Somnolent Spotlight: The Earliest Dreams I Can Remember

I had a conversation in the waking world with some of my friends recently about dreams we used to have in our early childhood. This, of course, brought a few of mine to the surface of my memory. I recalled some of the earliest dreams I can remember for everyone and to which one of them responded "oh, I don't like that. I'm an adult and I don't like that". So I thought I would document those dreams in long format to make everyone uneasy! 

Now, I must put a disclaimer here: a necessary evil of remembering something is that the environment in which you remember it will influence the recollection ever so slightly, and a lifetime of minute changes can amount to significance so I'm not sure for how long these dreams recurred, or even if they recurred at all. They could have been one offs, but they remain vivid, vivid memories and have indeed stood up to years of recalling, so here we go!

The Waves

The first I'll write about, and of which I am certain was a recurring dream brought on by real-life events, was a dream where I was in open water in a storm-ravaged sea at night, being tossed around on enormous waves without a boat, a float, or even a bit of flotsam to hold onto, it was just me and the open ocean. In those dreams I would try to call for help, but I either had no voice to call with or I couldn't be heard over the sound of the tremendous churning of water. There was no narrative to this dream, I was simply trapped in the ocean. I would regularly have this dream if, that day, I went to a particular swimming pool the next town over. 

Now before you think (if you haven't already) "My God, what an awful dream to have over and over again!", it didn't put me off going in the water at all! I loved going swimming as a child, I've been SCUBA diving since I was twelve and I have two degrees in Marine Biology, so as traumatising a dream as it may sound to you, a reader, I assure you that, to me, it was just a dream and I was unaffected by it, if anything it stoked my interest in the ocean; I wanted to overcome those waves!

The Goblins in the Moonlight and the Voice that Banished Them 

The next dream(s) I can recall from an early age link together over a period of time --or at least I think they do. 

The first was hyper realistic, and I have recalled it for so long I'm no longer certain where reality became dream. The vision started when my father put me to bed each night, he would leave my bedroom and my awareness would shift to the upstairs landing. There is a window on our landing and through this window would stream down thick rays of moonlight. Within this light, small glimmers would pass through the window and travel slowly down. Once these descending specks of light reached the floor, they became tiny goblin-like creatures that scurried and skittered and tried to get into my bedroom. I'm quite sure that I would ask my father to "smash the goblins" in the waking world because the dream was so vivid, but don't hold him to that! When I did, he would appear in the vision standing in front of my room with a mighty sledgehammer and would crush the goblins if they so much as dared to approach my door.  

These visions of moonlight-riding goblins invaders happened for quite a long time until one night I heard a voice in my dreams. The voice told me that it had the power to get rid of the goblins forever, but in return I would have the dreams that the voice decided to show me. I agreed because I was afraid of the goblins and never wanted to see them again. I was too young to be sceptical of a voice making a deal like that. 

For the next [indeterminate period of time] I had the same recurring dreams which consisted of still, grainy, monochrome images of nothing in particular that would flicker like old, worn-out film in a slideshow that repeated until I woke up. I never had another dream about the goblins again though! I also don't remember hearing the voice after that. 

Interestingly enough the gritty, dreary slideshow dreams ended the night my father said the Lord's prayer with me one night before bed. So that was the end of that saga! Isn't that weird! 

But they're all just dreams right? I'm quite interested in the memories of dreams, and the point at what they mix with memories from the waking world. "Did that really happen or was it a dream"? That sort of thing. I'm also interested in the idea of fake memories, or memories we might make up to pad around another memory we have. I've tried to keep padding to a minimum for this entry, but I'm certain that the process of writing them out again has altered my memory of them. 

As usual, here's a picture to capture peoples' eye in the thumbail, thanks for reading this far!

26th July 2020

Night of 08.05.2020: Profane Rituals and Colossal Beasts

 As I have come to expect from my dreams, this story has no beginning. I was simply a part of an elite squadron of assassins.

