3/16
I was in some kind of forested area with my family for a vacation or other outing. The place was beautiful, the landscape was like nothing I’d ever seen before, bright yellow-greens and deep forest colours dotted the hilly and mountainous landscape. These mountains however, where raised from monstrous slabs of white marble and grey-black granite; they surrounded a vast lake of sorts, with large, hill-like islands piercing its placid and crystal clear blue surface. Waterfalls carved through the rock on numerous occasions and the largest of the islands was a mountain in and of itself, but seemed to be amazingly balanced on rocky spires that created cavernous structures at its base; it was as if the island was being held up by natural stilts.. The sun was so bright and the water so clear that one could see straight through one cavern to the other side of the island and the urge to fly through these beautiful tunnels was a great one.The only thing I could compare this place to would be the moon of Pandora, from James Cameron’s Avatar.
As I was strolling along and admiring the landscape, a strange electricity ran through me. It was an amazing feeling of power, charging through my body in a way that I thought I could not contain, like when they go super-saiyan in Dragon Ball Z. My hair literally started to stand up on end as the air around my body became distorted with heat. My heels raised slightly off the ground, as if something was pulling me up by a string on my head. I, crouched down and planted my feet firmly on the ground and like Neo from the Matrix, vaulting myself explosively into the air above me. I shot up some six hundred feet and then floated there, in awe of the beauty of my surroundings. That is when I realized that I was dreaming. Ever since I had seen Avatar, I had wanted to go to Pandora. I had become enamored with this amazing world where nature was everything I’d ever imagined and I could literally communicate with my my great mother. Since I have yet to become a very powerful lucid dreamer, it is very difficult to completely shape the landscape around my without awakening myself, so my prior attempts to create Pandoraesque paradise had failed. Tonight, however, my mind had done it for me.
As I stood there, hundreds of feet up in the sky, completely aware that I was dreaming, everything seemed to snap into HD, becoming frighteningly vivid: the cool air currents flowing around me, the feint smell of jungle and mountains that the waterfalls constantly churned out, and warm sun against my skin all became evident to me as the image of this beautiful Pandoran landscape came into being. It was filled with the sounds of the jungle down there, but up here, it was quiet and peaceful, perfect for my reticent and gracious mood.
That’s when I saw it, a large orange body flapping its blue wings and rising up to investigate my unusual presence in its territory. I made eye contact with it, and somehow it seemed to know what I wanted, as if we’d done this before. It flew up and then swooped down, rocketing towards me, and I flew upwards and out to match it’s speed and lessen the impact when it reached me. In a few seconds it was right under me and I grabbed small, bony grooves between it’s neck and shoulders while clamping my legs around it’s bony spine. I was riding a charizard.
There are three things everyone should know about charizards: One, charizards aren’t assholes like Ash’s, but they are proud, so show them respect and gratitude, and they will show you the same. Two, charizards are very responsive to their Master’s wishes, this one at least, seemed to do whatever I willed it, I was literally steering it with my thoughts. Three, charizards are fucking FAST.
I spent about 10 minutes just flying around on him and damn was it a rush. He was remarkably maneuverable, even at high speeds. We soared down around the island and through the caves underneath; it was then that we spotted a dragonite and mecha-charizard. (I thought it was strange that even though I was lucid, my dream had some level of self governance in that it could create it’s own characters and landscapes without my knowledge, but that’s probably simply because I have yet to master the art of lucid dreaming) I decided it would be fun to mount and tame these wild beasts, and so ensued the mad flight around the island to try and catch the robotic charizard and the dragonite. The mechzard was fast and highly maenuvarable, but could only fly and walk on land. The dragonite, however, could not only fly professedly more quickly than I expected from its small wings, but could also dive underwater. It was impossible to catch up to both of them, so I landed on a rocky outcrop on the central island to think of a plan. The dragonite remained mostly by the water and in the caves underneath the island, where it could dive down to avoid me. The mechazard, without a human to weigh it down, was able to best me ever so slightly in each of our aerial encounters. I would have to focus on one at a time instead of whichever was closer, and I would have to rely on more than my charizard’s speed to catch them.
My charizard and I had our minds essentially melded, we communicated by thought, so when he was flying, I was flying, what I saw, he saw, and when I wanted to go faster, we went faster. I willed him to rise and pursue the mechazard and we did so. Just as the mechazard was about to whip away from us, we made a sprightly u-turn and dove into the caves. Neither of our prey knew where we were, but we could smell the dragonite resting on the water’s surface at the entrance of another cave. Quietly weaving our way through the labyrinthine underworld, we floated up behind the dragonite and then I leaped from my charizard’s back onto the the dragonite’s, locking it firmly in a rear naked choke. I feared it would drag me down with it, but somehow, I was able to subdue it with my mind. Knowing that I now had two steeds, the mecha-charizard met me at the shore to surrender itself. Thanking our two new friends for the good sport, my charizard and I flew off into the sunset and during this flight, I wanted to let out a fire-blast, so my charizard surrounded us with a multi-colored blanket of flames. Great contentment swelled within us both, growing with the wealth of a day well spent.
Suddenly, large, metallic cords whipped through the sky and blocked our path forward. Riding the thermals like an experienced eagle, I (we) attempted to avoid them. More and more began forming until a metal forest of vines began to impeded our journey. It was then that we realized that the metallic vines were forming into a literal, floating forest in the sky, like the mountains of Pandora. I began to sing, like the elves in the Inheritance series (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr), weaving a ballad in the ancient tongue. As the words of power permeated from my lips through ethereal song, the vines began to shift and allow us to pass. I continued singing and the wind came up beneath our wings, carrying us along hastily while the floating forest parted for us. It was then that I felt a great gratitude towards the Soul of the World, and a strange knowledge filled me. Because of my lucidity, I knew my dream was coming towards an end. I had grown attached to charizard as if I were a dragon rider (again, from the Inheritance series) and our departure was bittersweet, but I felt that he would be waiting for me again in another dream. As my poem reached its apex, the fortissimo of unearthly song forced my eyes shut and when I opened them again, I was awake.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was pretty much the best dream I’ve ever had.
p.s. Nish once told me that I should transform into a dragon in one of my dreams. Well, I didn’t exactly do that, but I hope this is good enough.