I have entered a school gymnasium which is having a basketball game. The game is already well underway; the stands are packed with people and some inhumanly tall people in blue uniforms are playing on the court. The audience is bustling with movement, not necessarily because of the game (it’s more like the beginning of a high school assembly when everyone has decided this is a good moment to goof off). The entrance I came in begins at the top of the bleachers (typical school metal type) and I go down the steps, looking for an empty seat, but there are none. I reach the bottom and there are mats all over the side of the basketball court that indicate where non-players are allowed to walk. I see an empty seat in the way corner where there is a teenage girl sitting against the wall with her feet stretched out on the bleacher and fiddling on a bright yellow smartphone, but there is still space enough for me to sit. I somehow go through the first row of people to get to the seat without setting foot on the court. I sit down and see at my feet that there is only a sliver of mat there and I have to keep my legs at an angle in order to get my feet on them(because just so much as touching the basketball court is forbidden apparently). My knees enter the girl’s territory and she yells at me, saying there isn’t enough room and she was there first. I am inches from where her sneakers are and say, “Look, there is plenty of space. I promise not to wiggle around and bother you, alright?” She doesn’t answer me but makes an angry face and goes back to her smartphone. I look up at the court and there are only a couple inhumanly tall people shooting hoops. I notice that a quarter of the court has a small kitchen built onto it somehow and a long fold-out table and chairs set up in front of it. There is an array of fast food or delivery bags all over it. Then, suddenly, the floor of the court is flooded with a few inches of water and I can’t put my feet down at all. The basketball players continue shooting hoops and jogging around even with the water and nobody else reacts to it. I look around at crowded bleachers and see me and the girl are the only ones on this row now; I wish I had a higher seat.
Next scene, the crowd of the basketball game has turned into the crowd of a high school hallway. I am a student at school and the hall is positively jam-packed with students walking or standing around. There doesn’t seem to be any desks or lockers or anything in the school, just blank halls, rooms and doorways without doors. I somehow manage to get into a classroom. An old friend, Travis, is there, and also a pair of familiar people I don’t remember specifically but remember they are siblings. Caressa and Tyler pop into my mind so I will use those names, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t those two. Tyler is sitting at the only desk I have seen and works very determinedly on a drawing he is doing with crayons on a huge piece of white paper. Caressa and Travis tease him about it.
I suddenly receive a hang-glider that is folded up like an umbrella. I now am able to use it to actually fly around freely, just opening the thing and jumping into the air to fly (I don’t know much about hang-gliding but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works in reality hah). I’m super excited but my three companions seem unsure. Travis even looks nervous and tells me not to go crazy with it. I have no sense of danger or anything and don’t think about it. The dream becomes a teensy bit lucid at this part. I take my glider and run out into the hall, which conveniently has a very high ceiling. I am able to pop open the glider and immediately fly around the school above everyone. I lucidly control my direction, but going up and down is giving me difficulty. It takes multiple tries to jump up and remain above everyone. I fly through classrooms, where people barely have any reaction to me. I end up in one with a low ceiling and too many students clustered together that I can’t get across the room and end up crashing into a corner. It’s like a cartoon or anime; I crash into the wall and then slide slowly and comically to the ground with my glider all crunched up. People in the room laugh but mostly people are still indifferent. I also am very amused and laugh but I’m a little bit embarrassed.
I appear outside and am flying a few stories above the ground, as if I simply jumped out a window. The school building is right on the beach of a bay. There is a small town of white and pale-blue square buildings along the shore in a crescent-shape. Beyond the town inland is green, jungly mountains and on one side there are jagged brown cliffs with tunnels and natural archways. The water is clear blue and tropical. There is also mist some distance out that prevents me from seeing very far into the horizon, but I assume it’s an ocean. I fly out over it. There are some small boats and people swimming with floaties. I eye the arches of the cliffs, thinking of flying through them, but I am still having issues with going up and down (this might be from my playing Spyro the Dragon semi-recently and getting used to the up and down in one of those flying challenge levels). As I fly, I bob up and down and scare myself getting too close to the water, worried about totally nose-diving in (some fear of swimming in deep natural water here).
Then I end up in the cliff caves on foot. I no longer have the glider and the dream is not lucid anymore. I think one of the familiar people from school is with me, but they remain behind me, just at my shoulder, and I only feel their presence (this happens a lot in my dreams actually, a familiar presence with me but always just behind me, and I am curious about what it might be; someone actually with me? Or just me wanting someone with me and creating the feeling?). The ground is a mix of sand and very shallow water. I walk around to find a way back to school, but the tunnels are narrow and maze-like. Even though I’m in the caves, it’s still very lit, as if there’s not much of a ceiling. I find an area that is boarded up with wood and some of the planks are broken. I see through them a sunny shore next to a white brick wall and on the sand two giant lizard monsters are attacking something. They’re the size of a truck, have stegosaurus spikes on their back, and can move shockingly fast (they are reminiscent of the Demonic Monsters in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which I’ve been playing). The thing they are attacking looks like a scamp from the Elder Scrolls games: scrawny pink imp-looking things with big pointy ears. Maybe I’ve been playing too much videogames lately... nah, that’s not possible! The monsters ferociously attack the scamp that is barely a tenth of their size and eat it. I am shocked but not very surprised or scared. I go to quickly find a way out of the caves. I know that the monsters are everywhere in these caves and though they can move really fast, they are not very smart. I enter a larger area with shallow and deep enough water that it is almost black. I avoid the deep side, fearing monsters hiding in it and splash across the shallow end. I find another area boarded up with broken pieces of wood and the familiar person with me tells me there is an elevator I can use and that it is connected to those earlier siblings house. The elevator is up above and starts to lower. This causes some of the planks to fall down and I see through them there are more scamps on the other side. They look right at me but seem frozen in spot and I think, That’s a weird detail they added to the game. This is the only moment where I even remotely think about videogames.
I get on the elevator and am suddenly up in the siblings’ house. The elevator is right in the middle of the house. I hope that Tyler and Caressa will understand and won’t be angry that I have just barged into their house. I go toward where I know the bedrooms are in order to find them so no one will freak out. I hear the sound of bass guitar strings being strummed but randomly, as if the person doesn’t know how to play, and realize it must be Tyler working on his ‘project’. I go to say hi, but then I wake up.