Things to Run Away From Really Fast

I'm at a networking event that's in someone's living room. In this dream, the very nice houses in the city are on a peninsula overlooking the water, and the host has a big house that fits everyone. It looks a lot like my house, but bigger.

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I'm at the dumpster in our complex, and I've found a couple of really cool chairs that I could use in my studio. My husband is not happy with the prospect of dumpster chairs. I now realize that the chairs that were really nice a minute ago actually have broken lifting mechanisms.

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I'm sharing a dorm with my mom and my brother. This is not a happy arrangement. We've just moved in, and the management is now telling us that we need to move to another one of their properties because they're renovating.

I'm arguing with my mom over whether we should rent a U-haul or take several trips in the truck. She vetoes my U-haul suggestion and says that we can make the truck work, but I say we have two hours to move and we need to take at least three trips in the truck.

A panel that we're loading into the truck snaps, and it flies with force towards my mom's throat.

Pause.

I realize that I'm dreaming.

With my mind, I catch the broken pieces as they fly towards my mom, absorb the kinetic force, and let them drop, harmlessly, to the ground.

I remember that my next task is to teleport—and that I want to teleport to a neighbour's house to fulfill two goals at once—but the dream is getting fuzzy and I'm starting to drift towards consciousness. Blearily, I think that it seems silly to teleport into a neighbour's house when it's right next door. I wake up.

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Malfoy is sending a robot after me. It would be a physical threat, but as long as I pick it up and hold it on its side, it can't actually get to me, so that's a bust as far as evil plans go.

The robot follows me uselessly around the room.

We're in a playground, and I've hijacked Voldemort's followers by pretending that I, Harry Potter, am actually the next incarnation of Voldemort. (Or maybe I am?)

Malfoy is teetering on top of something that looks like the Cirque du Soleil-inspired stunts from Mad Max: Fury Road. He's trying to prove a point. He falls, but he's currently invulnerable.

The nice thing about dreams is that in the right circumstances, you can just fall forwards, and the air will catch you, like polar opposites of a magnetic field pushing you away from the ground. I float over the grassy hills, and then swoop down to gain momentum and angle my way up into the sky.

I land on a set of stones on a hill and kick back off. I'm in some sort of a competition with other climbers, or flyers, related to a memorial or military ceremony.

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I have a blender, and half the components of the other blender, and they're both the same make and model. There's been a recall, and I'm disappointed, because I just swapped out a bunch of parts between the two blenders so one would work, and that means I won't be able to get the full return value of both blenders.

I leave the blender that I scrapped for parts in a "free to take" area in a local community hall. Later I come back for it because it turns out that as long as I still have the original boxes I can return both blenders, regardless of whether they're missing parts.

I box up the two blenders and bring them to the returns area. After I've returned those, I keep boxing things up and bringing them to the counter.

There's a good quality secondhand drill on the wall, and I think about buying it, but it's $125 used, and that seems pretty steep.

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I'm in a farmhouse, playing with cats. There are a lot of them.

Outside. Sailor Mercury, swathed in shadow, looking sad. I'm trying to tell her that we can fight off the dark thing together, but she smiles sadly and says that she's going to hold it off until I can find a way to defeat it. There's only one way: to create some sort of black hole—something like the wind tunnel in Inuyasha—and trap the dark thing on the other side. When that happens, it will take Mercury with it.

Images of the dark thing tempting travellers into its lair and devouring them. Mirrors hiding the horror beyond. A woman with a seductive smile, waving a man to follow her (she opens her mouth to reveal sharp fangs and no tongue.) Flashes of the different temptations that they'll face. One almost turns away... but it catches him in its web.

I have to stop it.

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Having done a set of dishes before I want to bed, I go to the dishwasher and unload it. I load one set of dishes into the dishwasher, and the dishwasher cleans them. And then I load another set of dishes into the dishwasher. Maybe I can get the place clean before my guest shows up later today.

Notes: I'm mad at my cat because he woke me up. I was chaining those challenges like woah.

My three-step goal for the Sensei Comp is to Reality Check, use Elemental Manipulation and Teleport. I shortened that to "Check, Fire, Port" so I could memorize it yesterday, or I never would have been able to carry that list into a dream.

Onto the dreams.

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I'm driving through, across, around a series of nicely winding roads. There are some problems with traffic, but it happens. I'm just enjoying the ability to slalom through the roads and enjoy the drive.

There's something about me dating a woman.

Then I'm Tony Stark, and I've just managed to get the arc reactor removed. Apparently I was dying immediately beforehand, because I get a phone call that goes immediately to voicemail, and I hear my voicemail playing morosely -

I rush to to the old-style landline and pick it up like a hot potato. "Pepper!" I say, "I was just going to call you!"

So Pepper's here, along with the other woman I was dating. At this point, I'm no longer Tony Stark, but I am some rich guy who needs to have kids to... um... leave things to. (It made sense at the time; let's just say that if I was playing as myself, this idea would really freak me out.)

Neither of the two women that I am now dating want to have kids, so I'm talking to a third woman who my family had an arranged marriage thing going on with. All four of us are sitting in a guest bedroom, hashing out legal details. The arranged marriage woman thinks that I should actually get married to one of the other two women because I'm romantically involved with them, but Pepper points out that marriage is actually a protection for the kids.

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(I wake up briefly and attempt to WILD. It doesn't work, but the dream goes lucid later on.)

My point of view is following a sky train car suspended from cables over a vast forest. Inside the train car are dozens of sloths, and they're crawling all over the inside and outside of the suspended car.

Now I'm inside a building in a downtown area, stone and brick and lots of windows. My hands are sore because I've been climbing the indoor jungle gym using only my index fingers... because that's what sloths do?

There are fireworks outside and I hurry over to a window to watch them with the three people I'm here with: my mom, a girl from my childhood who died a few years ago, and her mom as well. The fireworks aren't super extravagant, but they're inside the city over the square, so it's pretty cool to see.

Back inside the building on the lower floor, there's a grocery store. A villain—possessed Harry Dresden?—is threatening the people there.

I've wandered back inside, and while the grocery store is on the ground floor, I'm on the second floor despite having just walked in from the square. I remember the Sensei Comp, and think about how I've always had trouble phasing through a floor, even though walls aren't that hard.

I drop to all fours and focus on pushing my hands through the hardwood floor. Three inches down, four inches down.

I remember that in order to earn points, we do have to be lucid. OK, I think. I know I'm dreaming, I'm lucid, I'm lucid. I chant it as a mantra as I start to feel my knees sinking through the floor. I'm lucid, I'm lucid.

The floor has almost enveloped my torso and I blink -

I fly through the air and land on the floor below, coming face to face with Not Dresden. He turns from threatening the people in the store and looks at me with a wide grin. I ignore him.

Fire, fire is definitely a thing, I think to myself. Ah, reality check first. Then fire, then teleport.

"One, two three four five six," I count on my fingers. "Reality check done."

Then I throw a wall of fire at Not Dresden. He jerks back and dissipates the flame, but it's a close thing. The look on his face is something.

Also, apparently sending flames at your enemies counts as flirting.

Remembered another dream from last night as I was surfing Dreamviews. Weird that I didn't remember a lucid at first—I must have had it earlier in the night.

This dream references Sensei's Sexy Comp (tell your friends.)

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I remember that I wanted to try pushing through a solid object. There is a wooden door in front of me, with standard front door patterns routed into the wood—it's something like a grid of 3x2 rectangles. I put out a hand, and feel some resistance, like a rubber bubble. I push through, and for a brief second it's like I have my eyes closed, and I'm through to the other side.

Does that count? I think. I feel like I was supposed to keep my eyes open for this challenge.

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Apparently when I read through Sensei's challenges from the last competition, the idea of phasing through an object stuck in my head, apparently because it's not something that I've done very often. Even in non-lucids, I'll be running away from something and there will always be a door there.

Adventure: 1/10
Control: 7/10
Fear: 1/10