ErraticHopper

Winter Competition Night 4

Finally a full dream!

Fragment: I am living in some cheap area and know some weird fashion folk. I have a boyfriend and live in a small dark apartment. I talk to a friend about a manga and say slice of life seems to be fashionable lately - there are loads floating around with similar art style.

Then I am on a canal boat with my family. We're going along the canal and the boat is rocking a lot. The water is rough. I see a great blue wave splash up and hit the front window (which narrowboats don't have) with a lot of force. The boat rocks and all the passengers gasp and scream. Boat is a bit red and green on the inside. The water rises up again as we go under a bridge. There seem to be quite a lot of low bridges rather too close together.

We reach our destination and get off the boat onto the towpath. The canal seems much wider here and its layout makes less sense. It's more than twice as wide and on the far side only there are more bridges cutting off that area of the water - as if it is splitting into pipes. I see a man moving quickly through the water with only his head above the surface, grinning widely. This makes perfect sense to me. We are here to go kayaking - except that in this dream it's a bit different. The kayak along with most of the body (and the paddle) sinks under the surface of the water and you can paddle around at high speed with only your head and neck above the surface.

We get onto the water and I immediately set off, paddling fast and hurtling around in a spiral across the canal. I don't notice a thing until I open my eyes and see I am about to crash into the brick wall of one of the further tunnels, but I manage to pull myself back with my paddles and rush straight into the tunnel instead. Looking back I can see the instructor laughing at me. The way I'm steering the kayak doesn't feel realistic, looking back - I've kayaked before but this feels more like steering in a video game than paddling in real life

As I turn back and come out of the tunnel, I come almost face to face with a blonde seemingly middle-aged woman. Evidently I can see a bit more of her - seems her body above the waist is out of the water since she's wearing a lanyard and plastic name tag. It says "My name is Bridget B[can't remember]."
"I talk like this:"
Underneath that line is her name rewritten with an odd alphabet composed of smiley faces. They are squashed and warped in different directions to correspond to letters of the alphabet. I remember examining this a bit more closely, comparing these to the English letters of her name - I decided it made sense.

She might be an instructor too. I look back at her and see her name label shows even more information now, about her life. I'll paraphrase what I can remember:

"When I was...,..." I can barely remember any of the first column. Something about her mental state and how she ended up writing with smiley faces when she was younger. The second column says: "Now, I'm 63. I spent time at X hospital and got much better. Now I teach kayaking here and blah blah." There was also a third column but I don't remember a thing about it. But I do remember reading this whole label and I remember how it looked: perfect English and the lines were spaced evenly. That wouldn't have helped me become lucid...

Hand-drawn artwork:

I did a drawing but right now the drawing is at home and I'm not... And I want to publish this before it gets too late. I'll add the drawing later. For now please give me the benefit of the doubt and let me claim the points.

Excellent RCs 2pt
NLD 1 pt
WBTB (failed) 2pt
Hand-drawn artwork 2pt
Night 4 total: 7 pt
Competition total: 15 pt

Went to bed 9:56 PM
Attempt START 10:18 PM - FAILED

Bridget, by the way, did not look 63