Verre

I was stressed about work. How am I going to complete all the obligations piling up this month, which is already getting shorter? I figured it would be best to prioritize. I should be able to finish the map in an afternoon if I get the right materials together. I thought about what I would need to finish it, and came up with vellum and archival paper. Fortunately I knew I already had these somewhere and was pretty sure where I had last put them, in a box in the storage area. I could see it in my mind's eye. I had woken up early and wanted to go retrieve them, but the rest of my family was still asleep.

My mother, brother, and father were all staying with me in the house and I didn't want to disturb them by walking through the building and rummaging around in boxes. I decided to go outside for a walk instead. I walked down the stairs, which were littered with all the discarded santa masks. This struck me as odd at first, but I reasoned we must have had a holiday party yesterday.

Outside it felt like early morning, and there was a narrow stream of clear water nearby. Next to the stream was a small building of naturally weathered wood, a sort of shed. Just after I entered it, it occurred to me that even though I know I'm awake, I should practice some RCs to instill good habits. No one else was around and there was no reason not to do a blatant one, so I jumped. Yes, just as I thought, it's obvious I'm awake, because that felt perfectly normal. But just for good measure I should do it a few more times in order to internalize the feeling of what a proper jump feels like in waking life.

So I jumped in the air several times in succession, concentrating on that critical moment at the apex, when the upward motion reverses and gravity takes over. I knew that I would be able to tell if I were dreaming because the timing would be off, that moment would feel drawn out slightly, extended. Hmmm.... it isn't, is it? Was that a touch of hesitation at the top? No, I'm pretty sure this is natural. I've just never concentrated on it sufficiently before, my attention is making it seem more pronounced.

And yet... it does seem a trifle too long. Could it be...? What if...? I had just begun to seriously consider the possibility that I might be dreaming after all, when I woke up in bed. Only very slowly did I come back to myself and realize that all the things I had taken as evidence that I was awake were wrong or askew, signs of false memory. The building and surroundings that seemed so familiar at the time were pure dream space, unlike any place I know in waking life. It made sense at the time that my whole family was there, but the only accurate part is that I'm currently sharing a hotel room with my mother. The anxiety about work is real enough, but it was only well after I had written down my initial notes that I realized that in the dream I had felt responsible for an additional project that didn't exist in WL, in addition to the real ones. Finally, as I initially lay in bed reviewing the dream, I didn't even notice how I slipped back briefly from genuine waking into an FA, and briefly found myself another place entirely, which only transitioned again to lying back in bed once I reached the point where I felt I had enough grasp of the memory to get up and write.

Type: Paranoia/Evasion
Perspective: Mixed (initially Self, transforming to Character, male hobbit)

NLD: The dream began with a long complicated plot set in a futuristic world. The antagonist was trying to find me and some other people; I had the codes to some device of his that would frustrate his plans. At this point my dream character was still me, I know this because enemy agents were using my name and even showing around a picture of me. (The prevalence of this "paranoia/conspiracy" theme in dreams is one of the reasons I suspect—pure speculation—that schizophrenia in waking life is a condition related to dreaming.)

Enemy forces had located us, were closing in, we knew we had to run. We decided to split into two groups that would flee separately. I was with a group that was going to go on a very long journey. There was no perceptible shift in the dream or narrative, but by the end of the dream this was all entirely a group of male hobbits, and I, going with them, was also a male hobbit. There was no precise "moment" when the shift took place though, the dream narrative was continuous, and the transformation imperceptible: I was still "me' before the start of the journey then woke up remembering that I was one of the hobbits.

I had anticipated that we would need to flee and already packed a backpack, so while the two group leaders were waiting for the rest of us to prep and join them, I went and grabbed it. I checked inside first to make sure I had the right bag. I saw lots of warm clothes—that was good, I'm always inclined to get cold. I grabbed a few more things from my pile: a fleece jacket, a wide-brimmed hat. I was already wearing a leather pouch around my neck with my ring in it. When I had noticed this earlier I had wondered why my ring was in the bag instead of on my finger; I assumed I had to hide it for some reason. (Source: the dream played out with an increasing LOTR theme, so this could be a nod to the way Frodo carries the One Ring; it could also be day residue, as the other day I had taken off my ring for a long time for some task.)

