The first thing I thought to do was find CanisLucidus for our challenge. I willed him to be in the kitchen, and ran around the corner to greet him. I hadn't really paid much attention to his appearance before, and I was surprised to see that he was really tall and lanky, which is not what I expected. His other features didn't match what I was imagining either - he was slightly gothic looking, with pale skin and shoulder-length dyed black hair, although his appearance changed throughout the dream - he got shorter, his skin became more tanned, he had short brown hair, and then messy blonde hair. (I guess I had trouble with this because I don't actually know what he looks like in waking life.)
I was excited to see him and ran up and gave him a hug. He was kind of unresponsive and didn't even look at me.
I said, "Hey... CanisLucidus, right? It's Dreamer!"
He still didn't say anything, but he gave me a friendly smile and seemed to have a bit more life in him. I took his hand and led him to the middle of the room while I remembered the tasks of the month.
The first one I thought of was Basic Task i - National Repeat Day: Get a DC to say something to you, and just repeat it back verbatim. Try to keep this up for as long as the DC will stand it.
I said to Canis, "Well... say something!"
He put on a sarcastic voice and mocked me: "Well... say something!"
Damn it! This was the wrong way around!
I almost responded, but I stayed silent for a minute to see if he would say anything else.
Eventually he said something that didn't make any sense, it seemed like he just strung a few words together. It was something like, "Are you going to bukka?"
Despite having no idea what that meant, I said, "Are you going to bukka?"
I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't seem to be very interested in the game, and walked off into the next room. I figured I wasn't going to get much more out of him for this task, so I started thinking about the other tasks.
I remembered Basic Task ii - Gay Pride Month: Kiss a DC of the same gender.
I knew Canis couldn't really help me with this one, and he was kind of just staring into space anyway, so I decided to leave him there while I went to find a girl to kiss (sorry Canis!)
I walked outside the house. It felt like the middle of the night, and the street was dimly lit by street lamps. I saw a middle-aged woman walking past on the other side of the road. She didn't look very approachable - she was kind of posh and seemed to be in a hurry, but I decided to run over anyway before she got too far away. I didn't bother with an introduction, I just grabbed her face and went in for a kiss. She was holding shopping bags in both hands, so she couldn't do much about it, but she turned her head to the side and avoided my kiss. I tried again and pecked her on the lips. She looked quite shocked, and I felt a bit bad about assaulting this woman. I thought to myself, "That's certainly not how I imagined that task going down," because I'm not averse to same-sex lovin' with my DCs, haha.
I decided to get on with Advanced Task ii - Meteor Watch Day: Summon a meteor and investigate the impact site. Describe what you find/see.
I was feeling really confident about my dream powers and was certain that I could achieve all the tasks in this dream. I looked up at the sky and held out my hands to summon a meteor. I saw one coming down towards me, but I knew I was safe and didn't need to move out the way. It crashed into the ground a few metres in front of me. The crater was smaller than I was expecting - it was round, with a diameter of about 1 metre. There was nothing out of the ordinary inside, just some rubble and a few small flames.
I decided to go for the 'quadruple hitter' (I just heard this term in the podcast, haha) with the Bonus Task - Aquarium Month: Dive into a huge and empty aquarium - it is up to you to design unique and beautiful flora and fauna to populate it. Create an aquarium landscape and its inhabitants from scratch.
I was still in the middle of the road, so I tried to think about how I could get to an empty aquarium. I considered various types of transportation/teleportation, but then I thought, "Why don't I just close my eyes and dive?"
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fall backwards through the ground. I was free falling through the void and put my hands out into a diving position. I imagined being in the middle of a massive tank, and I soon started to feel myself surrounded by water (I was still in total darkness.) I have never had a problem breathing underwater in dreams, (which is strange considering I have trouble being underwater in waking life - cool story about that at the end*) so I felt perfectly comfortable and confident, and spent a few seconds taking in the feeling of the water.
I opened my eyes and found myself deep underwater in a huge tank. It was really bright blue, like the inside of a swimming pool. I started swimming up to the surface. I tried not to look for the edges of the tank because I wanted to make it as large as possible, since I hate the idea of animals in captivity. I decided that it was going to be a sanctuary for rescued marine life that had been displaced or injured by dredging, fishing, and oil spills, rather than a tourist attraction.
When I reached the surface, I put my hands underneath me and used them as a jet pack to propel myself into the air above the water. I kept flying higher into the sky, looking down at the water below me, with the intention of keeping the edges of the tank out of sight to make it larger and larger. I was flying straight up at high speed for about 30 seconds when I decided the tank was big enough (still nothing compared to the animals' ocean home though, but I reminded myself that they were rescued.) I could see the edges now, which looked like the edges of a swimming pool, but the tank was much deeper.
I hovered in the air and thought about what animals I would place. I remembered reading sivason's dream where he made a point of including a shark, so that's what I decided to start with. I used my finger like a pointer to place a shark, which only looked about 2cm long from this distance. I could still see the shape of the shark very clearly, and could see his little shadow moving under the water. I placed two more sharks, and then placed about 10 turtles using my index finger in the same way. Next, I used all my fingers, wiggling them like 'spirit fingers', to place hundreds of fish. I didn't give much thought to what kind of fish they would be, because they were too far away for me to see in detail anyway - they kind of just looked like specks swimming around. I placed a few dolphins, and before I could think about anything else, the dream started to destabilise.
I was falling backwards out of the sky and losing the dream, but I thought, "NO! The task says FLORA and fauna! There's only animals so far, I need to get back and finish this task!"
I was really determined to get back in control of this dream, so I put out my hand like a jet pack again, and thought, "I just need to hover, I don't need to fly back into the sky because I'm still exactly where I was."
I looked down and saw my aquarium 'canvas' as I'd left it, so I quickly thought, "Okay, flora... lillypads!"
I used my finger to place one single lillypad. YES! I immediately felt victorious, like I had officially completed the task, but I kept going and placed some more lillypads, and some seaweed/seagrass at the bottom of the aquarium.
The dream was still a bit unstable, and I wanted to wake up before I lost lucidity. I started spinning around really quickly, creating a whirlwind around me as I closed my eyes and entered a void, and affirmed that when I opened my eyes, I would wake up and recall my dream.
:tornado:
