All DJ Entries

Black: non-dream
Blue: non-lucid
Red: lucid

Dream
I was a ghost buster pretty much, or paranormal investigator. The places I seemed to go were dark and misty, spooky looking really... There were dead tress and stuff, and it was usually night. It must have been a pretty long dream but I can't recall everything I did, I do remember helping ghosts and stuff, all the ghosts seemed pretty nice except for the last one I helped.

This ghost wanted to regain a part of itself, and that part was hidden in darkness so I couldn't see what it was. I tried my best to help it, and I manage to disperse some of the darkness (the darkness flowed like mist). I managed to see what the ghost was after, it was a short dark-haired girl that the ghost wanted to possess (the girl looked like the person I've been wanting to talk to in my lucids). I woke up after that... At least I thought I did. I'm unable to move and I realize I'm in sleep paralysis, but the ghost had possessed the girl and came to lie beside, only then did I realize it was evil. I tried to roll off the bed and I felt like it worked, but I realized I had only experienced the *feeling* of rolling off the bed, and in actuality I was still lying on my bed unable to move.

After this I ended up waking up for real and it was daylight now... Also my windows were frozen, must have been very cold last night.

I also can't believe how realistic that FA was, EVERYTHING was as it should have been. The pillow, blankets, the position I sleep in, the bin beside my bed, the desk on the other side of the room... Crazy

I had P.F Chang's chicken fried rice for dinner last night and had an especially vivid dream early this morning. I think the meal might have had something to do with it!

Anyway--my dreams. The first I didn't record immediately so a majority of the details are lost to me.

I go to college! But a few close friends are there (no one I know from high school is attending my college) and I’m just beside myself; I’m so glad I’m not alone. I asked them if they had roommates yet. One did, but the other did not. When I go home I tell my mom everything. I’m 200% sure more happened in this dream because I remember dorms and expanses of grass and sunlight but I have no idea how it fits together. I’m very sad about that. Ye that’s it for the first one!

the second one was lovely and felt like it took place over the period of a couple/few days.

They opened a new school right next to my old high school. Because the school is so close students go to both as necessary. It is larger inside than outside. On my first and second days my mom accidentally goes to drop us off in the wrong place so my brother and I have to correct her and go to the right place. It’s dark both mornings. I think one of the mornings we had a fight.
The school is lovely. I lose my schedule the second day but before school there is a lounge of sorts to stay. On the first day I go through my schedule (I think) but on the second day after being in the lounge I have no schedule and forget where my classes are. I share a cookie with some friends in the lounge before going to find my first hour. I think I find it. Second hour not so much. I peek into a few rooms, one is a potions class. Then I decide to just explore.
The school is a square/rectangle with hallways that are built so you can always look over the railing to see the main floor. Soft sunlight comes in windows of open classrooms and windows at the top of the building I never looked up to see. Rooms are built off this hallway. I look in a lot of them but I only remember the art room right now—a smaller room with dark wood floors with a large piece of paper taking up the entire thing nearly. The walls are lined with paint. I end up looking into a large room with a boy in it, and he is suddenly very close. Other students are coming behind me and he tells me softly to just stay still, they won’t see me. He has brown hair with light curls and a thin face. He looks tired. In the dream I think he might be a ghost. The perspective switches to third person at this point and I turn away from the door, shutting it behind me. The boys behind me are surprised but I pay them no mind.
I see that I’m not in my own body. I’m a curvier girl with black curly hair. But I turn to a mirror beside the room and my hair turns red and straight; going back to first person as well. I’m shocked. The mirror does not reflect me correctly, fragmenting me and appearing cloudy grey behind me rather than reflecting the actual background.
There is a time lapse, I think. I’m now on the floor of the ground level beside a girl in a dress spread on the floor. There are a couple others. The girl's hair reminds me of Rapunzel but really looks a little more like me in my waking body. I don’t know what we’re doing to her, but I suddenly feel the need to do a reality check as I feel myself waking up and do, only to have a false awakening. I lose lucidity at this point UnU
I “go back to sleep” to a room in the school where I’m on a couch or a bed, watching two siblings sleep. I’m pretty sure I’m in my waking body again, just in a dream. Someone keeps coming in to put more blankets on them. They are both thin with black hair. The boy’s has a slight turn and the girl’s is a black bob. She’s talking in her sleep about how hot it is and I wonder if the blankets are to blame. He wakes up and we get into a conversation about what he does—ironically, he is a dress designer. I ask where he needs to measure me (across my collarbone?) and try to find a tape measure in my drawer only to find he has his own. I sit in a room in the soft sunlight and he starts measuring me for a dress. We chat a little and the dream ends.

