The Kestrel's Dreams

December 01, 2014

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I was a new resident/member of a co-op that doubled as a comedy theater troup... I was going to be in a skit with two others for the next show, so I was trailing them to get used to the place. It turns out basically the whole troup is involved in some kind of scandalous murder, even though they didn't know it. There was a group of them that was orchestrating it all, using the other members as pawns in their schemes. The two I was with were the only ones who knew about it and tried to stop the baddies. We went to the leader of the troup, who we believed to be unaware of what was going on. We told him about it all, and he was really worried and told us to keep on our toes and watch out for ourselves.

Our assignment for chores that day was to clean downstairs, so the two of them and I went downstairs to clean. We ended up near the boiler room, and we heard the voices of the baddies, and scattered. I ended up in the boiler room, alone. It was pitch dark, and hot. Suddenly there was a faint red light from across the room. There were stairs there, and someone was coming down. It was the leader. He came up to a spot in the pipes and there was the REAL leader, hanging in the pipes. He had overgrown facial hair and looked really ragged. The Fake Leader said something like, "There you are, you little fool. You want your food, eh? Here you are. You little fool." He talked to the real leader like an animal in a cage. The real leader was like a savage now. His eyes were like an animal's and he was tearing at the food. The Fake Leader was patting him on the head and grinning.

Then I heard screams from upstairs, and left in a panic, but unseen and unheard by the Fake Leader, who stayed with the real leader. When I got upstairs, everything was fine. Turns out, it was because of the skit at dinner. Apparently that's what they did there; there was a skit during dinner every day. The crowd was screaming/laughing at it, but I had only heard the screaming from downstairs. I met my two friends who were alright and already at the table. They had been worried about me but were glad to see I was alright. I told them I had to talk to them later, and went to get some food.

All the food was in a bus for some reason. The buffet was set up along the back wall of the bus. I was trying to get specific kinds of lettuce from the bowl of salad, but they kept falling to the floor when I did. I gave up on it and decided to just get some pizza squares and a piece of the cake. Just as I was putting the last bit of food on my plate, the bus started moving. Apparently we were going on a field trip in the mountains. I was trying to make sure my food didn't spill, and apparently I was sitting in the "adult seat," which was undesirable. It was higher up and the table in front of it was too low. Oh well. I set down my food and looked out the window to watch the scenery go by. The bus was on a high bridge over a valley with lots of buffalo in it. I took my spoon and pretended to scoop up the buffalo. Like, every time I scooped them, the buffalo there scattered. It was like I was controlling them from my seat in the bus.

Then, I was flying over the heard. In another valley, there was a heard of humans, too. I flew over them as well, along a river gorge. The landscape was green and grassy and at the same time somehow red-dirt desert-y. It's hard to explain.

I flew closer to the ground now, and saw a group of people at the top of the next hill. There were lots of children and some people I know, so I landed there and milled amongst the people... I saw a small elephant being tackled by some kids. It was actually a little disturbing, as it reminded me of that picture of the little elephant being attacked by some lionesses. I watched this elephant go by me, and then walked up to the ledge of the river gorge, where there were a line of children sitting down. I looked over the ledge; it was very high up. I saw my mom's high school friend, H, nearby. I called her over, and asked her when the bus would be back, and where it would pick us up. She shrugged. She told me that the bus driver would call her when they got there and tell her where to meet them. She handed me her phone and asked if I wanted to keep it so I would know when and where to go. I shook my head and gave it back to her, wondering if I should just make my way back down to the road and wait there. But I didn't know if the bus would come right up to the cliff to pick us up, so I stayed there for the time being.

I walked through some scattered trees to a little plaza with a fountain. I sat on a stone bench that circled the fountain. There was an annoying mascot thing with a huge hunk of cheese trying to get me to take a selfie with it. I turned around to face the rest of the mountain above us (we were about half-way up the mountain here). It was beautiful; the mountain side was all bare except for these tall, skinny, wooden animal figures. They were made with different colors of wood and stood along the mountainside, all looking as if they were walking in the same direction (to my right). There was a vast landscape of them, and something about them was tribal, though I can't pinpoint what it was. I took out my phone to take a picture of it so I would be able to see it forever, but every time I hit the button to take a picture, the view would switch to front-facing and take a selfie. The stupid mascot thing was in all of them, too. It was getting in my way, and I was convinced it was the one making my camera do that. I elbowed it in the stomach to make it go away, and turned back to the mountain above us. But it was different. There were large, almost junglish trees scattered instead of the animal figures.

I said, "WHAT GIVES. It's different!" And then I realized, and said, "WAIT. Haha! I'm dreaming!" I looked down at my hands and confirmed that I was dreaming. I grinned. There were so many children around, and I wanted to try the task from last month about telling a kid they were in a dream. It was too late for that one, but I still wanted to try it.

I walked up to a kid who was sitting on the crest of the grassy hill, and said, "Hi! My name is Ms. Kestrel. What's your name?"
"Nathan..."
"Hi Nathan! Where are you from?"
"I'm from BC. Where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm from around there! I'm from K."
"Oh, nice." Nathan smiled.
"Actually. Do you wanna know something?"
"What?"

I said, "You know how sometimes you are dreaming, and you realize you're dreaming, while you dream?"
Nathan brightened up and nodded. "Yeah, I've heard of that!"
"It's called lucid dreaming. This is my lucid dream right now. That means you're from my subC, actually."

I watched for his reaction. At first he was just blank, but then he says, "Maaannn. Oh that's just TERRIBLE."

He sounded dejected but also detached, like he didn't actually care. I patted his back and stood up. Now, I wanted to do at least one of the December tasks. The one that came to mind first was to throw a snowball at a DC.

I looked around. No snow here... But I was on a mountain, and snow was normal on a mountain. All I had to do was go higher up and I was sure I'd find snow. I jumped up to hover a foot above the ground. Once I was sure of my stability, I flew close to the ground up the mountain until I hit the road above us. I turned to my right, where the road curved over a bridge surrounded by trees. The trees created a sort of tunnel around the road. I hovered through this tunnel and on the other side, I heard a different stream. It sounded cold somehow, and I was happy to see some snow on the railings at the side of the road. I scooped it up with my hand, but it was all powdery, not good for a snowball. It actually felt more like fake snow. I kept taking samples, getting closer to the river, which was mostly frozen over. I kept getting powdery, fake-ish snow. I turned to the trees, and saw a clump of snow gathered in the branches. Powdery snow wouldn't clump like that, so I was hopeful for this patch. I scooped it up, and packed it into a nice snowball. Perfect. Now I turned back up to the road, and turned back to the direction I had come from. I flew back through the tunnel of trees, and then left back to the plaza. There were stone stairs downward. The fountain thing was to my right, and there was a stone tunnel ahead of me, where I saw all the kids leaving.

I called out, "HEY KIDS!" And Nathan and a few others turned right as I threw the snowball. They were looking at it like I had thrown an angry, venomous snake at them, not a simple snowball. They shrieked and some of them cried. Until they realized it was a snowball, and it missed them. It landed on the ground between Nathan and another kid, and powdered them all with snow, rolling along the ground with un-dampened velocity as far as I could see, leaving a line of snow where it rolled and showering the kids with snow as it passed.

The kids all started laughing and cheering, and said "THAT WAS AMAZING!!" And started playing in the snow.

I was pretty satisfied with that, and decided to just fly upwards until I lost the dream (I could already feel it was ending soon). I didn't make it very far before I woke up.