dream fragment

Non-dream stuff - only a couple of non-lucid fragments, have vague memories of more but can't put them to words.

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Fragment 1:
Remember being at a rustic village or inner area of a castle with my partner. It was a popular tourist attraction in the dream's context and it was day time.

We walked a path until we were at a place with shops, and one shop we stopped by was a wine shop. They showed us some special packs we could buy, and for whatever reason we were interested. The wine "bottles" were odd though, because they were the shape of a drinking flask, even though they were still made of glass. They even had paper labels like normal bottles.

Some of the wines were unusual; one was made from peas. I remember the lady at the counter asking if we wanted other specific ones like "homosexual (something?)" wine. Most of the wines made no sense, even in the dream. We still ended up buying 2 packs of 9 flask bottles each...

Fragment 2:
Was playing some sort of old real-time-strategy game. Remember getting annoyed by the fact that some interactions simply didn't work at all like expected.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at around 10:45 and started writing this about half an hour later. Several non-lucid dreams;

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Dream sequence 1:
I was in a game, but it was a mix of reality and World of Warcraft. I was playing with one of my siblings I think and the area was like a place called Dire Maul (DM) in the game; it is an ancient elven structure or city and the most prominent feature is a Colosseum-like area. "Me" was level 57 and the dream's context was set in the original version of the game where the level limit was 60.

We were at this place to kill some generic enemies, though in the actual game there would have been ogres here. But where we were at now there were vampires. I remember something about a quest to get infected by vampirism (this started to blend a bit with ES Oblivion) and I did by going into a dark hallway (the halls are very large in DM) and then left the area and went outside.

I approached an exit to the area and saw a dead Wyvern past the exit archway, and I suddenly felt very wary of danger, and continued approaching this archway, then going through it and looking around carefully. The area on the other side was very open but it was like it hadn't been designed yet by the developers, as there was some jungle but generally it was very bare and flat, which it shouldn't have been. There was a Wyvern master and a Gryphon master, for Horde/Alliance factions respectively. There were some shop stands under a small covered area and they were selling some crafting recipes. They looked cheap and I knew they had limited availability so I bought some.

Some sort of transition after looking at a preview item which was like a blue t-shirt with white stripes on the collar.

Dream sequence 2:
I remember walking down a pavement, alongside a road, sloping down. I was near a palace which I could see through metal fencing. I remember seeing Corinthian pillars with gold leafed tops. I was going to go in through the front, but then remembered I was carrying something for a dinner or party at the palace, so I thought I best use a servant's access lest someone complain at me for not using it. I did not feel like I was a servant, but a guest bringing something to add.

I found the access further down the road and went in. Someone from the palace was here to greet me but otherwise there was a long queue over some zig-zagging ramp upward. I went past people, as I didn't have to be in this queue, but I noticed there was rubbish on the floor and I suggested to the person that came to greet me that I might pick up the trash and they said "no no don't bother" or something. It did bother me, as I hate seeing litter.

Then maybe there was some sort of transition but now I could see a big climbing rope ladder thing, made of green plastic. It went up many many stories in height. I'd say somewhere between 6 and 8 and I started climbing it. At the top was a flat segment that then went into a tower thing. I went in there I think.

Now there were more stairs and some more people from the palace were here to greet me, I remember an old black man with a nice smile. The stairs were not normal, neither was the inside of this tower. Everything was square. The steps were massively wide and made of thin wood, almost like they were made of veneered multi-layer plywood. I remember it was a bit of an effort to climb them and then I reached a final step, there were no more steps but the tower still went up. I looked at one of the people from the palace who was still near the entrance and they did something and suddenly the steps were moving, reorganising themselves into more climbing.

Dream fragment 3:
An instant transition, I think.

Some like a false awakening. It was dark and I was in our real bathroom, though things looked a bit off. I was naked, which matches the way I sleep, but I remember noticing I had two extra genital organs. I was either sitting on the edge of the tub or in it. For some reason I started playing with myself until I reached a climax though I did not feel any real excitement doing any of it, more just curiosity about the extra organs.

I remember putting on clothes for some reason before leaving the bathroom and then going back into bed.

There was another dream after this, though I don't remember it anymore because of the time its taken to write all of these... I did do reality checks after I actually woke up while doing regular morning stuff before sitting down to write.

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Some notes:

• The first dream is very typical and it's the kind of dream where I find it really difficult to notice things as being "odd" because of the context. Everything that's "odd" just feels normal, since it's a game.
• I'm not really certain what happened with my sibling in that first dream, as I didn't see them again after the first part.
• I've forgotten a lot of details about the both the first and second dream, but I remember that it was day-time apart from inside some sections in the first dream which were in the large, dark, hallways of DM, which were unlit in the dream.
• I don't think I've ever had vampires in appear in a dream context before.
• In the second dream, I think outside was sunny, but the road I walked down initially was covered by tree canopy, though I don't remember seeing the trees.
• The setting of this second dream was somewhere like my native country, but I'm not sure that I felt I was anywhere specific in the world. The scenes were all dream-generated, anyway.
• I think what I was carrying was a large object though I honestly don't remember what it was. Maybe a large vegetable like a pumpkin or a giant turnip.
• The third dream was quite unusual, as I rarely have false awakening dreams and the sexual side of it was unexpected.
• Additionally, I did have some coffee last night before bed. A very weak coffee, which seems to help me with dreaming, and doesn't really make me not be sleepy anyway. Coffee doesn't generally make me feel "awake" in a way that is opposite to sleepiness, it simply makes me feel somewhat more focused.

Non-dream stuff; I woke up at 5:59 initially, then being up for a few minutes and then going back to bed and waking up again later around 7 and later at 10:30 when I got up. I haven't numbered the following sequences because the order in which they happened is really messed up in my memory.

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Fragment and intermission:
This was when I first woke up at 5:59; I simply remember music playing softly. The next paragraph is from waking life:

I woke up from the sound of torrential rain, as did my partner, and we both got up from bed to look. I realised I was still hearing the vague memory of this music very faintly, at which point it stopped completely as I also realised the rain was the likely cause for it in the dream world. After a few minutes we went back to bed, but I did reality checks because it felt like an odd situation, to find that this was indeed reality. I realised that perhaps the fact that I was lucid already by being awoken by something odd was what made me think to do a few RCs. I seem to remember going back to bed with the intention of confronting the man from the next dream written...