I've never had such a long dream!! It was exciting! I'm pretty mad that my false awakening ruined my lucidity though. How rude.

It started in a strange town that I had to get away from, so I got in a car with a few friends (none of whom are people I've actually met in real life) and we went to a Wendy's outside the town.
At this point I "woke up," an obvious false awakening now that I think about it. But I decided to go back to "sleep" into the same dream, and told myself that I would become lucid. I went back into the dream, to the Wendy's, but was now on a bus and wanted to get out, so I opened a window. But, suddenly realizing I was dreaming, I didn't climb out the window, I simply made the bus vanish. Then I played around with the gravity of the dream universe and made food levitate and stuff until having another false awakening and finally having a real awakening.

This is an old dream; more are coming soon!

So, I haven't been here for three years. In that time, I have had a large amount of stressful things happen to me and have got completely out of the habit of using a dream journal and lucid dreaming. However, this morning, I experienced a WBTB dream and gained full lucidity for this first time in ages.

So here is the dream:

I was in a local shopping centre and noticed two small boys staring at me and suddenly I became lucid. For a few (?) moments, I dipped in and out of lucidity/ the dream but eventually gained control. I realised that I was dreaming and managed to walk where I wanted but I noticed that I couldn't see the dream environment properly. I frantically tried to do a reality check but I panicked and couldn't find one to do. Anyway, I had completely forgotten the feeling of walking in a lucid dream so I found the experience pretty trippy, even more so because the dream characters appeared to be looking at me in bewilderment. At this point, I woke up.

I'm going to keep recording my dreams again and hope to attain some lucidity very soon. One thing I have never managed to do is fully control by dream environment. There are a few things and places I would like to explore in my subconcious so I hope to do this very soon.

Cory and I were planning out a route to visit Florida for vacation, and he wanted to drive down diagonally through Huntsville, AL. I was all annoyed by that because I didn't wanna go down there again, so I plotted out a route through Nashville to the far right of Tennessee and then downwards. He didn't like it because it would've been a long way around, but I refused to go through Huntsville. After that, I walked out onto the balcony to think about a compromise, and there was a neighbour out on the balcony beside ours, she was kind of a bigger woman with brown-ish hair up in a bun, sweeping the floor. I waved to her and said hi, but she just looked at me and then ignored me. Cory came out onto the balcony to ask me something, and he waved to her. She waved back and said hello. I was so put-out by that, how rude.

I was laying down on the ground and I heard a voice calling to me. When I looked up, I saw my Bast beadsprite and also there was Yinepu beside her. The voice spoke to me and told me I wasn't being spiritual enough lately, which is kind of true. It told me that the Gods missed having me and I should spend more time with them. I remember the sun streaming down over me and I was really awe-struck by the whole experience. When I woke up from that dream, it really stuck in my mind as super-vivid.

Micro awakening at 2.30 - recorded dream fell back to sleep quickly intending to wake up again soon for proper wbtb. Woke up at 3.25 didn't feel it was time yet , recorded dream. Woke up 3.55 Went to loo and sat up for 30 mins watching my mind waking up - at 4.30 felt sleepy enough but sluggishness was gone - layed down todo WILD.

Earplugs ect, Relaxed and again + 61 points - felt things changing around while doing 61 points but just went with it knowing I only needed to be aware it didn't matter if I did the 61 points exactly correct at this point, mellowed, vibrations clearer than ever before - now I know what that feels like - noise came and as I was in the middle of it I did my best to just observe - not too exited etc. Dreamlets came in before all that - one where I had a small child I was looking after -

( I am glad I have this to report even if it's not the full )

Mantra was ; I am dreaming - here and now -

Then it all stopped dead and went very quiet... I wondered if I might be in a dream or possibly in the void...wanted to open my eyes but didn't want to wake myself up...my body was all floaty - I thought I might try to roll over to the side to activate dream body. Then I experimented with a little movement and found I was simply awake in bed...

