Well, I didn't really plan on WILDing last night, but I woke up shortly before 5:00 and just rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
I didn't move a whole lot, so it wasn't long before I started to feel the
loss of sensation in my hands (these always go first, for me). Since I'd gotten that far, I thought "Well, why not see if I can make it?" So I just focused on keeping my mind conscious enough to WILD and letting everything else fall asleep.
Strangely, I didn't have
any HI this time. It was even a pretty calm ride as far as vibrations and other weird sensations were concerned. I just noticed after a while that
I really couldn't move...it wasn't just a loss of sensation anymore,
I really couldn't move. "Here we go, then!"
It was like
I sank down out of my body then, but I could still feel both it and the dream body my mind had created. But
being in the dream now, it was like a single wave passing across me, starting from my toes and moving up to my head, was erasing those last sensations of my real body so that I was completely in the dream.
I could already open my eyes and look around me at this point, but I waited until the wave had passed before I tried to move anything so I didn't lose the dream. I was still in my bedroom, laying down, but everything was much darker than it should have been, so I knew I hadn't failed the WILD.
Once all the vibrations had ceased and I felt I was securely in the dream, I did a reality check and tested to be dreaming, and then immediately got up and tried to fly out of my house and on to things more exciting.
I had a slight and temporary problem at the outset; I could fly no problem, but as soon as I focused on moving through a wall or the ceiling, I'd lose my flying concentration and so begin to descend. This only lasted a few seconds though, as I quickly figured out to focus on flying through the wall, a singular thing, not flying and phasing through.
And then the last wall to my house was a bit of a bugger, too. Instead of simply letting me pass through it, at first it tried to stretch out and hold me inside, like it was made of elastic.
"Oh, come on, I'm outside already." I said for the sake of convincing my subconscious to let me go.
The wall snapped back through me and into its place then, leaving me hovering outside, looking down on my neighborhood exactly as it looks IRL. I had planned no dream goals for this WILD, so rather than go to any place in particular, I just picked a direction and decided to fly at lightspeed for a little while and just see where I ended up.
I've never flown that fast before. It was awesome. Way better than teleporting, because I actually got to see everything that I flew over, which was really impressive considering all of it was a dream. There were houses, tall buildings, cars, people, birds, trees...I saw it all for what felt like miles of nearly instant travel.
I might have kept on going, but then I heard a call.
"Hey! Down here!"
Couldn't tell who it was from my distance, but I figured I might as well go and check it out. I slowed down, flew low, and finally landed on the ground in a really strange kind of place.
Everything was tropical, and yet, industrial. There was no grass, no roads, just sand. There were many buildings of the style that you see around beaches, and they all had water features that pooled into streams which flowed all throughout the city, using the sand to form intricate pathways of their own. But at the same time, it looked planned out, since several of these little streams went into the base of a big fountain at the center of the place. This fountain's job was apparently to spray the water all the way back up to the top of all the buildings, spewing out a stream in every direction so every building was continually re-using the water.
"This would be a pretty cool place to go on a dream date in..."
After taking all this in for a short while, the person who had stopped me walked up and thanked me for coming. I could see now that it was a woman. That gave me another idea.
"I wonder if I could take over this DC's body and go on a date from the female perspective? That would be interesting..."
So I began to ask the woman some questions, like where the best restaurant was. Once everything was answered and I had a plan, I was just about to make my first attempt at DC possession when something else came to mind.
"Oh, and one last thing. How old are you?" I asked.
"58." Was her reply.
She didn't look nearly that old at first glance, but once I actually thought about it, she certainly didn't look young anymore.
"58! But...that just won't do. Would you mind if I took some of those years away from you?"
She was repulsed by the offer.
"I'd really rather you didn't. In fact, I must be going now. Goodbye."
"Ok...I suppose I'll just look for someone else, then."
Problem was, there weren't a whole lot of people around. I had to just walk around for a minute before I saw anybody, and even then, it was a guy this time. He didn't look to be old, so I approached him.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"32."
"32, not bad at all. Still, would you mind if I took off about 10 years from that number?"
"Go right ahead, those were the best 10 years of my life! I wouldn't mind living them again!"
So I held my hands out towards him and through willpower caused him to grow just a bit younger. There wasn't a whole lot of visual difference, but there was some. Enough to make one guess his age would lie in the early 20's instead of the early 30's.
"Dude, I feel great! Thanks!"
Before I could ask the guy if he knew of any young woman who might be around, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see a VERY old woman standing there in front of me.
"What you just did for that man...would you do that for me?" She asked.
Now, I would have guessed that this woman was in her late 80's, and near death. Her skin was almost colorless. Hair completely white, and thin. Skin wrinkled something awful.
But it was just so crazy I had to give it a shot.
"Alright, I'll do it."
I held out my hands and began the transformation. It must have been a shocking feeling, because the instant change began to happen, the old woman grabbed onto my wrists and held on tightly.
It was a crazy thing to watch. The wrinkles tightened up, her hair grew thick and long as it simultaneously turned to a glossy dark brown, a healthy pink flooded into her pale skin, and many other such things as well.
When I was finally finished, the now-young woman brushed her hair out of her face and smiled brightly at the change. I couldn't believe how amazing she looked. I mean, this girl was a TKO! I wondered if I should simply take her out on a date myself instead of take her over...
I held on to the girl's hand and led her to the guy I had transformed a minute ago, and he immediately began to ask her out. I was just getting ready to take possession, one way or the other, when...
I woke up.
Since I was awake, I didn't try to DEILD for fear that I would fail and then not have recalled the past dream at all. So instead I went back through the dream in my memory until I had it in my mind pretty well and then I rolled over and tried to WILD again.
Once more, it was a pretty easy ride to the dream. All I felt was
the inability to move, and then
a wave-like transition into the dream body, and then...
Dream 2:
I was standing in a room with a crowd of people, but somehow they all seemed dull in color and liveliness compared to one person right in front of me. He seemed different than the rest of the people around. Not that his actions were spectacular; he simply was taking pictures with a really nice camera. Eventually he noticed me looking at him, but it didn't seem to bother him. He just waved and said 'hi'.
But there was something weird that happened during that short event. From the moment we made eye contact, I heard a faint whisper and saw ghost-like words scroll across my vision, both saying the same thing: "Man of Shred"
"No way, Man of Shred?" I thought. "I've got to find out!"
I tried to run towards him and get his attention, but he had seen someone else and was making his way through the crowd to get to them.
"Hey! Wait! It's LiveInTheDream!"
Yes, I woke up in the middle of that last sentence. And I finished saying it out loud, IRL. It was weird...like I had gotten kicked out of the dream. Usually there's a split-second sensation of "oh crap I'm waking up", but not this time. One moment I was in the dream, the next I was fully awake.
And I felt like I was being watched. Seriously. As in, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if I had turned around and found someone standing right next to my bed. It was that real a feeling to me.
So now the question is...was that really Man of Shred I saw, or just an imposter of a dream character?
You can be sure I'll look further into this one. MoSh, you've got a PM heading your way...