Dream sequence:
I was in the car with my partner and we arrived at a parking lot. It was day but it looked dark grey and cloudy. The parking lot was in front of a few shops, and my partner wanted to go to one of the shops for groceries, but closest to us as we got out of the car was a little shop, and I went in and my partner followed. It was a vintage toy shop. There were metallic scale models of WWI and WWII tanks and artillery cannons, and the shop's owner was a man. He had two children, who were also at the shop.

I remember having a look around and taking a liking to a cargo wagon model and a WWII Panzer-like tank model. I always liked the shapes on some of the German tanks. The models were all on display on some glass shelves of some kind, I think. There was a strange red mood lighting and no other lights seemed to be present, actually. This has happened in other dreams though it is uncommon.

Then I was going to buy the model of the tank and my partner was sitting on a sofa thing in the reception area, bored, getting worried the other shop was going to close (which in the dream I felt like he was right about) and then we heard some noise from the other display room and the shop man just said it was his kids.

Then we went out and my partner walked into the other shop, and I was about to too, and I dropped something and I stopped and looked to my left as I was going to pick it up and there was now a small wall close to me but a gap between the wall and the shop. There was a man, crawling forward on his stomach and making raving noises like "oooaaa oooaaa" repeatedly. He looked right out of his mind, and he took what I dropped. I got a bit angry and stepped forward menacingly, remembering now that I was scowling too.

He got up and stood tall; he was a fair bit taller than me and still had an odd expression on his face, and initally just walked forward a bit toward me at which point I threatened him in my native language saying something to the effect of "you wanna get some?!", he stepped forward again and I stepped back because he had long arms and I was wary of him being able to strike me from further than I'd be able to hit him back. Another man stood up from a seat to the left (that I had previously not noticed, in fact there was a whole row of seats and people like at a clinic) and that second man grabbed the first one and directed him toward a bathroom in the wall of the big shop building and bashed the first man's head on the toilet lid.

Dream fragment:
I remember being in some sort of game, with a lot of water. There were big naval vessels and I remember an interface with a map showing lots of dots and dots with circles around them. All of them were coloured, and I remember most of them were yellow or white, and there were some red ones too. They seemed to represent other ships and naval bases. I remember later being on land and something about a military base and my siblings being there.

Dream fragment:
I remember being in a room with a round table. The table was modern and large, but not actually very high. Around the table were myself, some random people and of particular note an old school friend of mine, which I'll call C. I didn't speak to C directly in the dream, she looked moody and was turned away from the table and she looked as I remembered her. Another girl was talking to me and explaining that C and her girlfriend broke up and that C was upset because of it and that they'd been trying to have kids. I initially thought that was a bit odd.

This other girl started having a discussion with me about a random method I'd never heard of for a woman to get pregnant, and I said something like "well, why didn't they just try insemination?" and the girl looked at me with a funny face and said "insemination?" like she'd never even heard the word. She scrawled some crude diagrams of the female reproductive system and of how this other method was going to work.

C left at some point, and that's all I remember.

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Finally, some notes:

• The raving mad man was someone I perceived in the dream to be like a beggar or vagabond. Not the kind of person I would have felt like I'd be threatening with violence, but I was angry for having something taken from me.
• It was odd that in the dream my partner didn't come looking for me but I didn't think of it in the dream either.
• The lighting in the toy model shop could have been a good cue to RC. I need to add it to my list of Uncommon dream-signs, as I've had it before.
• My old friend C was someone I had a crush on during school time. This should was a dream-sign and good cue for RC. For context, a couple of years later I did talk to her about it and she said that it wouldn't have mattered because at the time I was interested in her, she wasn't intersted in going out with anyone because she was fed up, but we were still friends.
• The fact that C and whoever her girlfriend was were breaking up seemed sudden to me in the dream. In waking life I do know that she has a girlfriend now but I so rarely speak with C that I don't really know anything about her life.
• The other very explanatory girl, felt like one of those irritating people who you can't really have a discussion with. Ironically I'm fairly certain she was dream-generated.
• It is somewhat curious to me that the dream-generated woman I recently had appear in some dreams, the receptionist, was a woman that represents the black hair archetype of woman I've found in waking life, such as C and some other friends. The Anima I've previously had appear in dreams was blonde, quiet, and of somewhat firm attitude. This second dream-generated archetype seems to be a different kind of Anima, more likely to respond and talk but also being firm in attitude.

I should make note that this DJ entry marks a bit of a milestone since starting this dream journal, that my dream recall has generally improved a lot solely by having the intention of writing down the dreams and having a routine to do so. I am no longer forgetting fragments easily between sleeping and waking, though it still happens.

Non-dream stuff; woke up early not remembering any dreams in particular. Eventually fell asleep again and then woke up at around 10, then being woken up "more" by the door. Some non-lucid stuff:

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Dream fragment 1:
I remember seeing a big (to me) naval vessel from camera-like perspective, I think it would be a destroyer or frigate-class, which I think are the two smallest classes. I remember getting the "keys" for it, but don't remember actually driving it.

Dream fragment 2:
I remember being in a car like a modern Nissan and I think I was in one of the front seats, though initially my point of view was at a low height but the car was moving on its own, as there was nobody else in it, and then I was a little bit concerned about how fast it was going to go down a hill, because it was a T-intersection and I was trying to put a seatbelt on.

Dream sequence 3:
I remember a place like a campus or open gardens for some sort of educational complex. It was day, but probably cloudy as things looked a bit grey and I don't remember sharp shadows. Probably around mid-day.
Me and my partner were walking along some concrete slabs that were the paving in this trimmed grass garden area, he was ahead of me, and I was seemingly fixed on my phone and we walked through a building and I realised I was holding an apple pencil on my right hand, to which I thought "wait why did I bring this but forget the tablet?" so I put it in my right pocket. I seem to remember I was wearing my casual pants, as it were, which I likely wouldn't have been in the context of the dream if it were waking life.

We got to a T or corner with the paving and went up some long but not very high steps, only about 3 or 4 steps, into a building. As we walked in I remember metallic catwalks and fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. There was a reception with a lady, with glasses. She was focused on whatever she was doing and I was still fixated on my phone, noticing on some level that my posture was very bad.

We went up some metal stairs on to the catwalk tier and pushed a metal door and entered a room. It had dark wooden board flooring, the walls were a similar colour, and the end of the room had 3 or 4 massive old-style industrial windows. I made particular note as we walked into the room that there were some paintings; portraits of contemporary, people, oddly enough at least one of them was a teacher from the university I went to in waking life.