As well as RRC + RC - Trying to remember during daytime to look out for the shapes in corner of my vision etc - the ones you mention in the prep work - looking at Schema...

TWAke up with the weezer song butterfly in my head. I can remember sharing my dream in my dream and talking about people way down who could tell that it was all a dreamy. The dream people are laughing and laughing. They are looking at my body sleeping in a bed and start shaking me up. "hey! he's sleeping!!!" i think..

Wild... brief lucid

laying flat on my back doing breathing with the word "remember". I can feel my hands go heavy and i forget for a second. Soon I am sleeping in a whole new bed. It's a full sized with a black comforter pulled tight. It doesn't tip me off. I go back into my wilding. I enter a dream in the dark on a block in a neighborhood. I do a nose pinch and try to stabilize but the excitement knocks me right back into my body. I try to deild and wake back up in my bed. My kid is sleeping next to me. I thought she was in her bed. She is in her bed. I wake up.

Post W;ld
My Bloomin Onion is being indecent. I'm in the chilli's telling it to cover itself.

It was midnight. I was sitting on a chair in the ruins of a castle. There was a cage with a monkey inside. The animal had no fur and wore green shorts. There was a girl that I was in friendly terms in the past, now only passing acquintances. She came closer to me and tried to tell something, but I interrupted her shouting "I'll rather be with that monkey in a cage, than with you!"

I ran away and found myself on my frontyard. I entered a car, and with brother and mother we drove to a city centre. On the way we passed procession, my younger sister was leading it. In the end we stopped in a parking lot, and heard people talking about christmas.

I have a short ld in between other dreams, so remember only parts of it. Once again I remember the totm and go find a mirror, this time look at the mirror but instead of myself see the reflection of the DC next to me (looking from an angle). I. Keep staring at the mirror for as long as possible and this time the face of the DC starts changing, it shifts from one DC to another DC, female to male features and vice versa. It goes on for a while, a very cool thing to watch.

Yesterday, NO freaking recall. Today, I had a bunch. I think I have a better recall if I wake up in the middle of the night and then go back to bed. Anyone here has that?

06/23/2015 - GUARDIAN OF THE SOCCER COURT

I’m in the gated community I grew up in. I walk out of my house. I’m barefoot. I walk towards the indoor football court we had in the community area. There’s a bunch of kids hanging out. Apparently I’m younger there. I see VICKY, a girl who lives across the hall from me now (she didn’t live in the gated community), she’s hanging out with the other youngsters.
I want to play soccer, but there are a bunch of little kids currently playing on the court. I can see that one of them is currently one of my students and I recognize him as a student, which doesn’t make sense since in the dream I was still a teenager, but whatever weird brain.

I talk to the kids and I try to convince them to leave the court, but they’re not really feeling like it. I tell them they could play outside the court, but they don’t want to leave, specially because the court is the most well lit part of the communuty area and they’re all afraid of the dark. One of them cries.

Then, the community area is empty. I don’t know if it was a transition or if I just don’t remember what happened. I’m inside the court and CHRIS PRATT is sitting on the benches in front of the court. Apparently I know him in my dream. “Who would have thought you’d be the biggest fucking star in the world?” I say to him. He kinds of shrugs. He’s even humble in my dream, I love that guy.

We talk a bit about his career and favorite roles. He mentions a movie he did called “Hard” (which doesn’t exist) and I’ve seen it and I say: “Yeah, with the huge samoan dude, what’s his name?!” (apparently my SC mind is slightly racist. THE HECK, SC MIND?!) Then I remember The Rock’s name.

We also talk about the best sequels ever. I remember that I had the same discussion with a couple of friends, and then I sort of flashback for a second, me leaving school with ALEX (who I didn’t know when I was in High School) and a GIRL and we’re talking about movies. And then I imply that “Boogies Nights” and “Magnolia” count as sequels because they’re in the same shared universe (they’re not).

PARTIN’ WITH THE ACTOR

This one I just remember a little bit about. There was more to it. So there’s this WOMAN, she’s at home. (Her home being my appartment, or at least her kitchen looked A LOT like mine). So she’s at home, with this actor dude.

I think she’s doing the dishes. The actor is trying to convince her to do drugs. I think they just wrapped a film or something like that, and he always gets high when he wraps a film. She ends up agreeing. They’re SUPER high. Her MOM is there too, so she’s trying to pretend she’s not. It’s her adoptive mother, apparently.

So the younger woman chats with the ACTOR. She tells him about her brother and how he was a wreck after the death of their bio-mother. So, the actor tells her about his psycho of a brother, that used to torture him when they were kids.

The older brother loved to steal their mother’s panties and hide it in the actor’s room. Kinky.


COPS ‘N EXES

I’m in my apartment. One of my exes, JULIANA, is here and she’s looking beautiful. I don’t remember exactly what happened. Something missing maybe? But I call the cops. She’s annoyed by that.

We talk about her love life. She’s living in Paris and her current boyfriend lives in Germany.They can only see each other on weekends. She’s not that into him, and I can see that she still has feelings for me.

At first I try to not think about it, but I can feel that I also have feelings for her. We flirt. A lot. I sit next to her on the couch. Then I decide to call the cops and tell them it was a mistake. (And now I kind of want to call Juliana Stupid dream)

This is going to be my dream journal. I'm not sure how much time I will have for posting, but I have read that keeping a journal is a good way to recognize dream signs. Posting dreams here should keep me accountable to continuing to journal. Many of these dreams will no doubt be based on video games I have played or am playing right now. In order to make them more readable I will use the following:

My normal dreaming will be recorded in regular black text.

When and if I manage to become lucid, I will record those parts in purple.

Notes for clarification that are not actually part of the dream will be blue.

Thank you in advance for reading.

23.06.2015

Zooming the mirror (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This was a very long and most of it, personal, but there was a lucid part of the dream and I remembered to do the advanced task since it was undone, so I am sharing this part:


After coming out from the house since I needed to go to the big event I wondered if I was ready and all set. As I was gliding I saw a lot of lights and circus-alike tents. The entrance was like an old creepy campsite welcome sign. There were some pot-a-potties nearbie and I did not recognize the place so I turned lucid.

I looked up into the sky, and as usual, it was full of stars, I wanted to take a flight but I remembered I had my advanced task undone. So I got into the pot-a-potty and on the inside it was huge and like a normal bathroom.

I looked myself into the mirror and at first nothing happened, but then, the top of my head started to inflate like a balloon. I wondered if I could change myself entirely if I looked away from the mirror and started at it again, so I did. I saw no changes, other than being deformed and/or having a lot more facial hair.

I wanted to see if I could be absorved by the mirror somehow if I started at it, which I did for quite some time. Nothing happened other than a "zoom" effect on my reflection.

A little after I left the bathroom satisfied with the task completed.

Lost lucidity shortly after and/or woke up/dont recall.

