Ritual: Went to bed 1am, woke at 2, too early to do anything, woke again at 5:40 with fresh NLD, so forced myself to get up and do a proper WBTB. Returned to bed at 6:15, did hybrid of SSILD and counting, but kept getting disturbed by environmental factors. Hard to sleep, eventually dozed off without awareness, finally woke at 7:20 and declared it a failed attempt. I could still squeeze in another hour of sleep though so I figured I'd just try FILD as a last resort. After this things get confusing. My best guess is that I did FILD, then fell asleep and into a NLD, then... I woke up, or thought I did (might have been an FA), and did FILD again (possibly in the dream state). Then I noticed that my arm was lying free on the bed rather than tucked under my pillow as usual, so I thought, "Fine, I'll do the stupid nose pinch RC," and what do you know, I could breathe! So I knew I was dreaming, but I was very perplexed. I had just been doing FILD and hadn't observed any kind of transition or even a momentary lapse of awareness in which the transition could have occurred. How could I have fallen asleep and not realized it? In retrospect, I really do think that this started as an FA that I mistook for a real waking, so I did FILD without realizing that I was already dreaming. Hey, whatever works. So I sat up, and immediately became more perplexed. I was in a bed, but it was not the one I had gone to sleep in, and the bedroom also bore no resemblance to mine in RL. I got up and started looking around, but then I realized that I recognized the place after all: hadn't I been having a non-lucid dream here, just before I woke up and tried that FILD attempt? (This also argues for the FILD-during-FA hypothesis, and it wouldn't be the first time I've had a "WILD" that was initiated from within an ongoing dream—a DIWILD?) This is hard to confirm because I always have a hard time putting dream events in their proper sequence, but there were events I remembered taking place in this building that don't seem lucid and don't fit into my memory of the lucid episode, so I think that must be what happened. That is, all the previous events took place downstairs, but the entire lucid sequence took place upstairs in what I took to be the same house. NLD: Earlier when I was downstairs, there had been some complicated narrative I don't recall, but it resulted in me opening the front door several times to let cats into the house. At one point there was a really big one, an orange tabby, both large-bodied and very plump. When I saw him sitting on the doorstep I thought he was the biggest cat I'd ever seen, and I invited him in and closed the door. But there had been two or three other orange tabbies of normal size sitting with him, so I relented and opened the door again to let them in too. "Okay, fine, we'll just let them all in." I knew we didn't have room for them all, but figured it wouldn't be fair to turn them away after I'd already let in others. We could sort it out later. After this I stood in the entry and watched the extra-big cat ambling away down the hall. Now it was even larger than it had seemed at first, with a lean, bony frame that was not at all cat-like. In fact, I thought I recognized what it was, and said to someone standing nearby, "That cat looks an awful lot like a moose. You know, I think it might actually be just a moose with no horns." Only it was still orange, which seemed a very odd color for a moose. DIWILD: So apparently this all happened earlier, before the FILD attempt, and afterwards I was convinced I was still in the same house. In the wall facing the end of the bed was a doorway to another room, and when I went inside, I encountered someone that I immediately recognized as the moose-cat from earlier, although now he was a human-looking man with orange hair. I was still curious, so I asked him, "Are you a cat or a moose?" "I have three types of glands," he answered, and I had the impression he was suggesting that he was both, and something more besides, a protean type of creature. The two of us sat down on the couch, and for a moment my dream libido took over, and I started making out with him. But as things got more intense I recognized that this was a distraction and would accomplish nothing useful. Didn't I have tasks to do? I remembered that last night I had been on DV looking over the monthly tasks for August, and there had been one that I particularly wanted to try out. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I disentangled myself from moose-cat-man's embrace and said firmly, "Tell me a word in a foreign language." It was hard to make out what he said at first. It sounded like "Arab mormon." "What?" I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly. This time he distinctly just said, "Mormon." It didn't sound like a word in a foreign language, but whatever. Run with it. "Alright, now tell me what it means." "A married man." I wasn't very satisfied with this result and wanted to try again. Another DC was in this room, sitting on another small couch further along the same wall, so I went and sat down next to him. This time I made sure my instructions were more explicit from the start: "I want you to tell me a word in a foreign language, and then tell me what it means." "Sprenn," he said promptly. "Spread?" I repeated what I had thought I heard at first. "Sprenn," he clarified, and helpfully spelled it for me. "S-P-R-E-N-N." "Okay, what does it mean?" At this he smiled coyly, as if embarrassed. "I'll... tell you later." I had the impression it must be a word for something naughty, but I needed to find out. "Please?" I wheedled. He shook his head. I decided to be more forceful. "Come on, you have to tell me!" I tried to think of how to back this up, and added, "It's my homework assignment." He tried to explain in a roundabout way: "It has to do with the city of Myrkbalik, and the laws of Garibaldi." The two names he mentioned sounded complicated, so I wanted to make sure I had heard them correctly. "What was the name of the city? Mrkbalik?" He nodded. "And the second name? Garibaldi? Garifaldo?" This reminded me of a name I had heard in waking life, so I tried to remember, then joked with him, "The laws of Janeane Garofolo?" He laughed, though it wasn't clear whether or not he recognized the pop culture reference, and repeated the name for me. It still sounded closer to "Garibaldi" than anything, though I had so much to remember at this point that I didn't dare ask him to try to spell it. Already in the back of my mind I was cycling through data points "mormon... married man... sprenn... mrkbalik..." trying to make sure I would be able to preserve them through waking. Mrkbalik... that's how it sounded, and I didn't ask him to confirm the spelling of that one either. But he had said it was a city name, and to my ears it sounded Russian or Eastern European. I had a sudden insight about this DC, and asked him, "You majored in Slavic studies, didn't you?" He confirmed this. I felt as though this conversation was winding down, so I got up and crossed the room. Against the opposite wall was a sort of shelving unit, framing square cubbyholes about the size you might put a pair of shoes in, six cubbies high and six wide. It was resting on some elevated base so that the fourth row of cubbies up was equal with my eye level. I looked in this row and saw that a couple of the cubbies were inhabited by small kittens. Could the kittens talk, I wonder? If so, I might even try the task again. But as I was wondering this, the little grey tabby kitten in the cubby I was peering into addressed me first. It had a tiny creaky high-pitched voice, like you might expect of a kitten, and said something about how its eyes were damaged or hurting. I was troubled to hear this and wondered how I might help. Since this was a dream, I figured the most effective way to help the kitten would be to correct its expectations. I smiled and said encouragingly, "No, your eyes are perfectly fine!" We had a few more exchanges like this, where the kitten would say something upsetting and I tried to reassure it. I don't remember anything afterwards so around this time I guess I woke up, although I don't have a distinct sense of the moment when it happened.
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