Nerefa

I only had one waking last night that I’m aware of. Normally I’m aware of all my wakings but every few weeks, usually when I’m especially tired, only slept 1-2 that I’m aware of (instead of the usual 4-6).

---

First dream of the night was more thoughts than a dream. There was no story or dream, but I was thinking about genetics and imagining them as trees all linking up. I was just going through them in my mind. Not sure whether this is lucid or not. It was just thoughts, and I felt aware of that.

Woke up from it. Wish I wrote down the time, but my guess is it was somewhere between 12 and 2 AM.

Went back to bed and started what would feel like a continuous 4+ hour dream.

I WILDed into a scene of white light. As the light faded, a dead forest came into view, full of burnt trees. There were humanoid monsters in the trees that bounded from limb to limb, hidden both by the trees and a thick ashy fog. They were white bodied with ghoulish smiling faces and thin skeletal frames, no muscle.

They carried bows and fired deadly arros at anyone wandering past.

I avoided the arrows and traveled the treacherous forest. As I went, leaves started to appear on the trees and the fog died down, as though slowly stepping out of an underworld. I reached a village where my dream SO (significant other) met me. The sun was going down so we bought a cabin, not wanting to be out after dark. It was well known amongst the villagers that you don't stay out after dark, or those creatures in the forest will kill you.

The cabin was tiny, about 100 ft.² with stairs leading to a second tiny section. It was cozy, full of nice soft furniture. A bed and essentials was all one needed for survival. The most important thing was that it was protected from the creatures outside. It had good locks and was small enough to be hidden in the trees (reachable with a small ladder).

There was a young man there who seemed to be an old friend, and he had nowhere to go. He needed somewhere to stay the night. He seemed suspiciously unstable and angry, but with the monsters outside, we couldn't leave him out there to die.

After we agreed to let him stay, however, he pulled a knife on us, wanting to steal our home and belongings. I grabbed his arms and wrestled the knife from him, then stabbed him with it before he could do the same to us. We took off running, leaving him bleeding and cursing.

We ran to the central village area, knowing my SO had friends here who we could stay with. I suspected the attacker would burn our house down and/or try to kill us in retaliation. We needed to avoid him, and the night monsters.

When we arrived at the SO's friends' house, we knocked on the door. This was an apartment complex and each strucrally sound unit was bigger than our little cabin. When the door opened, we saw several of her friends in the house, lots of colorful lights, music. It sounded like they were having a party.

We explained what happened and that we needed to stay somewhere for the night, but the group was suspicious of us and didn’t buy the story.

This was a turning point where they had decided to end their friendship with my SO. We decided to go somewhere else. It was dark out by now. We went to the nearest hotel, but didn’t have any money left since we spent it all on that house that we couldn't currently risk going back to.

We tried to sneak into an empty hotel room, but then realized the room wasn’t empty. Whoops! Before we could be caught, we slipped right back out into the halls.
It wasn't a really nice hotel. Was pretty cheap and seemed to be falling apart. The whole place felt small and cramped, too.

So we went into the bathroom, which was a multi stall bathroom and not the cleanest.

The owner happened to be in the bathroom and yeah somehow I just knew that that was him. He was just washing his hands.

My SO saw an opportunity though and suddenly got down and started cleaning a horrendous stain on the floor. I don't know what this was, but it was thick and green, like just straight inch-thick mold. It was nasty. Somehow I knew that the owner had been having trouble with the stain so I got down too and helped cleaned it. We actually started scrubbing it out, revealing very nice clean floor underneath.

The owner noticed and was impressed. He asked about the cleaner. My SO then offered to clean more up in exchange for a night’s stay if there were somehow any extra rooms. The owner looked like he was considering the offer, but wasn't sure about it.

So I got up, and offered my dragon. Don’t know where I pulled her out from, but suddenly I was holding my dragon out towards him. He was immediately on board.

As the hotel owner took my dragon, my consciousness seemed to go with it. Next thing I knew, I was the dragon hanging off his shoulder as he carried it outside. I just stayed and enjoyed the breeze and village lights. I looked up and marveled at the moon. It was incredibly bright and the fog had cleared. Everything was much more colorful around the village.

I looked back at the hotel owner when he wanted to see some fire breathing. Dragons breathe fire, right? Sure. I tilted my head up towards the sky and breathed some fire. Only a few embers came out because my dragon is a water dragon. Personally I was happy with it, but he seemed less impressed.

I got the feeling that he knew what I was, which was much more than just a dragon. He seemed unhappy about it, though. I eventually lost interest in hanging on this guy’s shoulder and ran off into the forest to explore.

There was a trail that spiraled down below the forest and village. Underneath was a whole other section of wilderness. It became apparent to me that this was the same planet/place I had been to in a previous dream, because there was a familiar ocean of fungus created by the forest.

It resembled acid, or syrup, but was a healthy part of the environment. Spotted forest seals (no bigger than a large dog) swam in it and gathered onto one of the ledges near the fungus to lounge. Up the dirt trail was a pack of wolves near a large tree.

I came back up to the surface area after a while, walking through the grass past an abandoned structure, still in dragon form. I stopped and thought something along the lines of:
“I haven’t been thinking about the fact this is a dream the whole time. Does that mean I’m not lucid? No, of course I’m lucid. Just not thinking about it actively until now.”

As I thought about the dream state, I noticed that everything stopped moving. The grass was frozen when I was pretty sure the breeze had been sweeping through it moments ago. Everything felt less alive in the dream. I was less engaged with it, and it stopped having that natural flow.

I wondered if I was creating expectation to wake? I decided to turn my attention back to the dream and went back into the forest.

I circled around and checked on everything. The seals, ledges, fungus, dirt trail, trees, wolves. Those night monsters were gone and everything was more vibrant and lush in the forest. Everything looked fine.

Wondering what my dragon sounded like (it doesn’t make any noise typically), I tried making some vocalizations. What came out sounded like a weak, failed coyote howl.

It was loud enough that it could be heard throughout the village in the distance, though. People recognized the sound and knew it was now safe to come out at night. The whole village was lit up even more now and people bustled around, knowing my dragon had scared the monsters away. Everything felt more alive.

I woke up and it was 6:18 am

Further Incubation
Now that I'm awake, using the long PR dream from last night, I’m going to incubate some extra things. usually I do this by filling in gaps where previous dreams were’t specific.

I'm going to think about the hotel owner. Aside from dragons being mythical creatures and presumably valuable, I don’t know why he wanted it. He wasn’t happy about seeing the dragon, but he was happy to own it.

So I’m going to incubate the idea that monsters in the forest forcing people to stay inside created good business for his hotel. With desperate guests brings more money.

He knew that the lucid guardian dragon would ward off those creatures, so he wanted to suppress it. He didn’t know how to do that, though.

So maybe I'll encounter him again, or revisit this village in a future dream.