The Kestrel's Dreams

July 28, 2014

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Backpacking vs. Outdoor Adventures

I was at the fall club recruiting day on campus. I was there for the backpacking club, with Zukin, Ivan and Stussy. We were working on the poster-board we would display, before people got there, and we were competing with the outdoor adventures club to see who would get more new members. I remember that our board was a three-fold board like you see at science fairs (most of the clubs do have these kinds of displays) and the adventure club had a single large board leaning up against something on their table.

I was laughing at them because we were almost done with our board while they were still putting on the first few pieces.

Then there was a sort of competition; we were all playing a game with a Frisbee; backpacking club vs. adventure club. We were on teams and there was a hill to the right of the field we played in; someone threw the Frisbee wrong and it went over the hill. The adventure club sent a child to go get it, because the child had way more energy than all of us and wasn't playing the game anyways.

I think I might have been the one to throw it over the hill, because the next thing I remembered was one of my teammates coming up to me and shaking me by the shoulders, yelling "GET IN THE GAME."





Wheely-Chairs

I was roaming a huge, old mansion on rolling-chairs with Zukin. We were sitting in them backward (with the back to our chests) and using our feet to propel us around the place. There was a lot more to the dream that I remembered when I woke up, but I forgot to write it down and a lot of it has faded. I remember a part where we had to get down some stairs, but the entrance had a really low ceiling. So we had to get off the chairs, tilt them sideways, and shove them down the stairs, then retrieve them at the bottom to continue our adventure. We broke some expensive shit.





Bike Ride

Again with Zukin, this time we were riding our bikes back from some event. We had decided to go two different paths so we wouldn't collide (given us two, it's a valid concern). We accidentally almost went the same way though, and almost ran into each other. But she swerved in time to dodge me and I apologized many times because I think it was my fault.





Scary Not-Scary Sounds

I was walking around a neighborhood I don't know, looking for a place to sit down and do my math homework. I had my notebook, a pen, and the textbook with me, but I needed to find a place to sit in the grass. It was starting to get dark, though...

I crossed a street, and then heard someone say, "hey!" I turned around to see a college-age man walking toward me. My first instinct is to run, but he just asks for a cigarette, which I don't have because I don't smoke, and he leaves after that.

I sit in the grass at that corner, after the guy has left. But only a few minutes into my homework, I hear a sound to my left. I look up but don't see anything, and really the sound was so mundane and shouldn't have scared me. But it did, and I was irrationally afraid of it, and so I stood up quickly and headed toward my house, because I realized I was now in the field behind it. But I thought I was forgetting something, and had to go back to where I'd been sitting. The road was nowhere to be seen now, it was just that field behind my house. I used to my phone's flashlight to see what I'd forgotten, and realize I did in fact have everything; I had thought I was missing my phone, because it wasn't in my pocket, but it was in my hand the whole time. I noticed that the phone's light wasn't shining as brightly or a broadly as it usually does, and stood there swinging it around, trying to get it to work better, but then I heard the sound again, and turned to leave. I never did find out what was making the sound, and still don't even know why I was so spooked by it.

July 16, 2014

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Night Gas Run

I was in my van, at a fairly sprawling gas station. The kind you'd find right off the highway, with at least 20 pumps and plenty of space between them. My car was parked in a large lot right next to the pumps, alongside the small store. I was with the people from my cohort again, and we were all driving out to some school. It was dark out; I think very early morning. My cousin was also there, as well as my brothers. I was sitting in the car with them, talking about something or other, and I had to move spots for some reason. As soon as I moved, things went all chaotic and it was difficult to find a new spot because people suddenly decided to all try moving at once.



Pizza

I was in a class, and the teacher had gotten us all pizza. There was tons of it, and lots of bottles of pop. I know for sure that Zukin and Stussy were there, and a few people from my cohort. When class was over, I was helping people collect the bottles from the pop, because I wanted to return them for the deposit. Stussy was helping me and talking about how much pizza he'd eaten, and I vaguely wondered why he was there, since I have never had a class with him before. But I didn't think it was odd enough to realize I was dreaming : /



Fragment: Phone Thief

I only know that just before waking up at 4 AM with a jolt, I had my phone in my left hand, and someone bumped into me, jolting my phone out of my hand. I think the person was trying to take my phone. I don't remember hat I was doing just before that.



