CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #224: Speedboat

I’m racing along on a speedboat, seated on a wooden chair that’s lashed to the deck. The wind buffets my hair and face. I’m much younger, a high school student again, and there are about a dozen or so other passengers, mostly other high schoolers. I think we’re on some kind of cool, high-speed fieldtrip.

A girl walks across the deck near the front of the boat and I think that she looks way too young to be the same age as me. It hits me that I must be dreaming!

I spend a couple seconds enjoying the wind, the speed, and the outdoors, but now it’s time to get down to business. I intend to summon Dreamer, so I look to my left to see if I have any DCs to work with. There’s a woman seated to my left, looking away from me out over the water as we race along. She has long, blonde, somewhat sun-damaged hair.

“Hey look, you’re becoming Dreamer,” I say, stroking my fingers through her hair and leaving purple streaks where I touch. After two or three strokes, her hair is completely purple-ified and when she turns to face me, it’s Dreamer! “You’re here!” I say.

She’s wearing a huge smile and vaguely seems to be trying to talk, but seems somehow tired and unable to speak clearly. I wonder if she needs more time, so I turn to the right and think about doing a couple of dream control tasks before doing anything further with her.

Another speedboat approaches from our right. I wave my hand, lifting it into the air, and then throwing it forcefully ahead of our boat. It hits the river ahead of us with a huge spray of water and then (quite improbably) disappears.

I look to the right riverbank and see a large number of pixellated children running along the hilly shoreline, pointing laughing and shouting. They look precisely like characters from an 8-bit video game. I’m trying to show off more telekinesis, so I lift about ten of these kids into the air and then throw them along the shore in the direction the boat’s. Most of them land on their feet and start bouncing along, following the boat, but one or two land oddly and disappear into the ground. I feel bad about this and resummon a couple more to take their place, pretending they’re the same.

Not much later, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #219: The Conga Convention

I’ve arrived for work at some kind of computer lab where we build or test hardware. Dreamer works here, too, and when I walk into the back room I find her interviewing a candidate, a young woman in her early to mid-20s. Dreamer’s in the middle of having the candidate assemble the scattered parts of a computer, so I decide not to bother them.

I return to the front room to find the door blocked with tables and computer parts. I figure that Dreamer moved all this stuff to make room for the interview but I’m confused as to how it all got here. The idea of lucid dreaming crosses my mind, so I try the nose pinch and I’m lucid. My breathing is clumsy and difficult, though, and I lose stability, falling into the void.

I rub my hands together and talk out loud to myself about lucid dreaming until a new scene forms where I’m walking through a large, nearly empty room with a few tables against the wall. I think this may be the office again and that Dreamer will be here, but there’s only one unfamiliar, dark-haired woman in her early 30s sitting at the table writing on a clipboard.

I walk through a door into a large, brightly lit convention hall, filled with DCs seated at round tables, most of them sitting in front of plates of nondescript convention food. I remember that I need to summon Dreamer for the challenge so I say, “That’s Dreamer right over there,” and turn my gaze to the right while doing this sweeping gesture with my hand. When I turn I see a tiny child (about a foot tall!) with purple hair standing between two of the tables. This mini-Dreamer giggles, hops up in the air, and scampers away. When she’s run about 20 feet, she disappears in a purple flash. Several of the DCs look at me in confusion.

This was not what I had in mind, so I circle the room for a while, rubbing my hands together and thinking about how I want to do this. Okay, new plan. I do a vague, sweeping gesture at several tables and say, “Ah, Dreamer, you’re sitting over here.” A very tall woman is hunched over at one of the nearby tables and I see that purple hair cascades all around her head, hiding her face. She’s covered in layers and layers of shawls, rags, and wraps to the point where she just looks like a big pile of rags and hair.

The enormous woman begins to stir, slowly unfolding herself to full height. When she finally draws herself up to full height, it’s Dreamer, but a seven-foot-tall (2.1336 meters ) version of herself draped in colorful, purple-hued cloth. She smiles and then walks past me before I can say anything else, vanishing behind me.

I’m getting agitated about these summons, so I decide to go for Task of the Month instead. All I can remember is the “get naked” task, so off comes the shirt. Next I whip my pants down, but they get stuck around my shins like I’ve gotten sweaty or something. I get a little annoyed by this and simply will myself to be de-pantsed. Should have thought of that first!

