New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I was in the living room watching the television, it was a show about fat people and ways to lose weight. I watched it a bit more and I realized it was a Dr. Phil show, he was talking about the importance of exercise in losing weight, I was feeling particularly fat right then, but I didn't want to exercise… Dr. Phil kept talking about the various things that could happen to overweight people, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, strokes… endless amounts of problems that can come from being overweight. I was thinking I really should get out and exercise, so maybe I would take a walk, I certainly didn't have the patience to listen to Dr. Phil any longer.

I went outside and started walking, the weather wasn't as hot as I had expected it to be, so I thought this walk might actually end up being a decent length one. The main road near my house is under heavy construction, so I didn't think it would be very pleasant to walk there right now, so I decided to look in other directions. I headed down a path I had never noticed before and I soon found the landscape changing around me, I was slowly leaving the desert landscape and entering a forest of trees. That seemed really odd… odd enough for me to do a RC, which revealed I was dreaming!

So now that I realized I was dreaming, I stopped to think of my goals for the night… at first I couldn't think of any of them, but I finally thought of the one from Mortal Mist where the goal was to explore a forest and note all of the details of the season long with the animals, weather, and other details. That would be a nice relaxing dream to have right now, so I thought I would do that. I walked through the trees, looking at the place and making note of all of the details I could, the trees were beautiful, the leaves were blowing in a gentle breeze, all of them were changing color to various shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and teal… um… blue, purple, and teal? Well, that didn't matter, this was a dream forest after all… I wondered if there are places where the leaves really do turn to shades of blue and purple, then I thought of course there are! I'm in one!

I continued walking through the forest, making note of and enjoying every detail I could take in, the feel of the cool breeze on my skin, the smell of the trees… it smelled like it might rain soon… I listened to the birds singing in the trees, the crunch of the fallen leaves on the ground as I walked through them, I caught glimpses of small animals running around in the trees, several squirrels, a couple of bunnies. One of the squirrels was quite brave, it ran right up in front of me to grab a fallen nut and then ran back to the trees and disappeared into its branches, I figured the squirrel was storing food for the winter. I saw more movement in the trees, and this time a fox emerged, cute! The fox was definitely brave, the fox came trotting right over to me and looked at me as if he expected me to pet him. Wait a minute… that fox could be none other than Pablo!

I sat down in the fallen leaves and stroked Pablo, the dream had become so vivid as I focused on every detail, the fox's fur was so silky and soft as I pet him. Pablo was a red tailed fox with a white chest, red fur on most of his body, dark brown feet, a long fluffy tail, most of the tail was red like the rest of Pablo, but the tip of the tail was pure white. What I noticed most that I couldn't get over was how soft the fur was, as soft as petting a cat, it was too soft to resist putting my arms around him and giving him a hug, burying my face in that soft fur. I saw movement near a tree and I looked, there was an animal I didn't recognize digging a hole in the ground near the base of the tree, I figured that would be a den, I wondered if that might harm the tree to dig right there… Pablo changed from an adult red tail fox to a fox cub so I could scoop him into my arms and continue walking, such a cute fox cub… I carried Pablo farther down the trail until I found a stream flowing across the path, the sound of the stream was so clear, the water was also clear, I could see some small fish swimming around in it. There were rocks positioned perfectly for crossing the stream, things were so clear that I could clearly see the difference between the dry rock and the wet rock that was being splashed by the stream.

I had to do a RC again, because I thought I would soon forget I was dreaming if I didn't remind myself, so I re-confirmed that I was dreaming before crossing the stream… and then the fox disappeared from my arms! I was momentarily alarmed, then I realized Pablo had probably just woken up, so I got down on my knees by the stream and splashed some of the cool water on my face, and it felt wonderful. I sat there for a bit longer, letting myself take in the details of the blue sky which I could see between the trees on either side of the stream, and there were some fluffy white clouds drifting across the sky… nothing looked like rain, I wondered why it smelled like rain… I got up and headed back into the forest, watching the birds flying around as if they were in a hurry to get something important done. I was walking down the path, getting close to forgetting it was a dream, when a huge shadow fell over the forest, a huge dark shadow. I also heard a loud "THWUMP… THWUMP…" sound from overhead and felt a rush of strong wind blowing down from above. This wind felt a bit chilly, and many of the colorful leaves that had been hanging on to the trees now fell off and blew around in the hurricane type winds. I looked up just in time to see a huge winged creature fly overhead, creating the wind as it flapped its massive wings.

The animal had flown farther along the path, so I followed the path faster, I really wanted to see what that thing had been. I knew it was a dream, so I had no fear that I would be in danger from it. I finally exited the thick part of the forest into a large clearing, a meadow, and I spotted several deer running past me and disappearing into the shelter of the forest. Whatever that thing was, the animals were scared of it, and maybe with good reason. I looked up and I could hardly believe my eyes… it was a dragon! A huge dragon, it flew over the meadow, swooped around in a large arc, and then returned to the meadow. It flapped its massive wings to slow down and land, the force of the wind almost knocked me over, and finally it landed and roared a deafening sound. Wow! The dream was so vivid and now I was meeting a dragon! Awesome! I had barely found a bit of voice to my awe, "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" I stood there taking in the details of the dragon, his size… he was huge… his scales, they were of various colors of greens and browns, but all of them glistened in the sunlight like gems… he had claws like spears on each of his limbs, teeth, huge white teeth, and his wings! He really could make a hurricane with those wings! I was sure of it!

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

To be continued…