Fragment: Elementary

I was at the school I intern at, helping the kids get off the buses in the morning and talking to them, though I don't remember what I talked to them about.

July 10, 2014

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I don't remember much about the plot of this dream, but I remember the setting pretty vividly. I was flying (I love flying dreams so much, but I don't have them very often at all), and I came to this large courtyard with a huuuuuge tree in the center. Not quite Home Tree sized, but much bigger than a normal tree. The building around the courtyard was old and made of red bricks, though I didn't look to see what the design was like.

I had the vague impression that I was supposed to be doing something at this tree, but I can't remember what it was. All I know is that I was flying through the branches and leaves, and it was beautiful :)

There was one other part of this same dream; I had landed, and was talking with the Backpacking Group, and I was trying to prove that I had flown through the tree. They didn't believe me, even though I demonstrated how I could fly right in front of them. Then Ivan asked if we all had the supplies we needed for our next trip. I hadn't gotten all my supplies yet, so we were all looking through a catalog to order what we needed. There were a lot of seemingly pointless things in the catalog, and the things we needed didn't seem to have a purpose.

June 20, 2014

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Loud Soup

I was in a really, really tall building. The room I was in was sort of sticking out of the building, so that the floor beneath my feet were some thousand feet in the air. I remember looking out the window and being terrified because there was nothing holding the floor up except that it was attached to the building's wall. I was with an old woman and her granddaughter, who was a little older than I am (I'm 22 in case you're wondering)

We were eating soup, and I was for some reason swallowing REALLY loudly every single time. I tried to be quiet about it, but couldn't make my swallowing less noisy haha!



She Got A COW?!

I was living in a coastal city; there was a huge crane building something in the harbor, and there were two or three very, VERY large sailing ships. I was there with the backpacking group; we all lived there and worked on building things in town. We lived in dorms and our lives were fairly well controlled, but not oppressed.

One day we had a field trip to a city along the coast; we were going to take a tour of a mall/factory thing.
We all got on a bus, and a large screen reading 5100 turned on. As the bus moved, the meter ticked down (it was at 5010 or so when we got to the location) and it marked how far we could each walk for the day, but I don't remember what units it was in. During the bus ride, I remember turning toward the window to look out over the ocean, and as we crossed a large suspension-ish bridge, I could see the huge crane from our hometown, as well as the huge boats.

When we got to the mall/factory, it was decided that Zukin would be our group's leader, and she started making really weird faces at us all. As I get off the bus, I make a note to myself to get a new wallet while we're at the mall/factory, since my old one was getting worn-out.

So, Zukin had this weird look on her face basically the whole tour. It was a bit like that face you make when you're pretending to be a fish. We walked through the entrance into a large, high-roofed room with shops along the walls. It was oval-ish in shape, and we walked toward a hallway to our right. It led to a production line-type-thing where we learned how they took these large black stones and carved them along one edge to reveal bright, rainbow iridescent layers. Then they carved a flat line for a base to stand it up on, and then patters along the edges. On the other flat side, they carved it so that there was only a very, very thin layer of black on top of the next colorful layer. They then carved pictures into that edge. The pictures were all different, and because the black layer was so thin, what ever got carved out wasn't a deep cut, but still revealed the rainbow beneath, and so the pictures that were revealed were really colorful This about those scratch-away art pages that were so popular in the 90s.

At the end of the tour, we each got one to take home. Mine had an anime-style picture of a girl with long hair and bangs leaning on her elbows. She was laying on her stomach on a bed, and a blanket was covering her from the stomach down. She was holding a book in her hands and looking at the POV with a surprised look on her face.

Zukin got a cow on her picture. I was so jealous.

Anyways, we all got food, as well. There was oatmeal and yogurt, and fruit and such. It was a very breakfast-y thing. I sat down at the table, so that Zukin, who was at one of the heads of the table, was to my right. So I was in the seat to her left. I suddenly realized that everyone else had sat on the other side of the table, not next to me. I suddenly felt really alone and inadequate and unwanted, and then I woke up.

June 16, 2014

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Night Sky

I was with the backpacking club, camping in the field behind my house for some reason. It's dark out already, but it's a warm night, so we're all wearing shorts and maybe a hoodie or something. I remember laying on the ground underneath the tree I climbed all the time as a kid. I was looking up at the stars through the sparse leaves; the tree is old, and not as full as it once was.

As I lay there, Ivan comes and lays down perpendicular to me, and we start talking as we look up at the sky. I remember the sky being overly bright. Like, in this picture with the celestial objects as they would appear if they were only brighter. All these things are actual size, believe it or not.

Anyways, the sky was so beautiful. I don't remember what exactly Ivan and I were talking about, but I remember being confused in my dream as to whether he was trying to be romantic or trying to just be a good friend. After a while, Dan walks by, asking if he can build a fire. Ivan and I both say that it's not allowed here, but that he can make a fire down in the woods (which makes no sense whatsoever. There's a fire-pit in my backyard so it would have been fine). Dan and a few of the others leave to go make a fire, and then Ivan moves so that he's laying right next to me and we lay in silence for a while until I wake up.



Silly Baby

I took a nap later in the afternoon, and had this dream:
I was in my apartment, and a friend from highschool, Kelcey, and her husband live in the unit right next to mine. I was sitting in my living room with the screen door open to let some breeze in, and Kelcey's baby (she actually has one) crawls in and starts wondering my apartment. I get up and follow her, letting her explore but being careful to watch her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself or anything. I let her go on until she reaches the bathroom, then I pick her up and carry her back to the living room, where I find Kelcey standing at the screen door. Her husband is in a beanbag chair out on my little patio.

I hand her the baby all nonchalant, as if it were a routine we had, and invited them all inside. Kelcey asked if I had a tin of nuts because she was ravenous. I found some in the cupboard and brought them out to her, and then woke up.

June 11

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Fragment: Killing Three Birds

I was in my neighbor's back yard, except it was thickly wooded, with two guys. I think I had a crush on one of them (but I don't remember much else about them). The other guy kept shooting endangered birds... I told him to stop, but he killed another; three total. He said it was so we could eat have a whole bird for dinner that night. A ranger came by and the guy hid the birds. Then we left.



Fragment: Shooting Stars and Fireworks

I was with Kristin and her boyfriend in my driveway at night. There was going to be a fireworks show in the neighborhood, so we were getting ready to watch. As we looked up, Kristin saw a shooting star. I looked up, and there was this huge fireball shooting star.



When Are You Due?

I was with Zukin in the back room of my Oma's house, where the kids usually play. She had this little contraption with her, that would act as a baby, or something. It was a project for school; she had to take care of it for a month. I helped her watch it and take care of it; I was feeding it in my dream (how one feeds a small bean-shaped ball of metal/plastic, I know not), and burping it. At the end of a month, a little age meter on the side of it would read one-year-old.

For some reason, we had to leave Oma's really quickly, and Josh was there to drive us to my house. Except when we got to my house, something was wrong, and so he drove us along the path through the "park" behind my house, and when it went through the woods, he went off the path, downhill. I remember thinking, Oh dear lord! and clutching the side of the vehicle. It was a sort of dune-buggy type thing, and I was sitting in the back seat to the right, while Zukin was sitting behind me, facing backwards (like in a golf cart. Actually, maybe we were in a golf cart. It's a little fuzzy). Josh hit a small bump and Zukin nearly fell out, so I offered for her to come sit with me. She says, "Oh my Bhuda, thanks," and instead of sitting next to me, she sits on my lap.

I'm still holding the "baby" contraption, and we pass a family who is having a picnic in the woods behind their own house. They say hello nicely, and so we stop for a moment to say hello back, and the mother sees the "baby" and asks me, "Oh, when are you due?" With a cheerful smile.

"Uh. In a month?" I was confused my the question; apparently they gave those contraptions to all women who were pregnant with their first baby, too? She thought I was pregnant. We left then, and Josh was worried that those people were going to call the police because we were driving a golf-cart-thing through their property, but I said, "Don't worry, these are all nice people. Besides the woods have always basically been free for all to use."



Adultery and Burning Dogs

I was a married man living in one of those cookie-cutter homes in a development. It was winter. I was having an affair with the neighbor's wife, and neither of our spouses knew about it. As far as they were aware, we just spoke friendly with each other like good neighbors should.

One night, I was in bed with my wife, and she was fast asleep. I was wide awake, and wanted to be with my neighbor, so I snuck out of the house through the front door. I had my PJs on still, but had put on a pair of nice dress shoes because I didn't want my feet to get cold. I was careful to be as quiet as I could be, but the snow was unbearably loud. Every step I took was about 10-times louder than it should have been; I was afraid my wife was going to wake up, so I tried to hurry to the neighbor's driveway, which was much better plowed than ours was...

I was almost there when I saw a light turn on inside, and my only thought was "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT." I hurried around a corner, and just as I was turning it, I saw out of the corner of my eyes the door opening and my wife looking out, spotting me, and getting that crazed look on her face.

The feeling that overwhelmed me is really hard for me to describe. It was the kind of feeling you get when you get caught while in the act of doing something bad, and still run away as fast as you can but as quietly as you can. Maybe it was more like the feeling when you're playing a game of hide and seek with your friends, and you know they're almost done counting even though you haven't found a good spot, and so you panic and rush and do silly things, all while trying not to let the seeker hear your distress; that excited but frantic feeling. It's like... I knew there was absolutely nothing I could say to justify my being about to enter the neighbor's house (when my wife and I both knew that our neighbor's husband was out of town on a business trip for another day and a half).

Rather than going inside the neighbor's house, I run around in a roundabout way to confuse my wife as she followed my footprints in the snow, all the while avoiding the dog, who was sleeping right outside the door, and then got cornered and crouched behind a bush. It wasn't a very good hiding spot because the pine needles of the bush were thinly distributed. I could see beyond it just as well as my wife would be able to see me if she looked; and I knew she was looking. It's dark, maybe she won't actually be able to see me... but just as I thought that, the moon came out from behind a cloud and my wife looked right at me. She walked toward me menacingly. I noticed for the first time that she held something red in her hand; a grill lighter. I was freaking out that she was going to set fire to our neighbor's house (I guess she was a bit of a nutter even before I had the affair. Maybe that's what made me cheat on her in the first place. Who knows)...

But she looked at me, and then at the dog, and then back at me. She grinned evilly, crazily, and bent down to set fire to the dog. She held the lighter out in three different spots, the way you would light a fire; cover more area. Amazingly, the dog didn't wake up until its fur was already catching. I ran out of the bush to try to pat the dog out, and my wife laughed and then went back into our own home. The dog was whimpering and I finally managed to get the fire out, leaving the poor thing with only minor burns. I opened the front door to my neighbor's house went inside with the dog, and got it some water before heading to the bedroom. I knew where it was because I'd been there many times before. When she heard me approaching, and called out, "Honey, is that you? What are you doing back so early? I thought you'd be out for another day or so?" And then she came out of the bedroom, saw me in my messy PJs, the dog with her burn marks, and my slightly dazed expression. "What happened?" She asked, walking toward me.

Then I woke up.



Fragment: Drain-O

I was volunteering at an elementary school with Zukin, and there was some sort of sickness going around. It was deadly, and all the kids had it, and the teachers were catching it as well. For SOME reason, the cure to this sickness was a hat I had on; it was a bright orange ball-cap, and if I wore it, I was immune to the sickness and anyone who looked at me would be cured. Dream logic FTW.

