Carabas

After going lucid and abandoning the storyline I'd been in, I'm walking to a simple full-length mirror leaning against a wall. I focus on my intended destination - the rose garden, a meeting place. As I place my hands through the glass, I lose all visuals. My hands sink into the glass as far as my wrists, but no further. The 'hole' beyond the surface of the mirror that acts as a portal isn't open enough. I can feel jagged edges against my right wrist, as opposed to the heavy liquid-like feeling of the portal. It's like I've broken open a hole in a frozen lake. I stay focused on the destination and mentally dig at those edges until they give.

I can feel a wall of thorns all around me so that I can't move. I still have no visuals, I think of this as between scenes. I'm annoyed at myself - this is the barrier around the garden, I shouldn't have had to deal with this at all. It was an error in focus, thinking about roses and sharp edges. I try to correct my focus but find myself waking up. (Though it wound up being a false awakening. Visuals returned when I 'woke up.')

I'm lying in my IRL bed, looking out into the hall, and I seem to see movement, as if there are several small creatures on the floor. It's too dark to be sure my eyes aren't playing tricks on me. I reach for the lamp - as I do so, I think I see one of the maybe-creatures-maybe-tricks-of-the-eyes come into the room and look up at me - but the lamp won't turn on. Although I'm aware the bulb could just be out, I suspect this is a dream.

To test it, I will myself to float up into the air, but nothing happens. I close my eyes to test whether I can see through them anyway, and I can't (in fact, after closing my eyes here, there were no more visuals for the rest of the dream). But I'm still convinced this is a dream. As one more test, I reach up and touch the ceiling, sure that it won't be solid. I encounter solid material, but it's spongy, my finger sinks into it, creating a depression, and then reaching some limit - the material breaks, creating a small hole. For a second I consider whether this might not be a dream and I've really poked a hole in the ceiling. But I keep digging at it until I create a larger hole, large enough for me to pass through, and I climb up into it. As I pass through, I find I'm now moving downward, not upward - and this makes me wonder if opening up this hole was really a good idea. I have a vague thought about moving down into a basement which stores unpleasant things. But once on the other side, I become aware that I'm lying in bed, and that I've woken up.

Fragments from later (insomnia's been killing me this past week and my recall's a mess):

A desert in a futuristic setting. I'm talking to my wife about some intrigue going on within an elite group of all-female guards who work for us. They're slaves, and I'm thinking about the tensions created by relying on people while keeping them in slavery.

Different scene, same POV character. I'm in a small spaceship, with the pilot - a good friend who works for me - to my left, and a boy whom I'm kind of mentoring sitting behind us. I'm explaining to the boy about a weapon I'm expecting our enemies to use, something that increases the heat of a star. It's related to the lifespan of the star, and the boy deduces that since the star in this system is very young, the effect will be very great. He sounds horrified, but I'm not feeling particularly concerned; it's just one more thing to take into account.