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Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #250: Open Your Eyes

There’s a long sequence where I help set up a first date between a male friend and the twin sister of a female friend. Proud of having helped, I wander off to a hallway adjacent to where they’re having their date. There’s an old lady here staring at a set of wall hooks and commenting about how she’s a lucid dreamer and always checks wall hooks “just in case she’s dreaming.”

Interesting idea, I say, and notice that the shape of the hooks keeps changing. I spot a wadded up piece of paper and decide to make it float, just to see. It takes some effort, but float it does, and now I’m lucid. I walk through a nearby door into a warehouse stacked with boxes, intending to encounter Dreamer here.

As soon as I enter the room, I see Dreamer carrying some huge, heavy-looking cardboard box. She seems to be doing grunt work for some kind of retail job and there’s a disagreeable-looking young woman behind her shouting at her to hurry up her work. Dreamer sees me and gives me an apologetic look as this supervisor hustles her along. I approach the pair of them and tell the supervisor, “She’s all done with her work now, isn’t she?” The supervisor seems to accept this and wanders away.

I grab Dreamer’s hand and we run as I babble to her about how this is all a lucid dream. We leave the way I came in, but now it’s a marble entrance hall. Then we’re out on a crowded street, people walking in either direction down the sidewalk and cars rolling up and down the street. I shout something bold to the dream world about how this is my dream and nobody’s going to cause me any trouble. A lot of the DCs stop and turn to me at this, and one of the cars veers off of the street and comes rolling toward us.

Dreamer and I leap onto the hood of the car, run along the top of it, and jump into the air as we reach the trunk. She hangs on as we take flight, wrapping her arms around my neck and left shoulder. I comment on how silly it was of me to start thinking about dreamworld hostility when everything had been absolutely fine. Fortunately, none of it feels like a big deal, and we say something about how it should sort itself out.

The flight’s a lot of fun but at some point I lose my sight. Dreamer says, “The dream is still here. Open your eyes.” I’m nervous about this, but I try it. For a second they feel like they’re glued shut and I think this has to be my real eyes opening. But a little more effort and they’re open! We’re high above the clouds now, and I do a hard dive back to earth, determined that this time everything will be easy and peaceful. I somehow hit the ground sooner than expected and faceplant in some grass. Dreamer seems to be gone now.

I feel the grass a bit with my hands, and it feels phony, like mini-golf grass. A couple of DCs I know from another dream pass by, greet me, and I follow them into a building, through halls into a glass-walled office on the 2nd story. Somehow it’s night outside. An easy-going guy named Gary (black dude, friendly, on the tall side) joins us and I incorrectly remember that the Task of the Month is to pull a prank on a DC! (Oops, this is one from a previous month! )

As a prank, I decide to pretend that the window is sucking me out into the night. I act scared and start shouting as I phase through, landing on the corner of a nearby section of roof. I complete the prank by humping the corner of the roof. The guys inside start laughing uncontrollably and I float down to an outdoor restaurant patio that’s just below.

I think about whether I’ve got a chance to encounter Dreamer again and think about doing either another task or whatever the heck I feel like. As I think this, a woman seated at one of the patio tables turns to face me, and it’s Dreamer! She’s wearing a dress and has long blond hair, but otherwise looks and seems like herself. I talk a bit about tasks, but again lose my vision.

In response to this, she starts singing a strange Australian song about “marching around” and tells me to try marching around myself. As I’m flailing about, I feel myself kick over a table or two and I hear some people shout in surprise. “See how silly that is?” she says. “Just open your eyes!” I have some trouble at first, but after a little encouragement, my eyes come open just fine and I’m still in the same scene. Dreamer runs up and gives me a big hug before we walk off together, talking again about what we should do next. We never get around to anything before the dream ends.

Dream - Lucid

I was staring out the window in a house. It was nighttime outside, but I could see this weird break in the clouds that had a reddish tint to it, as if the sun was setting behind that small break, but it was nighttime. I'm not sure exactly what triggered it, but I figured out I was dreaming! Very cool. I examined my hands to stabalize. Then, just for fun, I did a nose pinch RC, which is something I've been practicing IWL lately, but have never done in a dream. I could breathe! So that's what it feels like.

I then decided to fly towards the break in the clouds. I phased right through the window, no resistance or anything, which doesn't ever happen to me. I then started to jump to take off to fly, but once again remembered to just let myself float up. I did just that, and it was so easy! When I was in the air, I used this same technique to move to the left or the right. This is one of the first times in a long, long time that I have flown and not started to immediately lose height while in the air.

As I approached the break in the clouds, it started to look more purple than red. I briefly thought of Dreamer because of the purple. I then went into the break and saw what looked like a Mario Galaxy world with all these giant floating black bombs with faces and red tops among other things I can't recall right now. I feel like I saw them all from a different angle than the one that I entered the break at.

~

I felt myself falling asleep and entering the dream. I was with Dallas. I was sitting on the kitchen floor with him in the house I grew up in. There were all these kitchen utensils on the floor scattered about. I told him that since we were dreaming, he could do whatever he wanted to me (I definitely meant sexually ). I was kind of excited so I briefly lost the dream a couple of times, but went right back into it. I took off my pants, which of course made me more excited and once again I briefly lost the dream but went back into it immediately. Dallas then took this long straw-type thing with lube and inserted it into my forearm. Totally NOT what I expected at all, and if felt so weird! He kept sliding it in and out, and I couldn't even look at it because I was afraid to see it.
"No! Not that! Don't do that!" I said.
He kept doing it.

