Verre

Ritual: Set vibrating alarm for 40m at 6:20am. I don't remember it going off, but I began dreaming that I was trying to fall asleep, until it gradually dawned on me that I was already dreaming. It was 7:19 when I awoke, so given that the dream must have manifested at some point after the signal went off at 7am (since it was not interrupted by it), it could have lasted up to 19m. I'm classifying this as DILD and not EILD since lucidity was not initiated by recognition of the device signal.

DILD: Initially I am on a beach, lying on a sort of cot, trying to fall asleep. There are other people all around me, and their activity and noise is keeping me awake. I mention aloud to someone nearby that I seem to be entering REM state even while awake, as I notice crisp and colorful visuals superimposing themselves over my visual field. Even though the new scene is layered over the old one, it is distinct enough that I can make out details: I am at the edge of a river running through a futuristic city. Some sort of V-shaped flying craft is flying in tripartite geometrical formations up above, the crafts each giving off light colored red, white, or blue, each grouped into a separate section. Is this meant to be a patriotic display?

I do not change position, but the cot I'm lying on becomes a sort of couch as the environment around me resolves into a room full of kids. Someone plays a video on a TV monitor, which annoys me because I am trying to fall asleep and the music is distracting. But then they mention that the video features Jonathan Tweet, and the name sounds familiar. When I remember it is one of my favorite game developers, I take more interest in the video and sit up.

Something makes me think this is a kind of school where the kids are learning lucid dream abilities. One boy, bald, sits to the left of me on my couch and he's trying to test his powers against me. He takes my hand in his, which begins to glow blue, and I realize that he's trying to "crystal" me, that is, harm me with the pale blue light he is creating. I counter it easily, however. This frustrates him and he begins trying to bite me. He opens a disturbingly wide mouth and tries to chomp down on my hand, but I counter him by softening both his flesh and his resolve, so that mouth sags toothlessly and he never completes the bite. We go through this cycle three or four times before I tire of the game and get up.

By now I'm aware that I am already dreaming, and I walk into the next room, recalling my personal goals. [I accomplish a personal task, finding a certain fictional character, then suggest that we become dragons to fulfill one of the TOTYs.]

I lead the way to a window and lift it open. We're about four storeys up, but I jump out without hesitation and spread my arms, letting the air catch me. As I fly off to the left, I focus on trying to develop the "feel" of a dragon body: four legs, wings, tail, scaly skin. I haven't tried this before and the results are so-so, a fluctuating hybrid between the new bodymap and my usual one. I am flying over what strikes me as a mid-twentieth-century city. There are no skyscrapers, just a mixture of low commercial and residential buildings that cover a wide expanse. I recall that the task requires me to destroy a village, but the city below seems too urban to qualify. Would a neighborhood count as a "village"? But my moral qualms kick in, and I hesitate to bring wrath upon an innocent residential neighborhood.

I fly further on, toward the edge of the city, looking for a more remote target, preferably one with few occupants. After exploring the land for a while, I find a spot that, while a stretch to call it a "village," at least satisfies my ethical preoccupations: it is a cluster of buildings around a large industrial apparatus, evidently a manufacturing concern of some kind. I don't notice any people wandering around, so hopefully there are not many on site to be harmed. I can't imagine I'll find a better target (at least in relation to my own concerns, rather than the specifications of the task), so I begin circling over the site, breaking the buildings and bashing them down. Meanwhile I focus on maintaining my dragon form; this takes constant vigilence because it is so unfamiliar, and too easily slips into sensations more congruent with human limbs.

What color dragon am I? I recall that D&D dragons can take many different colors, with corresponding breath weapons. On the ruins of the factory, I test acid and frost breath in turn, trying to decide which feels more natural. I like the effects of frost—after freezing metal walls solid they shatter in a satisfying way—but then I remember that the task specifies leaving flaming ruins in my wake, so I switch to fire. There isn't much in the way of visuals; rather than great gouts of flame, my fire breath is more of an intense heat that makes metal glow red. But I dutifully knock down and burn the factory into rubble.