Then there was a man standing in the room, I realised, as I turned after reaching a point near the windows, and he had his arms crossed but not because of us or anything, was just his pose, and some big men started to come in carrying some stuff, which I didn't make note of. The man addressed me and said "do you have an order?", to which I said "do I have an order?", realising suddenly what he meant after I asked it, I said, "no, I don't have an order", to which he replied something about it being best we weren't in that room then. I did somehow feel that we had entered a room we weren't allowed to enter. Anyway, he walked out with us from the room, as we had nothing else to look at inside anyway and the men were busy bringing stuff in.

As we walked back out into the main lobby, it was transformed from before; now it matched the other room, dark warm, red-ish wooden colours. We went down the stairs, which now were wooden stairs with red carpet of some kind, and I said something and it sounded loud, to which the receptionist, still there and now seeing to some other people, asked me to be quiet or something to that effect.

The man replied something to me and we kept walking down until we reached a window with an alcove, and the three of us sat there, as there was a red pillow thing. For some reason now I remember being sat at a table, but in any case we were having a conversation about something and the man asked something like "were you looking for the old paintings?" (I think I mentioned something of it) and he said how that other room used to have very famous paintings and started recounting which ones.

Oddly enough, my partner who is not artist, understood perfectly what paintings they were and who the painters were. I was simply confused, as I never tend to remember most painters, even famous ones, despite being an artist myself.

I remember my partner and the man were on the other side of the table now, it was definitely a table now and made of the same dark red hued wood, looking glossy. My partner started saying something about "how ridiculous it is that my phone now has to level up to increase its battery life" and as I watched them talk about whatever I suddenly noticed I was getting a bit of a visual aura. I do remember something about my own phone having recently maxed some leveling up attribute and having taken many years to do so.

There was some kind of transition and I don't remember what the context was now but I saw things in a camera-like way and could highlight people and objects in an orange-tinted interface and examine what they had on them remotely.

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Some notes:

• In fragment 2, the context within the car was a clear dream-sign, but unfortunately in that context I never seem to remember to RC because of how "important" it seems to do certain things in that moment.
• In the long dream sequence, it's odd that I was so fixated on my phone, only explained slightly by the dream with the leveling up thing.
• Normally it could be the other way around, like if we've gone shopping, my partner will be the one looking at the phone and I'll be the one leading our walking.
• The building we entered felt like a library, both before and after we went into that room with the paintings.
• The apple pencil is an item I've only recently come into contact with, so it's interesting that it has actually carried over to my dreams, but it did feel odd that its accompanying tablet wasn't present.
• I remember feeling like I could get embarrassed for carrying the apple pencil while looking at my phone which is an android phone. Somehow I felt there was some conflict.
• The fact that I explicitly made note of my posture but did not try to correct it could have been a cue to do a RC. Some physiotherapy I received recently was all about posture and it made me far more conscious of it than I have ever been before, so I will correct posture more often than not when I notice it's an issue.
• I felt like the man we spoke to was the curator of the art in that building.
• It was curious to see the receptionist, as she looked like the one from my other recent dream journal entry, and her reception desk was not too dissimilar despite the completely altered context.
• The visual aura in the dream was odd. I started to cover my eyes to check that it was one in the dream, as I would in waking life. It's the first time this has ever happened in a dream.
• Me and my dad get visual auras at complete random. There is no associated migraine or pain for them as there are for many people, and the cause of our visual auras seems to be unknown.
• The aura in the dream didn't look quite like what happens in waking life but it did bother me and obstruct my field of view.

Non-dream stuff; Woke up at around 9:45. Two non-lucid dream sequences.

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Dream Sequence 1:
The chronological order is a bit off now for me but I think this dream started with me buying some sandstone pillars online. The pillars weren't much taller than me and they were also not very thick.

I remember I went with my partner to collect the pillars, in his car I think. The place was like the opposite of an oasis, it was a desert in the middle of valley that otherwise was pretty much green. The town here was in a raised area in the desert bit. It was day, but I think nearer the end of the day.

Initially when we got there we arrived at someone's house or something and then there were indeed some pillars there, but the seller wasn't. A couple of the seller's relatives showed up, like her mom and dad. The context of gender for the absent person was provided by the family. They commented that she should probably be back soon or something and we went around the town quite a bit and I remember seeing palms and small ponds of water and stuff in the lowest sandy areas. I remember thinking that this was in the US somewhere.

As we went full circle around town I think we went into the parents' house and for some reason we roamed it like we had been family friends for years. The layout of the house was peculiar and both that and the shanty-look it had reminded me of a house my grandmother from my mother's side used to live in, in waking life. But come to think of it, in a bit with stairs in this dream house, there was a lot of light, like the ceiling of the stairs was all a skylight. I remember in this room there were 2 or 3 wooden panels that were hatches to access some things but otherwise the walls were rough and stony.

I seem to remember we'd first gone into a room at the end of the stairs here, which was the seller's room.

Eventually we were outside again and we were just gonna set off in the car again because she never showed up, and I didn't want to take the pillars without the seller being there, for whatever reason. I remember having a number-plate on a note and reading it and comparing it to some other cars in the area and a car that had just arrived with a girl; the girl's cars number-plate was very similar but not quite it. Maybe I had the wrong number on the note but I didn't think about it. It was past sunset at this point, kind of twilight.

There was some kind of transition and I remember in very poor detail some warehouse area and a big truck that was part of someone's evil plan and I wasn't "me" anymore. I think I disarmed the truck or something but don't remember more other than some dream character showing up to get me out of there or advise me.

Dream Fragment 2:
I have a very vague recollection of playing a game like Warframe with one of my siblings.

Dream Fragment 3:
This was the last dream I had but remember little of it, other than being in that place in Lord of the Rings where there was the ill king. The dream took place before Frodo had even started the journeys.

In this room, from which I could see through a window outside a beautiful scenery with snow-covered mountains on a sunny day, there was "me" (whoever I was), Aragorn (I think) and an unspecified female character, either elven or human. I seem to remember her skin looked impossibly smooth but Aragorn spoke to her of something and she said that "something big is coming, I just don't know what it is yet", making me immediately think to myself "she means the ring, it's not happened yet...".