The problem is that none of the DCs are taking notice that I’m in my birthday suit! I throw in a few booty-shaking dance moves, hoping for more of a reaction, and now the DCs start picking up on it. They start getting up from their tables, strip off their clothes (only down to underwear, interestingly) and start dancing as well. A big conga line starts forming to my left and after a moment the whole underwear-clad room is conga-ing around the entire place.

While all of this is going on, I just watch for a while. As I'm doing this, I experiment with looking away from dream characters and looking back to see how they change. They seem to mostly stay the same except some of the DCs seem to undergo slight changes in make-up or facial appearance. As I’m toying with this persistence trick, an attractive blonde woman in her late 20s drapes her arms around my neck and kisses me.

Spoiler for Awkwardness:

She tells me that she wants sex, and what do you know? Apparently I do too. But when she removes her undies, her entire body is made of some kind of smooth, rubberized plastic like a life-sized Barbie doll. She positions herself seductively, but the doll effect is so unbelievably off-putting that I decide to just wander to some other part of the room and pretend all of this never happened.

The conga line dies down and I seem to be dressed again. The DCs are all dressed and seem to be heading for the exit of the convention hall, and after a bit of wandering I decide to give the Dreamer summon another good shot. As I’m heading toward a double door, I pick one of the women at random and say, “Okay, there’s Dreamer…” One quick morph later and now I’ve finally got a proper, purple-haired, normal-heighted Dreamer walking toward me.

I give Dreamer a hug and start walking with her toward the exit, explaining out loud my plans for the dream. She nods and “uh-huh”s along but before we get to any of this, the dream fades out into a false awakening in an outdoor courtyard with a garden. There’s a woman in her late 40s with curly hair standing nearby and I tell her about the dream that I just had.

“I just had a lucid dream myself,” she responds. “I’m glad that one ended. It was getting strange. I think that REM cycle was all played out, so I’m up for the morning.”

“I’m going for more,” I tell her. “If you just wait long enough, there’s always another REM cycle.” She nods, pondering this. I wander the garden for a bit until the dream fades for good.

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.

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.

Narcissism and botched summonings ahead. Still, every lucid's fun and this was a good reminder not to be too casual with details in dream control situations!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #111: Vanity at The Doppelganger Waterpark

I have a false awakening. Faint morning light filters in through the window. I wonder whether it's too bright to get back to sleep. A bedside clock says that it's 5:00 AM. It seems too bright and too late to have a lucid dream. I remember the micro-lucid from earlier in the morning and feel disappointed that I didn't hit a real one. (I really did have a micro-lucid earlier, as well as an earlier false awakening.)

I get up to use the restroom and notice that I'm not in my usual bedroom but rather on the first floor of a building -- a hotel perhaps? I feel like I'm awake, but the bathroom is just... so different. I'm dreaming.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear Wife beginning to stir. She's muttering something but I can't make it out. The morning light makes it seem urgent to get started with my goals, so I phase out through an external wall, my head and shoulders passing through a window. I end up in a fenced, grassy yard with a circular stone table surrounded by simple stone benches.

My strategy for this dream is to forget the meeting location for now and just try to summon NewArtemis directly. I walk toward the yard's open gate, holding my hand behind me as I go. "[NewArtemis], grab onto my hand." No good. I have the sense that I did it all wrong. Stop asking. I sort of try again but my level of intent is poor and nothing happens.

As I exit the yard, I'm distracted from the summon by a mirror hanging on a brick wall to my left. I check my reflection and see that I'm wearing a pair of jeans without a shirt. I vainly check myself out and notice that I'm less in shape than I remember being -- torso a little smoother, face a little puffier. I start worrying that I've let myself slip in waking life and try to remember whether that's true. It suddenly occurs to me that this is probably the most pathetic, narcissistic thing I've ever wasted lucid dream time on in my entire life.

I walk further along the grass until I come to a large, packed pool that's being rocked by gentle waves, almost like it's a half-activated water park wave pool. I notice my friend "SC" playing with a young child (too young to be one of his sons). About twelve feet to his right, I see another SC! The doppelganger smiles and gives me a nod of acknowledgment.

