Steganographical

I only recall, at the earliest, the intense discomfort of the situation. An old classmate of mine had somehow found her way into my bed and began massaging my shirt and tickling my jaw and ear with her breath. We didn't particularly like each other in waking life, and here I maintained that sentiment: I kept edging away, but she'd giggle and scoot in closer-- very uncharacteristic. When I saw that she'd massaged my nightshirt into tatters, I complained that it was freezing and went to the closet to pull on some clothes. Any clothes-- a tank top, over a sweater, under a long-sleeved off-the-shoulder sequined white blouse... which in turn lay under denim overalls that I don't have in waking life, over which I finally pulled my flannel pajamas.

She was still under the sheets when I came back into bed, remarking with deliberate loudness at how my apartment had no privacy-- no locks, not even walls between beds, or clothes between people's bodies...

I said that I didn't know about her, (unfortunately, this was a lie, I could clearly see about her) but I had clothes, I had plenty of clothes. Also, seeing as it was my bed and I'd dropped enough hints, strong hints, that I didn't want her there, I was darn well going to...to...

...to push aside the shoe rack inside the closet, wedge in the space between that shoe rack and the closet wall, sit with my chin on my knees, bar the closet from the inside, and sleep like that! (I was furious at how unrepentantly inconsiderate she was being, but even in waking life, I hate confrontation more.)

On the way to do just that, I saw a spool of bright gold auroral strings appear outside the window, burning against the black night cityscape. I jumped and hid behind the closet door, not closing it but peeking from behind because it seemed to know I was in there anyway. It began to take form...



The auroral Stegosaur broadcast some telepathic signal-- if it had sound, it would be deep and booming, a voice to intimidate Zeus. It had a message, but the beast was just way too big and scary for me to want to listen. I shrunk against the closet door, wanting to escape, to sink into the ground... and I did. Not through to the apartment floor below, as one would expect, but down to the landing of the stairs of the house in my last dream. "As one would expect," that is, if Kitty Pryde powers can ever be expected at all. Either way, that's what got me lucid.

The French doors leading out to the garden, in the dream, faced the same direction as the windows of my apartment, so I could see the threads of light dancing in the nighttime garden, assembling themselves.
The rest happened so fast.

I planned to run from the landing to the kitchen before the auroral strings formed eyes-- I ran, and the half-formed Stegosaur told me to wait. I skidded a turn and ran out the back door of the kitchen, which led into the garage.

The ball-bulb on the ceiling of the garage cast a stark light over the terracotta-tiled floor, the eggshell-white walls, the wooden garage door designed to fold open like an accordion— just like in waking life, but I could see through the slats of the garage door a pitch-black night outside. I halted, afraid to escape. Straining to plan, I closed my eyes and remembered how my house looked during the day.

Another image seems to blossom in the back of my eyelids right away, whenever I try closing my eyes in dreams, and then my eyes can’t help feeling open. That’s the way it happened here, too, sort of. My mind’s eye swept over the living room, the room bathed in a curtain-softened glow… then without opening my eyes, I was back in the garage. The ceiling light was off, the wooden slats of the garage door brimmed with needles of sunlight, and I could even breathe a different air now that the night-time mugginess had lifted.

All of this only took a moment to execute and digest. I’d turned night into day. I'd turned night into day. I was so shocked that I’d done it, that I woke up.

Since all features of a dream are equally in our heads, anyway, I should have known that it shouldn’t be any more difficult to create sunlight, than it is to manifest a beach towel out of thin air, like I did in my first lucid dream. There are no physical laws that took varying levels of effort to defy. But, my waking experience and logic, while it's good enough for recognizing that I'm dreaming in the first place... still gets me thinking that I need updrafts to fly in dreams, or that turning night into day is a godlike level of control. Isn't that strange?