Verre

Ritual: I often wake up briefly during the night, but at one point last night I noticed that my husband was awake too, so we ended up having a conversation, probably around 3 or 4am. After that it was hard to get back to sleep, and I tossed and turned for a while. Eventually I realized that I was tossing and turning with the distinctive sensations that suggested I might already be asleep. I played with it a bit, rolling until I was sure that I was not moving in a physical way, and when I felt certain that I was in the dream state, I "got up."

WILD, "Julbock": I realized that it was my first WILD since moving to my new house, but as is typical, I failed to recognize the ways that the dream environment was different from WL. In fact, it bore very little resemblance to the place I currently live.

I remembered my intention to work on the last two TOTYs I haven't completed, but after my difficulties making rainbows the other day, the idea felt stressful. Maybe I could just relax and explore the dream world? But I knew that abandoning my intentions was a recipe for losing lucidity fast. I decided on a sort of compromise: I would work on the Basilisk—why do I keep thinking of it as Basilisk? This is a mistake I keep making in waking life, not in dream—I would work on the Chimera task, but rather than go through the motions and try to force things to happen, I would let my subconscious take care of it.

I was actually surprised how well this worked. Normally, if I needed a goat (as the task specifies) I would deliberately try to summon one, but this time I just held the idea casually in the back of my mind as I walked through the my darkened apartment. Moments later, what should catch my eye, but a stuffed toy goat! It actually resembled an object that I possess in waking life, a little Beanie Baby goat that I have for many years brought out around Christmas time and designated the "Julbock." I have not yet brought it out this year, but it crossed my mind to do so a few times recently.



"Would a stuffed goat work?" I wondered as I picked up the small toy. I tried to remember the wording of the task. Surely it just specified "goat," not "live goat" or "real goat," as if those terms could even be meaningful in dream, so I figured that this goat would be adequate for my purposes, and carried it with me.

Since the task required the chimera to act violently against DCs, I didn't want to create it in my own apartment, what with the dream version of my husband asleep in the other room, so I left and went out into the hall. (It is worth specifying at this point that I don't live in an apartment, and have not for many years, nor have I ever lived in any apartment that resembled the one in this dream, which is what I mean when I say that this dream environment was very different from WL.)

Across the hallway was an open door leading into another bedroom, apparently empty. Should I summon the chimera there? But I didn't know whose bedroom it was, so I decided to keep moving. To my right was a solid wall, the end of the hallway, so I turned left and walked down the corridor. The hallway was narrow to start with, and the walking space was further restricted by the many chests of drawers that were pushed up against the wall on the left hand side.

I sidled along with barely room enough to pass through the corridor for about twenty feet, until I emerged into a slightly wider but still relatively cramped lobby area. To my left, a chest-high counter bordered a desk and work area where two women were seated, clearly employees of this apartment complex. Attached to the wall behind them was a row of large gingerbread men, a festive decoration for the holiday season—but also just what I had been looking for. I was impressed how well my subconscious was pulling through for me. You see, in my earlier WL attempts to plan how how I might complete the chimera task without harming any human-like DCs, the inspiration occurred to me: have it fight gingerbread men! I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about crushing some animated DC cookies, since I happily bite the heads off gingerbread men in WL. And now, even without any elaborate summoning rituals or focused intent, my subconscious had handily provided me with everything I needed to complete the task: I had my goat, and I had some gingerbread men that could serve as victims. All I needed now was to transform the goat into a proper chimera and cause some cookie mayhem.

"Could I borrow those gingerbread men?" I asked the women politely.

"Sure," one of them replied nonchalantly.

"Okay," I said, preparing myself for the complicated part. "I'm going to try to keep this under control. Hopefully no one will get hurt."

Though I intended my words as a subtle warning, it was apparently so vague that the women took no notice whatsoever. One of them asked the other, "Could you get me a Coke?"

"Sure," the other replied.

"Half," added the woman who had made the request. This puzzled me. I had assumed that the request was for a can of Coke from a vending machine. How would one bring back half? But I didn't put too much thought into it, because I was preparing to transform the stuffed goat into a chimera... everthing was in place...

...And I woke up, once again, just before I could get to the heart of the task. When I was at my best, early this year before my long recent dry spell, I could often keep from fully waking and DEILD-chain my lucids in order to finish complex tasks like this, but now I seem to be out of practice.