~

I was at Dakota's apartment. Someone else lived there as well. I hadn't heard from Dakota in years, much less seen him. He was sitting on the couch smiling, but it was a sad smile. I talked to him a little, though I can't remember what it is we talked about. I noticed he was wearing a dark green sweater, and he looked so much thicker than usual. Not fat, just...thick. He had a really thick neck that was as wide as his head.

~

I was playing this online multiplayer game where you would get put in a house in one of 8 places. The house would be themed randomly and would have a shop in it for food. The house would be where you "lived" in the game. I got put in one but I don't remember the theme. I went up to the counter in the back to buy something, though I don't remember if I actually did or not.

I then was doing something else and not paying attention to what was happening in the game. Three girls came into my house. One had a short blue dress on but I don't remember what the others were wearing. They then started to change all my furniture and make all these alterations to the house itself. It then kicked me out of the house, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. Wtf! I was then looking at all the houses in the area from an above view, kind of like The Sims.

I then somehow got another house. I was then working in the food area, which, in this house, was in the front. I felt as if I was in first person now instead of third person gaming. Other people would come in and buy food from me. I was then making some kind of chicken pita sandwich when a girl came up and was telling me how it would be good if I did it a certain way. I was still doing it my way. I then noticed that the girl looked like one of the girls who kicked me out of my house before; I noticed her blue dress. I asked her if she was, and she said yes, and I cussed her out and she left.

I then saw some sort of small purple pop up that came up when someone wanted to buy your house. It would give you an option on whether or not to sell it to them for a certain price.

I then was on a menu area where you could pick a place to visit, one of the 8 places you could be assigned a house. They were represented by little icons. There were 3 areas in the "fun" category, which was off to the left of the screen, separated from the rest, and the rest were in multiple categories, all except the "fun" category. I don't remember anything about what the categories were called. There was a mountains area and a town/village area, but I don't remember any of the others.

I decided to visit a different area, though I don't recall which. I then was calling a book store inside of the game with my phone outside of the game. Some kid answered and was talking really fast, so I couldn't understand what she was saying. I heard another kid giggling in the background. The girl kept repeating whatever she was saying really fast, so I couldn't understand her. She started to sound impatient. I then figured out she was asking me if I was over 21. I said yes. She then started telling me about a porn book that was on sale and a lesbian book. I turned to the person that was with me (I guess someone was with me now) and said
"This is an adult bookstore!"
I was amused, but not interested. I hung up the phone.

I then visited the town/village area, and heard some music from KQ7 playing, the music from Archduke Fifi la Yipyap's party. There was a stage at the front of the town, which looked 16-bit, that had small flies moving around on it. The area looked quite primitive.

~

I was feeling myself fall asleep. I would see images around me that looked like movie screens playing clips of movies. I then was in a dream where it looked as if I was looking through my cupped hands to see what was going on. I don't remember what it was now, but it looked vivid and stable. However, it didn't feel stable. I then woke up.

~

I was playing this game, though I was inside of the game playing it. It was like League of Legends, where you pick your player, but it was an open-world game instead of a MOBA. We were underground in an area with lava and some very small erupting volcanoes that separated the sides of the cave. Right before the other side, there was a pool of what was supposed to be hot water. You still had a team. I don't remember who my character was, but Dallas was playing as Captain America, and someone else there was some girl from Captain Planet, the Asian one (was there an Asian girl on that show? I think there was). She had on a white shirt and a short orange skirt and white pants/leggings underneath the skirt. She was hovering around above the ground and shooting around magic spells. I thought that she was the weakest, but whoever was playing her knew how to play her so she wasn't as weak. I only saw her from the back.

I then saw people from our team walking over the lava to get to the other side and getting hurt, but not dying. Dallas (Captain America) was trying to explain how to do this so you didn't die (you weren't really supposed to walk on the lava at all). He was saying you just had to avoid the small erupting volcanoes and the "magma" (he used the word magma) that was pooled around them. I think I tried it and died. I know someone else did too, someone who had done it without dying before.

Dallas was then using a bucket to scoop lava out of the lava pools and dumping it in the water to try to make a pathway. The lava just evaporated and disappeared though when he did this. He didn't think it would work (like it does in Minecraft), but it was worth a try.

~

I was telling Dallas about my dream and that he was Captain America.
"How appropriate," he said.
It made sense why he said this in the dream, but not IWL.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #238: Patronus Interruptus

I'm standing in a busy hotel lobby thinking about how I need a mini-USB cable to charge my phone. I reach down and dig one out of my backpack but realize that I’ve actually just stolen it from this other guy crouched nearby. “Sorry about that, dude!” I say, clapping him on the back. He turns to me and smiles politely. He’s an Indian guy and I recognize him as a random guy from the shopping area where I met Wife for lunch earlier in the week. I realize that I’m dreaming.

I’m excited to be lucid and the overreaction starts pulling me out of the dream and into the void. I rub my hands together, determined not to lose the dream. My hands feel stiff and oddly angled and I start tumbling forward over and over. I keep at it, though, saying something like, “I am having this lucid dream!”