Afterwards, I hover anxiously over the destroyed site to see if anyone was harmed by my stunt. (I know, I know, I make a terrible dragon.) I do spot someone—something?—running around frantically, but as I peer closer, it does not look human at all. Curiously, it appears to be a small white gem that I take to be a cubic zirconia, attached to a tiny wire loop that looks like it must have once been the pendant of an earring. The sense of scale has been skewing dramatically as I have been peering closer, and now I feel back to my normal human size and form, kneeling over ruined buildings the size of an architectural model. I look carefully and spot two more little gems running around. Unless there are more I don't see, three victims isn't too bad, and at least they're still alive, even if they're looking understandably anxious. (How do gems even look anxious? It was something in the way they moved.)

[I've been concentrating on my task and realize I have lost track of my friend. I look for him and we are briefly re-united before I wake up.]

Ritual: After five hours of sleep I woke naturally and was determined to make a good WILD attempt. I spent an hour-long WBTB reading and writing about dreams, then returned to bed just before the sun rose. Despite a promising transition phase in which I observed hypnagogic visuals and audio distinctly manifesting, I was interrupted by frequent re-awakenings and eventually realized it was time to turn on my side and enter real sleep. I fully expected to WILD at this point because the conditions felt ideal, but instead I just had NLDs.

NLD: I had just left a cafe and was walking down the sidewalk to where I had parked a couple blocks away. The sky was oppressively dark, darker than seemed natural, and I composed a couple lines to try to describe it:

The world cowers beneath an enormous dark,
Unrepentent and unredeeming.

I wasn't sure if I liked them but figured I should write them down as soon as I could, because if I came up with a whole structure I could always come back to it and work it into something better.

As I entered the parking lot I noticed the moon. The last few days have seen a huge harvest moon, but this one was even bigger, with that sallow yellow hue that tints it when it is still low in the sky. Moreover, the pattern on its face was unusual: it resembled a winged dragon, drawn with iconic simplicity and in a rampant position like a figure on shield heraldry. I felt an urge to photograph it.

I opened the passenger side door, left it open, and sat down on the edge of the seat to brace myself so I could try to frame a good clear shot of it on my iPhone. I thought I felt movement and the image was bouncing around on the screen, the moon lost among some trees now. Was the car driving off with me? How inconvenient! I reached to the side and jerked up the emergency brake, then returned to my attempt to take a picture.

As I held up the phone again and looked at the image on the screen, I was more alert to the possibility of movement this time, and yes, I was able to confirm from it that indeed we were moving, and this was preventing me from taking clear photograph. Bad car! We were now driving rather quickly down a city street so I scooted fully inside and managed to get the door closed. (I realize now that in the dream the car door was hinged in the back and opened backwards, flat against the side of the car, rather than being hinged in the front and opening outwards as in WL.)

Once the car door was closed I wanted to get control of the car back, so I awkwardly climbed over into the driver's seat. A towel seemed to be wrapping around my feet and impeding me, but with some effort I managed to get myself seated appropriately so that I could take over the driving. I had been planning to do some other things before leaving the quarter of the city that we'd come from, but by now we had driven away too far for it to be convenient to return, so I decided to just go home instead.

After that I was waking up, but there was one more scene where I was standing next to a tram and again wondered if I wanted to return to the area I'd been in at the start of the dream. Once more I decided not to, since I couldn't be sure the tram would go to the right place either, and I was at that point under the impression that it was the tram, not my car, that had driven off with me.

Then I realized with exasperation how absurd it was that dreams continually present me with situations that are extraordinary by the standards of waking life, yet I usually don't recognize them as evidence of dreaming. Why not? "I guess I just don't find them strange" was all I could come up with. Later I realized that I was at least still half in a dream state as I had these thoughts, and didn't realize I was dreaming then either.