The Art of Beasts

Date: 2/14/2017

I was a zookeeper of some sort. There was this other one, a girl with strawberry blonde hair, who didn't know what she was doing. She fed the animals wrong, clumping up the food and tossing it in the enclosure, leaving the animals to fight over portions. She was incredibly ignorant of their behaviors and frequently released the animals by accident. But she loved animals and meant well despite her mistakes. She was also too cute and sweet to fire; she'd bat her pretty little eyelashes and get out of it easily. Naturally, she frustrated me to no end. Eventually she released some dangerous animals by accident. An orca somehow got into the nearby ocean, some large raccoons escaped, and a few mysterious, unnamed predatory creatures were set free. One set of creatures were smaller in stature. They were pack hunters, though omnivorous. I remember pudgy upright bodies, round heads with short muzzles, beady black eyes and crests like feathered eyebrows. They ranged in color from teal to grey and everything in between. They had no tails and generally looked non-threatening. Fortunately, while they could give a nasty bite, they preferred leaves and fruits. The next was only seen in brief shots where I couldn't make out the whole image. Like a horror movie, the appearance was left to my imagination as it hid behind bushes and I hid behind and under objects. It had dark shades of orange and light brown for colors, and course, long fur. It stood upright. It was at least seven feet tall from what I could guess and was a clear predator with its muscular form. The lone, vaguely humanoid hunter sought to kill and possibly eat the strawberry blonde zookeeper. We almost finished putting away all the loose animals when the beast found her. But by some miracle, a humanoid version of the orca she'd set free burst out of the water, and as a show of thanks for his freedom, killed the beast hunting her. Then the orca-beast explained himself. He was the runt of the litter when he was in the zoo, and was coddled for how cute and small he was. He faced the wild seas and almost died, but he adapted and became the strongest of them all, partially through mystical, unexplained means that I can't remember (or he just didn't say). In a twist of fate, the beast woke up after being seemingly dead and ripped apart the strawberry blonde zookeeper in seconds with the last of its strength. The orca beast did the killing blow and mourned the messy loss of his savior. Images of drawings of this dream then bombarded my mind, and I wish I had the skill to draw these amazing paintings at this moment in time. I woke up at that point. I was told when I woke up that I was talking loudly in my sleep.