As I continue along the pool, I see my high school friend "LM". And just as with the other friend, not far from her is another doppelganger. Again, the doppelganger looks my way and smiles. The smile seems genuine rather than threatening so even though I find it a little weird, I'm not too troubled by anything that I'm seeing.

The water makes me think of Angel Falls. Okay, new plan: summon Art while on the move and dash to Angel Falls for Task of the Year. My hope is that if I'm very casual about the summon it'll just work. I reach my hand behind me and say, "[NewArtemis], Angel Falls is just up ahead." I feel a hand grasp mine and I look back to confirm that it's Art. But when I do, I see that the hand is sticking straight up out of the water. The geometry of all this strikes me as strange. How is their arm so long that they can still be submerged and grab onto me?

As I'm thinking this, the person floats up out of the water, still gripping my hand. She's a complete stranger -- blonde, early 20s, fair-skinned, slightly heavier build. She's wearing a black one-piece swimsuit. "Who are you?" I ask, and her only reply is to half-smile and turn away. I notice that her teeth have a very mild yellow/brownish stain to them.

"I'm going to change you into [NewArtemis]. Okay?" I'm not trying to ask permission so much as... explain what's about to happen? There's no reply. I look off to the side to make the transformation easier, but the dream ends before I can take this any further.

This was the fifth of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #110: The Substitute

I'm walking through a mall when I pass my friend "JR". Walking a bit further along, I pass by a yogurt place. Manning the counter is another person who looks almost exactly like JR. I think about how odd this is and after a moment's contemplationg, realize that this is a dream.

My prospective memory is fully engaged and I immediately remember that I'm trying to meet up with Art. This time I don't even bother getting to the Alamo. I keep walking through the mall, extending my hand behind me, and say, "[NewArtemis], I know you're already here. Grab my hand when you're ready to go." Immediately, I see a female-looking shadow appear on the floor walking next to my shadow. Soon after that, there's a grip on my hand. Confident that the summon has worked, I turn to look and find myself shaking hands with...

...a complete stranger! She's in her mid-20s, black, short, and very friendly-looking. "Uh, how's it going?" I say.

"Hey! I'm [NewArtemis' first name] Campbell!"

"Ah, nice to meet you," I say. "I was actually calling up a friend of mine." I pause. "Are you the [NewArtemis] that I know, just with a different look? Are you Art?"

"No," she says. "I'm sorry! You must be so disappointed."

"Nah, it's all good. You seem cool. You want to hit Angel Falls with me? I can do Task of the Year there."

Ms. Campbell agrees and as we approach the mall's exit, I realize that it's kind of weird that I'm still gripping her hand in a handshake (or has it turned into a hand-hold??) I turn to look at her but as I pass my gaze through the sunlight that's pouring in through the nearby glass door, she seems to vanish from the scene. This leaves me a little confused, so I pause for a moment, looking around the nearby area of the mall and wondering what I'll do next.

As I'm looking, I see my friend "Fry-guy" loitering near a set of stairs. I go up to talk to him and I'm astonished when he greets me with a British accent. (Fry-guy is from middle America.) He starts speaking exuberantly about a history book that I lent him named Idiots that's all about the litany of crucial mistakes made by various idiots that have set civilization on a bad course. (There's no such book, as far as I know.) After that, I explain to him that I'm having a lucid dreaming, and we have a quick discussion about that next.

Strangely, there's some classroom nearby taking a test, and a couple of the pupils keep stage-whispering to us to be quiet. I walk with him away from the class back toward the mall exit, continuing to talk lucid dreaming until the dream ends.

Although I didn't get my goals accomplished in this lucid dream, I did meet my first supposed "dream guide". Not as... competent as I might have expected.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #94: The "Dream Guide"

I'm walking down a sidewalk past a construction zone. One of the construction workers is crouched down low to measure something. I notice that he's using our diaper bag to make the measurement. I wonder what on Earth is going on but I'm in a hurry. You know what? I don't even want to know. I wait until the worker isn't looking and then just swipe the bag, throw it over my shoulder, and forget about it.

