Verre

Ritual: Yesterday was full of work and stress, conditions that I have previously correlated to vivid dreaming. I worked until going to bed at 2am. Woke at 5am to feed the cat, then again at 6am after a dream that culminated in an experience of intense frustration, vivid enough that I spent around 45 minutes writing it down—an unintended but useful WBTB. Since today will also be very busy I did not do any other lucid practices, however, I had primed myself a little by reading the list of TOTYs last night. Apart from those conditions, the following dream was spontaneous, and I woke from it at around 8:45am.

DILD: I am at my mother's house, but it is unlike any WL house. I am in a long room with high ceilings, very spacious and sparsely furnished, with no modern accoutrements. Maybe it is the medieval look of the interior that reminds me of the TOTYs, and I become lucid. Which would be a good one to do? Fairy would be easier to do outdoors. I could turn into a dragon but then I'd have to destroy everything and I don't want to wreck my mother's house. Phoenix? That would be a good one. I try to remember the details. I can't just summon it directly, I have to burn something, right? I look around the room for something suitable.

On the far end of the room is a table under a shuttered window. The table is covered with a white cloth, and spread across it is an assortment of jewels and precious stones. These look ideal. I select a faceted gem and place it in my left palm. It is small, only about six millimeters across, transparent with cobalt blue striations, like a combination of diamond and sapphire. It is faceted into what I think of as a classic gem shape. [According to online sources, this is simply called a "round" cut.] I walk slowly across the room back toward the couch where my mom is sitting, concentrating on the stone and willing it to catch fire. The stone feels inert in my hand, and I feel that I have chosen the wrong one. From the coloring, this stone is clearly attuned with ice, not fire. I should go back and pick a different one.

I return to the table and find a small stone of matte earthy red color. This is more a mineral than a gem, and it is shaped like a narrow lozenge, almost a centimeter long, pointed at the ends, and only a few millimeters wide in the middle. I begin to will it into flame, but immediately have second thoughts. The stone is so skinny and small, it would probably make a scrawny phoenix. I go back to the table to look for a better one.

I decide to find a gem that could pass for a phoenix egg, examine the options more carefully, and finally come across a good-sized stone around three centimeters across. It is also matte and reddish, but a generous oval in shape, and the top is composed of randomly assorted rounded protrusions, like bubbles. The bottom has been leveled off and already set into a metal frame. I decide that this one is ideal, put it in my left palm, and begin to invoke fire in earnest. Around this time my mom tries to talk to me about doing some household chore but I hush her: "Not now, I'm busy."

The stone resists at first, but I do not let myself doubt my ability to do this. I've summoned fire in my palm before. This time I'm just transmuting it from a substrate. I will a flame to emerge from the stone and soon it does—but I notice that in the process, the stone has transformed into a candle. The candle is larger than the stone, filling my hand. It is a 6cm tall cylinder and is conveniently fitted in a round container. Between the candle and the sides of the container is what looks like a filling of crumpled dry grass.

The flame is burning on the wick in the ordinary way, and I will it to expand and consume the whole candle, turning it into the phoenix I am trying to create. For a moment it burns quietly, but then the whole object transforms again. Briefly I seem to be holding a bundle of smoldering dried grass, around a foot in diameter, until the whole thing explodes and violently flies apart, patches landing in various places around the room. Failure? I'd better check the remains.

I wander around to a couple of the smoking remnants, but see nothing notable. I remember that I need to keep my expectations high, so as I walk toward a third, larger patch, I anticipate finding a baby phoenix. Sure enough, when I prod at the charred dried grass, underneath I discover a tiny, long-necked, bird-like creature! The phoenix has hatched! But it is it skinny and completely limp. What can I do to help? As a creature of fire, I reason, it must need heat. It is probably freezing to death.

I gently pick up the baby bird, which drapes across my hands with no sign of life, and take it to the fireplace. Luckily there is already a good fire burning. There is a kind of metal chain screen separating the fire from a metal grate on the hearth. Sprawled on the grate, soaking up the heat, is a long iguana-like lizard that I had previously noticed on the table when I was selecting jewels. I figure it must be a salamander, with the same need for warmth as my new phoenix. Should I place the phoenix in the fire directly, or on the grate? Since my hypothesis about the wisdom of putting the phoenix in the fire is as yet untested, I decide to lay it on the grate in case I need to remove it quickly.

The experiment goes well. As soon as I lay the baby phoenix next to the fire, its body begins to perk up and fill out. It grows until it resembles a toucan in shape and size, though red in color and with a sleeker bill. Success! But was there more to the task? I can't remember if we were also supposed to fight something, and figure I'd better do that as well as long as I can maintain dreamstate. "Let's go fight something!" I say to the newborn phoenix, and it hops up on my shoulder.

I head past the table with the jewels and open the window in the end wall. The window is a square aperture about three feet on a side, fastened with a single wooden shutter. The shutter is hinged on one side, flush with the wall when closed, and opens inward to the left. This truly resembles a medieval house in that there is no glass in the window, so it is easy to climb up and out. I pause on the sill and bid the phoenix to fly on ahead. Meanwhile, I hang up the long metal hook that I used to open the shutter so that I can grab it when I come in later, then use another device that resembles a hook attached to a wire loop to suspend myself from the sill and ease the drop to the ground, which is far enough below that it requires some precaution. I have the feeling that I have done this many times before.

Once on the ground, I look around for someone or something to fight. I am on a grassy lawn that extends between a number of different buildings. The buildings themselves don't leave a distinct architectural impression—I wish I had taken a closer look. Instead I was scanning the ground between them, but all I see are ordinary people walking about, none of whom seem like suitable opponents. I don't want to be an unprovoked aggressor.

The dream begins to fade. I worry that the abrupt transition to a different space might have unbalanced it, and I immediately take steps to stabilize, falling on my knees and examining the details of the grass while running my hands over it for texture. For a moment the grass turns grey and although I see all the usual plants among it, like clover, everything looks unusually small. But then a voice hails me from above and the dreamstate resumes its integrity: "Do you want to fight?" I promptly agree.

I am facing a man who is accompanied by a creature resembling a muscular, short-haired white dog. The man has a sword, and immediately begins to strike at me. Although I am unarmed, I find that I am able to parry his blows with my hands without too much discomfort. I suspect that I could turn the fight to my advantage if I want, but the whole point of this exercise was to fight in tandem with the phoenix. Where is that bird? "Phoenix? Phoenix!" I call anxiously.

The blade keeps falling, and I keep catching it and pushing it aside, but luckily the dog is hanging back for now. Suddenly to my relief the phoenix swoops in, aiming a stream of fire at the dog. More gouts of flame follow, consuming the man and dog, but they do not go down easily. I watch the phoenix, who has now taken human form, take a blade right through his stomach, angling up toward his chest. It is an unmistakably lethal blow, and I run over to him as he falls. I feel guilty for having put him in this predicament—but recall that for a phoenix, there should be a way to fix this.

Looking around frantically, I am pleased to discover a fireplace in my immediate vicinity. Nevermind the unlikelihood of finding a fireplace outdoors; it is just what I need so I don't question it. I drag the phoenix, currently in the form of a slim Asian boy, over to the hearth and dump him directly onto the flames. I expect the fire to heal him; instead he begins screaming as his skin burns and chars. It is horrifying, but I hold him down as he struggles—he was dying already, this is the only thing that might help. Maybe this is how it is supposed to work. A phoenix has to die to be reborn, right? The human body blackens and burns away. Sure enough, in its place I find a little baby bird, looking much like it did initially but yellow instead of red this time. I wonder if its pale color means it needs to eat. The bird pecks at some morsel of food near the fire and I try to tempt it with something better. "Here, eat a hot one." I pluck an olive-sized piece from a row of snacks baking in the fireplace (I don't feel the heat, just as I didn't feel pain from the sword earlier) and offer it directly. The little bird compliantly swallows the morsel, growing in size and turning red again.

I feel that I have completed the task to satisfaction, so even before I wake up I begin reviewing the details, making sure I commit them to memory. There is a moment when I am back in the same house as the beginning of the dream and ask someone to remind me the name of the guy I fought. "Ziggy Starduster and the Hoarfrost," comes the reply. I note that they definitely said "Starduster," not "Stardust." Since I only hear rather than see the names, I briefly wonder if the dog's name is spelled "Whorefrost" or "Hoarfrost," but decide that the latter is more appropriate on a number of levels.

I was looking under the bed for my two cats, and they were there, but to my surprise I found a third! It was an enormous calico, at least twice the size of any other cat I'd ever seen, and unbelievably fat. Startled by this strange discovery, I pointed it out to my husband. He gave me a suspicious look and said, "That's Crowl," as if explaining the obvious.