(I don't remember well the lucid dream because after waking up after the lucid dream, I though that if I get back to sleep I can get back to the lucid dream but no didn't work):
I was sleeping on the floor under a plant pot and I got scare because there was a spider in the pot, so I wake up quickly and take my pillow. Infront of me there was a scale where there was a lot of object, on both sides there was my bed but which were chairs.
...........CutOff of the Dream..........
I was wearing my tank-top and walking in a parking, then I went sleeping next a group of people. I lay down and put my cap on my face. When I woke up, I saw that the group have put make up on my face and were filming with their phone. I took their phone and broke it, some of them were running from me, but I catch them and took their phone. There was 2 phones in my hand. Now they start running after me to get back their phones. We were in the neighbourhood and I started climbing up on the roof of the house, they follow me, I jump on another roof of a house so they do also. At that moment I realize I was dreaming. So I fly up in the sky and watch them down on the roof of the house. I make circle around the house and all the house which was next it disappear.
..........CutOff of the Dream...........
I was in my bedroom, my door was close. I was infront my door, I was trying to fly: I jump but doesn't work, I put my 2 hand like superman but doesn't fly. I said maybe I need high, so I climb on my bed and jump but didn't work. So I said maybe if I jump backward without seeing the floor, it will work. So I jump backward and keep falling like skydiving(I could hear the wind blowing while I was falling) and I could see my bed getting far away up.
..........CutOff of the Dream...........
I was still in my bedroom, I decided to get out by passing through the window. I jump on the roof of the cabin(there is a cabin in my garden). The roof of the cabin was made of metal and when I walk on it we could hear the noise of the metal. Then I got on the wall, I try to fly by jumping but didn't work, I said to myself: ''how the fu..k I'm conscious about dreaming but can't even fly'', then I said ''I need some high, I must go on the roof of my house''. I get back in my room by the window. My door was still close I decided to pass through the door and it work. I was now in a corridor, there was sofa on both side. I sit down on a sofa, and in front of me, there was a man with a helmed on, siting on the sofa. I started to scream and talk sh..t and then I said to myself: ''if the man is an intelligent character, he must said WTF am I talking about''. But I said '' Fu..k it, it's my dream, I do whatever I want''

I've been sick, so I slept all day with lucid goals on my mind. The funny thing is, that delirious me thought one of the tasks was fireworks, but I still managed to do the mirror one.

Anyway, I vaguely recall a conversation with a DC where I suddenly became aware I was dreaming. But I don't remember if it was something she said or if it was just a feeling. Anyway, I was in a hallway at the time, and at the end of the hall were 2 mirrors. I stared at my reflection, and like many times, it looked like a younger, slimmer, longer-haired version of myself. I was wearing a really baggy t-shirt like I used to in college, and my long hair all one length and combed down with a power-part like the granola girl that I was lol. Satisfied, I thought about going through the mirror, then thought "nah I always do that." So I tried something different: I noticed the DC was coming after me in a kind of playful "I'm gonna get ya!" fashion. So I squealed and jumped through the ceiling, successfully phasing through it.

I was in a residential neighborhood, with a few large houses and no trees or grass or landscaping of any kind, and really hot dry and sunny. I dream this scenery alot, and it reminds me of the neighborhood where I grew up. We moved into our house before the rest of the neighborhood was really all that developed, so there were few houses and all the yards were just dirt. I guess it's a fairly easy, simple environment to create in dreams.

Anyway, I jumped down off the roof, using some kind of large pipe to slow the descent. I still have height issues, even in LDs, so I've found ways to work around them. I got to the curb and for some reason believed that creating a firework was one of the TOTMs. I know it was for past July tasks, so with July 4th around the corner I guess that's why it just popped in there. So I was standing on the curb, and pointed to the street, fully expecting a firework to appear without a smidgen of doubt. One appeared, the size of a large button. I willed it to light itself, then watched as it shot into the air. It was pretty sunny, and at first all I could see was a bunch of smokey dots, kind of like what you see in the sky after a firework burns itself out. Then there was a flash, and the firework became a large arc of rainbow, surrounded by fluffy clouds and another rainbow that encircled the first one. I applauded lol. Then since the dream was still going, I went on to do tawdry things..

Ritual: Slept from about 1:45 to 6:15am, woke to record a vivid NLD, decided to turn it into a WBTB and try to get lucid. I wanted to use some light supplements but nothing powerful, only alpha-gpc and bacopa... but after wondering why one of the bacopa capsules I'd just swallowed was white, I realized, oh shit, when traveling recently I had put some galantamine in the same bottle! I had no interest in taking galantamine this morning but now it seemed there was nothing to be done. Then I had an idea: since piracetam counters the more unpleasant effects of galantamine, and since it now frequently acts for me as a lucid trigger on its own, what might happen if I took the two at the same time? It had never occurred to me to try this before.

Writing this up after the experiment, I feel like an alchemist who has just stumbled across the philosopher's stone. Wow. After going back to bed 7am I did some prep before falling asleep and then found myself dreaming lucidly for over an hour, waking at 8:30am, probably my longest stint to date. Then I wrote up everything I could remember, lay back in bed to remember and write down some more, went back to sleep, and found myself in another semilucid that presented itself as building on events from the previous dream (though I'm not convinced it actually was). At 10:30am I woke again, feeling thoroughly surfeited and satisfied with so much dreaming.