We had infiltrated the castle of Carriel and were looking for the Queen. Numerous moles from all nations had reported that the queen of this land was killing her citizens in profane rituals and amassing a dreadful necromantic power. If left unchecked any longer there was no telling what the consequences would be. A spell of mass killing? Potentially. An insurrection of undead soldiers and the subjugation of all living beings? Perhaps.

The bottom line was that her foul work could continue no longer.

One in our squadron, Rhizo, was particularly attuned to the residues and the voices of the departed and was able to shift the energy of the next world into physical form in this. He had asked the spirits lingering in the castle to tell us the way to the queen and had created a 3D map of the hallways and interior of the castle, which we were now following.

Soon we came to an outdoor walkway with two other paths running directly above and below. We detected another party approaching our location on the lower tier so we climbed up and hid in the highest, being careful to mask our presence by lowering our heart rates. There existed ears sensitive enough to hear even heartbeats, especially when powerful magic is involved. The owner of such a pair of ears was also in our group; her name was Borda.

Borda listened to the group on the lowest pathway from whom we were hiding. She told us that they were spies from one of the other nations. They had intel that the King and the Prince would be passing along the walkway we jumped up from.

Both our party and theirs in our respective hidings witnessed the King and Prince walk out into the sun. The prince was grimly trailing along a person in unusual purple robes by a chain fastened around their waist.

Borda, our ears, notified us when the King and prince, and the other spies had moved on. We dropped down and followed the path back into the castle that the King, prince and article of sacrifice had walked along.

Slowly, and carefully we proceeded, the essences told Rhizo that the queen was before us on the path we walked. We perceived once more a bright, natural light spilling in at the end of the hallway and our map told us we were approaching a large outdoor colosseum. She was in that colosseum. We interrogated our map further as a direct attack was our least favourable option. There were numerous subterranean passageways, presumably where the champions of the past would have come up from their chambers to fight in that arena. Three of our unit stole away to secure those routes, leaving myself and the strongest, most capable fighters to deal with the possibility of a head-on fight. Rhizo stayed with our group and told us that the spirits of the departed were howling that the queen was ahead of us and was draining the life of more people to fuel her profane magic. There was no longer any doubt.

Our mark was ahead of us.

We waited the amount of time the others told us to wait for them to secure the secret passageways, and when that time expired, we surged forth into the light.

Sure enough we found ourselves in a vast, stone-built, empty colosseum in bright, midday sunlight. The queen stood ahead of us in the centre of the colosseum and at her feet lay desiccated, withered once-human forms. Rhizo was at once overwhelmed by the foul, relentless, churning of the spirits of the furious dead. Their rage was his, their insatiable thirst for vengeance against the fell queen was being channelled directly into his human frame. As Rhizo was imbibing this ancient hatred, the rest of the group and I launched a rapid attack against the queen hoping we could land fatal blows before she was able to put up her guard.

Fools that we were.

When one such as the queen stands in the threshold between life and death, they exist immortally. In shattering their union with the world of the living they are no longer bound by its rules and escape the cycle of life and death. She was not playing by our rules.

The queen’s mouth. One dreadful, boiling, rasping word that pulsated and filled our bodies with fire and torment. Such was the queen’s power that she could manipulate the fabric of reality with one contemptible word.

We fell to the ground, wracked in pain. All I could do was watch the queen laugh hideously, but all at once a green, healing light emanated from somewhere.

It was Rhizo. He had stilled the fury of the restless lifeforce perverted by the queen and beseeched it to aid him. Our bodies became our own again, but the Queen was not without response. She recited an incantation and become wrapped in a shroud of horrible purple light. It lifted her up high, high into the air and assumed the immense shape of a spider around her waist. Once again her voice filled our every sense: “You fools cannot hope to defeat me. I possess more power than can be contained in this universe!” her gargantuan spider-self lurched destructively towards Rhizo:

Another flash of green light. Rhizo now sat atop a colossal, green boar. The boar reared forward and locked tusks against the spider’s legs in some desperate struggle of the millennia-oppressed vs the millennium oppressor. The two vied back and forth but Rhizo the boar broke free and pushed the spider back. With a titanic, primal force that shook the Earth, Rhizo roared:

“We!” the boar sank its dreadful tusks into the spider, purple blood spilled freely from the puncture sites. The boar pulled back.

“Will!” again the boar struck, deeper into the same wounds.

“Never!” terrible blow after terrible goring blow did the boar skewer the spider

“Be silent” the spider was limp from these heinous wounds but the boar did not let up

And then the final words. A constellation of the spirits of the countless killed emanated around the boar, lending their rage, their strength and twisted glee to this ultimate blow:

“To you!” 

The boar reared back, scraping its behemoth hooves across the ground in anticipation for the apocalypse strike that would end it. With a tremendous howl the boar surged forward and struck the spider with enough force to dissipate its form. The queen fell, defeated, to the ground.

Without missing a beat Rhizo masterfully shifted the boar into an enormous sarcophagus and sent it crashing down on top of the Queen, encapsulating her. But she was not to be defeated so easily. Once more she assumed her spider-form inside the sarcophagus and thrust her 8 needle-legs out, barring her tomb from trapping her completely. This second struggle lasted for what seemed like an eternity but her power ultimately waned. She could not indefinitely resist the weight of her sins and was sealed away by the powerful magic she had unwittingly created.

But as an immortal she was not killed. The sarcophagus churned and twisted and shrank into an ornate, jewelled container that might reasonably be compared to a Faberge egg. Her essence was trapped in this form by Rhizo’s powerful magic. But her voice emanated from it

“You fools, you have not defeated me. The moment this egg is opened, your sealing spell will break and I will be freed. The curiosity of your wretched kind will be your rightful downfall!” and she laughed a maniacal laugh. “Did you not think that I would not have guards in every corner of this colosseum for precisely this situation?! Guards! Kill these insurgents and free me from this form!”

The gates of the colosseum opened but the members of our troupe stepped out. They had easily despatched the guards and cast their unconscious forms in front of them. 

At this, Rhizo produced a sheet of tin foil and the vessel containing the sealed Queen in it, her curses were muffled to silence. Rhizo slipped the egg carefully into his pocket “Don’t think so”.

Here's an image for the thumbnail! 

There was more to this dream after this scene. Later on I was in the castle's training ground at the King's man-at-arms recognised the Prince's sword which I had swindled as spoils of our successful mission. I obviously wasn't the Prince so the man-at-arms was incredibly suspicious and challenged me about who I was and why I had the Prince's sword. I think I managed to convince him that I had done a great service to the Prince and that this was my reward. I also have this gut feeling there were velociraptors in the dream, but in what capacity I don't remember.

Friends in Celestial Places 26-27.6.20

I was visited by a group of beings that took me to lots of different places to make new friends as I have recently moved from Plymouth to Bath. The group never told me who they were, but they weren’t human. That said though they weren’t frightening, nor did they make me feel uncomfortable. The situations and people they took me to became increasingly unusual and in a few cases extra-terrestrial…

On the first trip the group whisked me away and dropped me off in a room with someone I hadn’t met before. I don’t remember what they looked like, but they were video chatting with one of their friends using their TV screen. I introduced myself to the new faces as a marine biologist and the friend on the TV said that they too studied marine biology, after a while the TV person said they also played guitar and we encouraged them to play something. I picked up the chord sequence quite easily and fetched my cello which was magically on hand. I played along, knowing full well that the latency probably made it sound horrible on their end.

The group then took me to a different planet comprised mostly of water. It was dark when we arrived, and I found myself near a small river with a little waterfall and plunge pool a bit further upstream. Once my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I noticed that there were floating specks of faint light in the water and I got closer to have a look. I got to the riverbank and saw three pillars of starlit water arise slowly from the river surface. Whether the pillars and I spoke out loud or through telepathy I don't know, but I determined that the lights were sentient, bioluminescent phytoplankton, and that they were who I was communicating with. 

The phytoplankton told me that whilst each plankter had its own sentience they were able to join together to form a collective conscience through processes similar to quorum sensing. They told me that the colour they were glowing was influenced by their environment; their current blue colour meant that conditions were stable and favourable. The lights in the dark water then changed to red and they told me red means conditions are getting worse or that the phytoplankton are busy doing something.

Then the plankton glowed green.

Though it was dark I noticed the flow of the river sharply quickened when they glowed green, as if the planet was responding to them. Many many more phytoplankton stirred in the water until the river was teeming with green light. They told me that their green glow released a chemical into the water which alerted all the "sleeping" phytoplankton that they were needed to respond to a threat, and thus the green light was their defence mechanism. The “green” bioluminescence also connected every phytoplankter to the collective consciousness so they could communicate their situation across great distances very quickly. 

The group then took me to another planet where many rock platforms were floating freely in outer space. These platforms moved around and to each other to create walkways for the inhabitants when they wanted to go somewhere. As soon as I set foot on the planet many platforms joined onto mine and a number of inhabitants came out of their houses to greet me. They thought I was the postman. After a while of me explaining that I didn’t have any post for them—and that I was brought here to make new friends—I felt a presence behind me and turned around to see who or what it was. I was met by a humanoid being that seemed very muscular and broad in shoulder, it was wearing a two-piece suit and whilst its body was corporeal, its face was a holographic projection of orange light. I don’t remember any interactions with it, but it was also pleased to see me.

The final place this group took me the sky where a passenger plane was physically breaking apart in midair as we arrived. We rescued everyone from the plane and the group suggested telepathically that I used the opportunity to ask all of the people to be my new friends. I began to wonder if the group had engineered the plane to break apart to create that scenario for me and suddenly felt quite predatory.

That’s all I can remember from that one!

Night of the 27.6.20

A friend of mine in the waking world who plays cello and I were standing in a spacious, open chamber with many large windows that let the room fill with natural light and views of the outdoors. We were talking to a pair of girls; one of them was saying that they had come to the join the University Orchestra and played cello. I was happy to hear they were joining the orchestra, especially as I had now left and quizzed them about their cello, I said something like,

“Oh yes? What cello do you play?”
The girl looked a little flustered and said,
“Oh it’s the best model, everything about it is top of the line!”
She didn't give a very clear answer, nor did she mention what level a player she was, so I asked a few more questions.
“Neat!” I started, “so we’re talking like, high hundreds, maybe even thousands of pounds (for your cello)? My cello was only a couple of hundred, but my friend's was closer to a thousand” I gestured to my friend to hint that even if this newcomer was a better player than me then they wouldn’t surpass my friend.
 The girl responded, quite firmly “It’s the best money can buy”. 

This further cemented in my mind that she was just trying to show off, maybe she was a new player and bit of more than she could chew trying to big herself up to us two. I went and got my cello and brought it back to the group.
“Look,” I said holding my cello up to the newcomer “look how beaten up and cronky my cello is. The bridge is all out of whack, there’s rosin caked on everywhere, chips in the woodwork….” I tailed off as the girl looked quite blankly at my cello, not sure what she was meant to be looking at. Someone who knew what their way around a high quality cello would have noticed the Larsen strings and the pickup under my bridge, so I was pretty sure they were just fronting. But I was still pleased they were going to join the orchestra

In the next scene I was adventuring on my own in the deep wilderness. To my left was either a wide river or an estuary with a relatively small, fragile wooden bridge stretching over it. I was walking along a dirt path forged by the years of footfall that had come this way before me, and everywhere else was long, untamed grass except for a small range of mountains stretching off to the right.

I was approaching the time-worn bridge when a warrior appeared, seemingly out of thin air. They were dressed in tight wraps of fabric which muffled the sound of their movement and confronted me with a single-edged blade. Few words were exchanged before we started fighting.

I beat them easily and as they were kneeling on the ground in exhaustion, they demanded that I kill them but I refused and left them on the ground to continue my journey. The “camera” then stayed on them as they took a moment to recover and get back on their feet. They then followed my footprints back to my house.