A little further on, I pass a couple walking with their daughter, a blonde girl of about 7 or 8. The girl glances at me as I pass. I think nothing of this at first, but after a few steps, I'm overcome by this feeling of being watched. I turn around to look behind me and the little girl is following me now, floating a couple of inches off of the ground. She has an unsettling, dead-eyed expression, and I hurry to get away. She's faster than I am, though, and as she seizes my hand, a horror movie "dun DUUNNNN!!" soundtrack plays. At first I'm spooked, but the effect is so ham-handed that I become lucid.

"This is just a dream," I tell her.

She smiles happily, no longer the fright figure of just moments ago. "It is!" she exclaims, dropping my hand and raising her arms over head triumphantly. "And I'm going to help guide you through it!"

Cool, I could use some help... "So that means you're a Dream Guide?"

"Oh, okay!" she says, not inspiring my confidence.

"Can you help me out with teleportation?" I ask, walking down the street with her. The road soon turns to cobblestone as we move away from the construction site. There are fewer people around now.

She shakes her head. "I haven't learned that kind of stuff yet..."

"Okay," I say. "Well, my goal for this dream was..."

She interrupts and speaks really rapidly: "You're going to summon NewArtemis and have her turn into a werewolf!" She grins, proud to show off her ability to read my mind. (She refers to Art by her DV handle.)

I smile, amused. "That's right... [NewArtemis]. The plan is to use a handshake summon. Can you help me do that?"

"Oh no," she says. "I haven't learned how to do summoning yet."

The street seems to be ending so I hop casually over the buildings at the end of the street, float over them, and land on another cobblestoned street just beyond. The little girl follows, floating just slightly behind. We're at a T-intersection and to my left is the mouth of a dark tunnel. I say, "How about I show you how to do that handshake summon?"

She nods eagerly and I extend my hand off to my right, out of sight, and repeatedly imagine NewArtemis performing the handshake. After a while, I feel the beginnings of a handshake. The little girl gasps and claps her hands. "What's it look like?" I ask. The girl doesn't answer and as I look at her now, I realize that she looks like a teenager and that her hair has lengthened and changed color. "Am I changing you?" I ask, starting to feel confused. It occurs to me how confusing it is to look at the girl while trying to imagine NewArtemis. It's like trying to remember how a song goes when something else is blaring on the radio. I feel like I might be morphing the girl into NewArtemis but I'm unsure whether I should switch to trying that. I'm becoming distracted.

I feel an insistent tap in the palm of my hand, as if the middle finger of the person I'm shaking hands with was repeatedly poking me and trying to get my attention. My mind races between the summoning effort, the tapping in my hand, the girl's shifting appearance, and my own indecision as to whether the summoning is ready for me to turn and look. Soon, the dream collapses.

This WILD was amazing. Very vivid and realistic, rich content, successful summoning, and a Task of the Month success (plus a failure.) Forgive the length of this entry, but the dream was 25-30 minutes, and a lot happened! (Edit: After further review... best LD ever.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #90: The Night of the Weredog

I experience a sharp transition that feels like a short fall face-first onto a paved surface. My arms are splayed out over my head and I can't move. I can see just a bit and it looks like I'm on a basketball court at night, but I'm afraid to open my eyes more to look around.

I'm totally paralyzed. I'm conscious and aware but for some reason can't move, and I think I'm experiencing something similar to REM atonia. I know it's all in my head, though, so I start peeling my dream-arms out of this fake physical body by rotating them forward into the ground using thought rather than my muscles. It takes a little effort, but eventually I feel this set of "dream-arms" separate out and move independently. Soon the rest of my dream-body follows and I'm able to exit completely and get to my feet.

It is a basketball court -- four of them in fact, all arranged together in one giant rectangle. I'm alone on this court but teenagers are playing small, informal games on the other courts. The courts are surrounded by concrete stands and a metal railing. For fun, I stunt-jump off of the metal railing and land back on the court, then see Wife approaching out of the darkness. She's dressed for bed and looks groggy. "You're still up?" she says. "Shouldn't you get to bed?"

"Shhh, it's okay," I say. "Go back to sleep. I'm having one of my dreams." She nods, yawns, and wanders off into the darkness. False awakening averted.

I roam around the basketball court for a while before regaining focus on my goals for the dream -- summon NewArtemis and have her do the werewolf tranformation for Advanced Task of the Month. I put my right hand out for the handshake summon and look away, pointing my gaze over my left shoulder. I don't feel anything at first, but I'm relaxed about it. I know it'll work if I just give it time. I imagine the sensation of a hand pressing into my palm, and then slowly, vaguely it takes shape. After a few moments, I give the "hand" a squeeze and it squeezes back.

Without looking, I check for a forearm, probing all the way up to the elbow. "[NewArtemis], is that you?"

"Hey! Yeah I'm here!" Cool, I think, but I want to be sure the summon's really solid before I look. I check the DC's arm -- quite thin, but it's there. I reach her shoulder and I'm a little worried when it just feels like bare skin.

"So before I look... uh, what's the story with your clothing situation?"

"It's fine, I'm dressed!" she says. "Come on, quit worrying so much!"

Slowly, I turn to look. I'm shocked to see that I'm shaking hands with a short, middle-aged woman in a blue business suit. There's about a half second of sudden blackness and then a hard scene transition -- now I'm shaking hands with NewArtemis (no longer the businesswoman and back to her usual DC appearance) on some beachside boardwalk at night. Success! "Told you!" she crows. "Let's go!" She sprints past a burly, mustachioed man eating an ice cream cone, heading toward the sand. I follow, flying to keep up.

As she reaches the beach sand, she notices that I'm flying. She looks annoyed. "You know, I can't seem to get my flying to work right now." I notice that I'm unable to fly more than a few feet off of the ground. I try a Hulk jump and can only manage a measly 20 feet or so. Seeing this, she tries a Hulk jump of her own and manages about 50 feet. "Ha!"

There are some dunes along the shore and we practice competitively Hulk jumping up and down the dunes as we continue along the water. After doing this for a bit, we come to a long line of black-robed cultists standing at the top of a dune in a long series of rows, torches in hand. They're droning and chanting, obviously in the middle of performing some dark ritual. There are probably 50 of them in total and I think that this looks like a perfect place to go for the "mythical creature" Task of the Month. "[NewArtemis]! Do your werewolf transformation! These guys are just begging to get eaten by a werewolf."



She looks doubtful. "I'm not so sure," she says. "Isn't this just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation?"

Just as she says this, one of the "evil acolytes" flips his hood back. He's a friendly-looking blonde guy with a goofy smile. "Hey guys! Sorry if we freaked you out! We're just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation!" (He uses her precise wording.)

I sigh. We continue for a little while longer, coming to a well-lit swimming pool. "Maybe we should go ahead now and do your werewolf transformation while we're thinking about it," I suggest, and the moment I say this, she changes fast into a big, black dog, bounds ahead of me, and leaps joyfully into the pool! She splashes playfully in the pool for a while, panting and grinning.



But as she kicks up more water, the playful splashing turns into thrashing and now the black dog has turned into my 3-year-old son and he's sinking fast. I'm still aware that it's a dream so even though I badly want to pull him out of the water, I don't feel as freaked out as I would in waking life. I dive into the pool and even underwater I can hear my son calling to me. I can see and breathe without any trouble and I swim to the bottom of the pool, scoop him up, then fly back out of the water, landing poolside to tend to him. He seems unharmed and the moment I set him down, he runs off into a nearby grotto.

I follow my son into the grotto, a low-ceilinged cave with a shallow pool of water, partially bricked walls, and some form of dim light that reflects off the water and plays across the cave ceiling. I find that my son E has changed back into NewArtemis in human form. "Sorry about the pool thing, man," Art says, rolling her eyes. "Hey, do Task of the Month on these DCs!" She gestures at a family of tourists that are exploring the grotto. (The task is to tell a DC they're not real and see their reaction.)

I'm impressed that she reminded me of this. "Good idea! Hey kid," I say, addressing a boy of about 11, "you're not real."

"Nuh-uhh..." the kid counters, looking cross and uncomfortable. Okay, that should be good for a Basic completion, but I'm looking for more.

Now I address a bearded man in his mid-60s, who I assume is the boy's grandfather. "You're not real. This is all happening inside my dream."

"Nonsense," the grandfather says, "you're not real. I'll prove it." He flicks me on the left arm, looking proud of himself. I counterargue by levitating him a couple of feet off of the ground and setting him back down. He blubbers for a moment, then looks off at one of the cave walls, mentally processing this existential crisis. I feel a little bad for him.