DILD, "Three Houses": The dream lasted so long that there was even a point midway through it where I thought to myself, "With everything I've already experienced, how am I ever going to remember all this? There's just no way, especially if I keep going. Should I just wake up?" But the answer came readily, "No way! I want to keep experiencing it, even if I can't remember everything later." There were a number of shifts and transitions that might normally have destabilized the dream and woken me, but I felt confident in my ability to navigate them safely.

Although I don't clearly remember the beginning of the dream, I'm sure it was a DILD because I recall having one of those thought sequences like, "Hey... I think I might be drea—yes, of course I'm dreaming. Duh. I knew that." Experiences like these confirm for me that lucidity goes beyond mere dream awareness (which in itself can be non-lucid, as I've experienced many times) to encompass that awareness of dream awareness, a kind of meta-awareness, that enables agency. Once I had agency, it was on to my tasks. I had two main tasks planned, working on the "intellego" technique from Ars Magica and trying this month's bonus TOTM. I prioritized the latter because it is time sensitive.

Random house: Although I was upstairs in a house when I got lucid, I decided that to do the task properly I should start with a fresh one. I went out to the balcony, which looked out over some tall pines bordering the backyard, and easily levitated into the air. I was floating over a residential neighborhood with numerous houses to choose from, so I tried to let instinct guide me. Although the outside of the house I picked didn't inspire any sense of connection—it was an ordinary two-story suburban home in blue-grey clapboard—I figured I should look inside.

My first distinct impression was how heavy the front door was, one of those old ones made of solid wood. I had to manually lock it behind me and the bolt was hard to turn, though even at the time this struck me as mere DR, since the sensation of forcing the bolt was identical to what I have to do currently with my patio gate in WL. After entering, I found myself in a short plain white hallway, and started wandering through and trying various doors.

Although my intention had been to find house that represented me, and I even muttered something to this effect aloud a few times as I wandered through this one, I still didn't feel any connection with this place. All the rooms on the ground floor were vacant and a bit dirty, as though someone had moved out in a hurry. I wondered if I was seeing an empty house because I've never actually owned a house of my own in WL, having always rented, so I never had experienced a house that truly did represent me. I opened one door and it led into an enclosed porch or sunroom, also empty. I went back inside and found an interior room with no windows. I thought that if I did live here, this would be a great place to build bookshelves, something I've always wanted to do if I had a house of my own. This house, however, didn't look like a place would ever really want to live, much less a place could represent me in any meaningful way.

I was annoyed with how empty and uninteresting the ground floor was, so as I went upstairs I reinforced my intention for the house to represent me. At the top of the stairs were two rooms, and these were cluttered with scattered boxes of junk. Might this represent a cluttered state of mind? I looked around at the seemingly random stuff, but once again I felt no connection with it. There were big boxes crammed with vinyl record albums... but I've never owned any vinyl, having grown up in the era of cassettes and then CDs. There was a smaller box containing smaller records, and I tried to remember what that format was called. "Eight-tracks" was what I came up with—clearly I didn't have full access to WL memory, because I'm well aware that eight tracks are those big chunky early cassettes, and only after waking did I remember that the miniature records are properly called "singles." I've never owned any of those either. When I saw that another box on the floor contained an open bag of what appeared to be maxipads, I started to get annoyed. This is just random junk! Sure, I'm a woman, I occasionally use maxipads, but I really don't think they have any special meaning for me... apparently the dream is not cooperating with my intention. That part, at least, is nothing new. My dreamstate has never been entirely cooperative.

I went back downstairs and out through a garage. It was mostly empty, but there was a chest of drawers there, where I began to try out my second task. "Intellego," I said, touching the wood (I wasn't sure if the Form should be "Corpus," so I left it blank.) All I could read from the chest of drawers was a vague impression of the craftsman's hands, and a feeling that it might have been made in India. That made sense, I figured... how much information could I expect out of furniture, anyway?

