Alyssa

#1: non-lucid

I was at a lock on the waterway where my dad works, with a friend of mine. We're sitting on the grass, and she has a tiny turtle that she's feeding pieces of bread. I go with her as she carries the turtle over to the side of the lock and puts it down in the water. She tears off pieces of bread and throws them into the water. The turtle is eating them, and small fish swim up to eat too. More and bigger fish show up, and for a moment I see a piranha. I'm afraid that if she stops throwing bread, the piranha will start eating the other fish or her turtle.
Even bigger fish start coming up, the water is completely full of them, big bass. My mom shows up, and takes some bread from my friend, and tosses a few pieces onto the concrete beside the water. I ask what she's doing and she says that she needs to get dinner. A huge bass flops up onto the concrete, and starts flipping itself further from the water. There was grass in that direction before, but now there's a long, but shallow, empty swimming pool. It was full of dirt and dead leaves, and the fish landed in it and stopped moving.
I cross to the other side of the lock, and see a bunch of oyster shells stuck to the side, just above the water and clustered up high, and most of them are empty. The ones that aren't are still open, and I can see the pink skin inside breathing. There's a sign beside them that says "a clam shell contains air and 14 breathing mechanisms."
I look across the lock at my friend, who has coaxed two sea lions up out of the water, and holding some bread up above on of their heads, trying to get it to reach up its nose to eat

#2: lucid
When the dream started, I was going through the mail in my kitchen, and found that I had been mailed a magazine. Inside the front cover was a message that said "if you want to know more, meet me in Vaughn" and there were instructions on which bus I should take, and a finished with "More instructions will follow." It was signed Deb Graves, who was a strange woman that I met(in real life) at a gallery opening recently. I was reading this message while sitting in my living room, and when I looked up my mom was on the couch with me, and I showed her the message.
She took the magazine from me and seemed to read it, but when she looked back at me, she just started berating me. My mom acting like that is actually a pretty common dream sign for me, and it prompted me to do a reality check. I looked at my hands, and wasn't entirely convinced, so I pinched my nose and I could breathe. I stayed calm through the realization, and immediately started rubbing my hands together and looking around me, which brought the details of the room into focus.
I didn't want to stay with my dream mom, she was still yelling, so I left the house. It was too bright, I needed to stabilize, so I bent down and ran my hands over the grass, which was wet. My mom had followed me out of the house though, so I started moving down the street. I was trying to will her away, tried to tell her that she wasn't real, I wasn't really sure how to get rid of her, but nothing I tried worked.
She started trying to convince me that I was actually awake. Specifically, she said, "I know what you dont know. I know that if you looked at your hands right now, they'd look just like my hands."
I started running from her, and I remembered reading a post on the forums about running really quickly on all fours. I started running on my hands and feet and it felt completely natural and smooth. I kept saying "faster, faster" and every time I did I felt my speed increase. The world was streaking by.
When I stopped, she was still right behind me. I decided to try to fly. I closed my eyes and imagined what it would feel like to lift off the ground, and then it was actually happening. I started to drift upwards, and I was feeling thin and light, like I was transparent. I tried to visualize a forest before I opened my eyes, hoping that I'd be flying over it when I did. Instead I was still over the street, and my mom was clinging to my legs.
I drifted back down, set her down on the ground, and she let go without struggling. I lifted up higher and higher and started moving forwards. On the horizon, there were billowing swirls of bright yellow and dark blue, and I started moving towards them. The detail faded quickly before I woke up, but it didn't feel abrupt.