Non-Lucid Dreams
Monday Night, 1/25/21 I was basically Sam Winchester from Supernatural. I was returning from a mission with a group of fellow hunters where we'd had to translate between various languages. I walked up to a linguist guy and asked, "Do we ever translate messages from the 21st language over the phone?" (I had knowledge from the dream the the 21st and "final" language was demonic and therefore forbidden, with few people who could translate it, but we needed it nonetheless.) "Yes, we have to sometimes." The linguist told me. "Right." I realized our plans and knowledge were probably being constantly intercepted, which would explain a lot about our recent troubles. I quickly cooked up a scheme. "Alright, we're going to steal the book from the source so we don't have to pass information over the phones anymore. Come on." I grabbed the linguist by the arm and led him down a corridor. The section of floor we were standing on was actually an elevator, which transported us rapidly below ground. "Wait, where exactly are we going?" The linguist asked with great confusion. "Just popping over to hell real quick. Don't worry, I do it all the time." "What!" The elevator reached the bottom and opened up into a series of corridors. "I didn't sign up for this..." The linguist complained but I shushed him. The place looked more like the version from Charmed than Supernatural. I scurried down a corridor, apparently knowing my way around very well, and the linguist trailed reluctantly behind me. I came to what looked like a dead end. I put my hand on the wall and it opened to the central chamber with the book. Unexpectedly, the room was packed full of bad guys, as they were in the middle of a major ritual. Oops. I ran back down the corridors pushing the poor linguist back in the other direction. We made it back to the elevator, which took us back to ground level. "Split up!" I told the linguist, "They'll recognize me but they haven't seen you yet." I ran off to the left while he ran right. I made my way down a long hallway and then went outside. Now I could see that we'd been inside a large, black castle. The kind you'd expect villains to live in, with intimidating Gothic arches and lots of spires. I morphed into a young boy and clambered over the rocks surrounding the castle. In front of me was the sea, stretching out into the foggy horizon. I found myself climbing on the Statue of Liberty... or perhaps a replica of it, since it wasn't to scale. It looked like it had seen better days but it was more or less intact. I worried that I would be seen and hoped the bad guys couldn't look everywhere at once. I scaled down to the base of the statue, where I discovered that mermaids were carved into the green stone. They looked like they were just part of the statue but I knew from my dream memories that they were real. "Hey, remember me from years ago?" I asked one of the mermaids. No response. They appeared to be sleeping. Good. I recalled a group of allies warning me that when these mermaids smelled blood in or near the water, they could attack viciously. Is there any blood around here? I wondered nervously. It was late in the evening and I was crouching on the shady side of the statue, right next to the water and a sleeping mermaid. I couldn't see very clearly. I pulled out my phone, looking for the flashlight app. It took a while to turn it on since droplets of water kept getting on the screen. I was eventually able to confirm that there was no blood, however. Relieved, I turned the light off and looked back out toward the sea, wondering about my next move. My phone morphed into a wizard's wand. Maybe I could use the flying spell? How's that work again? Then I recalled an in-dream memory of my "magic mentor" laughing and saying, "The so called flying spell is completely useless! It's a joke, really. If you want to fly, what you really need is a dragon." Oh, right. But where would I get a dragon? I happened to know that the bad guys had stolen all the dragons in the country and were keeping them locked up deep underground. However, there is one dragon I could get to. I looked back to the castle and craned my neck to see a large black dragon chained to the highest spire of the castle. This was, apparently, the personal dragon of the head bad guy, aka "the Night King". That is, he was magically bonded with the dragon, allowing him to command it. At some point I morphed again to resemble my waking self. Somehow I managed to scale all the way up to where the dragon was located. I crept around to the side of the dragon at first, trying not to be noticed by it just yet so I wouldn't get fried. "What are you doing here?" The dragon asked telepathically. "Getting you out of here." I said quietly and unhooked the chain around its neck. The dragon grunted in response, seeming disinterested. Dream logic said I would have to ride the dragon (without