not every prediction follows a set path, your Grace,” Elder Kalu told him, her dark hair bouncing a bit as she bobbed her head. “What Aria describes is a choice that must be made, and without that choice, then there is no path for her to follow to see what happens next. This kind of prediction is not unheard of, but it is fairly rare. We call it a Crossroads Prophecy, a prophecy that warns of something momentous in the future, but whose ultimate conclusion is in doubt because no decision has been made to influence its direction.”
“What it means is that the future Aria sees cannot be predicted because there are two or more equally prescient paths that the future can take,” Elder Rovak said, the large man nearly a head over the other four Elders as they sat at the table. He was the oldest of the five, but also the largest and most spry. “As we near the events of her dream, its content may change if one of those choices becomes more likely than the others. But until that happens, your Grace, I regret to say that there is little that can be done. No other Dreamer has reported an omen dream similar to hers, so we don’t have a second opinion in the matter.”
“It is both a prophecy and an omen, your Grace,” Elder Vado said. “But until she sees more, or her dream changes, it’s an equal possibility of which it becomes.”
Nothing has changed in the dream since the outbreak as it pertains to the Medical Service. So the second interpretation currently has nowhere to go right now, no action has been taken in regards to the role the FMS played in releasing the Virus, and no actions are being discussed.
But if you instead make the virus the dragon, on the day of it becoming active, both Jason and Dahnai jumped into action to take steps to contain it. Dahnai's attempt was far less successful(swatted out of the air), and she quickly ends up letting the retrovirus run its course, where it subsequently mutates and infects/transitions the Urumi Collective as well. While Jason's attack on the Dragon meets slightly better success, although it too broke containment and infected every Karrine holding and even the Karri, but it appears to be locked down at the moment, just not fully under his control. The Jirunji and Subrians have it and could use it, but they do have it locked down in a non-contagious state for now.
Jason is now in a position where he can "end it" with a head strike(having the Kimdori locate the samples so they can be destroyed), or he can pursue another option he hadn't considered previously. If that interpretation holds, he's now hit "the crossroad" for Aria's Dream, and at least Aria, if not other dreamers, are likely to be experiencing some new dreams either "tonight" storywise, or after their impromptu summit on Oasis.
The other aspect of the "village" metaphor in the context of the dragon being the retrovirus, is that the "community of Generations" no longer is comprised of a "small village" worth of individuals numbering in the 200's. They now number in the tens of Billions and soon to be hundreds of Billions. "The village" is well and truly gone.