After a bit of a fight, the scene resolves itself into a room on the second story house with two windows. I move toward the first window, attempting to phase, but the window feels stiff and resistant. I move to the other window and attempt it again, once again having trouble. This irritates me and makes me stubborn, so I head right for the wall this time instead, saying out loud that “There’s nothing there, you know.” I cut cleanly through the wall this time and float down to the front yard.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and say, “[Dreamer], yeah, you’re just… you’re right over there!” and gesture at the front entrance of the house. Dreamer steps out from the shadow of the front entrance. She looks like herself apart from her hair being pink rather than purple. She’s wearing a purple jumper that looks like fleece.

We approach one another and I realize that something seems off about her personality. She seems not to have much personality at all yet but I feel relaxed about this and that if we keep talking she’ll get set right. I give her a peck on the bridge of her nose and she reacts with surprise, smiles, and runs off down the street. I jog along behind her, and start telling her about her appearance in a previous non-lucid from that night. “Hey, in this last dream, you’d written a book!”

Dreamer stops. The area we’re in looks abandoned and urban. Now she has a huge smile on her face and seems like herself. “Tell me about this book!”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I say, and give her a hug. It’s nice and I remember how she used thoughts of our friendship to produce her patronus. I also remember her words of “encouragement” a few nights ago for my own patronus attempt:

“I wonder if your patronus will be a giant turd!”

Chuckling a little, I extend my left hand out while continuing the hug with my right arm. Dreamer and I are both watching my outstretched fingers with anticipation but when I try to shout, “Expecto patronum!” I do a choking gurgle instead. I get antsy and lose the dream.

Dream - Lucid

I was waking up in my bedroom in the middle of the night. I saw that next to me there was no nightstand, and another bed close by. Definitely a dream; I have a nightstand. I got up out of bed and went to go try to phase through a long floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, I could see that it was actually a cloudy morning, not nighttime; I saw little slivers of light. I tried to go through the window, but instead of me going through it, it felt solid, and rose up out of its fixture and went outside with me. It looked kind of like a garage door would look like as it was opening. Wow, I bet this looked silly to my husband, who was in bed still.

Speaking of my husband, I could faintly hear his snoring coming from waking life, and woke up.

~

I went back to sleep, and was again aware that I was dreaming. I got up out of bed and went to try phasing again. I approached a wall. This time, I focused on simply phasing through. I don't know how else to put it, but really, that's all I had to do was think that "This wall isn't solid", basically. It worked, and I emerged in what looked like an alleyway at first with lots of dressers and chests of drawers of all different types and wood colors. They looked old. The wall in this alley was a soft olive green color with a black border on the top. Instead of an alleyway though, it started to feel more like a big room. I approached a dresser, and really started to focus on my surroundings, taking in the color and vowing to remember it. The dresser I approached had something attached to it that had lots of small drawers and doors, kind of like a jewelry box. I started to open some up to see what was inside. I wasn't finding anything. Some of the drawers and doors were to high for me to reach, so I decided to try to make myself taller. I thought to myself I would be taller, and I started to rise. It almost felt like I was levitating, not growing, but nonetheless, it worked! I opened a small door and saw what looked like a small shadow box with some figurines in it. I remember a miniature white teddy bear and some furniture, but nothing else.

Again, I started to hear my husband's snores, and I woke up.

~

The snores got so bad that I had to move to the other room to sleep more, so that's what I did.

I then was dreaming of something that had to do with these big dogs I had. It's really hard to explain because it seems very abstract and jumbled in my mind. I feel like the dog care taking was kind of video game-esque. I had to go get something for the dogs. I went to Kohl's to get it. I was going up to some registers that don't exist IWL. I didn't recognize any of the employees there. I wondered where David was; he's normally up there all the time. I then approached a desk, I suppose it was the service desk, but it was round and in the middle of the store. Two boys were at it, one that had curly hair. They said whatever I was doing would take 15 minutes. Alright, that's fine. I waited. I do not remember what I got or if I even got it.

At one point, I remember one of the dogs loving me a lot for something I did.

~

I was at my brother's wedding reception. Something about maybe Dallas and I's wedding too? It was in this place that had lots of pathways and slopes, kind of like a hiking trail. I remember seeing my brother and his fiance' after the ceremony. I also remember thinking to myself I guess they decided to get married early instead of in December.

I talked to a lady about some food there. I was helping to serve the food. She wanted white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. I went to grab her some out of this plastic container with drawers, but then realized that there was another container of fresher cookies nearby. I went to grab one. She was trying to grab one out of the drawer container. I asked if she wanted that one or the other one. I think she took one of each, or two of the old ones. I can't quite recall. My brother's fiance' got cookies as well, the old ones.

Then, I was talking to an older lady with short, straight hair about a hair stylist. She was telling me she had expected me to leave her the name of someone that I recommended in the city I live in, and I hadn't, and if I could please do so. I wanted to tell her it wasn't my responsibility to find her a hair stylist, but whatever, I wrote down the name of a girl that I used to work with at Kohl's who does hair.

Then, something about someone Dallas used to work with at his old job. It looked like the job, which resembled apartments or a beach resort, was overlooking a beach, but the "ocean", upon further inspection, was just a really long pond that would fill when it rained. I saw where the pond ended. Dallas was shushing me when I was talking about something to this person because of someone at that job, his boss or something, could hear me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #234: Tavern

Wife and I are standing across the table from another couple, a guy with brown hair and a lady with blond hair. The table is covered with a messy array of partially consumed peanut butter jars and jelly jars, which we’re examining in order to do some kind of inventory.