But the hat got ruined somehow (I don't remember how; it may have already been ruined when the dream started), and Zukin and I were trying to fix it. Eventually we did fix it, but Zukin had clogged the drain in the sink somehow, and it was like new again, and I put it on. It looked normal on me, but when Zukin tried to wear it, it turned into this floppy green thing with white lace hanging over her ears and part of her forehead. So I put it back on, and we called the Kindergarten teacher into his office, where we'd been working. "We got the Cure-Hat fixed! But the sink got clogged."

"No worried, I have Drain-O." The teacher (who was attractive in that way 50-yr old men can sometimes be) took a tiny bottle of Drain-O out of his pocket (why he had it, no one knows) and put a few drops into the sink, which had water all the way up to the brim. Those few drops were somehow enough, and it instantly started to drain. The Drain-O smelled EXACTLY like liquid NyQuil.

June 08, 2014

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Kebab Gets Sick

I was with the backpacking group, drinking in an old house. I think the house belonged to one of my family members, or someone I knew, but I can't remember who it was. The house had a very modern feel to it, even though it was old. We were all on the second floor, and suddenly Kebab said, "I forgot how sick this stuff makes me..." and goes to the upstairs bathroom, but he gets worried that it won't hold all of his vomit (I laughed out loud as I wrote this out) and so he tries to get to the bigger bathroom downstairs, and... well, let's just say he left a trail, and it was disgusting.

I must have blotched out the part where I cleaned it all up. I remember being on the stairs at the point where it turns (it was one of those kinds of stairways), hearing him vomiting all the way to the bathroom, and then more in the bathroom. I remember thinking, Oh God, I'm going to have to clean this up...

And then I remember being back upstairs with Zukin, Penny, Ivan, and a friend of his, who was in my own grade instead of a year below me, like all three of the others are. I was telling them all about my Dream Journal, and gave them all my DV username so they could find me once they joined the site (Zukin and I were recruiting them all).

Suddenly, I was in my high school cafeteria, just as I am saying the last five letters of it; "E-L-K-A-T..."

And then someone on the complete other side of the cafeteria yells, "E-L-K-A-T!" And then someone else yells it from another side of the room, and soon the whole room is shouting "KESTRELKAT! KESTRELKAT!! KESSSSSTRELKAAAAATTT!!!"

It was so strange.




Murder at the Musical

A friend and I (at the beginning, I don't remember who she was, but toward the end it was one of my friends from college) were acting in a musical about a crazy King who tries to kill his daughter and her friend. My friend plays the daughter, and I play her friend... Her dad plays the crazy King. Can you see where this is going yet?

Anyways, we find out that her father is trying to kill us; He is going to do it right on stage and get away with it because people will think it's just really good acting. Or, it may have actually been that he was going to actually kill us in order to make it the best show ever. I can't remember exactly which it was, or if it was both. In the musical, the crazy King pretends to be the painting in his daughter's room in order to get her and her friend while they are off-guard, and he jumps at them with a knife, killing the friend first, because he knows his daughter wouldn't dare to avenge her friend and he could easily get her right after.

Everyone else in the play found out her father's plan, and was trying to help us. We couldn't go straight to the police because they wouldn't believe us if we did. So we all continued with rehearsals as planned, to formulate our plan and also to keep her father from finding out that we knew his plan. We had to all live in the building in which we practiced, and we weren't allowed to leave at all. It was an abandoned warehouse that was for some reason located on my home street.

When it was time to do a sort of official advertising for the musical (there was a local musical association, and they held an event where all the main characters of the various plays and musicals being put on would gather and try to sell tickets to people passing by on the street), my friend and I left the building (since we were main characters, and her Father could not keep us hidden away with the rest of the cast). Her father was already there, and we were to meet him. We decided we would expose him today, because there would be many people and policemen to help us, and he wasn't really a good actor anyways so he wouldn't be able to lie his way out of it.

The event was being held a couple blocks away, and so my friend and I had to get up the hill on my street. We were having a very hard time doing it, because of our bulky costumes, so we put on roller blades that we apparently had hidden in the bulky dresses we wore. The going got much faster then.

When we reached the top of the hill (that's where it meets the street on which the event was held), we saw that there were many, many more people than we had expected. Even better; more witnesses to his horrible lying and more support for ourselves. We found a policewoman and explain what was going on, and we led her to where my friend's dad was, in his ridiculous costume (like this, just he was a painting of a rather creepy looking clown, and the frame was almost as big as he was). We exposed him, and the police took him away. They told my frind and me that we should get the rest of the cast and crew, so that we could all go to testify at the station.

We go back to the building, gather the others, and get on a bus to get to the police station. As we walked to the bus stop, we all decided that we would have to find another musical to perform in, and that we would stick together because we had become like family. When we got on a bus, and it started moving, a man that had been sitting on a bench at the stop moved with the bus. He was outside of the bus, but moved as if he were in it, even swaying as the driver used the brakes too heavily. I stared out the window at him, and he stared back, grinning. Every time we stopped at a bus stop, the man would appear to adjust himself in his seat of air, so that he looked like he was just sitting at the bus stop. He was describing something to me, and it was strange, because I could hear his voice in my head again. But, I can't remember what he was describing to me. He wore a patch-filled jacket and had a sing-songy voice, but I didn't realize until I was awake that it was the same person from my Gangster Pimp story, who may have been The Face from another dream I had.

The leader of our little troupe suddenly told us all to get off the bus, quickly. In the confusion, the man whom I will call The Face until I learn his real identity vanished. I reach my troupe and find that they have been confronted by a group of white men and women (my whole troupe, except for my friend and me, was black, with only 1 or 2 women). They stood in lines facing each other, with the leaders of the two groups standing opposite each other. It seemed everyone in my own group had a counterpart in the other group, except for my friend and me. I suddenly know that our leader had taken s off the bus because he'd seen the other group waiting to get on it, and wanted to avoid a confrontation; but the leader of the other group had also spotted him getting off, and had stayed, just to pick a fight.

"What are you doing with these little white girls, eh? You messin' with them?" Their leader turned to me. "They messin' with you, honey?"
"We're their friends," I say.
"Oh really?"
"We're in a play- a musical- together."
The other group collectively mocked me and I saw some of their members push some of my friends, so I tried to make myself a human barrier between the two groups, hoping I could stop a fight from happening.

The other group members were saying really nasty, rude, and disrespectful things about my friends, and I could see my group beginning to get angrier, but they didn't make any moves.

Then, I saw my group's leader's thoughts for an instant; but it was enough to know that he and his friends had been in a bad situation before joining the musical cast and crew, and they all wanted to live better lives now.

"Just ignore them all," I said to my friends, while staring into the eyes of the opposite group leader.

That all went on for a few more minutes, and the situation was looking so desperate that I turned around and hugged as many of my group members as I could, crying. I guess the antagonizing gang must have gotten weirded out by my show of affection, and they left with the grumblings of an aggressor who doesn't really want to open that can of worms anymore.

We all sat down to wait for the next bus. People sniggered and talked bad about me, as if what I'd done was the stupidest thing they'd ever seen, and I snapped at them all, "Shut the FUCK up! What would you all have done?! Run away? Watch your friends get hurt?" My group leader ruffled my hair and the rest fell silent, just like my group was. It was all very sober until the bus got there. I sat at a window seat, with the leader to my right and my friend to his right. I remembered my leg brushing his, and realizing I needed a shower REALLY bad because my legs were prickly as fuck.

Then I woke up.

April 17, 2014

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The backpacking group was getting ready for a new trip, and Ivan and I were in charge of arranging transport, and for some reason we thought it was a good idea to go by Tractor. And so, on the way to meet with some other people, we passed a barn, and he opened the door and offered me a genuine tractor ride. We got into the tractor, and started down the road toward the meeting place.