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Some notes:

• The desert town did have tall buildings but everything looked like it was made of mudbrick or sandstone.
• The town looked a bit run-down overall, and in the dream context I knew they hadn't had too much trouble with water shortage but were going to in the future. I remember thinking about solutions.
• That location in general seemed to almost all be dream-generated, apart from the familiar-feeling house.
• The fact that the number-plate I had on a note was so similar to that of the girl arriving should have been a good cue to RC.
• In the LOTR dream I remember the woman had a sword sheath on her right side, so I suppose she was left-handed. I remember noticing Aragorn had a left-side sheath, in contrast.
• The woman was a brunette and she had some sort of forest-green tunic or tabard type clothing, with some tree symbol on it like some characters did in the films. She had a noticeably firm personality but was not uncaring.
• I do not know whether I was physically existent in the last dream or if I was more like a conscious bodiless entity, because of camera-like viewing.

Non-dream stuff; Just some non-lucid dreaming. Woke up at around 8:40.

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Dream Fragment 1:

I don't remember a lot of this one, just that I was trying to build some things in what looked like a map editing world or something. I was placing concrete foundations for buildings along the side of a cliff and placing stretches of roads for what was going to be a residential area.

I remember a transition and a forest. I think the forest was in an MMO game, but it looked realistic and it was day and the trees were large pine trees or perhaps some sort of smaller variety of redwood. I remember a lake and the reflection of the sun and forest, though the lake looked shady, somehow, like the canopy was over it somehow.

Dream Sequence 2:

I was in a game, it felt like a mix of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 and something else MMO-y. I was entering a really dangerous area and my character was a bit weak to attacks and my view of the character was top-down isometric like in D2. I had a shield spell, a spell to summon skeletal minions for a duration and some other summoning spell.

I knew at the end there was a boss, so I just rushed past the enemies as fast as I could, trying to avoid damage using the shield and summons, sometimes taking hits but never getting below half health points, every now and then opening a new town portal in case I died. I remember noticing several packs of enemies with champion enemies and felt annoyed that I was skipping these, as they give good experience and loot. It felt like it took a while, but as I reached the end I could see there was an area down at a lower level.

There was a door closer to me. As I went through the door my perspective changed, I think to first-person, and I went down a number of stairs in some corridors with a few windows, until I reached a door; I remembered to open another town portal, but I forgot I couldn't in this area, so the last portal was a little bit further than I wanted it to be.

I prepared myself for the (I felt) difficult boss before going through another door. I opened the door and went through, I could see a cafe-like place and lots of shelves, all with tins.

The boss was a bull-fighter, except he commanded a massive demon bull. He was addressing me and explaining how the fight was going to work in terms of how to defeat him. He didn't say anything about the attacks he would use; I remember I had a laser pointer and fiddled with it, trying to get the bull's attention to no effect. Now the demon bull was enraged and his eyes glowed vivid red, almost as weak headlights on a car.

The bull was inside the cafe but carefully came out, then getting ready to charge toward me, his muscles tensed, and I waited for him to get very close and I jumped up in a sort of weird backflip. The bull was dazed, I think he'd hit a wall or something and didn't look as muscly. The boss guy had explained that I would have to open one of the many tins when the bull was weakened, and then "cook the heart on a goose's (unintelligible)".

I had a tiny tiny tiny steel axe, smaller than my hand, and I used it to open one of these tins from the shelves; I remember the paper label was orange and the tin was cojoined with another tin, as if the tin had been made this way by mistake. But I managed to pry the lid off with the tiny axe somehow, not feeling too difficult, oddly, and surely enough there was some sort of dark heart-like organ, though it was smaller than my closed fist. There were some other fleshy lumps too, but I'm not certain what they were. Testes perhaps.

I tipped it out of the tin on the floor and looked at the heart and tried to think on where I could cook it, "inside the cafe in an oven", I thought. But then remembered I'd need to cook it on the goose whatever, which I didn't have.

The dream kind of ended there.

There was some other fragment, before these two... I remember a spellbook and something about character selection/customisation... I remember the spellbook showed examples of how spells worked. In particular I remember a spell that would summon a giant skeletal hand to rake a target down into the ground, like a building.

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Some notes:

• The bull's red eyes like that remind me of other dreams I've had where animals had red eyes in the same way. Even once in a sort of fever-dream my dog looked like that, but in that dream I realised she wouldn't harm me, she was still my friend. It's a peculiar dream-sign I hadn't realised until now that has been present for some time.
• The bull looked like a bull, but the features looked like a Baron of Hell from DOOM(2016): https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20160517180410
• I thought it was odd a bull's heart would be so small as to fit into one of those tins, but I simply accepted that it was shriveled or something.
• I thought the other organs might be testes because in my native country eating some animals testes is not uncommon, and these tins were all tinned food; oddly enough, come to think of it, the tins literally only had the organs, not any juice or gravy or anything.
• As the bull was about to charge toward me I was a little bit tense but confident I'd be able to make the jump. I actually didn't jump as high as I expected, but still more than high enough.
• The man, the bull-figher, was mostly passively observing.
• The tiny steel axe was produced from nothing but I accepted that I'd been carrying it with me somehow.

Non-dream stuff; Woke up early enough but slept again and then just stayed in bed far too long because I felt very poorly yesterday. Had a few long non-lucid dreams but let's see what I can remember...

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Sequence 1:

I remember being at a street and walking down with my partner; it was day time and I think the sun was to the right, as we were walking in the shade of some terraced houses or the like. We were going to some rented cars we had at the moment, we had two rented cars and one was up the street and the other down the street. When we got to where the second one should have been, it was gone. We reacted a bit with "oh shit..." as some of the stuff we had was in the boot. I couldn't remember what exactly but I think my partner's laptop and some backpack of mine.

I said we should call the police and I remember "seeing" an interface that showed they'd find it in under an hour. There was even a thing where I could pay the police some more money and they'd use a jet to find it very quickly. My partner said not to bother, because (for some reason) even though the car had been stolen we'd only have to pay the rental company 100 from the deposit, which I found to be odd. But I was still worried about our stuff at the very least.

Can't remember how that sequence ended.

Sequence 2:

Still part of the same general dream somehow, I remember us arriving on foot at a house; it was night time. The place was more like a small castle or small mansion than a house, actually; a typical estate you'd find on large plot of land anyway, the building's stones were limestone, and it probably had some sort of gothic ornamentation. I remember we went in... There was a woman? Or maybe there wasn't anyone, but I seem to remember the presence of a woman.

I seem to remember we went into some rooms and dropped off some stuff we had on us and maybe sat down. The memory here seems to blend with memories of the previous sequence, so I'm not sure what chronological order things took exactly, apart from considering time of day in the dream.

