non-lucid

This dream began in what looked like a college lecture hall. There were plenty of people in the hall, but most of them were in the lower area where the lecturer would stand. I was sitting in a desk up above all the people, and I walked down to the teacher's area of the hall to see what was going on. The dream shifted slightly, and all of a sudden the hall was empty save a row of tables in the center of the room. The people from earlier were all still in the room, but they, and I, were all playing poker. Somehow I knew the exact rules of the tournament, even though I have never played this kind of poker in my life nor am i sure if it actually exists--you had to lay down a straight of three before anyone else, there was no turn basis, and there were three rounds. After playing a few rounds, I found that I was winning the tournament, and that was the closest I came to suspecting that it was a dream (though it was still just a vague feeling, certainly not a realization). After having a short conversation with one of the other players, I went back to play another game, and this time the scenery changed. We were on a large grassy hill overlooking a small valley with long picnic tables to play on, and this was the final round of the tournament. We played, and I lost, but this is where it got interesting. From my loss at the tourney, the dream shifted to a more familiar dreamscape--that of my high school parking lot. It didn't take me long to realize that this was a zombie dream--I was in a van with several other men plowing through a parking lot full of zombies. Our objective was to get through the parking lot, through three locked gates that were blocking our path, and into the school. We managed to clear the parking lot, though the first gate was giving us some trouble--in order to unlock it we would have to find iron rods that matched the color of those on the other side of the gate and place them on the gate parallel to those rods. <We decided to unlock the gate as opposed to jumping over it--because it was only a high falt-topped fence--incase we needed to make a quick getaway later.> Half of the group decided to vault over the gate and attempt to unlock the one past it, while the other half went to look for the iron rods. I stayed behind at the first gate incase either team needed help. The rod team called me to help first, saying that i needed to grab the blue rod that was lying on the ground and take it back to the gate. I did, and as I arrived back at the gate, I noticed that the team that had gone over the gate was screaming for help--a blue health bar had appeared over their heads, and a group that appeared to be the antagonists (with red health bars) were fighting our friendly's. I yelled at my team to hurry up so that we could help them, but it was clear that they would not get there in time, so I could only watch as the battle between the two groups continued. Just as It came to an end, in our favor thankfully, the rest of the rod team made it back with the rods, and we proceeded to unlock the gate. Past that, there isn't much that I remember, but I do know that I had to cut open the lock on the second gate with wire cutters, and I used them several times after that.

Dreamsacpes:
High school--parking lot
College--lecture hall
Hidden Valley--random hill

This dream began non-lucid, and the starting point was on a small sand dune in the desert. Off to one side of the desert, I could see a thick jungle that began right where the desert ended--side by side, as if there had been a line drawn between the two biomes. I headed off towards the jungle (still not lucid yet), and as I began to explore the hanging vines, trees, and the like, DILD kicked in. However, my idiot self completely forgot to stabilize the dream, so I pretty much just continued right on after I gained lucidity, thinking, "Cool!" I continued walking through the jungle, now in control of my actions, but not exerting the amount of control that I could have if I had stabilized the dream. I came to an area that had no trees, but there were vines hanging down everywhere, so I decided to test my control on them. (I was completely unaware at the time that I had forgotten to stabilize.) I began to walk among the vines, attempting to instantly change them into another object, material, or substance, touching them as I tried to shift them. The first vine I touched I tried to turn into a chain, and nothing happened, so I walked on,a bit disappointed, and touched the next one, focusing on making it into an orange-colored vine. Nothing happened to this one either, so I turned around to try and change another vine just by looking at it, but as I turned to look behind me, I saw that the first vine had changed into a chain while my back was turned! I took a second to process that, then I turned around to look at the vine I had just touched, and I saw that it had changed to a bright-orange vine when I had looked away. At this point, I was getting a little annoyed, as if my control was mocking me, so I ran through the mass vines, brushing my hands over as many as I could, thinking of all the minecraft blocks I could as I touched the different vines. As I expected, (sadly) no vines changed instantly as I had intended, but they were all changed to exactly what i pictured when I touched them once I turned around to survey the [very annoying] delayed reaction. I was going to continue to try and instantly shape things, but the scene began to shift, and I couldn't do anything to stop it considering that I hadn't even stabilized it in the first place.

The dream continued and got much more exciting from there, but this entry is already fairly long, and the laptop I'm using is about to die, so I will continue into the awesome part of this dream as soon as I can get a hold of a computer for a good half hour. Please leave your thoughts and comments on my retardation at not having stabilized and the strangeness of the delay that I experienced during this dream. Thanx!