But we got pulled over by a cop, who ended up being one of my friends, Tish. She spoke in a heavy northern Spain accented German (she doesn't speak German in the Waking world) and I was so surprised to see her, and started chatting with her. We talked in German and she told me she had only pulled us over because she saw me and wanted to mess with me. "I won't give you a ticket, but I will check your trunk, just in case," she said, winking. She walked to the back, opened the truck, and gave Ivan the thumbs up to keep driving. When we catch up to the others in out group, we drive past them in the Tractor, taunting them and bragging about our shiny red tractor.

Then, we go to some sort of conference for Tractor drivers. The tractor had turned into a sort of Code Geass suit for two. We listened to a speaker, though I can't remember what the talk was about. This woman siting next to us asked us a really religious question. I was taking notes on a graphing calculator.

Then I woke up.

April 10, 2014

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The Backpacking group and I went to Vienna. At first, it was just Zukin and I watching a Miyazaki film; I was sitting on a dresser for some reason. Once the movie had finished (it made me cry, I remember), the rest of the group joined us and we went and roamed about the town. At some point later in the night, everyone else wanted to get Ice Cream, but I had to get back to my family; I was actually there with my family. My grandpa had bought a condo in Vienna and we were all visiting. The backpacking group had just happened to be there as well (because it's perfectly normal for 9 people to randomly all decide to go to Vienna at the same time right?)

I knew where I was going, so I split from the group in a large, unlit parking lot that looked more like downtown Detroit than it did Vienna; I went right while they went more left. I remember it being a little scary at first, but then I came to a lit and busy, high-end street. It was the street my grandpa had his condo on, and so I turned left and walked up the street to get back to his place.

As I approached his building, I ran back into the group; it turned out they had decided to go to a Hot-Tub Ice Cream Parlor on the ground floor of my grandpa's condo building (don't ask me what my sleeping mind thought was normal about a hot-tub ice cream parlor). You know how cafes often have tables out on the sidewalk when the weather is nice? Well this place had hot tubs right out on the sidewalk. I decided to join them after all since it was so close to my grandpa's place, and Stussy and Josh jumped right into an empty tub, clothes and all on.

I told them I needed to go up and get my swimsuit, though, and went into the building. The bellboys recognized me and let me through just fine, pointing me to the elevators since I didn't really remember where they were (it had been my first time there in a long time)

The elevator ride was fracking scary. It was a large elevator, like a freight one. My grandpa was on the 97th out of 100 floors, and around the 10th floor, the elevator started to jerk and shake. It was a long ride, and around floor 80, I thought the whole elevator would break lose and fall. I finally reached the right floor and ran out of the elevator. Then I had trouble finding the right apartment. For some reason, Ivan had come up and found me then. We both went off and eventually found Bob and Erik, and they pointed us in the right direction. We found the right room, and for some reason the key was a toothpick. I opened the door and greeted my family; my grandpa wasn't there yet, but one of my aunts from the other side of the family was, for some reason. My mom was in a hot tub in the middle of the living room (I think this part of Vienna had a weird obsession with hot tubs). I asked her where she'd put my suitcase, and she told me it was in one of the bathtubs (to which I was like WTF). I left Ivan out in the living room and went to change into my swimsuit. I woke up as I was pulling off my shorts and someone was opening the door. Who was it??

We shall never know.

March 20, 2014

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I was with the Backpacking group again, plus a few extra people. I know for sure that Bob and Erik were there. There may have been one or two other people, as well, but I forgot who they were or if they were there.

We were all going on some trails around a mountain. The thing is, they all had obstacles or puzzles to get past them. The first one I remember had a really steep incline that was hard to climb on your own. There were stairs along the side of it, but the stairs were unstable and slanty, and there was no handrail. We made it past that one, and came up to a monorail type chairlift thing. While getting on, we had to split off so one person from our group (I am pretty sure it was Bob) was left to get on the next tram-thing. We had already decided which stop to get off at, so we weren't too worried about losing each other.

What we hadn't accounted for was that the transporter was super fast and getting off was a bit of a chore. The way it worked was that you couldn't really see where you were, but you had to mentally decide when to get off of it and just hope it was the right stop. I shouted for when to exit, and we ended up in a deserted cottage in a glum and misty mountain clearing. I had a REALLY strong sense of deja vú here. I think I may have dreamed of this place before, but I can't be sure. We had gotten off the transport a stop too early, and this place was the one place we hadn't wanted to be.

