The Kestrel's Dreams

December 01, 2014

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I was a new resident/member of a co-op that doubled as a comedy theater troup... I was going to be in a skit with two others for the next show, so I was trailing them to get used to the place. It turns out basically the whole troup is involved in some kind of scandalous murder, even though they didn't know it. There was a group of them that was orchestrating it all, using the other members as pawns in their schemes. The two I was with were the only ones who knew about it and tried to stop the baddies. We went to the leader of the troup, who we believed to be unaware of what was going on. We told him about it all, and he was really worried and told us to keep on our toes and watch out for ourselves.

Our assignment for chores that day was to clean downstairs, so the two of them and I went downstairs to clean. We ended up near the boiler room, and we heard the voices of the baddies, and scattered. I ended up in the boiler room, alone. It was pitch dark, and hot. Suddenly there was a faint red light from across the room. There were stairs there, and someone was coming down. It was the leader. He came up to a spot in the pipes and there was the REAL leader, hanging in the pipes. He had overgrown facial hair and looked really ragged. The Fake Leader said something like, "There you are, you little fool. You want your food, eh? Here you are. You little fool." He talked to the real leader like an animal in a cage. The real leader was like a savage now. His eyes were like an animal's and he was tearing at the food. The Fake Leader was patting him on the head and grinning.

Then I heard screams from upstairs, and left in a panic, but unseen and unheard by the Fake Leader, who stayed with the real leader. When I got upstairs, everything was fine. Turns out, it was because of the skit at dinner. Apparently that's what they did there; there was a skit during dinner every day. The crowd was screaming/laughing at it, but I had only heard the screaming from downstairs. I met my two friends who were alright and already at the table. They had been worried about me but were glad to see I was alright. I told them I had to talk to them later, and went to get some food.

All the food was in a bus for some reason. The buffet was set up along the back wall of the bus. I was trying to get specific kinds of lettuce from the bowl of salad, but they kept falling to the floor when I did. I gave up on it and decided to just get some pizza squares and a piece of the cake. Just as I was putting the last bit of food on my plate, the bus started moving. Apparently we were going on a field trip in the mountains. I was trying to make sure my food didn't spill, and apparently I was sitting in the "adult seat," which was undesirable. It was higher up and the table in front of it was too low. Oh well. I set down my food and looked out the window to watch the scenery go by. The bus was on a high bridge over a valley with lots of buffalo in it. I took my spoon and pretended to scoop up the buffalo. Like, every time I scooped them, the buffalo there scattered. It was like I was controlling them from my seat in the bus.

Then, I was flying over the heard. In another valley, there was a heard of humans, too. I flew over them as well, along a river gorge. The landscape was green and grassy and at the same time somehow red-dirt desert-y. It's hard to explain.

I flew closer to the ground now, and saw a group of people at the top of the next hill. There were lots of children and some people I know, so I landed there and milled amongst the people... I saw a small elephant being tackled by some kids. It was actually a little disturbing, as it reminded me of that picture of the little elephant being attacked by some lionesses. I watched this elephant go by me, and then walked up to the ledge of the river gorge, where there were a line of children sitting down. I looked over the ledge; it was very high up. I saw my mom's high school friend, H, nearby. I called her over, and asked her when the bus would be back, and where it would pick us up. She shrugged. She told me that the bus driver would call her when they got there and tell her where to meet them. She handed me her phone and asked if I wanted to keep it so I would know when and where to go. I shook my head and gave it back to her, wondering if I should just make my way back down to the road and wait there. But I didn't know if the bus would come right up to the cliff to pick us up, so I stayed there for the time being.

I walked through some scattered trees to a little plaza with a fountain. I sat on a stone bench that circled the fountain. There was an annoying mascot thing with a huge hunk of cheese trying to get me to take a selfie with it. I turned around to face the rest of the mountain above us (we were about half-way up the mountain here). It was beautiful; the mountain side was all bare except for these tall, skinny, wooden animal figures. They were made with different colors of wood and stood along the mountainside, all looking as if they were walking in the same direction (to my right). There was a vast landscape of them, and something about them was tribal, though I can't pinpoint what it was. I took out my phone to take a picture of it so I would be able to see it forever, but every time I hit the button to take a picture, the view would switch to front-facing and take a selfie. The stupid mascot thing was in all of them, too. It was getting in my way, and I was convinced it was the one making my camera do that. I elbowed it in the stomach to make it go away, and turned back to the mountain above us. But it was different. There were large, almost junglish trees scattered instead of the animal figures.