a saddle I might add) and that the only way to accomplish this, since I wasn't bonded with it, was to command it to fly first and then jump onto its back while it was in mid air. "Vlar!" I shouted, and the dragon spread its wings and launched itself into the air. I flung myself from the spire, flailing wildly in midair for a while before just barely landing on the dragon. This seemed to destabilize it for a few moments, but I hoped that as a relatively smaller woman the dragon would have an easier time carrying me than the Night King. Sure enough, the dragon's flight smoothed out soon after. We were traveling in the opposite direction of the sea. I only had minimal steering control of the dragon, who informed me his name was Rijik. He was flying close to the ground and we were narrowly missing obstacles. I hope he accounts for the trees that could knock me off. I thought. "Trees can't hurt us at the speed we're going!" Rijik replied, "They're like bugs in the wind." Easy for you to say. You've got armored scales. And you're a dragon. Rijik laughed but flew a little higher. "It's these pillars you should be more worried about." Sure enough, we narrowly avoided a series of tall, white pillars. By this point I suspected the dragon was purposefully messing with me. "Doesn't it feel liberating to have that castle so far behind you, a tiny speck in the distance?" I glanced back at the castle. It did look a bit smaller, but we'd only escaped about 30 seconds ago and it seemed a little soon to be celebrating already. I would like for it to be much further behind us and much tinier looking. After traveling a while in silence, I was about to suggest we fly up as high as possible, enough to get some cloud cover so we wouldn't be seen by any potential pursuers. However, I noticed a strange looking tree out in the middle of an otherwise empty field. It was dead and it had strange branches that curved out and then straight upwards like many fingers reaching towards the sky. In the center of this circle of branches was a big hollow with stuff piled inside it. "That's the Knob Tree." Rijik said. "The what? Uh, that sounds kind of..." "What?" "Never mind." "It's called that because of all the doorknobs." "Oh right. Of course." Upon closer inspection I could see that the stuff inside the tree was, indeed, a pile of many doorknobs. Up ahead, there was a gigantic palace in ruins. It looked as though it had been sliced vertically in half such that all the interior rooms were exposed, on every floor. Despite its condition, it loomed over us and gave me an uneasy feeling. It must have been nearly twice as tall as the black castle we had fled. It was built upon a mountain of rock, which functioned like a wall that even the dragon would have a hard time clearing. A narration began, describing an event that had occurred long ago. Decades ago? Centuries? The Narrator said that the palace had been inhabited by an evil ruler. One man had, little by little, betrayed his own people in an attempt to appease this ruler. Each time, the man had a chance to redeem himself by recognizing how far he'd strayed from his moral compass, but each time he only sank deeper into self delusion. Finally, the man "fell beyond saving" (presumably in a spiritual or moral sense), and his last betrayal led to horrific atrocities. All the remaining people banded together and ultimately sacrificed themselves in order to ensure the evil could not persist any longer. They broke down every door to every room and placed the doorknobs of each door of the palace into the tree. I glanced back at the dead tree in the field and saw a sort of time lapse animation of the tree's hollow going from being empty to being piled high with so many doorknobs that they fell to the ground around it. By this point Rijik had to fly almost vertically upward because we were so close to the palace. I got a closer look at what was inside the faded and crumbling interior. I was horrified to see that each room contained one or more pictures of smiling children, some so many that they were stacked on top of each other. Sometimes there was a photo of a parent next to them. In a few places there were cubbies containing small caskets. I realized the whole place was like a cross between a war museum and a mausoleum. I could see debris, leaves, and tiny spiders strewn about the floors and I wondered who had set all this up, how long ago, and whether it was still being maintained. At last Rijik and I reached the top of the palace, but there was only more mountain and no clear way over to the other side. Climbing down to the roof, I saw an old woman. I realized she had been the one narrating the story. "Quickly, through here!" She said, revealing a hole in the rock covered by a curtain of vines. "They've already opened a wormhole to get to you." Great, wormholes? I thought, Now they'll be able to get to us just by knowing where to look and we won't be able to simply outrun them. So much for putting as much distance as possible between us. "There is one location that's safe from them," The old woman continued, "But the only way to get there is via a specific bus. There's a bus stop right down there." She pointed. "The next bus leaves in 3 hours." I lay flat on my stomach and rolled through the hole in the wall, barely able to fit. I lost my grip and fell but luckily the drop wasn't far on this side of the palace wall. I could actually see the wormhole nearby (kind of like the ones from Stargate but without the gate) and I hoped I hadn't been seen already. Rijik must have found a way over the wall because I saw him fly past. The bus stop was tiny, and there was nothing at all next to it except for a little bush. Three hours waiting at a bus stop with the bad guys here any second? How can this work? I considered taking Rijik off in a random direction to kill some time and try to shake the tail, then circling back in time to catch the bus, but then I decided it would only increase our chances of being seen. We'd have to find a place to hide, much as I disliked the idea. I crouched behind the bush and started digging with my hands in the dirt, hoping to find a secret passageway or something. It seemed unlikely so I gave up shortly after. I scanned my surroundings for other options. The coast looked clear, so I entered a random dark garage, as one does. A small metal case was sitting on the floor. Intel! I thought, and scooped up the case with delight. Suddenly light shone in from an opened door and two men in suits walked in. They looked kind of like Yakuza. "Hunters are so stupid." One of them said, laughing. "They're so good at picking up our little 'gifts' but not so good at finding anything of actual value." I'd be offended, but he's kind of right. We never questioned the conveniently located cases of intel. Darn. Looking past the Yakuza guys I saw that Rijik had been captured. He was being forced to battle a red dragon in an outdoor arena. I assumed other dragons were in the area as well. The Night King must have brought them all here. I started hatching a plot to try to break them free and escape again, myself, in the process. Of course, my options were limited at the moment. Perhaps I could get close to the arena and convince Rijik to turn on the Night King despite the magic bond and then help free the other dragons? Rijik knew me a little now, after all, and the Night King had been abusive. I didn't know enough about dragons to know if that even had a chance of working, but it was my best shot. Unfortunately I woke up before I could try saving the dragons.
Updated 02-08-2021 at 05:07 AM by 17503 (added tree drawing)
A set of recurring bear dreams. Mid October, 2017 I was in a variation on my aunt F and uncle C's house where a party was being held. There were so many strange and quirky characters there that it felt more like an indoor carnival. In one room I met a woman who was the caretaker of a semi-trained bear. People took turns meeting the bear, warily, before leaving, fully amused by their encounter. It was a black bear, small as bears go but still large enough to do some serious damage if it wanted to. It followed me around in particular and it kept resting its head in my lap every time I sat down. Each time I would feel a little on edge despite its outward displays of affection. I was worried about making the wrong move and setting off its wilder instincts. After the fourth or fifth time I started to even feel annoyed, not wanting to have to stay on my toes all the time. The caretaker woman seemed to sense my annoyance and she came up to me saying, “It is a great honor to be chosen by a bear.” I wandered out of the room, thoughtful, but not entirely convinced. *** Thursday Night, 11/7/19 See "The Jaguar Woman" entry. *** Tuesday Night, 6/30/20 I was someone else, a man in his 40's I think, outside at the edge of a forest as dusk was approaching. I morphed to resemble my waking self. I began climbing a large arbor for some reason, treating it like a jungle gym. While I was up there, I discovered a baby elephant hanging from its trunk in the arbor I was climbing. I stared at it for a while, confused by how it got up there. It changed into a bear cub. Das showed up. He thought the baby bear was cute and wanted to pet it indefinitely. I began to think about the implications, however, and I started looking around nervously for the mother. It appeared to be alone out here, but I was still wary. "We shouldn't have put our scent on the cub." I told Das, "The mother will smell us and get angry if she's around." Das shrugged. "I'm not worried. Look! He wants pets!" I sighed and edged my way down the arbor. "Come on." I said, trying not to be too loud, "It's almost night time, we need to leave the forest now if we want to get clear of wherever the mother bear is at." I started creeping quietly away from the arbor and towards a sparser area of trees. Das shrugged again but reluctantly stopped petting the cub and trailed along behind me. I started to hear sounds in the bushes and a low rumble, and I realized the mother bear had arrived. For a moment I picked up the pace but continued to try to be as quiet as possible, hoping we might somehow get away before it finished locking onto our location. I searched my mind for what to do in case of a bear attack, and I remembered to play dead. The mother bear showed herself, blocking our path. I realized we weren't going to make it. The bear roared angrily and charged at us, knocking down Das first. Then she ripped into me (which didn't hurt as much as one would expect) and I got to see my intestines, right before my right eye was detached from its retina and everything went dark. I woke up. "Damn it Das..." I said out loud. *** Thursday Night, 11/5/20 I'm talking with my parents outside on the deck when an adolescent black bear wanders into our back yard and we notice it has an abscess on the right side of its head. My mom wants to go over to it and treat it. I'm also worried about the bear's health, but I do not think it's a good idea to go up to it like that. I suggest maybe calling a wildlife center instead. "I have some leftover antibiotic ointment from when the cats were sick, I'll go get it!" My mom says and goes back into the house. My dad laughs at us and goes back inside to the other side of the house. I follow my mom and try to get her to reconsider, but she doesn't listen to me. "Well, here it goes!" She starts heading back outside with the ointment. "Mom, no!" My mom jumps a little, startled. "Ah, you scared me!" "You should be scared, it's a bear!" I look away for a moment, wondering about the wildlife center idea again, but when I look back I see that my mom is way out in the yard heading towards the bear. For whatever reason I decide I have no choice but to do things my mom's way now. The least I can do is try to mitigate the danger so she doesn't get attacked... But this is probably a bad move. I head outside and my mom is scaring the bear towards the fence and towards me. I'm worried it will feel cornered. I backtrack a little and grab a bag of cat treats as it's the only thing I can get to quickly. I manage to get the bear's attention with the food, tossing a handful of treats on the ground in front of it to distract it. My mom comes up behind the bear with the ointment. The bear finishes the treats very quickly so I keep having to scramble to get handful after handful ready. I'm worried about the gaps of time where the bear might get aggressive. "When I say stop, stop until I can get more treats." I tell my mom, convinced the bear needs to be distracted with the process eating to not notice her. It's a dubious plan to begin with but I'm clinging to it. My mom is applying the ointment to the bear, but I'm struggling to get the next set of treats out of the bag. The bear is slowly starting to look up. "Stop." I say. My mom does not stop. The bear looks directly at me with dark black eyes. "Stop, stop." I say again. Still no response from my mom. I imagine I can see impatience developing in the bear's expression, although it's hard to tell. "STOP!" I'm trying not to be too loud, but I'm starting to panic. I finally get the last of the treats out of the bag and toss them on the ground. "Done!" My mom exclaims cheerfully. "Mom, get inside, quick." I say anxiously. I make sure she makes it inside while the bear's still eating, then I go in myself and close the screen door first. Why am I bothering to close the screen door first? It's not going to stop a bear and I'm wasting time... I think and close the sliding glass door as quickly as I can. I can see the bear standing in the yard, eyeing the bag in my hand as if annoyed there are no more freebies. *** Monday Night, 11/23/20 I'm in a building I don't recognize. My dad is there and says something very mean to me, although I can't remember exactly what it was or why it happened. Rather than feeling hurt or scared, I suddenly feel a deep anger come up as the full implication of the words sink in. "I am not stupid." I yell powerfully. My dad disappears but I yell it again. It seems to be irrelevant that no one is around anymore. I can see out a window onto the unfamiliar street outside. It's night time and raining a little. I still feel the anger, like a raw energy. I open my mouth and a bear's roar comes out, a guttural rumbling. I stop, confused at the ability to make such a sound and feeling self conscious, thinking people will think I'm weak for being too emotional and sounding ridiculous. Then I decide I don't care, even if anyone was around to hear. Twice more, I let out the bear's roar which resolves into a more human sounding scream. The dream fades.
Updated 01-11-2021 at 11:08 PM by 17503 (fixing broken link)
Monday, 9/14/20, Core 2 I resembled my waking life self, although I was in a strange place. I seemed to be underground. The dirt floor was damp with pools of water and there were various discarded items strewn about. I removed a bird from a wicker cage. I think it was a white cockatoo. I was thinking of it as my pet, despite never having had or even held a bird. I wandered around and the bird sometimes rode on my shoulder, sometimes on my hand, sometimes flew short distances away. At one point the bird landed on my hand and I tried to pet it on the chest with one finger. It decided it didn't want me to and started gently biting my finger with its beak. At first I thought it was cute and was playing, but then it began to bite my finger harder. I realized I knew nothing about handling birds. I stopped attempting to pet or play with it but now it latched on hard to my finger and it was pretty painful. I regretted not bringing the cage. After some more traveling, we ended up at a pool party, perhaps in someone's backyard. Other people had brought their pets as well, and I had my camera to take pictures. DV member MoonageDaydream made a cameo! She was recording video of a small white terrier dog, then she switched to taking video of all the animals. She shrugged semi apologetically, and told me something like, "I have plenty of footage and I want to get the other pets too. I only was focusing on the one dog because my mom was worried there wouldn't be enough footage of him." Spoiler for Additional Notes: Upon reading back this dream, I finally put two and two together and realized that the wicker cage, the bird, and the underground place with water and debris meant I'd been in the old text adventure game, Colassal Cave!!! So it turns out "get bird" is not so simple in practice, okay? Definitely use the cage. Maybe I'll XYZZY on back there sometime
Sunday Night, 5/3/20 Dreamt that I ended up in the ER due to some serious respiratory issues. They gave me a bed right next to a couple people infected with coronavirus. They looked like they could be dying from it. I asked the nurse if it was safe for me to be in the same room, especially in my weakened state. She told me it was fine and that "They're six feet apart!". I wasn't reassured, especially since it was more like two feet. Is this even a real hospital? I wondered. This isn't the right procedure. I then noticed there was no medical equipment anywhere, just cots. I laid there, fading in and out of consciousness, wondering if this was where I would die. At some point I found the strength to escape from the place when no one was looking. An involved plot followed where I got captured by a sociopathic serial killer in an abandoned industrial building. I managed to hold him down at one point but worried I wouldn't be able to maintain control of the situation until the police arrived. I don't think I did. The police did arrive, however. Three cops entered the building. I switched to the partial perspective of the lead detective, an older man close to retirement age. He/I instructed the others to split off and make a little noise to fake out the serial killer so he thought we were all approaching from a different side. Meanwhile I went off a different way as quietly as I could. The surprise ambush didn't work. The killer was holding a gun to the hostage, who was now actually a cat instead of a person. He gave me the ultimatum of taking a shot to the head to save the cat's life. I got the information that this cop was depressed and felt empty without his work to look forward to. He/I took the deal and for some reason I knew that the killer would adhere to the bargain... because he was just that particular brand of crazy. I somehow survived after taking four gunshots to the head. I was not in great shape, however, and knew I needed to seek medical attention. I staggered out of the building and into the forest at night, making my way down the path. I gradually became myself again. I came to a short, rustic stairway with a wooden railing. Around that area I noticed a few swarms of flies. I stopped and stared for a while from a distance. I wondered about what type of flies they might be and why they were swarming here. I crept closer to get a better look and discovered that there was a dead crow laying on its back and that's what had drawn the flies to the area. I stared at the crow for a few moments, then I stepped past it and continued a short distance along the path until I reached the edge of a college campus. The Narrator spoke, telling me that I was going to be alright. I turned my face to the sky as dawn was approaching and lifted up into the air, drifting above the campus. The Narrator gave me instructions on which direction to travel. It seemed odd to me that I was flying but I reasoned that I must be in some sort of virtual reality simulation. Yes, that's it, that's why I heard a voice. I figured. Spoiler for Additional Notes: The first part of the dream is likely at least partially a result of the shelter in place in waking life, although I hadn't been giving much attention to fears of getting sick, at least not on a conscious level. The serial killer was likely a result of watching a short documentary on a sociopath the day before. For me the end of the dream stood out the most: seeing the dead crow felt meaningful in some way, as did deciding to just walk past it and flying at dawn. Between the Narrator being present and the realization I could fly, this seemed like another almost lucid. Unfortunately my mind rationalized it away instead of questioning it further.
Monday Night, 4/27/20 I was playing in the ocean along with one or two companions. "Come on!" I said, rushing headfirst into the water, swimming as fast as I could. I was half experiencing, half simulating the ocean waves. Upon realizing there were no large waves crashing over me, I began to expect them which then led to their creation and my experience of having large waves tumble me about. The part of me that was scared was drowned out (no pun intended) by my overall sense that I was perfectly safe. A female friend came along with me past the large waves. We were then rapidly pulled far out to sea where the waters became deep and calm. My mind offered up a couple practical concerns. Aren't you worried about dangerous sea creatures the longer you're out here? How far off is land on the other side of this ocean? Won't you get tired of swimming and drown? I decided it was best not to think of dangerous sea creatures. I should simply focus on not splashing around too much. As to getting tired, I found I was able to easily swim at a fast pace with barely any effort. Later we transitioned to walking and gliding along the surface of the water. As night approached, the Narrator said that we would need a place to rest for the night. A dark blue door with orange trim around it appeared. I knew exactly what it was the moment I saw it. I opened it and we stepped through, into my room. Inside it was arranged a little differently than waking life, with bunk beds and a couple random piles of blankets, pillows, and sheets laying around, but it was still fully recognizable. I also found there was a second door which I could open to the rest of the house. I walked around in the upstairs hallway then went back into my room again. Strange. I thought, while my friend just seemed obsessed with playing in the blanket pile and rubbing her face against the pillows. I opened the blue door once again to see that, indeed, it still led right out to the middle of the ocean. "You can change where the door leads." The Narrator informed me. I closed the door and reopened it to try it out. It no longer led to the ocean, now it led to a random room. I closed it for good this time and prepared for sleep, though I don't think I actually did fall asleep. Spoiler for Additional Notes: This one was so close to becoming a lucid dream. I had the awareness of dream control abilities, noticed the oddness of what I was observing, and then there was the presence of the Narrator dropping hints. The Narrator is a disembodied voice that shows up surprisingly often in my dreams and I've referred to it as my subconscious in the past. I'm starting to notice a clear pattern where it shows up when I'm either lucid already or I'm very close to becoming lucid. The ocean is another pre-existing dream sign of mine that's been showing up a lot lately. My relationship to the waves in dreams has gone through an interesting progression over the course of 20+ years of having those recurring dreams, but that's a post for another time. Apparently I'm plunging headfirst into them now.
Thursday Night, 11/7/19 I was hiking through a forest and I came out into an open field, accidentally spawning a large bear as I did so. I had to run away from it using video game controls. It morphed from bear, to wolf, to lion, to jaguar and long story short I couldn't increase the distance between me and it no matter what tactics I used. Gradually the environment shifted from video game to realistic until I was running in my own body rather than using controls. Knowing I stood no chance remaining in the open field, I dove into the deep river to my left and swam across. I pulled myself out onto the opposite river bank and found myself back among the trees. But of course jaguars are excellent swimmers so the big cat followed me easily. As it came out of the water the jaguar transformed into a woman. She was beautiful and lithe, dressed in flowing white, with the cold expression of a seasoned killer. We came out onto a wide and empty paved road that cut through the trees. I walked backwards and shot invisible arrows at her which made her health bar go down - a remaining feature from the video game - but she was otherwise unfazed. She was slowly walking toward me holding an already bloodied sword which she didn't even bother to raise. She said, "It's always hard to kill something for the first time." Clearly she was not referring to herself. She seemed to be implying that any reluctance to kill on my part would give her the advantage. We both stopped walking and she informed me flatly that I was out of arrows. Her health bar was only at half. I knew I would have to use my sword and hack away for my life. I wasn't very skilled with a sword. That is to say I'd never used one before. As the jaguar woman raised her own sword it was immediately clear she was in her element. My alarm went off, yanking me out of there and into a waking state.
Updated 12-03-2020 at 01:55 AM by 17503 (added drawing)