"He must have at least fifteen percent of the Internet!" I exclaimed, thinking that there's no way such an unusual cat could avoid becoming an Internet sensation. My husband nodded in confirmation.

"Where did he come from?" I inquired. It seemed like a reasonable question, since I had never seen this cat before but my husband appeared to be familiar with him.

Again my husband looked at me in wary confusion, as if he couldn't understand why he had to keep telling me things I should know perfectly well. "We got him from Donna Slope."

"Who's Donna Slope?" The tension was growing with every question I asked. My husband was now staring at me as if he feared that I had finally lost my mind. I gathered that this was the name of someone we knew quite well, for for the life of me I could not remember a single detail about her.

I noticed that the sliding door to the patio was open, and one of our own cats and Crowl had gone outside. I expressed alarm: ours is an elderly indoor cat, and definitely not allowed outside without close supervision. My husband seemed strangely unconcerned: "It's okay, he'll follow Crowl." I was not reassured. "We'll have to talk about this later," I said, indicating the events of the entire morning, and went out after the cats.

The two were already walking along the side of the house toward the street. To my alarm I saw that the front gate was open, and they went right through it. For some reason after I caught up with them I picked up Crowl first. As I walked back along the side of the house I noticed an assortment of little pumpkins or round gourds next to the path. One green one was rattling violently as if something were trying to get out. This piqued my curiosity, but I could not investigate with my arms full of cat, so I resolved to take a closer look after both cats were secured back indoors. I unceremoniously dumped Crowl back inside the bedroom, making sure to close the screen door behind him, and then went back for the other cat.

I was worried at having left my cat unattended, but reminded myself that he moved very slowly in his old age and he could not have gone far. As long as he hadn't blundered out into the street, he should be okay. I soon spotted him next to the sidewalk chewing on grass... but something was amiss. There were now two cats of his appearance. I studied them closely until I thought I was sure which one was him, and carried him back inside. After he was safely secured in the house, I went back to investigate those pumpkins.

The pumpkins ranged in color from green to orange, and seams indicated that the tops could be lifted like those of jack-o-lanterns. What did I expect to find inside? What if it was a coiled up snake, and it bit me? I brushed aside the fear impatiently: the only reason to be afraid of a snake is if you think it might have deadly poison, but that is quite rare. Most snakebites are harmless. Still, why did I want to look inside the pumpkins? I needed a good reason. "Curiosity," I concluded. "Curiosity is the desire to know more." That seemed like a good enough reason in itself.

The first few pumpkins were hollowed out as I anticipated, but they contained only vague shapes, like something was still buried in the pumpkin flesh. I peered closely at one and I thought it looked lizard-shaped. "Maybe they aren't ready to hatch yet," I concluded. I reached the green one that had been shaking violently. Surely this one was ready! I stopped and tried to imagine what I would most like to find inside, and decided on one of those little troll dolls. Wouldn't be cool to find one that had come to life? I lifted the top and... it was just another lizard. This was vaguely disappointing after I had gotten my hopes up for something more exotic.

After going back in the house I started thinking hard. I realized something very strange was going on today, and I needed to figure out what it was. My husband was acting very uncharacteristically, and I was apparently unfamiliar with major details of my own life. What could it be? Was it related to time travel? My current situation felt very similar to the life I knew, but not identical... could I have somehow "jumped the tracks" to a different timeline, a different possible present?

Later I was shelving some books in the kitchen when another possibility came to mind: I could be dreaming. At first this felt very unlikely, but I knew that apperances could be deceiving, and I would need to test thoroughly. I began by looking at a book on the shelf and trying to withdraw it through will alone. Nothing happened, but I thought it might just need a headstart, so I pulled it out about an inch with my fingers, then tried to finish using only mental strength. This time it worked! I let the book hover in the air above my palm to confirm that I was controlling it with my thoughts.

Alright, so I'm definitely dreaming. Shit. That means I have to remember everything so I can write it down when I wake up. I started going over details from the morning, listing them aloud to better fix them in memory. "Crowl... Donna Slope... lizards in pumpkins..." I'm sure several other things happened that morning that I'm now forgetting, but I lost lucidity and had another long NLD before waking up, so some of the details have faded.