On the table with the gear I was choosing from was a sort of talisman made of a round disk of leather, as well as a few masks which I grabbed at the last minute—they weighed almost nothing and might come in handy. I considered the options: should I put on a mask before we left? If I needed to conceal my identity from those who would recognize me it could be useful, but if we were trying to pass incognito among people who wouldn't already recognize me, wearing a mask might draw too much attention and be a disadvantage. But better to have the option than not.

I was the third one to gather around the group leader, a male hobbit, and we were waiting on about three others. While we were waiting I went through the masks I had grabbed at the last minute to make a more careful selection, trying them on in a mirror. A couple were cheap plastic full-face masks, and I wasn't sure if they would stand up to the rigors of travel, so I set them aside. I kept one, though, because it gave me a scary monster face and I thought it might be handy if we needed to play a trick and scare someone. I kept a plain black eye mask and another one that was just a single sheet of light brown translucent plastic—it weighed nothing and could serve as sunglasses, I figured. For now, I decided to wear the simple black eye mask. When I put it on, I noticed that I was strapping it over the glasses I was wearing: they had huge round lenses. I didn't remember owning glasses like this, but that was just one of many, many clues that should have alerted me to the fact that I was dreaming—I had not an inkling of it.

When our full group had assembled, the leader then instructed us to get rid of a lot of stuff that he figured we had probably packed. He had a list of very specific things we were supposed to give up, unnecessary objects that he said were a result of "emotional packing." Already on the table were a lot of little boxed games, like dice and tile games (source: Scrabble on Colbert last night). I worried that our long journey would get dull and depressing if we didn't even have a few games with us, but I understood his reasoning—we needed our packs to be as light as possible if we were to outrun our pursuers—so I reluctantly gave up some things as well.

There was one item that I wasn't sure about, so I went to consult the leader. It was a boxed set (I hadn't opened it yet) containing a special kind of saw blade that could function as a lathe, cutting wood into round or shaped dowels. The leader and I opened the box and inspected it. I felt a tool like this might be useful at some point, though I couldn't think of a precise situation in which I would need to lathe a dowel to survive. The only problem was that the tool was made out of solid metal, a complex shaped piece about eight by eight inches, and it was extremely heavy. "It's about as heavy as a two-liter bottle of water," I estimated aloud. This decided it: the leader reasoned that water was more essential, so if the tool cut down on the amount we could carry, it would have to go. I reluctantly left it behind. Later as we began our journey, I thought back and regretted this: I realized that dowel-shaped wood might be very useful in making traps, and moreover that even if we had only brought the tool with us to sell, we could probably get up to 50,000gp for it, because it was an object from our futuristic world that would be completely unique in the fantasy world where we were going.

I realized that we were pushing the limits of the time we had left and needed to leave right away. But as the leader and I stepped out from the room where we'd consulted about the saw blade, something caught my eye. It was a tiny fluffy grey kitten sleeping cozily on its back, lying in the hallway against to the wall on our right. "Wait—just two seconds," I said to the leader, "Look!" And we knelt down and tousled the kitten's belly. I explained, "It reminds me of something Sam said: this is what we're fighting for." I was remembering the line late in LOTR where Frodo is losing heart and Sam reminds him "That there's some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for." Naturally my version involved kittens.

We then rejoin the rest of our group—which was more diverse in the beginning but by this point consisted of the full set of LOTR hobbits plus me as a random male one—and started down a lane. No sooner had we set out then I look behind us and see a group of fierce orcs, at least eight of them, less than fifty yards behind us and moving faster than we are, already closing in. Did we waste too much time with our preparations, losing our head start? I needed to act now, or our journey would be cut off before it began. Fortunately I recalled that I knew Ars Magica magic (all that practice in LDs paying off!)

Twisting to look back while still running at full tilt, I held out my hand and blasted a frost effect at the group of orcs: it created a slippery ice slick on the ground where they were running and also iced their bodies directly, covering them with a pale layer of frost and slowing them considerably. I knew it wouldn't last forever so I was already trying to decide what my next trick should be. A grease trap on the ground might be useful: the lane was narrow and walled on both sides, so they wouldn't be able to bypass it. Then I was trying to remember the mechanics of Ars Magica spells: were they limited by a specific pre-set quantity (like in D&D) or could they be chosen freely but the rate was restricted by a mana pool, or could they cast at will but it was just really hard to succeed at the roll? Around this time the dream must have despaired of my ability to transform even a thrilling adventure chase scene into tedious decision-making and option-weighing, and I woke up.