Something about secret rooms... But then I remember that we somehow owned this place all of a sudden and that we were gonna change some things around.

Fragment 3:

I think this came before the first sequence, but some game where my partner was playing and he got a jet and I said "oh, I haven't seen that one before! let me try" and he wouldn't, saying "find your own" in a cheeky way even though he wasn't flying the jet too well, as I remember he clipped the nose of the plane on a skyscraper as he was doing a loop. I remember the jet had a nozzle-mounted machine gun and some rockets.

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Some notes:

• These sequences were much longer, but only writing them down about 3 hours after I've woken up, I've forgotten most of the details...
• I think in sequence 2, there was a fireplace that was lit when we first came in.
• The fact we had 2 rented cars does not make any sense, as I cannot actually drive in waking life. And my partner couldn't be driving 2 cars at the same time, obviously. Just this in itself should have been a good cue for RC.
• The fact my partner didn't care so much about our belongings in the stolen rental was odd too. Again another good cue for RC.
• The police "interface" thing was reminiscent of something from a game, I'm not even sure "where" I saw the interface, I think just in my normal field of view.

Non-dream stuff; Just some non-lucid fragments. Must have woken up at 8 but don't remember it, and then woke up at 9 again, initially thinking it was still 8 and didn't make the correct recall efforts.

---

Fragment 1:
Not sure what the location was, but I remember volcanic rocks and things like that. Most of what I remember was fighting with a witch over a pizza or something, and she had my yellow box-cutter and tried stabbing me with it. We were locked in a struggle of me resisting the knife and her trying to push it into my chest.

Fragment 2:
Think it was part of the same dream, I remember me and one of my siblings playing a game. I remember gyro-copters and gnomes from Warcraft.

---

Notes:

• The box-cutter is one I own in waking life but it's a bit old now and actually isn't very good at all because the blade often drops out of its slot.
• The pizza was small, like a microwave pizza.
• I can't really remember what the witch looked like other than a stereotype, with black pointy hat.

Non-dream stuff; couldn't remember any dreams yesterday. Today I woke up at about 8 but forgot dreams so got up and did something before getting back in bed and then remembering the following non-lucid fragment.

---

Fragment:

I remember I had a camera-like perception and that I was seeing some recorded footage from a car in New York. People were talking about the footage, and it was like one of those CSI programmes. I don't remember the footage very well other than it was the car going on to a bridge, then making a U-turn and then starting to drive off. Then I was at the bridge place and there was a blonde woman in a red dress, whom was implied by the dream context to be a hooker, and she looked pretty clueless but was related to the car thing, especially given the fact she was in the middle of the initial stretch of the bridge road.

Then I moved away from the bridge, to a T-intersection with it, or rather that its road made with another, and saw 2 blue camouflage soldiers diverting traffic and telling everyone to not come closer. They had an RPG-Launcher on their left hand and a typical American assault rifle on their right hand, which made me wonder how they would be able to appropriately fire the RPG at an incoming tank or something. They had blue helmets, too.

In the distance, I saw some skyscrapers, and a certain one behind another had something funny about its logo that was related to whatever was going on at the bridge, but its like nobody else had made the connection, though I don't remember details.

It was day for the entirety of the dream.

---

Some notes:

• I've never been to New York, and in fact have really only ever seen it in games and police tv dramas.
• The blue camo soldiers were more than likely some sort of U.N. force.
• I am not sure that I ever had a physical representation in this dream, so I'm not sure how a RC would have worked.
• The soldiers looked a bit bored and somewhat agitated at the same time.

Non-dream stuff; woke up at around 8:30 and had a dream (the first fragment) but couldn't remember it that well so went back to sleep again and woke up at 10:10 and then came to the computer to write down all of the non-lucid dream stuff below. It took about 40mins to write everything, not counting the notes...

---

Dream fragment 1:

I don't remember much here, but I was at a place similar to the house I'm in now, in waking life. It was day, near the end of the day and I was out at the back as were other neighbours. The walls were short, instead of being tall like in waking life and the view was not of a town but of the countryside. This area seemed to resemble an area a bit west of where I live.

There was a black cat. And it was playful and smart and it would catch mice and handle them differently to other cats. At one point I'm sure this cat talked. But something was odd about him, he was too smart and so I grabbed him and realised his fur was not that of a cat at all, even though he looked like a black cat, he was some sort of little raccoon thing that had tricked us and recently there were fires out in peoples back gardens, small fires, and I knew he was the cause, as I saw him play with matches before. I got rid of him somehow, in a way that wouldn't make him return, but I don't remember what I did. (Have the distinct impression I gave him a good smacking for being a cheeky little thing)

Dream sequence 2:

I was in the car with my partner, I was as usual in my passenger seat and we were driving along a motorway. It was night and there was nobody else on the road. At times my perception of vision changed, to outside the car to scenic views of the road. We went around a long corner and I could see mountains in the distnae as well as forest closer by. I remember seeing displays with double green arrows on them, like it was a racetrack or something, but it wasn't, even in the dream's context. As we kept going we reached a part where the 3-lane road was splitting into two 2-lane roads, one which ramped down.

We continued head on and then there were some cars on-coming on one of the lanes and their driving looked a bit funny; as we reached the end of this road segment we realised that had been a one-way 2-lane road and just everyone else was avoiding us.

I remember we were waiting in a queue to get into a petrol station to get fuel, and it was day at this point.

Dream sequence 3:

I remember being at some sort of hall, that looked like a supermarket really, but there were big theatre curtains and lights and I was there supposedly with my partner, but he looked different, though I felt it was him in the dream. Then there was another man, a dream-character I've not seen and he looked smug. He approached us and there was some sort of crew getting things ready for presenting him and in the dream I was aware that my partner had to go with this guy to the stage for some reason. They gave this man the cue to go on stage (which was not raised, since this was a supermarket...) and I peeked from behind the curtain and saw the spotlights focus on him. I looked at my partner saying "come on you gotta get on there" and he didn't say anything and started to look pale white, and I asked some relatives of this other man what should we do and they were shrugging and saying they didn't know.

Eventually we both went on to the stage and the smug man was surrounded by upper-class looking people and when we approached him he smiled at us and welcomed us but we could see he had that "I'm actually really angry" smile.

