CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #242: The Return of the Rabbit

I’m riding in the back of a Suburban with several of my business partners. “PM” is the man behind the wheel and we’re driving slowly around a dirt loop, listening to the soundtrack from the video game that we’re working on. The music for our battle scene concludes and breaks into a slower section.

There’s a new part, a soft solo of a guitar-like stringed instrument that I’ve never heard before. It's beautiful! PM turns back to say, “I thought this part sounded fucking badass.” I enthusiastically agree that the new music sounds “all badass”. PM’s driving very erratically but not very concerned about it. I become semi-lucid, noting that this is probably a dream. I start laughing when he plows right over a stop sign and now I’m sure that this is a dream. PM is laughing too, and stops the car.

We all get out and there are several of the guys here, PM, “Leroy”, and probably “Z” as well as maybe more. I put my hand on PM’s upper back/shoulder and kind of massage it, wanting to stay really connected to the dream. “Hey man,” I say, “this is a lucid dream. This is the first time that you've been in one of these with me. I’m really happy you’re here!” I feel very happy to have these guys here with me and I enjoy the swell of positive emotions. I tell PM that I’ll do my best to remember the new parts of the song and that I wonder whether he’ll remember them too.

We walk down a dirt path through some trees and night falls quickly. We’re moving through an industrial area by the water and I think that I’d like to summon Dreamer. I look down to see that there are 4 shadows in the group. Must be me, PM, Leroy, and Z? I hold out my left hand, imagining that Dreamer will take hold of it. I feel something vaguely like a hand, then look down again to see a fifth shadow (in a dress!) holding onto my hand.

I look over and Dreamer is standing next to me! Her hair is blond rather than purple now and very short, the bangs bluntly chopped almost in the form of a bowl cut. She’s just wearing a shirt and some kind of pants, though, not a dress. We smile at each other. “Hey guys, this is…” and then attempt to introduce Dreamer several times. I’m mortified that twice in a row I completely goof her waking life name before finally getting it right. I feel awful about this, very embarrassed.

The guys continue ahead and Dreamer and I walk just behind, coming to an abandoned wharf. I recall that we had recent, very specific plans for this dream (to try to heal one another’s sniffles, ha ha…) I ask her whether she remembers and she replies, but I have a hard time understanding her. I move really close to Dreamer’s face, trying to understand her or read her lips or anything, but it’s not working. For a moment I wonder whether there was a kissing task, but no, that wasn’t it, maybe that was someone else’s lucid dare. (Correct, actually -- this was a dare that Dreamer completed a while back!) I quit focusing on her lips and on this mumbling problem, assuming that her speech will sort itself out if I just quit worrying about it.

As we walk further along the water, we talk about how nice it is to just stroll through the dreamworld. I tell her that I’m glad that we’re getting to hang out in such a stable dream and how relaxing this is. I feel peaceful and happy, which reminds me of the patronus task. I tell Dreamer that I want to try the patronus and she moves close to wrap me up in a hug. I extend my right arm and she places her left hand under my wrist, almost to support it. I tell her that I feel super happy in this dream and that I think the patronus is going to be easy! She enthusiastically agrees.



Immediately, pulses of blue energy pour out of my fingers and float to the ground in a big ball. And now scampering along the ground near our feet is my bunny patronus. “Oh, he is cute!” says Dreamer. As he hops around, the bunny turns from a blue, glowy patronus into a real bunny. He hops further along the wharf. Dreamer grabs my hand and pulls me along to follow him. We follow him for a while through an old, crumbling breezeway until the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.