I went outside and looked up into the sky. It was full of fluffy, almost cartoonish clouds. "Intellego auram!" I shouted. I got no response, even when I repeated the command several times and focused specifically on the wind. Well, what did I expect to learn from the sky? The current strength and pattern of wind currents? What possible meaning could that have for me? I suppose it was a failure of imagination, but "intellego auram" produced no impressions at all.

Aspirational house: I wasn't happy with my first house attempt, but figured I should try again. I tried to find a house that looked more like something I would actually want to live in. Stone walls, of course, something old and solid and dignified. I "located" such a house but it felt a bit fake, like I was forcing the issue, maybe even creating an overlay of what I wanted to see over what was actually there. I tried to remind myself this is dream, nothing is "actually" there, and went through the front door.

This front door was also pleasingly solid and heavy, and it latched shut on its own, a big improvement over the last one. I found myself in a little coatroom or antechamber, and from there passed through another door into a spacious kitchen. As I walked in I was still determined for this to be the house I was hoping for, so at first I felt like my impressions were driven more by imagination than dream. But after a moment dream took over, and my vague wishes solidified into a magnificent kitchen. It was long and narrow, and over to my right I had the impression of a stove range where a woman was cooking. To my left was the food storage area, consisting of a large refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling stainless steel doors that turned out to be the cupboards for dry goods, and the glass doors of a built-in freezer that also occupied a whole section of the wall. Although I had created the basic structures through my own deliberate imagining, as I now opened the doors and peeked at the contents, I was satisfied that dream had followed through and spontaneously filled in the details. When I opened the door of the refrigerator, there was even a beautifully frosted white cake, and although I thought I heard the woman across the room warning me not to touch it, I couldn't resist lifting up a corner of the plastic cover and using my finger to swipe a bit of the frosting. The vivid taste made me glad of my mischief... just like real buttercream!

I don't remember the other rooms of this house as clearly as the kitchen, though in contrast the last house it was furnished and even peopled. Upstairs I ran into a guy with a beard and mustache and decided to work on my ongoing attempt to summon game characters. I wondered if it would work better if I started with a character I had less interest in, so that I'd be less concerned about "getting it right." Last night in DA:I I had some conversation scenes with Blackwall in which I basically friendzoned him, so I tried to transform this DC into him by visualizing the scene I remembered. The voice was easier than the face; it wasn't a complete success but not a complete failure either. Unexpectedly I ended up kissing the DC (which was not in the original scene), and it was at this point that he seemed most like the game character, though I didn't take our interactions any further.

In further exploring the upstairs of this house, I opened a closet door and found myself in—I'm not sure what to call it, maybe "the labyrinth," a kind of claustrophobic dream space that perpetually replicates itself. In the past I've experienced it when I've portaled and accidentally found myself trapped in a seemingly endless series of tiny doorless rooms. This time it wasn't even rooms, just a texture like pebbly pastel-colored styrofoam that was pressing in on all sides. Wherever I pushed through in any direction, I found myself in another identical space. I even "airlifted," a technique of rising vertically that usually extricates me from unpleasant or threatening situations, but was still stuck in the labyrinth. In the past, the only way I've gotten out was to wake up, but this time I was determined to keep cool and persevere. Sure enough, eventually the sense of claustrophobia receded and I found myself in a new scene. Maybe the labyrinth is no more than a virtual rendering of unconstructed dream space.

I was now outdoors on a street far too narrow for cars, and cobbled. It was pleasingly archaic, and I wondered if I could work on the DA:I theme some more. The only distraction was the brightly colored balloons that were attached everywhere for some reason... a festival? At the end of the street I climbed a steep staircase to the second floor of an unpainted wooden building, and on an inspiration, I thought, "When I turn the corner, I want to see my dream lover." (I've been thinking it over in WL, and decided that I might prefer this over a mere "guide." But my DCs have been so inconsistent that to date I've identified neither.)