The guy and I are talking about how hard it is to find time for important non-work related activities like this jar thing. He says how impressed he is with his wife for finding time to run and that she wears “SXN 400 running shorts”. He says something about how hot Wife probably looks in those.

For some reason, I don’t find this impolite. Instead, I turn to Wife and tell her she’s beautiful, and compliment her for staying in such good shape even with the challenges of having and raising two kids. She accepts the compliment without awkwardness (tough for her in front of people), scooches closer to me and begins a long monologue. She’s switching rapidly from subject to subject and I’m having a hard time understanding her. I realize that I must be dreaming.

I grab on for a nose pinch, remembering to calm myself and just breathe in and out. Wife’s speech becomes even more rapid and confusing. I tell her that I’m having a lucid dream, but she’s talking over me. I walk around the room, continuing to calm myself and breathe through the nose pinch, but my vision goes dark, like the void. Wife’s voice is still there, though, and I just keep walking, having faith that the scene will right itself.

Now a doorway with a stairwell appears in my vision. Good. I walk forward, enter the stairwell, and walk down to a nearby window. I phase through the window and lower wall, my foot getting slightly stuck on the way out, but no problem. I’m outside on a street again, and now I attempt to fly. I have some trouble with this, so I do a quick Hulk-jump to regain some confidence.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and take her… somewhere. I’ll have to figure that part out later I guess. “Dreamer, youuuuu… are right around the corner!” I say, just before turning the corner.

When I turn the corner, there is a young woman there! She doesn’t look all that much like Dreamer. Hair is blond rather purple, and her overall appearance is different. She's plainer, younger, shorter than Dreamer, but I don’t worry about that. I figure that she'll become herself after I just spend some time walking around with her for a while.

“Dreamer!” I say. “It’s you! Hey, purple up for me!” (meaning “change your hair to purple.”)

“Hey!” she says. Her voice is completely wrong, and she even has an American accent. I don’t worry about it though. “Normally I would, but I’m just not feeling it today!” Her blond hair instantly disappears and now she’s bald as a cueball.

With this, she races off in a run, and I run behind her to keep up. She’s really fast and I’m having a little trouble keeping up. I encounter the sign from the previous dream that reads “←Tavern→” and remember it from before.

We run down a few streets before entering what looks like a train station. I know there’s something specific place I’d planned to take her, but I’ve forgotten it. “I think I’m supposed to take you to a tavern for Task of the Month.” (wrong!)

She seems to consider this. “Whatever it is, I’ll think of it soon.” With this, she twirls once and runs up a set of stairs.

I run after her, thinking that my plan was to go to a tavern with her and do some lucid drinking. I’m not completely confident that this is right (it’s not!) but I go with it for now. As I’m partway up the steps, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #233: Rucksack

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. It’s dark and my oldest son E is standing nearby. He asks me where Wife is and when I don’t know the answer, I feel terribly worried.

Another false awakening, and this time Wife is lying on the bed. She stirs and sits up. Confused, I complain to her that she shouldn’t have just disappeared earlier without telling us where she was going. She says something strange about the time of day and after a moment of feeling strange, I realize that this is a dream.

I walk to the hotel room window and phase through to the outside, finding myself 25 feet or so up in the air. I drift gently to the ground, finding myself in an alley during daytime. I’m behind a brick building and sign with fancy lettering reads:

“←Tavern→”

This sounds interesting, and apparently either way will take me there. I hop along through city streets until I come to a plaza at the base of a tall office building. I quite unexpectedly encounter an old friend “Rucksack”.

“Hi!” I say. I’m surprised, because he and I haven’t really talked in a few years.

“Hey,” he says. “I really like the stuff that you’re doing on DreamViews and I wanted to buy you some extra <dream control tricks?>. When you log on, you’ll see a $50 donation. That’s from me!”

I thank him, and he quickly leaves. I wonder what this new dream control could be. Unsure what to do next, I bound joyously around the plaza for a bit before the dream ends.

I've posted the lucid dream at the bottom of this entry but I'm going to start with some non-lucids. I don't usually post my non-lucids in the Dream Journal, but this was a cool series of four NLDs all from the same night as the lucid. All of the NLDs featured Dreamer as well as some other DV folks. The first dream about the magical fox was probably one of the funniest I've ever had.

NLD#1: The Magical Fox

Lots of people on DreamViews are in a big, active study group on advanced dream control. There are 40 or 50 of on this subforum and everyone’s got workbooks that they update regularly. Definite participants include me, Dreamer, Xanous, sivason, NyxCC, and Sensei.

There’s tons of excitement and everyone’s improving rapidly. At some point, we come up with a strange plan to capture a rare, magical animal to use as a class pet. This will somehow improve everyone’s dream control even more. We come up with this awful plan to cut down all of these ancient trees in an old growth forest to drive the creature out of its habitat so that we can more easily capture it.

I’m embarrassed to say that I and nearly everyone else in the class was totally for this plan, but Dreamer is dead-set against it. She objects, begging the study group not to do this and not to destroy this creature’s way of life just to improve our skills a little bit. But everybody’s too excited about the plan to listen.

Dreamer puts a desperate plan into motion. She announces in her workbook that, “I just GASSED!” (Meaning “passed gas”.) And somehow this amazingly strong, room-clearing stench hits the nose of every DV member at same time that she makes this announcement. Everyone stops what they’re doing, horrified.