When the warrior got to my house they broke in and attacked everyone who was living with me, including the new cellist in the previous scene. There was one scene in particular where the warrior inflicted a number of very swift, light cuts to one of the more elderly people who was living with me, who fell to the ground in shock. I don’t think the warrior killed any of them though; their attack was to leave a message: “You should have killed me”.

The “camera” returned to me still in the open wilderness, I had put the encounter with the warrior out of my mind. That is, until a messenger came running towards me from over the hill I descended earlier. I moved towards them to shorten their already-long journey. when they arrived, they told me about the onslaught on my friends led by the warrior who I had left alive.

I roared in distress and anger which summoned a horde of gigantic beetles the size of cars. I mounted the beetle closest to me and the lead the stampede as the valley shook with a great thundering of dashing feet, the clashing of the beetles rigid bodies as they ran in close formation and my cries of rage and sadness.

The dream then played out in a series of still images of me riding the giant beetle with score after score of beetles following behind in a tremendous uproar. Every now and then amongst the beetles I could see fierce centaurs with the four legs and body of a horse, the incredibly muscular human torso and arms, the snarling head of a lion, and two imposing, black horns that jutted straight upwards from their head. These chimera beasts had come down from the mountains to aid in my revenge.

I think the final scene happened after the dust had settled from the previous encounters. All my friends were still alive and life was beginning to return to normal. I had enlisted another swordfighter to teach me new techniques to improve my own combat skills and it is in one of the training sessions that the next scene takes place.

I was standing a little outside the house in a large, flat grassy garden which continued on to a large hill that sloped down and away from the house. The swordfighter told me that today they would teach me a special technique which created either fire or explosive energy and rained it down in front of the user when executed properly. They showed me a few times, directing the energy to fall down the hill and out of harm’s way. I moved forward to the top of the hill and copied the movements I had seen my teacher perform; it seemed to involved drawing a circle with the tip of the sword to create a flow of energy and then to chop that circle into many parts to disrupt the flow of that energy and cause it to release explosively.

I executed the technique successfully a few times but then lost my footing and slipped all the way down to the bottom of the hill. I picked myself up once I had stopped tumbling and slowly made my way back up to the top of the hill. I wasn’t injured.

As I walked up the hill, I noticed there was a small platform of rock to the left of the slope. I could hear a sort of bestial breathing coming from. I passed by the outcrop and saw a large blue cyclops sleeping on its back. I thought to myself that the training had a second function of dispatching this giant. 

That's as much as I remember! Thanks for reading!

Author's Commentary
I think these dreams are a very clear message to me that making new friends is playing on my mind a lot. There is a heartening message to my existing friends in the dream from the 27th where I (very territorially!) say that my new friends will never be as good as my old ones, but in the waking world I know that's quite a naive outlook. Beyond that, the dream about the warrior by the river is almost directly lifted from a Legend of Zelda videogame called Breath of the Wild. In the videogame I was walking along the coast and got attacked by a member of a ninja-like tribe who are out to get the main character. I wasn't able to beat the ninja in the game as they teleported away before I could defeat them. The centaur-like creatures are obviously the Lynel enemies from the same game, and the sleeping cyclops is an enemy called a Hinox. I think the fire-making sword technique is influenced by another game I've been watching a playthrough of called Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in which the main character fights with a katana and there is a combat mode where you freely control their sword.

I believe the phytoplankton I met in the first dream are influenced by an episode of a programme called Disenchantment where the main characters swim through an underwater tunnel lit by bioluminescent sea creatures. The creature with the holographic face is almost a direct lift from a music video for a song called "Magnum Bullets" by the band Night Runner. The scene where the plane was falling apart in midair is from another videogame I've been watching called Grand Theft Auto 5 (V) where the people playing spawned a bunch of passenger planes in midair which collided with each other and broke apart.

Here's a picture so that there will be an attractive thumbnail when I share it in social media: