Glieuaeiel's DJ

Ask Her (LUCID)

The party is happening at an indoor swimming pool. The building is three stories tall, and most people are hanging out on the balconies of the upper two stories, overlooking the pool. There are all sorts of staircases to climb and all kinds of ropes and structural supports hanging around the ceiling, so I'm having a blast swinging around the room and over the pool doing flips and leaps.

While I'm taking a break from this, walking down one of the upper balconies, a portly, bearded man falls in next to me.

"You were doing pretty well out there with all those flips," he says.

"Yeah, because--" Suddenly I remember that such acrobatics are a dead giveaway that I'm dreaming. I give the man a sideways look. I bet you anything he asked me that question just to make me realize that. "Because gravity doesn't work the same here, because I'm dreaming. I bet the other dream characters are pretty mad at you right now." (Everyone knows that dream characters are in general opposed to the dreamer's becoming lucid.) I'm proud of myself for remembering the phrase "dream characters."

The man chuckles. "Yes, I suppose they are."

We walk a few steps while I ruminate on the favor he's done me. "You know, I come to this pool almost every night," I say. "But I've never realized before that it's a dream. So thank you."

We go our separate ways. I do some more acrobatics. [I lose most of my lucidity almost right away, probably because I was determined just to go with the flow so the dream didn't fade away.] At one point I dive towards the water, only to pull out of it at the last moment using a breast stroke. I'd forgotten how useful the breast stroke is for flying.

Later, I'm talking to a group of friends on a balcony. They seem to think I have a crush on one of the girls here, someone named "Anna." I don't even know what she looks like, but they're all determined that I should talk to her. "You should ask her," they say. "Just ask her!" I leave for a little while. When I come back, I see a kinda cute girl standing a few feet away from my friends, though a lot of people have left the balcony since last I was here.

"Is that Anna?" I ask.

"What?" says the girl I'm talking to, glancing in the direction I'm indicating. "No, that's not her. Anna's younger than that."

Younger? So she's in high school? Why would they think I have a crush on a high school girl? Weird. Well, at least I proved that I actually don't know who she is. It occurs to me, though, that this might just be how I start relationships: I have to wait for the girl's friends to insist that I ask her out. That's a depressing thought.

I walk back to a staircase, where another group of friends invites me to play a game. A girl produces several two-inch lengths of floss, which are flavored with a randomly-generated flavor. We each have to take one and try to describe what it tastes like. I am very impressed that she's somehow discovered how to encode a randomly-generated flavor in a little piece of string. "You all keep complimenting me on my acrobatics, but this"--I say, holding out my piece of floss--"is really much more impressive." Then we all put the floss in our mouths and spend a few minutes sucking. I'm having a bit of trouble with mine, because seemingly the flavor's not very strong. The people to my right start writing down their impressions, and finally, they ask me what I think.

"You know, I think mine is just . . . lemon." I was certainly not expecting to get such an ordinary flavor, which is probably why I had such a hard time identifying it.

"Oh, so you mean it was boring," my friends say, commiserating.

I wait a bit for the next round to start, but it looks like that will take a while. I make my apologies to the girl hosting the game and depart. I explore some back staircases, which are deserted except for me. It takes some effort to climb all the way to the top, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find that the last half-staircase (from the landing between the second and third floors to the third floor) is only two steps long.

I walk out into the hall. I hear some noises from a bathroom, and a janitor comes out with cleaning supplies. Awkward.

[I have no recollection of having visited this pool before. But I suppose my dream-self would know better than I about something like that.]