The next thing I remember was that I was in some sort of mine or cave, and now things looked like a game, but the smug man was here somewhere too and my partner was at a house and I just knew where it was. I got on a mine cart of some description and sped up, trying to "remember" (in the dream context) where to go, going over some abyss on the rails at one point and then reaching a split and deciding to continue going the way I was already going. I reached an end and though the caves were dark I distinctly remember they looked a dark de-saturated blue. The smug man had caught up and was here already, and I was starting to want to get away aster. Here there was a wooden door and for some reason I knew it just led me to more caves so I opened up some interface and "pressed" a H key which made me start using an item or spell.

It teleported me to the house my partner was at, which was like it was out of Hanzel and Gretel but bigger and as a mansion. It was day and there were some clouds. I walked in and told my partner the man was coming. I saw a glossy cobalt coloured camera and went up to it and punched it with my right fist and then grabbed it by the tripod and smashed it against a window until it was nothing. I said to my partner in a fake eastern european accent; "not very good spy" and I smiled at myself. Then I saw through the windows a big blue truck approach. At first I thought he was gonna hit the house, as it was a massive truck and looked like a petrol tanker. But instead he blocked the front of the house with it, but again, job poorly done because I could still use the front door, and I got out and quickly hid somewhere on a bush before he could see me and as he got out of the driver seat I pounced at him, gripping him by the shoulders initially and then attacking him with my fists and he tried spitting on me and blowing on my face and I ignored it and got a claw weapon out and started scratching the man all over (who now looked like a sweaty redneck and not a smug man at all), and he struggled and I saw damage numbers fly all over the place and he asked with surprise something like "how can you deal so much damage?!".

I defeated him and I got in the truck and my "camera" changed to third person view of the vehicle, which was taller than the house and I drove off against some trees that just got knocked down and kept my momentum (that wouldn't happen so easily in waking life) and I realised this was actually a missile truck, loaded with 18 missiles; on a control interface I saw an interesting option of "teleport payload to target" and I remember I could see a top-down view as a map of the local region; I tried the option and unfortunately I could not see the target I wanted in range, so I drove the truck further, into a city. By the time I reached the city I'd damaged the truck a bit with some clumsy driving through forests and some of the payload was gone, I was down to 11 missiles and I was going to look for a target again, when I saw some man in a suit come toward the truck and waving at me all like "oh no no no!"; there was a small sub-station behind him and the dream more or less ended here.

---

Some notes:

- The presence of fire in the first dream fragment was probably related to the fact that last night shortly before bed there a car fire out back. So the little mischievous animal was more than likely a representation of whoever might have done it. When I realised the creature was not at all a cat I did think it was very odd, and through most of the dream there was a nagging doubt in my mind about it.

- Throughout the entirety of dream sequence 3, my partner was very passive, and though he did say things back at times, I really don't remember what he said in any detail.

- The map in dream sequence 3 reminded me of Fallout 4 and the capitol wasteland from Fallout 3, as well.

- There were many times through all sequences and fragments which would have been good prompts for doing a RC. Unfortunately the game-like nature of sequence 3 made it exceptionally difficult to question anything, as I was too entrenched in my role. Dream fragment 1 and 2 were the ones that made me think "that was odd" a few times, in the dream.

- The missile payload truck was not at all like anything specific from games I've played but rather was dream-generated, as was were many other aspects of sequence 3.

- I remember a music played when I was on the truck approaching the city, something like "the bad guy's gonna get it! hyaaa! the bad guy's gonna get it!" but it reminded me, even in the dream, of the intro song to the game Borderlands 1 (the music being Ain't no rest for the wicked).

Non-dream stuff: A very long non-lucid dream. I only remember one part of it, that I held on to loosely as I was quickly forgetting everything, deciding this was the most important part to remember.

---

Dream sequence:

I was in my native country, in the dream context it had been explained why I think but I can't remember it. I was in a small town and it was day, looking to soon be sunset, as everything looked a bit orange.

This was just a typical town and I was wandering around and there was an old brown-stone church, with one of its doors wide open. I walked in, and I remember I was looking at the floor just before doing so and seeing a roach type bug, but small. In the dream context there was something about going to visit local landmarks. When I entered it wasn't like a church at all, but a community centre of some kind. It was deserted. All the lights were on, but there were many many webs... and spiders, weird ones, some almost as big as my hand. I was very wary, but something compelled me to continue and I kept my instinctive fear in check, wondering why I was fearing them, they were just stood there on their webs, undisturbed for years, clearly.

I wandered through the first two rooms, and the second room was at the "back" and had large modern glass windows that were letting the sunset light in. Everything had that orange light bath, as expected. I used my boot to clear away some webs I just couldn't avoid if I wanted to move further. After having a look around in this room, where there had been some displays of some kind, I turn back a bit and again have to carefully remove some webs from the way, feeling extremely wary of the spiders on it. I remember being in a room or common hall that connected other rooms and there was a bag of some kind on a swivel office chair. On topof the bag was a black leather wallet. Everything was absolutely covered in webs and I looked at the wallet with the intent of seeing what was inside and taking it, but I saw a slightly open door and could sense something. It was a very small room, a cupboard of some kind, and I couldn't fully open the door in, because of an object inside. The light inside the tiny room was also on, oddly. I reached with my left arm into the room and felt something stony and as I touched it, I saw the wallet and bag disappear and heard a female voice saying "You have resisted temptation. You are blessed with protection." I could "see" an interface icon showing a "buff" as in a game, but the context of the dream felt all too real.

I remember exploring a little more but there were some areas that didn't have lights on and were getting on for darkness. It is implied in the dream that I went into these areas, as next I remember being at a doorway in the same building and walking into my the room my mom uses as an office at home in waking life, except the view through the windows was part of the dream context. I found it odd to find this room, but didn't question it much. I looked at her computer screen. It was on, something about this feels emotional though I have no idea now what was on the screen, other than the fact that on some timestamp it said the date was "2013". It was 2018, I knew this in the dream context. I took a photograph with my phone of the screen, and I thought something but I can't remember what. I seem to remember that at some point before this in the dream I'd found something else pertaining to my mom, from the past also. Even in the dream I couldn't help but wonder, are these things I'm finding related to her mental health?

I know I went out of that room but I cannot remember more details, even though the dream sequence didn't end there.

---

Some notes ^{(spread out because they'd be too dense to read otherwise)}:

• The sunset is a dream-sign. I hadn't realised this before. It is distinctly different from all other times of day, and in my dreams it always represents "the end" (of time, in some way).

• Even in the dream I thought everything in that light looked beautiful.

• As I saw all those spiders, I was about to react instinctively and let out some reaction of fear, but the fact that in the dream I had strongly intended to go into this building and that I somehow felt compelled to go further in, made me remember my practice of trying to keep my fear in check. This is the first time in a dream that I have truly suppressed such a basic and intense fear, as far "consciously" as my dream mind would allow. Keep in context that I have been an arachnophobe almost all of my life until very recently, and that in dreams basic fears and instincts are much, much stronger in my behaviour.

• In the dream context I remember being told by someone to look at the local points of interest and landmarks because I could be interested in them and because they needed people to do some tourism around here. That's the context I had for the "church".

• The bag/purse under the wallet was magenta. The office chair was a deep blue, I think.

• All I can remember seeing on that computer screen was a few different windows open, and maybe an image as one of the windows, which is what had the timestamp. In my dream, I knew that my mom had not been in this office for a long time. It looked just as the rest of the community centre.

• I do not know why even out of the dream now I feel some strong emotion thinking about the date and the screen. As far as I remember, 2013 was no different for my mom, if anything, her mental health has improved greatly since then. But considering it now, it was also when I moved to where I live now, away from my native country.

• At some point in the dream I understood the sunset feeling like "end", though I'm still not certain what about.

• The community centre (which was actually the church, after all) corridors and rooms looked, actually, much more like a very stereotypical office building and some doctors offices I've been to.

• As for the context of my mom's mental health, she suffers from bipolar or something the like, but has it very well controlled by medication these days.

Non-dream stuff: Got up at about 9:30 and then had to help my partner for a while so I've forgotten most details but held on loosely to a few non-lucid fragments.

---

Fragment 1:

I remember having an A4 notebook, the paragraphs lines were red and the edge guides were another colour, probably blue. In the dream this was a dream journal, though at least a few of the pages were torn, as if they had been bitten off, by a big animal, I though. I still tried to write on a torn page, either with a pencil or a pen. There were still good and intact pages, but for some reason I did not choose to try to write on them.

Fragment 2:

I was on a low tier of a canal or something, but not in the water bit. There was one of those tall concrete bridges across to a higher tier on the other side. Where I was, there were some chunky metal fences, one was crumpled and the others were stacked against each other. In the dream they were relevant to the dream's context, though I don't remember how.

---

Some notes:

• The dream dream-journal was not like any DJ I've ever kept in real life. This journal I'm writing on now is digital, as was the last one I had. The physical journals I had were not books, but loose collections of blank A4 sheets that I wrote on.
• I really can't remember if I had a pencil or a pen when trying to write, but I know that it felt odd either way when I pressed on the paper. The feedback was not as I expected. This, and the fact that there was such a unique (and oddly torn) dream journal should have been a good prompt to do a RC, as I've just done now, thinking about whether I should do RCs when writing on DJs or not.
• The second fragment's area looked like typical city/town scenes I've seen from Japan, though I've never been there. I've recently been playing a game with such typical towns.
• The fact that I was somewhere so foreign should have been a good RC prompt, but in the dream I did not think about why or how I was there.
• Both fragments were linked together by some sort of plot/story, but I don't remember any detail.

Non-dream stuff: Woke up and got up at about 9:20. Remembered a few segments from the last dream I was having.

---

Sequence 1:

I was looking at an interface for picking a map in a real-time strategy game, for some sort of Command&Conquer game. I remember my partner being next to me and as I generated a random map with a "continental" style, I thought it looked a bit different and too small compared to most, but my partner said "no, have a look at the preview, it will be fine", so I clicked on preview and then my vision went into the screen and the map thumbnail image; as it zoomed in, the map became detailed and I viewed it from above but my vision kept zooming in closer and then there were 3 player factions, one being mine, another being my partner's, and the last one being someone else or an AI. We all started with some vehicles specific to our factions and the cars were racing through beaches and roads, with my vision still zooming now on a car I had, which looked a bit like something out of 1940s Germany, with white/grey colours and chrome accents. The AI had some military trucks, including one with a mounted gun, and they were chasing me and gaining speed, but I overtook my partner's cars and they blocked the chasing trucks a bit.

I remember now seeing in first person, and the car was stopped near a road tunnel that oddly enough was just after an intersection with a main road and a road that went around a bend behind a hill. I remember it was a clear sunny day and there were tropical forests.

Sequence 2:

Then I was at an area with pavement in a town, this was an open area on or near a quay and was reminiscent of my native country; there were subway entrances and this was all still part of the game somehow, I felt. In one of the subway entrances some gangsters were running up the stairs with sub-machine guns and I threw grenades and rockets at them, watching them not blow into pieces but fly around with wonky physics, just as one would expect with most games. Their "AI" was also poor; they ran against walls and corners sometimes and just idled even though I was being aggressive. Then I noticed I had a toolbar thing on my interface and picked a massive plywood plank item, and placed it over the entrance; for some reason it was steady standing on its own and was large enough that nobody could pass; I read a little tooltip on the interface saying I'd recently placed a blocking barrier and could not do so again for 15 minutes, but that I could upgrade any existing ones to increase their duration; this barrier I placed was going to last for 1 hour, apparently. The people that showed up the steps from behind the barrier, that I could still see just over the top, looked a lot less threatening, and in fact some were complaining like "hey I gotta get to work, come on!". I pretended to not care.

The dream ended at some point soon.

---

Some notes:

• Although I separated both sequences into their own parts, they were part of the same dream, I just can't remember what went between them exactly; I don't remember a sudden transition from one to the other.
• The RTS map interface looked a bit like C&C:Generals and Warcraft 3; I remember the players had assigned colours and numbers, like for teams.
• The other generated maps were more representative of real Earth continents, picked at random, but the one I thought was odd just looked like a coastal section of a place.
• The fact that the whole of the sequences took place in a game context makes it very difficult for me to remember to question reality. Even when I am playing games in waking life and remember to do reality checks, it is difficult for me to pick good moments, i.e. weird ones, because games are generally very predictable and the only "weird" things that ever happen are bugs, the frequency of which depend solely on the specific game.
• The vehicles in the RTS were supposed to be base-starting vehicles, so in a way I should have remembered to do a RC over this, because in the dream context, the dream-awareness indicated something different from what actually happened.

A few non-lucid dream sequences/fragments. My dreams felt very long and the places I was in felt vast.

