The Kestrel's Dreams

June 06, 2014

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Hippopotamuses EVERYWHERE

I was at home, and it was getting dark but I didn't feel like going to bed. So I got into my car and started driving. I went down to Doug Ave, and headed north. When I passed the light at Patty St, the road was different from the way it is IRL. Instead of being wide and non-residential, there were houses on both sides, more like the street I live on.

But that wasn't the weird part. At the light, I saw the first one of them: A lone Hippopotamus standing at the edge of the road. As I drove on, there were more of them, and eventually I had to stop because there were so many of them, all over the road. They were in the road and in driveways and shuffling about slowly as large beasts often do.

I know hippos are dangerous animals, but these ones were more like kittens. They came up and sniffed the car and then left, leaving me alone for the most part.

I was amazed, and drove back to where ever I had just come from, where some of my friends were. "Guys!" I shouted. "Guys, there are hippos ALL OVER THE PLACE down on that street. Ugh what's it called? The one with the sketchy gas station where they sell rugs and tapestries!" (I couldn't remember the name of the street for some reason, so I was trying to describe it. But I remembered it anyways) "Doug. They're on Doug Avenue! Come on!" And so a few of them get into my car (Zukin is there, she sits shotgun) and I drive them to where the hippos are.

One of the people living in one of the houses to our right came out of their house and fed one of the hippos a carrot. She patted it on the head and then waved at us, before heading back into her house. A hippo came up to the car and playfully headbutted the passenger's side front window (Zukin's) like a kitten headbutting their human.

It was all rather awesome.




Bus?

All I remember from this one is that I was on a bus with a bunch of random people.




Ice Test
I was taking a test of sorts; it was like an obstacle course with puzzles scattered around, which I had to solve. All the tests were on a huge ice-mountain. Everything was made of ice, and had an ethereal glow to it. I don't remember much of the actual course, but I do remember the last part. I seemed to like it so much that when I got done, I did the last part four more times, at least. It was a series of switchbacks in the ice, and we were supposed to get down as fast as we could. So I took off the jacket I had been wearing and used it as a toboggan, sliding down. The last time I went on that part, I looked over the ledge at the city below me. It was night time and the ice-mountain was lit up, and so was the city below. We were so high up that the city looked like it does from inside and airplane.

I looked to my right, where there was a barrier of some sort made out of lots of randomly sized and placed cube-like shapes. They had about the same shape as a Companion Cube, but a little more exaggerated in terms of the corners that stick out. I wanted to see what was "out of bounds," so I started climbing around the ledge to see what was past the cubes. After about ten feet, it was getting a lot harder to climb, and I didn't want to fall, as there was no path below me, only a really really really far drop, and it looked like there wasn't anything further on, anyways. I figured that if there had been a cave or something, I would keep going, but since there wasn't, I turned back and went down the ice switchbacks again. At the bottom, the "teachers" were handing out our grades for the course. I had taken it before, and gotten 98% on it, and since I got 98% again this time, I technically failed it. You only passed if you did better than your best score so far. I didn't care though, because the 98 from the last time was good enough for anything I wanted to do with my life.

As I was walking along another ledge at the bottom, I looked out at the city again, which was a little bit closer, but still really small-looking from high up.

Then I woke up.