It was dark and creepy and abandoned. Rundown. Dusty. Everything was dim and gray. We all stood there for a moment, and then I went outside to inspect the area, but all these zombies and monsters were coming to life all around me. Every direction I turned, there were things coming to get me. It got cold all of a sudden.

Then, Ivan grabbed my shoulder and we went back inside, and the monsters all dissolved back into the ground. We tried to get out of there, but eventually Bob found us. He said he'd gotten off at the right stop, but we weren't there, and he'd assumed we had gotten off a stop too early.

We eventually figured out the trick to that "trail," though I can't remember what it was. We found ourselves back on a normal trail, and I pulled out a map of the area to find out where we needed to go to get to where we had planned on going before the mishap wit the transporter.

From there on out the dream is blurry. I remember fragments where Jasmine was there, but I don't know whether they were in the beginning or at the end of the dream. I feel like it was before the very steep part, and only for a moment, as she was in a passing group going the other direction. She was with a guy, who I assume was her boyfriend.

March 12, 2014

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I am a traveler in some olden Europe-esque land. I met Zukin on the road, and we decided to travel together. We talked a long time as we traveled, and I found that she, like I, could not live in her own country anymore because of some political strife.

Along the road, we met with Kebab (who is actually someone from the group we both went backpacking in Texas with. The whole group appeared in this dream), who joined us in our travels. I think he was some sort of dwarf or mine-worker. We were walking along a wide open field with hills when we met a Japanese (Or at least, this dream's equivalent of Japanese) Prince. He traveled with us for a few days and then asked Zukin to marry him. She said Yes right away, and we all four traveled back to his home country.

We almost got lost at one point, while we were traveling at night (Sound familiar, Zukin?) because we were behind schedule, but luckily the Prince knew where he was and was able to find the road again.

We got to his palace, and the wedding was planned for five days from our arrival. The main hall was long and tall, with huge windows lining one entire wall. There were red and gold tapestries hanging from the ceiling along the entire length of the hall. The kitchen was at one end of that hall, through a concealed door.

Zukin learned Japanese (again, dream equivalent) really fast and was texting the Prince all the time, even though we were in the same building (also, I don't know why we had cell phones...). For some reason, I was put up in the kitchen; my bed folded out of the Oven (haha!). I started thinking it was strange that with a whole fracking castle full of rooms, they put me in the kitchen instead of a real room. It was then I realized I must have been under some sort of spell, and so I started snooping around. I got Kebab to help me by keeping an eye on Zukin while I stalked the Prince.

Then, I overheard him speaking with his attendant saying some really horrible things about me. I got even more suspicious, because he was always perfectly normal and kind to me, even when Zukin was not around. I did some more digging around and it turned out he was soooooo fracking corrupt; he extorts money from people, is abusive to his subjects, and apparently he needed to marry within the week or else his inheritance would be withheld from him.

But by now it's the day before the wedding, and there's not much I can do to get Zukin to stop the wedding, because she's been brainwashed or put under some sort of strong spell. I was plotting in my Oven-bed when I met another member of the backpacking group (Let's call him Ivan), who turned out to be a spy from another country who was there to overthrow the Prince and reveal his corruption. We decide to work together to stop the treachery of the Prince, and at intervals, the rest of the backpacking group also ended up in my bedroom (aka the Kitchen). They were all from different countries and all were trying to stop the Prince. they'd all pretended not to speak English to infiltrate the Castle as workers. They were all under cover, and so well all devised a plan to save Zukin and stop the Prince.

My role in the mission was to go on a "Double Date" with Zukin and the Prince, with Ivan as my date. (Can't say that wasn't self-serving, as I had a huge crush on him in the Waking World). While we were all on the date, the others would get what they needed from the Prince's royal office/bedroom or where ever he kept his incriminating documents.

I woke up as Ivan and I met up with Zukin and the Prince.