I said, "WHAT GIVES. It's different!" And then I realized, and said, "WAIT. Haha! I'm dreaming!" I looked down at my hands and confirmed that I was dreaming. I grinned. There were so many children around, and I wanted to try the task from last month about telling a kid they were in a dream. It was too late for that one, but I still wanted to try it.

I walked up to a kid who was sitting on the crest of the grassy hill, and said, "Hi! My name is Ms. Kestrel. What's your name?"
"Nathan..."
"Hi Nathan! Where are you from?"
"I'm from BC. Where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm from around there! I'm from K."
"Oh, nice." Nathan smiled.
"Actually. Do you wanna know something?"
"What?"

I said, "You know how sometimes you are dreaming, and you realize you're dreaming, while you dream?"
Nathan brightened up and nodded. "Yeah, I've heard of that!"
"It's called lucid dreaming. This is my lucid dream right now. That means you're from my subC, actually."

I watched for his reaction. At first he was just blank, but then he says, "Maaannn. Oh that's just TERRIBLE."

He sounded dejected but also detached, like he didn't actually care. I patted his back and stood up. Now, I wanted to do at least one of the December tasks. The one that came to mind first was to throw a snowball at a DC.

I looked around. No snow here... But I was on a mountain, and snow was normal on a mountain. All I had to do was go higher up and I was sure I'd find snow. I jumped up to hover a foot above the ground. Once I was sure of my stability, I flew close to the ground up the mountain until I hit the road above us. I turned to my right, where the road curved over a bridge surrounded by trees. The trees created a sort of tunnel around the road. I hovered through this tunnel and on the other side, I heard a different stream. It sounded cold somehow, and I was happy to see some snow on the railings at the side of the road. I scooped it up with my hand, but it was all powdery, not good for a snowball. It actually felt more like fake snow. I kept taking samples, getting closer to the river, which was mostly frozen over. I kept getting powdery, fake-ish snow. I turned to the trees, and saw a clump of snow gathered in the branches. Powdery snow wouldn't clump like that, so I was hopeful for this patch. I scooped it up, and packed it into a nice snowball. Perfect. Now I turned back up to the road, and turned back to the direction I had come from. I flew back through the tunnel of trees, and then left back to the plaza. There were stone stairs downward. The fountain thing was to my right, and there was a stone tunnel ahead of me, where I saw all the kids leaving.

I called out, "HEY KIDS!" And Nathan and a few others turned right as I threw the snowball. They were looking at it like I had thrown an angry, venomous snake at them, not a simple snowball. They shrieked and some of them cried. Until they realized it was a snowball, and it missed them. It landed on the ground between Nathan and another kid, and powdered them all with snow, rolling along the ground with un-dampened velocity as far as I could see, leaving a line of snow where it rolled and showering the kids with snow as it passed.

The kids all started laughing and cheering, and said "THAT WAS AMAZING!!" And started playing in the snow.

I was pretty satisfied with that, and decided to just fly upwards until I lost the dream (I could already feel it was ending soon). I didn't make it very far before I woke up.

June 15, 2014

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Fragment: Bell Bed

I was at someone's house, and it was winter. They had heated floors inside as well as heated ground outside so that their yard would never have snow on it. Everyone in the house was going to go to a concert for my cousin's best friend, Aynes (she's got a pretty stellar voice). I remember that my mom and some other people had specific tickets, but I could probably get one at the door because they didn't think it was sold out... We get there, and I get a ticket, but I have to sit in the cheap seats because that's all that was left. Someone else was singing before her, but I don't remember anything significant about whoever it was.

After the concert, there was a sign-up for some sort of military camp, and everyone in my group signed up for it. We all got shuttled off to a cabin and got assigned beds. I was in the top bunk closest to the door, which was apparently the "Bell Bed," and every time I got into or out of it, a bell would ring and everyone else would have to get in our out of their beds too. It was strange.



I Trust You

I was with Zukin in my home-town near my Oma's house. We got on a bus to go rent a movie from the Video Hits Plus, and she didn't know where it was so she turned to me and said, "I trust you."




Fragment: Fish Food

I was talking to Kristin and she was telling me not to feed Fishie, our beta fish, the little crunchier bits in the food we have for him. I asked why, and she said if he ate them, he would get bloated and die. I felt really horrible because I'd always been feeding him those, and I thought he was going to die. (as soon as I woke up from this one I groggily got up and checked on him to make sure he was alive and well, and then went back to sleep)




I wanna get a Sammich

My English class plus Zukin plus a few random characters I didn't recognize were all part of a secret, elite group. Each of us had some sort of super skill, and we all worked together to do good in various locations. There were about five locations in this dream, but I don't remember much about the first two. I just know they were there.

