Airship Adventure To The Floating Island

I just woke up from such a long lucid dream that I doubt I can remember it all...

All right. I was at the mall with a classmate of mine from grade school. She was quite the budding Queen Bee, in waking life. Somehow I found myself walking on the ceiling of the mall. That's when I realized that I was dreaming.

My classmate called out some things, trying to shame and bully me into coming back down and acting "normally," but I laughed her off and floated away.

The next thing I remember, I was in a grassy field, like a park, under a bright blue sky. I was walking with some dream characters that I knew as v-logging lucid dreamers in waking life, so I could remain lucid knowing that it was unlikely to know them personally in waking life.

I rifled through my pockets for The Lucid Crossroads badge, but nothing came up. I expected to have it in my hand, and tapped what I saw as empty space in my palm where the badge should have been. The world "twanged" sideways a bit, but I didn't teleport.

What else can I do? I wondered, being so easily discouraged and distracted even in waking life. Aha. Sky Island.

The Chroniclers are a clique on LD4all.Com who attempted something like The Lucid Crossroads, except with an island in the sky.

I scanned the sky to get our heading. Somehow the gang had managed to get in an inflatable raft held up by a single balloon on a string. It wasn't even a helium balloon, we had taken turns blowing the balloon up with our breath, but it rose up like a dirigible. (I wish I had a dirigible, even in my dreams. This made for an extraordinarily crappy epic airship.)

I saw a jut of earth or two floating up in the sky, but the sun shone too strongly to see it clearly. Willing the raft to rise, I pursued the shadow in the sky. The perspective turned, so that instead of coming up underneath the floating island, we were descending from the top. It wasn't Sky Island, but some other floating island with a single Maori statue in the middle, and the earth carved around it like ripples in water.

The next thing I remember, I was in an office building, or perhaps the mean woman lived there. She was mean. I humoured her until I remembered that I was dreaming, then I flew out through the glass pane. It had been dark inside the almost empty office building, except for a few fluorescent lights in the corridors, and it was nighttime in the city outside.

It looked a lot bigger than the cities I've lived in in waking life. Skyscrapers are supposed to be tall, but the vastness of each window pane dwarfed the streets.

I found myself on the inflatable raft again, with the same dream characters. Scanning the horizon for our heading, I found yet another floating island coming up between the buildings, underlit by searchlight beams. This island held a medieval castle, colored white.

"Better than nothing," a dream character pointed out.

"Not what we're looking for," I insisted, burning with embarrassment. "Turn to starboard!"

Another transition I can't remember, and we were on a road trip during a monsoon. I'd lost lucidity. I was wearing too many jackets, which I was pulling off while I sat in the back seat, and when we made a rest stop I realized that I had lost my wallet. Grampa Shirogane was giving me a lesson in deductive reasoning concerning the M&M's that had been left in my wallet's stead. (Grampa Shirogane being an offscreen character in the video game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4.)

I became lucid when I wandered around the rest stop and back into the park. Only partially lucid, I pulled my dress over my head and stole a sheet off the clothesline to make a toga. I'm a little fuzzy on whether I manifested or found a tapestry on the grass, but either way I made it into a magic carpet, and decided to make another attempt at getting to Sky Island, with or without anyone to accompany me.

Personally, I think that broomsticks handle better in dreams. They provide both speed and control. Flying carpets like that one felt far more stable, unlike my "transverse wave" form of dream flight where I get caught in downdrafts, but it's still not particularly fast. And, maybe it's the mode of transportation that got me...

... on a rocky and pebbly gray beach, surrounded by black water. An old lady crouched by a rock, muttering ominous prophecies and cackling at my fate. A huge honking skull took up the center of the island. The carpet had brought me to a floating version of Skull Island!

Still, hope springs eternal. I stepped inside the skull, to the cobwebby darkness inside. There was a statue made of smaller, cracked skulls deep within. I stood by it and then, as was routine, called out, "C- Chroniclers? Calling all Chroniclers--"

I was interrupted by a couple of dark figures that leapt, like ninjas, through the cave entrance. They didn't look happy, apparently this was their secret trading port for stuff they pillaged from other ships.

So, they were a combination of ninjas and pirates, and they were dressed like emo rockers. There were a couple of them, but one of the members from the inflatable raft revealed himself to be waiting behind the small skull pile. He was armed with a gun, and fired a couple of shots near the entrance where the emo rocker ninja pirates stood.

They leaped back, like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon swordfights (emo rocker ninja pirate monk swordsages? It's a cross-classing nightmare!) but the fellow crew member and I didn't want a fight, we just wanted the entrance cleared to escape through.

By the time we met up with the others back at ground level, and I don't remember how, I had lost lucidity completely. But, that was okay, because the rest of that dream involved us all going to a spa to get pedicures... refreshing ourselves for the next journey.

Oh, but a couple of the inflatable raft members-- and I've got to find a better term, since the inflatable raft wasn't always there, but it was the same group I first met on that inflatable raft that flies... and the members are not inflatable -- got into an argument or something, and I flew after them to try to patch things up. Somehow that involved making sure they didn't share a taxi home to talk it out-- I dunno!

And then I woke up.