Now that she has farted her way into everyone’s attention, Dreamer gives a rousing, moving speech about how what we’re about to do is wrong and that we have to change out ways. She says that this magical creature should be free and that it should serve as an inspiration for us out there in its natural home. We shouldn’t be destroying the place that it loves.

She convinces everyone and we halt our plans to deforest the fox's home. Instead, the study group travels out to the forest to commune with the creature and learn advanced dream control this way. The dream ends with a scene of several people sitting down meditating and several others talking about how inspired we all were by Dreamer’s speech.

NLD #2: The Dreamsign
After Dreamer and I exchanged Skype messages during WBTB, I had the following dream (and a huge missed dreamsign):

I look over to see that I’ve received a skype message from Dreamer. It says, “You did wind up falling asleep, right?” I feel guilty for still being “awake” and looking at the clock instead of trying harder to get into a dream. I fret about this for a bit before finally replying with something jokey.

It never occurs to me that she was basically trying to tell me that I’m dreaming right now.

NLD #3: The Watch
This one’s a little hazy, but Dreamer and I have come into possession of a complex, advanced wristwatch that an elderly black woman constructed by hand.

From the top of a parking garage, we get into a car and ride around in the back seat, me watching as Dreamer disassembles the watch into all of these tiny pieces. I worry a bit about how to keep the pieces from getting lost in the car.

We go to some other building to do something important and possibly dangerous, but I can’t recall what was involved.

NLD #4: Hot Street Fighter II
This dream was a cross between skyping and exchanging DV forum posts, the conversation taking place entirely between me and Dreamer.

Dreamer: “I had a dream where you had these super HOT scenes with ladies from Street Fighter II.”

She goes on to mention that she was telling a couple of other DV friends (including KristaNicole07) about the dream. She asks, “I wanted to know if it was okay to tell them you don’t have a beard.”

I ask why they’d need to know that and Dreamer responds: “It’s really relevant to what happened in this dream.” Whatever the reason is that this is relevant, it appears to be highly amusing to her.

After I woke up from this one it occurred to me that there is only one female character in the original Street Fighter II. Maybe we can count Cammy of Super Street Fighter II. Because otherwise, the dream implied that I had a “hot” scene with Blanka or Ken or one of the rest of the crew.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #230: Bold Talk

I’m at home, walking through the master bathroom toward the gym. I’m clumsy, staggering around like I’m dizzy or drunk. Out of nowhere there’s a buzzing noise, electric and unbearably loud. It reminds me of the transition into a dream and I realize that I’m dreaming right now.

I don’t feel stable right away but I furiously rub my hands together, immediately remembering my goal to try to gain total control and confidence in this dream.

“This is my lucid dream!” I bark. “I can do anything!” The gym looks dark and I don’t want to double back. It doesn’t matter, I remember right away that the next thing I want to do is phase outside. I phase through an external wall, expecting to end up outdoors but end up in some new, relatively empty room. It looks like it belongs in my house but it’s not a room that I recognize. Fine. Again! I try another phase through the outer wall…

And wind up in a larger, more bare version of my master bathroom. I’m a little annoyed but I figure that confidence will carry me through this in the end. I hit a nose pinch reality check, breathing in and out a couple of times to cement in my mind that this is a dream.

There’s a mirror and I look over at it to see a more hulking, slightly angrier-looking version of myself. I decide to try to summon Dreamer. I say, “There’s a woman here, right behind!” There’s an uncertain stir in the mirror’s image. I remember to hurriedly add, “And it’s gonna be Dreamer!”

This isn’t working and I don’t have a DC to repurpose as Dreamer. I turn away from the mirror, intending to switch to a handshake summon, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #229: The Note

I’m sitting in a restaurant and something feels off to me. I stand up to find Wife standing here beside me and I realize that a lucid dream has started. “Do you want to come along?” I ask Wife.

“Sure, okay!” she responds rather happily. This is a nice change because she’s normally more involved in the dream plot and not as cooperative.

I walk outside of the restaurant with Wife, opening the glass door to walk through. Oops, I’d meant to do a phase for the competition! I try to quickly phase through it while it’s open. I phase my arm through the door and then start moving the rest of my body through, Wife giving me a very strange look. The door becomes flimsy in the middle of the attempt and starts folding in on itself. I gyrate my hips, trying to hurry through before it collapses, and I’m very conscious that it totally looks like I’m humping it.

The door becomes completely unmanageable and the scene comes apart as I fall into the void. I hand-rub for a bit to wait this out but sense that something is close to my face, something that I can chew on. I bite down on it and it tastes like a soft, very mild licorice. I usually hate licorice but there’s something about this that makes it a little more bearable, sort of like it’s been crossed with bubble gum somehow.

I keep chewing and chewing, walking forward through the void. I eat fast, consuming yards of the stuff as I walk forward. After a while, it just feels like it’s been too long in the void and that I need to do something about it. For some reason I raise both of my arms over my head before calling out, “Dreamer, pull me out!” I don’t feel any physical contact, but almost immediately find myself standing in my darkened master bedroom, no longer in the void.

There’s a piece of paper stuck on the opposite wall covered with large, handwritten letters. I interpret this as being a note that Dreamer has left for me. It looks like gibberish, so I move forward, trying to get a better look. It rearranges itself, but it’s still unreadable. Then the letters rearrange into:

“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”

I interpret this as meaning there’s something I’m meant to read, but I don’t know what. This is relevant for later… see the end of this entry!