---

Sequence 1:

One of the last sequences; I remember being driven by my partner to a small white building. It was the lobby for some sort of research complex. I went in and it was decorated with white and black inside, and there was a receptionist, a slim black-haired woman with her hair tied in a knot and she was wearing a black suit with skirt and a pair of glasses. She was speaking to someone else, both of them were standing up, though her desk was at a normal sitting height. She was explaining something to this other guy. She noticed me as I approached and I said I wanted a job there or something, she asked me what relevant skills I had; I answered truthfully (in waking life context), that I had not had many formal jobs. I also said something else random like I was good at blasting things or something.

She then said "let's see what you got then". And then I simply remember being in another area that looked like an old or ruined town, and what looked like trenches or canals. She was there and in a different outfit, with a sword; I had a sword and a shield and I could see myself in third-person now (so it had become like a game), wearing a similar roman-era battle outfit. She got a few blows in first but I bashed her with the shield and she fell on the floor and I struck her with the sword in long swipes; sword swipes left a glowing trail behind them.

There's something missing in my memory of the sequence here; next I am at what feels like an underground facility, the research complex. I am in a cylindrical room, on its upper half, which was separated from the bottom by thick glass and metal beams that made an aesthetically pleasing pattern. There were researchers here on upper half and on the bottom half I saw a test subject (which in my dream-mind I knew was a volunteer, like I was for the project) walk in through a doorway, to the centre of the room, where there was a raised platform. A researcher was in front of the subject on a control panel and adjust some things and the subject transformed into a 50ft/15metre creature; as a creature, it was pink and white-ish and with flowing appendages, not quite like tentacles. It also looked semi-translucent in parts. I have a dream-memory of seeing several transformations, each with very different resulting creatures, but all large.

At some point before this entire sequence I remember seeing a similar giant creature like the one that, before I "knew" about the research complex, and it had been in some sort of combat situation. It may have been in the previous sequence.

I remember watching more of these transformations and wondering if they would do me at some point. My memory of this dream sequence ends here.



^{Edit: Made this 3D image of how I generally remember the transformations room. I didn't add a lot of detail simply because I don't remember it anymore. The grain is just because it's a quick render (6minutes).}

Fragment 2:

This came before Sequence 1, and was just as long, though I only remember fractioned details.

I remember being in a different ruined city area, which I got to by going down some steps under a mountain or something. I remember seeing some sort of interface for my health points and equipment, and my health was very low. I had no top on either, and for some reason in the dream context that made me extremely vulnerable. There were rats and other pests around, and I remember I got to a place where there was some sort of faction's base, where they were defending from another faction. One of the guys there wanted me to train first, and he had me lie down on a table of some kind where they either injected me with something or attached something; either way, something like an exoskeleton formed and my fear of being vulnerable went away. They explained something about the process, how a sodium injection was required but wasn't the only key to this. I remember there was a training room in the downstairs of the base.

Fragment 3:

In the same region as before, I remember being on a stereotypical Asian looking rooftop, and looking around and seeing the mountain where I came from, with the steps under an overhang. It was day, but the sun wasn't very high and there was cloud cover, though it didn't quite cover the sun. There were a lot of shadows. Looking around more there were other mountains to the left and then further left were plains and forests, back up to the point of seeing the steps mountain again. On the rooftop was someone else. A boy or a girl or a young-ish person anyway. They told me something about the winds that were coming and that we had to do something. I could see large, fast, clouds coming very low from the mountains. I don't remember much else other than seeing this character before in an alleyway.

---

Some notes:

• The sparring match with the receptionist went on for quite a while and I remember that even though my sword would cut her to chunks, she would "respawn" and we'd fight again. The combat reminds me now of Warframe and Shadow Warrior (both of which have strong Asian themes).
• The first time I saw the giant creatures outside of the research complex I was not aware that they were human test subjects, so when I saw the transformation process I felt bad for having participated in a combat with one, especially given that I felt I'd rather be on the creature's side anyway.
• Watching the creature transformation process I remember feeling a bit envious. In the context of waking life, I know that transformations of even the smallest degree are impossible, but a part of my subconscious still desires them, which attracts me to creative content that represents those themes. The transformation theme in general is a clear dream-sign, but one that I must remember to set an intention to make notice of, due to its prominence in games, and therefore the fact that it's so well embedded into a part of my reactions and behaviours towards it.
• It is a little rare that transformation themes are so present in at least a couple of dream sequences. They were clear dream-signs and I should have done a RC.
• The researchers at the complex wore no special clothes or outfits, they were dressed casually or with suits, so a potential dream-sign did not manifest there.
• The "exoskeleton" wasn't so much an exoskeleton as it was making me "buff", I seem to remember.
• Being at the rooftop especially should have made me RC due to a fear of heights, especially taking note that being a stereotypical rooftop, it was sloped.

Non-dream stuff: Just a few fragmented memories of non-lucids. Got up at about 9:10, though I woke up briefly around 8. Writing fragments now, about 1 hour later after getting up;

---

Fragment 1:

I don't exactly remember the context but the area looked a little bit like some sort of concrete/stone complex; I was either fighting something (like an animal) or getting attacked and someone I knew (not sure who) arrived with some sort of eagle mech, trapping my enemy under a metal claw, and then firing an energy beam out of its open metal beak. I remember the mech was painted blue and yellow and then later I was at a servicing bay in the same complex for these types of mechs.

Fragment 2:

Some sort of sex/sexy scene, but don't remember details other than the fact I was on top.

---

Some notes:

• The first fragment is very much one of those dreams that blend game worlds with "reality". Being attacked or seeing a high power energy blast up close from a metal eagle machine was taken for granted inside the dream, as my dream-mind simply took this to be part of the normal context, and did not question it at all.
• The livery on the mech is reminiscent of at least a couple of games; more specifically, Mech Commander and Just Cause 3. In Mech Commander, the player's mechs always have a blue livery scheme, and in Just Cause 3, friendly vehicles all have a similar blue livery. This association between the two games was not previously present in my conscious mind.
• Game-type worlds in dreams are a typical dream sign, but usually far too difficult to make note of them.
• The second dream fragment, though I don't remember much, would have been far better for noticing that something was "off", especially given the rarity of the context in waking life, due to my pain and fatigue. But the limiting factor there may have been the usual "don't like to do dream-checks while near other people", even though I've been working on this lately in waking life.
• I have the feeling fragment 2 came before fragment 1, in terms of when I dreamed them, but I can't say with certainty.