Verre

Ritual: I had a vibrating alarm in my hand, but I think it was the cat that woke me, as there was still four minutes left on the alarm when I got up after the end of the dream. The cat is a likely culprit, since he frequently comes and meows at me several times in the morning, even after he's been fed. Whatever it was, luckily I had the presence of mind to remember not to move, and if the cat was meowing, somehow I did a great job of tuning him out. I focused on trying to maintain a state just below the threshhold of full waking that would allow me to DEILD.

My DEILD technique developed unintentionally out of my WILDs, since I had always instinctively chained them through inadvertant half-wakings. For this reason it feels natural to try to DEILD by "separating" my sense of the dream body from my physical one rather than incubating visual impressions, since I do WILDs the same way, so I started by trying to move my dream-limbs. I wasn't entirely sure if it was working, as it felt a lot like I was really moving, but it also seemed suspiciously easy and I wasn't getting tangled in the bedcovers. Eventually I was raising my knees alternately until it felt almost like I was marching in place. I had the impression that I was lying on my back while doing this, although it is almost certain that in WL I was actually lying on my side.

I hadn't been dreaming right before I half-woke, at least as far as I could recall, so there was no particular scenario to dwell on. Instead I just let imagery form randomly. There was a series of brightly-colored hypnagogic scenes that for some reason were all very cartoon-like. None of them turned into a dream, nor did I expect them to. All my thrashing was with the intent to integrate myself well enough into the dream body that I could "get up" out of bed.

(Actually as I was writing this account I did remember a non-lucid dream that must have occurred in the previous sleep period. But I didn't remember it at the time so it did not influence the attempt.)

I thought I could be more certain I was really dreaming if I moved in an unnatural way, so I tried some rotations. I was unable to rotate laterally, but eventually managed to rotate around my body's vertical axis until it felt like I was lying on my face. This was especially interesting because the whole time I was convinced I felt the cat standing on me, so the impression of his weight went from being located in my chest to on my back. At this point things seemed sufficiently unnatural that I was confident I was dreaming, so I continued to roll horizontally to the side until I fell right out of the bed. It still felt remarkably lifelike, but my landing was much too soft and painless to be real... in RL I'd likely suffer serious injury if I rolled out of the bed that way, since the bed is quite high and I suspect I'd hit my head on the bedside table on the way down!

DEILD: As I scrambled up from the floor, I noted that my mind felt very clear but my senses were vague. I danced a bit as I left the room, since I was still trying to transfer sensation and awareness fully from my sleeping self to my dream body. I still had a shadow of a doubt that I might be confused and actually awake, so I was slightly concerned about the prospect of leaving the house naked. However, I didn't feel like bothering with clothes if I was dreaming, and I figured as soon as I left the house I'd know for sure, because in my dreams the landscape outside is usually different.

Sure enough, as I stepped out the sliding door from the kitchen, instead of the concrete pool patio I found myself standing next to a steep hillside heavily overgrown with brush and small trees. I started climbing it and the earth was loose and leafy enough that it was easy to get purchase on it even though the slope was extremely steep; it seemed like a 60 degree incline. I remembered that my goal was to reach a winter forest, and promptly noticed the patches of wet snow on the ground, like those that appear when it has snowed recently but much of it has already melted. I momentarily wonder if I will be cold without clothes on, but remind myself that my dream persona is often a vampire, so the cold shouldn't bother me.

I have elaborate tasks stored up: there are a lot of things I plan to do in the forest, like another attempt at my lucid dare and perhaps "Hansel and Gretel" for the TOTY. But the snow reminds me of the TOTM, and I recall that was the reason I had specified a "winter" forest in the first place. I decide that it would be nice to get wings again and that the basic task won't be too hard to accomplish as long as I can find a DC to throw a snowball at. I scoop up some snow and pack it into a ball. The texture feels a little off as the snow comes together, too smooth and almost slick, rather than with the crunch of real snow.

(WLR: I realize that the odd texture of my snowball was probably influenced by dolphin's post on the TOTM thread where he says that his snowball ended up being a rice ball! I think the plasticky texture was also influenced by a knickknack I saw the other day in a Paper Source store: it was a little snowman made of some sort of white latex-like material that you could build up into shapes and then it would slowly "melt" again.)

Snowball in hand, I need to find some DCs. I look around but there is no one in sight. However I see a couple houses in the distance, off the to left beyond some open ground. I come down from the hill and go that way instead, in the direction of the houses. I figure I can ring the doorbell of one of the houses and lob the snowball at whoever opens the door—a bit rude, perhaps, but it will get the job done! But soon the problem is simplified when I see two DCs walking directly toward me, women dressed in business casual. I feel a bit anxious that something might go wrong before I get close enough to hit them with the snowball. Maybe I should just throw it now? I try to remember how the TOTM was worded: did it specify that the snowball needed to hit? [In retrospect I see that it does.]

While I vacillate we are still walking toward one another, and soon it looks like they are in range, so I throw the snowball. It misses, so I quickly make another and try again. It misses as well, so I pack a third one and aim more carefully. This time the snowball strikes the woman walking on the left on the lapel of her teal-colored suit jacket. The women seem nonplussed at first, but instead of protesting they soon start making snowballs of their own to throw at me, so we have an old-fashioned snowball fight.

Meanwhile two more DCs, middle-aged men, are approaching from another direction, and quickly get drawn into our game. One of the men seems annoyed initially when he is struck by a snowball, but before long he is participating enthusiastically and exclaiming, "I love this! I love this!" as though rediscovering the pleasures of childhood. The other man is older and well-dressed, with a strong accent that sounds not quite German but something in that neighborhood. He says, "Uh... apologies for staring. A rigorous loser, poor loser." I can make out his words distinctly but I don't know what he's referring to, and at this point I wake up.