I wander out into the hall, which is lit up like it’s morning. I remember my intent to phase and try to phase through my youngest child R’s door. Unfortunately the door just comes open instead of letting me phase and I see R beginning to stir around in bed. This sounds like a good way to get wrapped up in a dream plot, so I back away into the hall.

I fly down the stairs to the kitchen area to see that the breakfast table has been moved far to the side and that almost the entire area is covered with Lego pieces. The coolest part is that most of them have been assembled into these amazing, moving models of roads, freeways, machines, amusement park carousels, and all kinds of other things. It’s really vivid, so much so that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m viewing a scene from waking life. I think that in this scenario, Wife must have stayed up all night building this.

I leave through the back door, finding myself in a park walking along a red dirt path dotted with autumn leaves. I follow the path into a building with large plate glass windows all around its walls. I look back at the park through the window, marveling at how realistic it looks when I shift my perspective. I feel excited and happy to see this, saying, “I can’t believe my mind generated all of this.”

I remember again that I’d meant to phase, so I walk toward one of the plate glass windows, anticipating an easy phase. Unfortunately, before I get there, the dream ends.

Notes: Here’s something cool. Immediately upon waking up, I removed my sleep mask and looked over at the clock. Just as I was looking at it, my iPod’s screen came on with a notification. I popped it open and just at that moment I’d received a Skype message from Dreamer.

This was really exciting to me because of what the note had said earlier (“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”), and the timing was perfect. I guess that the end of the message would have been “check the iPod”. Pretty cool!

This lucid dream happened two nights ago, and was my major motivation to set up this account so that I could start dream journaling again. Though the emotion of the dream was actually sort of negative, the implications it had for my dream control were enough to make my want to start really working on it again.

I was hanging out with my close friend M who I don't get to see quite as often as I'd like anymore, and we had decided to go check out the house that another old friend of ours, D, grew up in. As far as I know his family still lives there in waking life, but I'm sure he's probably moved out by now. I unfortunately haven't seen this friend in a few years now because we had a falling out after I made some life choices that he disagreed with, but I still think about him and miss hanging out with him as we had known each other since before grade school even.

There wasn't anyone at the house when we got there, and we actually ended up sneaking in somehow. I don't recall exactly which way, but I don't recall there being any sort of struggle to do so. We just walked around to see what all may or may not have changed since the last time either of us had been there, and I figured that if D's parents or brother showed up they might not mind that we were there since it was me, but I was afraid of spooking them unintentionally. We were upstairs as I was thinking this, and as we started walking down the stairs I suddenly noticed that there was someone else in the house too, but it was this old woman waiting at the bottom of the stairs for us. She appeared to remember who I was from many years ago, but I couldn't quite figure out who she was exactly. Despite that, I do remember registering her as possibly being one of D's brother's friends' moms. She didn't seem overly surprised that we were there, nor we of her, and we just kept going about our business after running into her.

M and I ended up going out to their backyard next, which looked pretty different from what I remember. After checking out the pool, we decided to go swimming for a while and just talk about life. I couldn't really tell you too much of what we talked about, as I barely even remember the act of changing into bathing suits or anything other than just already being in the pool, but I do know that out of nowhere a whole bunch of people suddenly showed up. Once again we were not particularly bothered by this, and I remember feeling that there was just suddenly a total pool party going on, and M and I were fine with that. It seemed like a pretty lighthearted atmosphere and everyone appeared to be having fun. I swam up toward the edge of the pool to just kind of hang along the tiles for a while, and M came up to me from the left and the character Gunn from Angel came up to me from the right. For some reason they were both starting to squeeze me together pretty tightly, and just as I was about to say something and try to wiggle my way out from them, a foot met my hand that was resting on the edge. I looked up, and it was my mind's theoretical version of a more college-aged D, looking down at me like he was expecting some sort of explanation.

M and I both get quiet and D just continues to stare at me impatiently. In my mind, this is the first time I've seen him in years, and I say to him that I know we have some things to talk about. I start getting up out of the pool in the meantime, and he begins to reply in a begrudging but friendly way that he knows that whatever I say, he'll have to accept my apology. This actually makes me start to feel better, like things might not be so bad between us after all and maybe we can be friends again, but then there is a sudden blip in my perception of reality and now I am just standing outside by the pool all alone. No D, no M, no partiers. Everything about my environment has suddenly become much more vivid and detailed as well, and the odd idea strikes me that everything that had happened up to that exact moment might have been a dream, but now I was actually awake and had a real chance to talk to D, since I was still in his old backyard.

I ran into his house and went upstairs to his old bedroom to talk to him, and along the way I became aware that all five of my senses were now strongly present. I was excited in the idea of fixing up what he and I have lost, but once I got to his room and checked everywhere, including lifting up the covers of his bed, he was nowhere to be found. As my enthusiasm begins to dwindle, it starts being replaced by logic and I begin to fear the worst. I quickly grab my phone and try to turn it on so that I can try to check what time it is twice, but it won't even turn on in the first place. Losing my sense of hope, I then run to his bathroom which is attached to his bedroom and tried to flip on the light switch multiple times, every attempt to no avail. There's no use trying to fight it anymore.... This is a dream.

For a moment I feared that I had not only fallen for a disappointing lie but ruined a considerably vivid lucid as well, because the darkness of D's bathroom had overtaken all of my vision so that I could see nothing but black. I don't even recall how exactly, but I managed to desperately grab for any stimuli I could possibly find, and just when I thought all was lost, D's bedroom faded back into focus. Things were a little blurry, and for some reason I had the strange idea that taking my glasses might actually make things more vivid, which worked perfectly. I repeated this action one or two more times during the rest of the dream too without ever actually having to put my glasses back on.

I was still feeling really hurt by the loss of what I thought might be a old friendship finally coming back into my life, and I just needed to blow off some steam. Luckily for me, this is very often what I use lucid dreams for anyway, so there couldn't have been a better setting for me to be in while feeling this way. At this point I stopped walking and instead flew out of his house, phasing through the wall as I did so, to get back out into the neighborhood. While flying I went past a tree and actually felt like I scraped myself on one of the branches, which caught me off guard, but I probably brought it upon myself by just happening to glance at the tree as I went by. However, that momentary loss of focus caused the whole area to start being replaced by just a big field of flowers, which was definitely not what I was looking for at the moment. The edge of my vision on my right side still contained house, so I quickly darted off in that direction hoping to find a more developed area, which worked perfectly.

The area I had arrived in contained many houses but was no longer anything like the neighborhood that D lives in. It looked much more like a downtown city area, with a road going down a hill, and houses much like you would see in the San Francisco area, absolutely none of which you will actually find in the area I was in just moments ago. However, any area such as this would work for my purposes. Harnessing my emotions into my dream control as I had done in my last lucid that I can remember, I held out my hands as if to hold something very large and heavy in front of me, started tensing my fingers like I was gripping something in each, and then started raising them up while projecting my feelings out into the city ahead of me. As I did so, the ground under a housing complex began to rumble and rise up into the air, warping the buildings around it as it did so. The mass that I was lifting up became colossal and took on a shape seeming to have arms and legs, but it was not humanoid. Suddenly, a glowing red light and chunks of rock were visible all through the cracks in the ground which was splitting more each second, and then terrifying, monstrous face emerged on the head of the beast. I had summoned an enormous lava monster, just as I had intended.

I could hear people in the area all screaming at the site of this new creation of mine which was the manifestation of the pain that I had felt after the previous events of the dream. To release that tension that I felt, the monster began using its incredible power to start destroying the city all around it. This whole event was incredibly vivid and life-like, and I was quite proud of my apocalyptic pet. I simply let it do its thing and then continued flying down the road, not yet ready to be finished wreaking havoc. The next thing I did was focus all of my negative energy toward an area just above another set of houses just a bit down from where I had been, and this caused a ball of fire to burst into existence. Before it could totally fade away, as it was just a quick thing, I reached my hand out to it as if to hold on to it from a distance, and then pulsed more energy out through my arm and towards, reigniting the burst and making the ball even larger than before. Ready to end my sadness, which like most emotions seemed significantly enhanced my being in the dream state, I continued to push this ball more and more until it reached the strength of an atomic explosion, annihilating everything in the dream reality and waking me up in the process.

Though this was certainly not the happiest of lucid dreams I've ever had, it was definitely an important step up in my quest to obtain better dream control. Hopefully in the future I can continue to expand these abilities using more positive emotions to really achieve some incredible things.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #221: The Singing Robot

I’m taking an unusually long time to fall asleep after WBTB and I sense a shift which makes me wonder whether the dream has begun. I will myself to roll out of bed and I find myself floating in the air about 3 feet above and to the left of where I normally sleep.

The sun shouldn’t be up yet but a trickle of daylight’s coming in through the shutters. I roll a couple of times, a little out of control. When I try to fly I wind up just heading straight downward, soon faceplanting in the floor. The scene goes dark and I hold on for DEILD. After a while I give up,I incorrectly thinking I’ve failed and have a false awakening, feeling disappointed that the dream was “so short”.

I log onto DV and see that Dreamer has left a series of comments on one of my DJ entries. Rather than text, these comments are a series of giant images that are larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture. The first is one of Dreamer standing with one foot on a balcony railing, looking back at the “camera” and grinning. She’s holding her other foot over her head almost straight up in the air like some kind of crazy ballet move.

The next few pictures show different angles of a similar scene from a Japanese manga and I see that she’s just creating some favorite piece of a manga she likes. I think that this looks dangerous but I chuckle at her cleverness.

Soon the dream ends and I hold on for DEILD. I feel another shift and I once again roll out of bed into the air. This time I’m able to fly again but my dream body feels slight and insubstantial. It’s daytime, just as before, and I phase out through the shutters. The dream’s feeling really thin, and I try to rub my hands together but I can’t even manage that simple act. The dream soon falls into the void.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I say, but my voice comes out very gargled and robotic. I don’t want to lose the dream, so I try singing. It works, but every word comes out in this strange, metallic robot voice:

This is a dreeeeeeam,
This is a dreeeeeeeeeeeam…
<pause> Dream dream dreeeeeeam…

The audio holds together for longer than I expect, but eventually I lose even this and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #220: Purple Haze

I’m walking through a hallway in an art school, getting ready to attend a class. I recall a previous dream where a lot of money had been stolen from my wallet and I dig for my wallet in a panic. I recall my intent to LD, get suspicious and nose pinch RC my way into lucidity.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer for the challenge as I walk into one of the classrooms, but as I walk in a cluster of art students engage me in conversation. Before I know it, I’m blabbing about lucid dreaming until I’m only semi-lucid. Something prompts me to take out my iPod and check it. It acts just like waking life, but one of the words on-screen is “Kentucky”. Look away, look back, the letters are now a jumble, and I’m lucid again.