The third place was weird, because to get to the bedrooms, we all would have to sort of pole-vault across a 10-foot-wide gap in the building. It was a sort of courtyard that was about 15-feet wide except for the landing we had to get to. We were on the top story (10-ish?) so the fall if you missed the landing would be pretty bad...

One of the members of the group, a guy I didn't recognize from the real world, was being cocky and reckless, and decided to try to pole vault from about 10-feet left of the "runway" to make the gap a lot bigger. He ended up missing the little indent where you stick the pole, and couldn't stop in time, running right off the edge and falling. I yelled, "Call 911!" a few times, running around the top floor to tell people what had happened, and then went back to the runway. There were people coming out from the bedrooms on the other side of the gap to see what the commotion was. I called down at the guy (I called his name, but I don't remember what it was) and he moved a little. I was relieved he wasn't dead. I kept calling for him to move different parts of his body if he could, mostly to keep him from falling asleep in case he had a concussion. People were coming with ropes, and so someone was lowered down to help the guy up, but by the time they got down, the guy was already standing up and acting just fine, laughing about it even. I think he super skill must have been a hard head.

An ambulance had arrived by the time he was lifted all the way up, and he was protesting that he was just fine, but I made him get in and get checked out just in case.


The fourth location is a little blurry, but I remember that one of our group left because he was scared of something in that place. He had to quit permanently, but they would let him have a different job at HQ. He was going to be some sort of librarian/clerk. He got a giant pet lizard.

On the third night being at this location (we spent on average about two weeks at each place, I think), there was a severe storm warning. Either a hurricane or a tornado, or some kind of unreal dream-world storm. We were all told to stay inside the building, which was at the top of a mountain. There were floor-to-ceiling windows lining the whole side facing the town we were located above, and I could watch the storm rolling in.

Just before the storm was about to hit, Zukin, Robert, another guy, and I wanted to go get sandwiches. So we left. We went down a bunch of stairs and then an elevator, and then we came to the part that I hated: It was a perfectly vertical ledge, about 500-feet down.about five of our group had the skill to be able to jump down that without getting hurt, because they could absorb the force of the impact, or something. Those five would take the rest of us down by holding onto us and jumping, then jumping back up (the could also jump freakishly well, I guess) to get the rest of us. Robert and the other guy were two of them, so Robert grabbed me, and the other guy grabbed Zukin, and they both jumped down and set us down. I had screamed because I hate the sensation of falling, and I'd also been terrified Robert would lose his grip, so I basically straddled him around the upper body with my arms and legs. And then it was weird because he set me down gently and then nuzzled the back of my neck seductively before just walking off.

At the base of that cliff was the checkpoint where we all had to check in and out every time we entered or left. We went to four of the computer consoles that lined a wall. We had to fill out Name, Age, Date, When we Joined, etc. The last part to fill out was a check-box style question: "There is currently an order to remain indoors due to inclement weather. Why are you disobeying these orders?" The options were all official-looking, like "Visiting sick loved one in the hospital" and "urgent business with a superior" or "with explicit exception from superior" and the last one was "I wanna get a sammich." We all checked that one.

The computers gave us the green check that meant "Go Right on Ahead," and we made our way through the storm to the sandwich place, which made sandwiches just like a place on my college campus. We ordered our sandwiches to go and took them back to the "dorms" on top of the mountain. We ate them in front of the large windows, watching the rest of the storm.


The last location from this dream was actually HQ. We got to stay there for a month, but still had to do good deeds and whatnot while there. I went to the office of my friend who left the group to see how he was doing. He loved life staying at HQ with his giant pet lizard. His office was messy and books were stacked all over the place. I was glad he was doing well, and went back out to the dining room where people were eating. I sat between Zukin and Robert. I think he and I had gotten into a relationship in the time between the storm and when we got back to HQ.

I got half-way through my dinner and then needed to get something from my room, so I excused myself momentarily and went through the maze-like hallways to my room; I say "my room," but they were all co-ed communal bedrooms. I shared the room with 7 other people. I got what I needed, though I can't remember what it was. On my way back to the dining room (I had turned left and then right and was about to turn another left into the hall that led straight to the dining room), my watch beeped, so I did a reality check on reflex. I looked down; 12:00 exact. I rotated my wrist so I could no longer see the time, and then turned it back toward me; 11:32. I was dreaming!

I felt that same rush of excitement and the destabilization of the dream, but this time I was within reach of something to touch; I remembered that touching things in the dream could help keep it stable. So I touched the wall to my right, and kept my hand on it as I took the next few steps. Then, when I felt like it was okay to let go without it going away again, I decided to try levitating. I jumped in the air, and clapped excitedly when my feet didn't touch the ground again. I floated through the halls, exploring in my lucidity. I went back to the room I slept in, and this time I noticed Zukin's blanket on one of the beds, so she must have shared the room with me. I wanted to find out who all was in this room, and so I hovered back to the dining room and asked, "Who all sleeps in the same room as me?" but I could feel the dream destabilizing. Zukin, Robert, Melisa (another of my classmates) and three other people raised their hands, looking at me like I was stupid, and then I woke up.




After I wrote down my lucid dream, I fell back asleep for about 45-minutes:

Fragment: Bike Ride

Zukin and I were going to go from our University town to her house about 40-minutes away, but we were going to ride our bikes there instead of driving. And we were going to do it at night, apparently. I was trying to pull up directions for taking back roads, since bicycles on the highway would be a dumbass thing to try (we do dumb things but we're at least smart enough to know what will DEFINITELY kill us). I called up Moonie, a friend I met online, to get the directions (why she would know the directions, I dunno). We were stopped at a stoplight this whole time. I remember the light turning green and then the fragment faded.




Fragment: High School Hospital

All I remember was wandering the halls of my high school, but it was Dream World version of my high school. I remember it being like that in all the other dreams about my high school. I was in the wing that, in real life, is the art wing, but in Dream Life, it looked like the corner stairs nearest to the cafeteria; the main stairway in the building because it connect the three portions of the school. Anyways, apparently the school was a hospital for the summer, and some random guy asked me where the "Cardiovascular Brain" Center was, and I told him I had no idea because I didn't even know there was a temporary hospital here in the first place.

June 08, 2014

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Kebab Gets Sick

I was with the backpacking group, drinking in an old house. I think the house belonged to one of my family members, or someone I knew, but I can't remember who it was. The house had a very modern feel to it, even though it was old. We were all on the second floor, and suddenly Kebab said, "I forgot how sick this stuff makes me..." and goes to the upstairs bathroom, but he gets worried that it won't hold all of his vomit (I laughed out loud as I wrote this out) and so he tries to get to the bigger bathroom downstairs, and... well, let's just say he left a trail, and it was disgusting.

I must have blotched out the part where I cleaned it all up. I remember being on the stairs at the point where it turns (it was one of those kinds of stairways), hearing him vomiting all the way to the bathroom, and then more in the bathroom. I remember thinking, Oh God, I'm going to have to clean this up...

And then I remember being back upstairs with Zukin, Penny, Ivan, and a friend of his, who was in my own grade instead of a year below me, like all three of the others are. I was telling them all about my Dream Journal, and gave them all my DV username so they could find me once they joined the site (Zukin and I were recruiting them all).

Suddenly, I was in my high school cafeteria, just as I am saying the last five letters of it; "E-L-K-A-T..."

And then someone on the complete other side of the cafeteria yells, "E-L-K-A-T!" And then someone else yells it from another side of the room, and soon the whole room is shouting "KESTRELKAT! KESTRELKAT!! KESSSSSTRELKAAAAATTT!!!"

It was so strange.




Murder at the Musical

A friend and I (at the beginning, I don't remember who she was, but toward the end it was one of my friends from college) were acting in a musical about a crazy King who tries to kill his daughter and her friend. My friend plays the daughter, and I play her friend... Her dad plays the crazy King. Can you see where this is going yet?

Anyways, we find out that her father is trying to kill us; He is going to do it right on stage and get away with it because people will think it's just really good acting. Or, it may have actually been that he was going to actually kill us in order to make it the best show ever. I can't remember exactly which it was, or if it was both. In the musical, the crazy King pretends to be the painting in his daughter's room in order to get her and her friend while they are off-guard, and he jumps at them with a knife, killing the friend first, because he knows his daughter wouldn't dare to avenge her friend and he could easily get her right after.

Everyone else in the play found out her father's plan, and was trying to help us. We couldn't go straight to the police because they wouldn't believe us if we did. So we all continued with rehearsals as planned, to formulate our plan and also to keep her father from finding out that we knew his plan. We had to all live in the building in which we practiced, and we weren't allowed to leave at all. It was an abandoned warehouse that was for some reason located on my home street.

When it was time to do a sort of official advertising for the musical (there was a local musical association, and they held an event where all the main characters of the various plays and musicals being put on would gather and try to sell tickets to people passing by on the street), my friend and I left the building (since we were main characters, and her Father could not keep us hidden away with the rest of the cast). Her father was already there, and we were to meet him. We decided we would expose him today, because there would be many people and policemen to help us, and he wasn't really a good actor anyways so he wouldn't be able to lie his way out of it.

The event was being held a couple blocks away, and so my friend and I had to get up the hill on my street. We were having a very hard time doing it, because of our bulky costumes, so we put on roller blades that we apparently had hidden in the bulky dresses we wore. The going got much faster then.

When we reached the top of the hill (that's where it meets the street on which the event was held), we saw that there were many, many more people than we had expected. Even better; more witnesses to his horrible lying and more support for ourselves. We found a policewoman and explain what was going on, and we led her to where my friend's dad was, in his ridiculous costume (like this, just he was a painting of a rather creepy looking clown, and the frame was almost as big as he was). We exposed him, and the police took him away. They told my frind and me that we should get the rest of the cast and crew, so that we could all go to testify at the station.

We go back to the building, gather the others, and get on a bus to get to the police station. As we walked to the bus stop, we all decided that we would have to find another musical to perform in, and that we would stick together because we had become like family. When we got on a bus, and it started moving, a man that had been sitting on a bench at the stop moved with the bus. He was outside of the bus, but moved as if he were in it, even swaying as the driver used the brakes too heavily. I stared out the window at him, and he stared back, grinning. Every time we stopped at a bus stop, the man would appear to adjust himself in his seat of air, so that he looked like he was just sitting at the bus stop. He was describing something to me, and it was strange, because I could hear his voice in my head again. But, I can't remember what he was describing to me. He wore a patch-filled jacket and had a sing-songy voice, but I didn't realize until I was awake that it was the same person from my Gangster Pimp story, who may have been The Face from another dream I had.

The leader of our little troupe suddenly told us all to get off the bus, quickly. In the confusion, the man whom I will call The Face until I learn his real identity vanished. I reach my troupe and find that they have been confronted by a group of white men and women (my whole troupe, except for my friend and me, was black, with only 1 or 2 women). They stood in lines facing each other, with the leaders of the two groups standing opposite each other. It seemed everyone in my own group had a counterpart in the other group, except for my friend and me. I suddenly know that our leader had taken s off the bus because he'd seen the other group waiting to get on it, and wanted to avoid a confrontation; but the leader of the other group had also spotted him getting off, and had stayed, just to pick a fight.

"What are you doing with these little white girls, eh? You messin' with them?" Their leader turned to me. "They messin' with you, honey?"
"We're their friends," I say.
"Oh really?"
"We're in a play- a musical- together."
The other group collectively mocked me and I saw some of their members push some of my friends, so I tried to make myself a human barrier between the two groups, hoping I could stop a fight from happening.

The other group members were saying really nasty, rude, and disrespectful things about my friends, and I could see my group beginning to get angrier, but they didn't make any moves.

Then, I saw my group's leader's thoughts for an instant; but it was enough to know that he and his friends had been in a bad situation before joining the musical cast and crew, and they all wanted to live better lives now.

"Just ignore them all," I said to my friends, while staring into the eyes of the opposite group leader.

That all went on for a few more minutes, and the situation was looking so desperate that I turned around and hugged as many of my group members as I could, crying. I guess the antagonizing gang must have gotten weirded out by my show of affection, and they left with the grumblings of an aggressor who doesn't really want to open that can of worms anymore.

We all sat down to wait for the next bus. People sniggered and talked bad about me, as if what I'd done was the stupidest thing they'd ever seen, and I snapped at them all, "Shut the FUCK up! What would you all have done?! Run away? Watch your friends get hurt?" My group leader ruffled my hair and the rest fell silent, just like my group was. It was all very sober until the bus got there. I sat at a window seat, with the leader to my right and my friend to his right. I remembered my leg brushing his, and realizing I needed a shower REALLY bad because my legs were prickly as fuck.

Then I woke up.

June 04, 2014

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I was with Zukin on a bus (in Germany, I think. But I'm not certain). We sat in forward-facing seats on the left side in the back half of the bus, and our bags were to our right in a row of left-facing seats that lined that whole side of the bus. Those seats were elevated by two steps. The bus seemed abnormally wide.

The dream fragmented here. We must have gotten off the bus, and were now in a hotel room. We started talking about a reading assignment for a class we were both taking. We had to read part of a book I've already read (I get a very strong feeling that it was the Hunger Games), as well as the first 100-or-so pages of another book, which I'd never heard of. I hadn't known that we needed to read the other book, and the class was meeting tomorrow. It was already late, and so I asked Zukin to just summarize that book so far, but she refused to tell me what it was about.

Another fragment; I had spilled something all over me, and so I went to the hotel room's bathroom to take a shower. Zukin asked me if I was going to "take a real shower in the morning," to which I responded: "This is my shower."

After my shower I changed into my PJs and then I woke up.