"[NewArtemis], you should do this too, get those Basic wings," I say, only partly joking. She doesn't respond, and when I look over, she's changed into a man in his late 20s, short-haired, prematurely balding, and slumped against the wall in fatigue. He mumbles something about how long the dream has been and how tired it's made him. I throw the guy over my shoulder and carry him out of the grotto. When I set him down outside, he's turned back into a tired-looking NewArtemis. "Are you okay?" I ask. She says that she is, but everything has started to feel wobbly and unstable.

Suddenly, the whole scene rocks and something pitches us forward. We both yelp and I fall flat on my face, my hands flailing out in front of me. I'm semi-paralyzed and the scene has gone dark, but I've managed to grab onto NewArtemis' left ankle where it feels like she's wearing some kind of thick winter sock. There's a loud rumbling in the background that sounds like an earthquake. "I can still move!" yells NewArtemis over the noise and she drags me slowly forward across some kind of rough gravel. My face is smashed down into the gravel so I can't respond. She keeps hauling us forward for about 15 more seconds before the scene collapses into...

...a false awakening in some unknown house. Mom is here and I excitedly start telling her about the incredible LD that I just had, going over as many details as I can recall. She tells me to keep my voice down -- my son R is sleeping in the next room over. I apologize, continuing the recollection in a softer tone of voice. After a while, this scene fades, too, and I'm awake.

This was a fun Valentine Task of the Month-themed LD. I managed to pull off the basic TotM ("Find a flower and give it to the next DC you see") and gave a valiant effort at the Advanced ("Find Cupid, and bribe him to shoot your favorite celebrity or DV member.")

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #62: Winged Cupid Painted Blind

I'm talking dreams with my friend AL as we walk behind a row of townhouse garages. I tell him, "You know, I had a dream a few nights ago that Wife and I went out on a double date with you and ML." I feel something strange when I say that, then realize that it's all a dream. "And I'm having a dream right now... gotta go, man!"

I'm disoriented and can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. I assume I'm supposed to be flying somewhere. Without waiting for AL's response, I turn my face toward the gray, cloudy sky. "Up, up and awaaaay!!" I wail. Absolutely nothing happens.

Then I remember the Task of the Month. I look down at a nearby patch of grass and see a bunch of small, yellow, weedy-looking flowers. I pull a handful of them up and turn to AL, who is now sitting on the ground, piddling with the grass. "Here you go, dude!" I announce, stuffing the flowers into his hand. He just stares at them.

This dream still has some gas in the tank but I have no plan. After a moment I remember the "Cupid" advanced TotM, where I'm supposed to summon either a DV member or celebrity. Even though I'm hoping this task will stay G-rated, I play it safe. I remember that Kate Beckinsale is on my "freebie list" ("A list of 5 celebrities who, should the opportunity arise, one is allowed to sleep with without it being considered as cheating by your significant other.") Also known as "list of absolutely futile spouse-approved celebrity crushes".

"Okay," I say, "Kate Beckinsale will be..." I whirl around. "...right behind me!" I'm staring at nothing but a chain-link fence.

I relax and do it right this time. I think about how she is already standing there and I'll just need to turn around in order to find her.

I whirl around again and this time find myself staring at an invisible woman dressed in a business suit. She has no hands, feet, or head. I watch for a moment and see that the suit is vaguely moving. The suit's right arm reaches across its chest, as if its wearer was scratching her shoulder.

"That's not right," I say, and walk up to her. I place my right hand where her face should be and am surprised to feel nothing at all! I pantomime the motion of molding clay and after a couple seconds of work, her face fills in from top to bottom like liquid being poured into a glass. This is really close to the final result:



Her eyes narrow shrewdly, like she's wondering how exactly I plan to pull off this next part. (I'm wondering the same thing.) I need to add Cupid to this whole scene. I don't want to turn around and potentially go through the hassle of re-summoning my celebrity, but I'm not sure how else to get Cupid into the scene. I think about putting my hand behind me and having him land on it, but then I'm a bit grossed out by the idea of Cupid sitting in my hand naked.

Kate Beckinsale cocks an eyebrow as I stand there struggling with this question. In a few more seconds, the dream solves the problem for me by ending.