Wary of being distracted again, I duck back out into the hallway, which is now empty. I walk along for a while, thinking about how I’ll do my summon. I want to try rolling with what the dream gives me and using an existing DC. I step into an atrium where I see a handful of DCs walking around. I point at the closest one and say, “You’re Dreamer!” Immediately I notice that her hair is purple and she’s walking toward me. I lean in to make sure and it’s a perfect match!

“Yeah it’s me!” she says, as if nothing could be more obvious.

We hug and I start describing my plans for the dream. I tell her that I’m planning for us to do something together but that I’m having some trouble remembering Task of the Month. “That is Task of the Month!” she says, laughing. (Good call!)

“Oh right,” I say, “that’s Basic. [Note: Wrong, that’s Bonus!] But what’s advanced?”

She furrows her brow and then shrugs. We walk down the hall together and I tell her that I have an idea for something cool to do outside. We talk a bit more but I’m feeling like all this walking is compromising my lucidity, so I say, “Hey, let’s just fly, okay?” I turn my back toward her because for some reason I think she needs to ride around on my back. (How insulting!)

“Okay!” she says, and hops onto my back, “seatbelting” herself on by reaching her right arm over my right shoulder and her left hand under my left arm, then clasping her hands together. I hop up into the air and fortunately the flying feels effortless. We go soaring through the atrium into an area that looks like a shopping mall. There are a number of DCs milling about below and I’m surprised to see that a few of them also have purple hair!

We swoop low past a bench of DCs and a few of them run. I laugh at this, and Dreamer does too (though a little less maniacally than me.) We’re heading toward a low wall and I have a little trouble pulling up, my dream body kind of “oozing” awkwardly over the top. Made it, though! I see a set of doors off in the distance, so I set us down and head for them, determined to get outside. All the while I keep talking about how all of this is a lucid dream.

As I’m talking Dreamer starts taking over more and more of the conversation. I keep my left hand on her right shoulder as I walk in order to keep her “stuck” as part of the scene. But after a bit I notice that her accent, perfect at first, sounds all wrong and she’s changed the subject from dreaming to how I really should go back to art school. I nearly lose lucidity, but look over in time to see that Dreamer has been replaced by a young, dark-haired woman who looks Thai. “You never go to your art classes!” she says. “How can you expect to succeed if you don't go to your art classes?”

“You are not Dreamer!” I declare, pointing a dorky finger in the air and running for the exit.

“Wait!” says the woman, and I feel her grab onto my ankle. I ignore the sensation, though, and fly out through the door, phasing outside to a parking lot. There are a number of DCs milling about, mostly women, and all of them have purple hair!

I swoop toward the closest DC, a stout, middle-aged woman with glasses. “You’re Dreamer!” I say, pointing dramatically at her and kind of dropping into a goofy lunge. She says something noncommittal so I follow up with, “Don’t worry, you will be,” which she seems to accept with some surprise.

I tell her that my Task is to eat a huge dessert (somehow I’ve finally remembered) and she tells me that there is a “Chili’s” nearby. I point to a building and leadingly say, “You mean there, right?” She agrees and somehow I wind up inside of this restaurant, the purple-haired woman no longer around.

I’m walking forward in a huge line in order to enter the restaurant, which winds through some kind of indoor forest. I zoom in close to the tree’s detail and see ants crawling along the bark. I study the way that the lighting and shadows play off of the trees in real-time and I brag about all of this detail to the DCs, gushing that “This is all inside my head!” They nod politely and look a little uncomfortable.

We come to a long spiral staircase downward that leads to a cavern floor blanketed in mist. I don’t want to wait so I leap over the side, floating down to the floor and then moving into a dark tunnel. I remember how Dreamer had good luck producing a flame from her finger and how Xanous had focused on the pain of the experience to create fire in his hands. I hold up my thumb and expect this to happen for me as well but there’s nothing.

Now I expect pain and heat. There’s a slight tingling ache, but it’s little more than a nuisance. “The big fire!” I say. Nothing. I exit the tunnel into a large, darkened movie theater. I try to shout “The big fire!” but I get the sensation of my waking life voice croaking out the words and I’m startled awake.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #217: Jazz Hands

I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, droning on and on to Wife about lucid dreaming. “Remember!” I tell her. “You have to let me summon you.”

“Okay, fine, fine!” she says, seemingly in a hurry and darts away into the kitchen. I’m confused for a moment -- wasn’t I intending to summon Dreamer for the challenge? I realize that I’m dreaming and head for the front door, phasing out onto the front walk.

It’s a clear morning outside and I walk out to the sidewalk and then start running to the east, ready to attempt the summon. I reach my right hand out, slightly behind me and out of sight and say, “[Dreamer], I know you’re here!” I feel a hand and then two sharp tugs and when I look to my right, Dreamer is running/floating along beside me. She beams and starts floating while doing a silly “jazz hands” move with her right hand.

I decide to fly as well and wind up soaring into the air. Dreamer seems to be sticking at a lower altitude, though, and now dangles calmly from my right hand. I can see trees going by far below her feet.

I haul her up and she wraps her arms around my shoulders while still dangling underneath. She seems very relaxed about the whole thing but I start having trouble controlling my altitude and feel like I’m going to nosedive back into the earth. The scene collapses into the void but I still feel like we're flying. The fear of crashing is still there, though, and after a few more seconds I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.