I turned the corner and... sitting in a rocking chair was a drab, ugly old woman. (I already mentioned how perverse my subconscious can be.) I didn't want to be rude, so I approached her with questions. At my wondering why she appeared in this form, she answered, "We take different appearances." I had the feeling that the "we" included both of us. Although I was not attracted to her in this form, I thought there was something familiar in her eyes, so I kissed her anyway. Around this time another DA:I character, Sera, came climbing up a rope onto the balcony of the room, and I thought perhaps the dream was suggesting that we take a stand for lesbian love. I was up for this, so I yelled at the young man pursuing Sera up the rope that he had better climb down as quickly as he could, if he hoped to stand a chance of surviving when I cut it. I pulled out my knife and let the taut rope brush against the sharp blade, severing some of the strands to show my threat was serious. The man started climbing down again, but the rope was not as durable as I thought, and my knife hadn't cut through more than a third of its width before the rest of it broke and unraveled, dropping him to the street. I peered down anxiously but was relieved to see him stand up again, apparently unharmed. "Sorry!" I shouted, and genuinely meant it.

Things only got weirder from here, and at the point where the jockey told me, "They should tape our warm hands to the wheel," and I was going over this line trying to make sure I would remember it, I started to wonder if I should wake myself up. Hell no, I decided. So there were more things I don't remember clearly, and I'm not sure how I found myself in my old house.

Old house: I was in the house where I lived from the age of ten until I left for college. This was so far into the dream that I can't be sure if it was another attempt at the TOTM that brought me here, but once I found myself in the house, it definitely felt relevant to the task... of all the places I've lived in my life, this was the one I felt the most connection to, and it lives very intact in my memory. I floated through it like a disembodied spirit, mostly impressed by the accuracy of what I saw. But there was something drab and empty about it, too, perhaps because I was aware that everything I was saw no longer existed: the house was sold shortly after I finished college, so although it still stands, it is no longer the home I remember.

I started in my bedroom, floated through the upstairs playroom I shared with my brother, drifted down the stairs, and then made a circuit through the dining room, into the parlor, through the closet that connected the parlor to my parents' bedroom, and through the adjoining bathroom. Everything looked ordinary and intact until this point, when I saw the first oddity: a white enamel woodburning stove, a kitchen model, was in the bathtub for some reason. I continued floating into the kitchen, where we did have such a woodstove—original to the house—though the real one was black cast iron and much too large to fit in any tub. I concluded my tour in the living room, having made a complete circuit of everything but my brother's room, the pantry, and the workroom.

There was something festive about the decoration of the living room, perhaps because of the many wonderful Christmases we had enjoyed there, and another oddity: a giant pair of elk horns, which when I looked closer appeared to be attached to an actual elk, although it was standing as still as a statue. I assumed the elk horns were DR, since I had recently been impressed by pictures of the giant Irish elk, an extinct species (neither specifically Irish nor actually an elk, to be pedantic) that sported massive antlers. It reminded me of the elk that Thranduil rode, and my earlier successes inspired me to attempt another thematic summoning. I clambered on the back of the giant elk and rode it outside (conveniently ignoring the fact that there is no way its antlers would have fit through the the ordinary-sized door that led outside from the living room.)



Outside it was winter, everything covered in snow, and I found myself in a hilly landscape with no connection to my old yard. I focused on finding Thranduil and saw him up ahead on his own elk, actively battling a pack of large winter wolves. He was alone and I feared that if I did not intervene I would lose the chance to talk to him, so I charged ahead using fire magic to clear the pack. When the battle was done and we stood alone again, surrounded by the fallen wolves, he gave me an imperious look and said coldly, "No Lothian tickets will be given to see me." Although I wasn't sure what he meant by "Lothian" (or why I feel like it should be capitalized), I had the impression that he was telling me that he was not someone to be summoned at whim by a mere dreamer. So I changed tactics, presenting myself as his sister. According to the lore I don't even think he has a sister, but it worked.

"So, our father in the middle of a storm brought anzu fruits for our hunters," I informed him, pointing to a cache of green and orange spheres buried under a patch of ice. Thranduil accepted my new identity and greeted me with a prim brotherly kiss, to which I responded with somewhat more than sisterly affection, though I tried not to go full Lannister on him. It was here that I awoke at last, delighted to have finally made some progress in the character summonings that, to date, I have found the most difficult type of tasks.