Dream Journal Ultimate
Date: 5/9/2020
By ItsABlackCat
This dream is weird and, like usual, I remember certain things about it in vivid detail. It’s like I have snapshots of the dream, and I can close my eyes and literally see those snapshots in my mind. For whatever reason this dream I can remember extremely well. It started off with me in a graveyard. There was another woman there with me, a nice elderly lady. She had a wisdom about her that made her seem like the “wise, powerful mentor” type character (if it were a movie). Anyways, inside of the church was empty, oddly empty. The sky was dark, the sun hidden by clouds that made an entirely gray sky which cast no sunlight and no shadow. The world seemed undefined in a way, the wind was whistling softly in a lonely sort of way, and there was dust on the altar of the church. I went out to the graveyard where the old lady was standing at the front of it (near the church’s front door). She said gravely that “something bad is brewing, something evil is coming.” I’m pretty sure that what she actually said in the dream was almost a direct quote from Macbeth, but I’m not sure. I felt a little bit of dread build near my stomach, mostly just determination though. Then, thunder clapped, although lightning was nowhere to be seen. As if I’m cue the ground near the graves started shifting ever so slightly. First, the grass rippled and bubbled like it was liquid. Then the earth beneath it split apart and was torn upwards as hands, elbows, knees, feet, and even heads pushed their way from the ground. The old lady and I rushed around to stop the zombies from wreaking havoc on the rest of the town- which by the way was also very empty, no cars were seen on the roads and all shutters of the houses nearby were pulled tightly shut. Stopping the zombies in the dream was slightly different (and more difficult) than in the movies. Before you could do the usual, shoot them / otherwise kill them PHYSICALLY sort of deal, you had to first kill them mentally. Or, that is to say, you had to send their spirits from their bodies before the bodies would be able to die. It had something to do with the fact that, when the zombies were raised from the dead, it wasn’t just lifeless bodies that were pulled into motion like puppets on strings; the souls of the people had been forced back into the broken, twisted, disgusting bodies, and the combination made them horribly mean and desperate to get back to wherever they came from. They had the definite memories and general ‘personalities’ of whoever they were before, but were obviously changed beside that. In order to send their soul back to where it wanted to go, you had to do a weird mixture of magic and convincing, all while making sure not to be killed by the ‘person’ in question. The zombies were also kind of different from the regular zombie in this way, too- they weren’t ‘infectious,’ and being bitten by one didn’t turn you into a zombie. However they were overly vicious, extremely powerful, and inhumanly tough, and they wouldn’t hesitate to just straight up kill you with their bare hands. They didn’t need a disease to do their work for them. I started with the first zombie to pop up, which was right next to me. It was the withered body of an old man, recently dead, whose skin was drooping from his corpse like wax melted from a candle. His eyes were liquidy, the whites of them running down his cheeks, which dropped far enough from his nose to show bone. His teeth were broken and yellowed, and he looked so fragile I didn’t know how he even moved at all. He turned his gaze upon me and immediately I jumped into his head; my mind was enveloped inside of his as I made my way around his remaining memories and personality, trying to find a way to send him back. The inside of his mind was like a huge, old-fashioned house, with no windows- just doors. My mind manifested itself in his as a doll-like version of myself. I flitted from door to door, checking memories and examining his personality, searching. Meanwhile in the physical world, he glared at me with the hatred of death. Time curved his eyes over into a permanent scowl. He lunged towards me at a definitely-inhuman speed, and I dodged, gritting my teeth to keep my focus from slipping inside of his memories. He kept lunging at me, swiping with horribly disfigured nails, gnashing his remaining teeth. I kept dodging and avoiding his attacks. Once, I dodged while keeping myself somewhat close to him, so I aimed a swipe at his face to push him further away from me. I feel my nails catch in his soft, rotted flesh; the gray stuff peels from his face in a soft but surprisingly heavy chunk that lands on the ground between us. For a second we both stare at it in horror. Then the man looks up at me with rage, half of his skull showing through his cheek. I’m like, welp, shit. That wasn’t planned for. I hurry my search in his mind while dodging attacks renewed with the energy of his anger. However, soon mind-me finds what I’m looking for. A single memory, something simple. I don’t know how I’m so sure that it’ll work. I hone in on the memory and then single it out from the rest, forcing the zombie to stop and remember it. While remembering the memory I infuse the memory with my invitation, a mental ladder if you will, which will take the person back to where they came from. While the soul longs to be free again, the zombie’s body clings to the soul, not wanting it to leave again- so giving the soul a way to be free is difficult. However it works and the body stands motionless, before turning a blank stare towards me and moving like a robot. I easily take it down using a nearby shovel (which I shove upwards into its throat, feeling the odd give of the weak flesh and hearing the metal scrape bone). Then, once it’s down, I spot another zombie almost out of the grave. The old woman is still battling a zombie herself- and she’s surprisingly quick, using a broom handle snapped from the head as a staff with which she fends herself off from the zombie. Two other corpses, zombies she’d already taken down, lay behind her. I battle the second zombie the same way, and become quicker with my kills. Soon both the woman and I have almost finished putting the entire graveyard full of people back to rest. However the old woman gives me a sorrowful look as I take down the last zombie, and warns me of what’s coming next: the cause of the zombies, the reason they rose in the first place. A lady whose powers stretched beyond mortality. I get the backstory of this powerful lady from the old woman. She leads me into the church, and, with the wind as accompaniment to her voice, tells me the tale: The lady started off as a beautiful young girl (somehow this sounds familiar...), whose every aspect was promising. She lived back in a time when women weren’t allowed places of power, however even then she was revered and many people bent the societal ‘rules’ for her. As the old woman tells me the story I receive mental images from her- almost like she’s sending me her memories via the mind world’s version of an email. I see a lady, who is definitely beautiful alright, smiling brightly. She has pale skin, but not overly pale like mine- it’s almost dark enough to be called tan. Her neck is thin, and her face is very innocent and kindly. She has a thin face with prominent cheekbones, a cute, thin nose, and wide green eyes that sparkled. Her lips were slightly small but very full, and a light, shiny pink color. Her teeth were perfect and white, but not candy-white, not artificially white; and her hair, which was pulled into a neat bun on the back of her head, was a light dirty blonde color, almost an acorn-yellow color- it was consistently light and smooth, soft-looking, and a few long strands fell from the bun to rest beside the right side of her face, which made her look even more elegant and beautiful. Generally her style reminded me a lot of Peggy Carter, although she seemed much more prim/soft (and a lot less badass) than Peggy. She almost gave me a teacher vibe- like Mrs. Peregrine style teacher vibes. She was wearing a blue dress- an 1800s Victorian corset dress, with a bustle skirt and laced bodice- which hugged her upper body and was tied tightly at the waist. From there it slowly expanded down to a SLIGHT (not huge) poof at the bottom, landing right at the ground. It had a bodice which was laced with off-white buttons and laces, and the skirt itself had two white lines circling the bottom of the dress. The shoulders were puffed out a little bit, compared to the sleeves which were tight, and the dress had a bit of a collar. The material may have been lawn, cambric, broadcloth or maybe even seersucker, I don’t really know- but it was all made of the same fabric. I wish I had a way to find an image of this dress because I remember it, and her wearing it, really well. She wore white flats the same color as the stripes on the dress, which were made of soft fabric and had a simple lace across the top. She wore a cute hat on her head, the same color as her dress, which I also remember really well. It was smaller than you’d think, shaped sort of like a top hat except the top slanted sideways a bit instead of remaining flat and parallel all the way across. The brim itself was less than an inch away from the beginning of the hat, and the edges of the hat just barely extended off of her head. It was set onto her head slightly tilted, but that seemed to be on purpose. On the front of the hat, slightly to the side, was a big bow made of slightly see-through fabric. The bow was a lighter blue than the rest of the hat and was tied around the main part of the hat. It was almost as big as the hat itself, and had lots of lace, ribbons and fabric coming from it. I swear I can literally picture this lady in my mind, but I don’t know how else I can describe her because I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to Victorian fashions and fabric... Anyways, this lady was very polite, very kind-seeming, smiling and waving primly to people she passed. She carried an umbrella that matched her outfit and seemed very well-rounded. The old woman described in detail how she was smart, but humble; how she was naturally beautiful, naturally a star, but not to the point where she seemed too bright to look at; she was good at almost everything she did, even sports, although she mostly stuck to artsy stuff- which she excelled at. She made paintings to rival even the most talented artists of her time, wrote and played her own music on several different instruments, danced and did ballet so beautifully she was offered spots in some exclusive dance teams and shows- she was even a talented actress, making just the right expressions and saying just the right things. And on top of it all, she was kind, and just plain likable. She was sweet to everyone, and had a way about her that made everyone she met immediately think highly of her. Almost nobody who’d actually met her in person disliked her. She also had a talent which was much less known: that talent was in the supernatural. She’d figured out many mysteries of life from an early age, when she was a young teenager she’d discovered magic. Magic, in this dream’s world, was strange and complicated. It could not create new things or destroy new things on a whim, and couldn’t change things with a simple few words and wave of a wand. Magic was a palpable substance in the air, and in order to work it you had to carefully weave and sew it, pulling the strings of nothingness to get the magic where and how you wanted it. It was very hard to do, and required more than just the ability to manipulate the magic- it required intelligence, patience, and determination. It required the instinct of being able to tell which actions will have the effects you want- which string you should pull to change another one far away. And the lady, explained the old woman; she had all of these things and more. So she started teaching herself magic. At first it was simple things- levitation, changing the appearance of objects and eventually living things. She learned how to jump into people’s minds and search their memories, by interpreting the magic inside of the people and herself, and manipulating it to combine as one. Not only did she learn how to read minds like that, but she even learned how to do it discreetly, so that nobody knew she was there. She learned how to step around the creaky floorboards of the house in people’s minds, how to sneak past doors without disturbing the memories within. She even learned how to secretly open doors and quickly back away, causing people to remember things out of the blue without even knowing why. All of these things were things that I knew how to do, explained the old woman to me- however they were very difficult and rare talents, especially in the lady’s time, when magic had been all but forgotten. I understood what she meant: just because I knew how to do that magic, didn’t mean it wasn’t hard. And I had been lucky enough for the old lady to help me develop my magical abilities, most of which centered around the mind. (I didn’t know about this all- about me having magic and whatever- in the dream, until then, when I thought that exact thing). The old woman continues. Apparently, she’d been watching this young lady develop her magic from afar. Although the lady was powerful and had raw talent, the old woman (who wasn’t old at the time) was much more skilled than her, and so she both observed the lady in real life, and in her mind. Eventually she decided to offer to teach the lady. The lady was more than pleased to get help with her developing talents, and accepted. From there, the lessons began. The old (but not so old back then) woman taught the lady the basics, and how everything worked- she explained it in words which the lady had not really known on her own, and which she had acted upon merely on instinct. Then the old (but not) woman taught her what she could truly do with magic. She could manipulate and change memories. Entirely change the appearance of things, from one to another, either permanently- by molding the shape of the item in question like clay, reshaping it with strings of magic used like fingers- or temporarily, by weaving magic around the object to make it appear as something else. There were some things the old (...) woman didn’t tell the lady; things that were dangerous and verged on the brink of evil, that she would not teach anybody about until she decided they were ready for it. Magic could be used to kill creatures with a twitch of your finger, so long as you pulled the right string- that is, the string connected to their heart. It was as simple as turning off a switch, once you knew how to work magic well enough. And not only could magic give you abilities over death, but it could give you abilities over life. Although it was difficult, you could weave magic in just the right way, and give life to things that had none. You could change a rock into a living stone (literally). You could take a knife and give it breath. It was difficult mainly because you had to not only give the thing in question everything that was needed to survive- you had to mold the very cells of it into minuscule lungs or gills, into a heart and veins and ‘blood’ which were all just physical manifestations of magic, smaller than the eye could see. And then, you had to infuse it with the right pattern of magic to actually give it something more. Of course, this power over life could be extended to even bringing back the souls of the dead. By exerting your power to stretch magic for miles and miles away, you could pull down souls from heaven or from hell, dragging them into the physical world. If you were powerful enough you could use the strings to even choose who you pulled down. However this never ended well as the souls were desperate to return to wherever they came from, and often this caused some mild to severe violence. The old woman told the lady none of this, fearing that her raw power and natural curiosity, and craving to explore, would end badly with that added information. So the old woman taught the lady magic, for a few years. But then the lady started getting curious, and her curiosity led to suspicion. She was smart, after all, and even though the old woman hadn’t taught her anything about life/death magic, she had started to form the connections on her own. One day, she asked the old woman a question (and this part of the dream reminded me of Voldemort and Slughorn)- she asked if the strings of magic that formed around people, also connected to them somehow. In other words, she was asking if people could be manipulated past their thoughts and minds. The old woman didn’t lie, and admitted it could- but she warned the lady not to try anything. At this point I don’t know what else I would have expected from a powerful, intelligent, and very curious 18 year old, but let’s just say I wasn’t surprised with what happened next. The lady decided to experiment on her own, first in secret. She started with animals- the old woman caught her pulling at the strings to make a frog tap dance, and then, after she was done with that, the old woman watched the lady pull at the strings connected to its heart. The old woman didn’t mention what she’d seen, because the lady still didn’t know that the old woman could watch her- but all the same, the old woman warned her once again about dangers concerning death magic. Long story short, the girl turned her experiment onto people. Three tragic deaths occurred in the town a few days later, and strangest of all, the people had been entirely changed. Brown hair was turned pink, blue eyes now red. One of their tongues had been crudely shaped into a fork, and elongated like a snake’s. Another victim had been distorted until their face exactly resembled a famous actor’s, with the exception that their entire face was stretched- the skin unnaturally placed and muscle clumsily woven, and blood gushing from pores. And all of them had died of heart attacks. The old woman told the lady that she shouldn’t experiment with people. The lady basically said, fuck you old lady, you’re not my mom and I can do what I want- and then continued to experiment, no longer accepting teaching from the old lady. Soon she found out about life (and soul) magic, and now, in the present, she had become someone withdrawn from the rest of the world, experimenting with magic and pushing the limits of possibilities. She had found out how to raise the dead, in a way, and considered herself a savior angel, bringing back people who she thought deserved to be given a second chance. She either didn’t know about the effects (aka them being violent zombies), or she ignored them in her effort to remain, in her mind only, a ‘good’ person. She had even built her own laboratories (yeah, laboratories as in more than one- the buildings were huge and close by each other, one by a private lake which she personally owned, and another by a mountain nearby), with bright scientists and people she deemed ‘worthy’ working under her command, misguided the same way she was, and thinking that they were helping to do something great and something good. Another thing was that the lady had essentially made herself immortal. As soon as her body started to change itself, to grow old, she immediately reshaped it into a brand-new, forever young body. The only thing she didn’t change was her brain, for obvious reasons. But living so long had made her start to become emotionless in a way- death, violence, murder; none had any effect on her, as she had already seen them time and time over again. Now, she was driving her experiments to the supernatural side of things. She was finding people who had just the right DNA, just the right genes, and pulling them in for experiments to turn them into supernatural creatures. Anyways, the old woman actually explained this in like two minutes max, but because our minds had linked I was seeing the memories at the same time, giving me more depth as to what happened- what felt like days of memories and recollections, passed through my mind in under a second. By the time the old lady was finished the story, the wind had begun to go from whistling to howling. The old woman told me that the lady was coming here, to us. Not only had we fucked up one of her experiments / acts of ‘good,’ not only had we ruined all of her hard work, but the very concept of ‘we’ consisted of an old woman that the lady absolutely despised, and a newly budded magician who had powers that were promising AND who was definitely planning to get rid of the rest of her experiments. Again, the dream continued with perfectly placed timing. As soon as the old woman warned me that the lady was coming, we heard the wind rise to a roar. The old lady shouted above the wind and told me to stay nearby, but hide- both physically and mentally- and let the old woman handle her first. If the old woman couldn’t sway her and it turned into a fight, the old woman would fight her and I’d simply be in charge of sneaking into the lady’s mind and taking ‘the time she’d stolen to keep her mind as forever young as her body.’ Then, I heard a swoosh. The old woman walked calmly outside and I blocked off my mind, making it so nobody with magic could sense that I was here. I also hid behind a church pew and watched through the church windows. The old woman stood at the front of the graveyard. Seemingly out of midair appeared the lady, eerily unchanged from what I’d seen in the old woman’s memories. They talk, but with the wind I can only try to lipread. I don’t dare sneak into either of their minds yet, because I’d have to lower the defenses of my mind that were keeping me hidden. The lady has a sad expression, but the magic in the air around her almost vibrates with a sort of wickedness- violent glee and excitement at revenge, and anger all mixing up inside of her, so strongly that I didn’t even need to lower the defenses of my mind to sense it. The old woman still seemed sad as well (from what I could sense from the back of her), and actually was sad from what I could tell, but she gripped her staff tightly all the same. The lady (who, by the way, was wearing the exact same outfit she’d been wearing in the memories, minus the hat and with added white stockings) suddenly poised her fingers in midair as if playing an invisible harp, concentrating hard and twisting strangely. She grabbed and plucked at the air in front of her like she was operating an unseen puppet or machine. She pulled her arms back and something near the lady shifted- something magic, I couldn’t quite sense it fully with my defenses up in my mind- and the old lady reacted fast. With one hand still on the staff she reached and plucked a single time, looking like she was simply stretching her fingers, drumming them on an invisible doorway or something. The fight had begun. The two furiously magicked at each other, and defended themselves at the same time. The ground under their feet changed and shifted and cracked as magic was deflected or exploded in a radius, and the wind stopped suddenly except for solely around each of them. Their eyes were wide and the lady never blinked- and I’m guessing the old woman didn’t blink either- and strange things, strange magics just barely sensed, started to shift and form and ripple. The world around them seemed to bend and distort. As the fight grew more intense and both were plucking furiously, now circling each other in the graveyard, occasionally meeting in a small physical fight, I decided it was time to do what I’d been told. I just barely lower my defenses enough to sense the lady’s mind and slip through, unnoticed. As far as I could tell, she didn’t know I was there- but she was as powerful as me and then some, so I had to be cautious. I closed my eyes in the physical world so I could focus on moving through the lady’s mind quickly and quietly, searching for whatever the old woman had wanted me to find. “The time she’d stolen to keep her mind as forever young as her body.” I search through her mind, occasionally checking behind the more important doors. It was hard because normally, more important memories and similar things (for example, main aspects of the person’s personality and identity) had more important-looking doors; but the lady had somehow changed her doors to look all the same. I had to feel for the importance which meant lowering the defenses of my own mind a bit more, but I was able to see through the illusions and find important stuff. I could feel magic swirling, being pulled out into the physical world. Then, I got to the center of her mind. There was a huge and very well-protected door, which was definitely suspicious. I had to completely open up my mind so that I could work magic inside of hers without being detected; I managed to ease the locks from the door and convince the door itself to open up enough for me to slip inside. Inside was a simple room, with wooden floorboards and a sloped roof- perhaps in an attic of sorts. The walls were basic floral wallpaper with wooden trim, and the room was empty except for this strange thing/person sitting on the floor. At first I thought it was a child (maybe she had turned her innermost identity into a child to preserve her mental youth?) but then it turned to look at me and yeah nope, not a child. It was completely white- and not regular white, I mean fresh-snow-white. It’s skin (eerily smooth and hairless, even arms had no hair at all), hair (a messy boy’s haircut, slightly curly and short), even clothing (a T-shirt and shorts)- everything was that same unnatural white. It’s face was the weird part though. First off, it looked like a cyclops. I’m not being mean, it literally had one giant eye in the center of its head. The eye was round and had no eyelid that I could see- I think it had that clear eyelid that cats and camels and stuff have. You could see the veins, soft pink below the deep, squishy clear-white. Its iris was ice blue with a dark navy-blue ring around the edge, and it’s pupil was normal (except for its size, which was huge like the rest of the eye). It had no other features on its face. It also had no ears. However, when it turned to me and made a sound I saw the underneath of its chin and it’s throat vibrate. It made this sound that was a mix between a mouse squeak and a cat’s “brrr!” I was like, alright. THIS is normal. Obviously. And I obviously know what I’m doing because the old woman gave me such detailed, precise instructions. I say, “can you talk?” It squeaks again. I gingerly walk over to it. The room is smaller than I’d thought and when I get to the thing, I realize it is also a lot smaller than I’d thought. It’s the size of a toddler, and that’s generous. It stares at me unblinkingly. I slowly reach down and lay a hand on its head. It stares. Then, cautiously, I place one hand on either side of its ribcage. Again, it stares. I lift it with ease which is weird because I’m not the strongest, but it’s a lot lighter than it looks. It squeaks at me and I tuck it under one arm and quickly escape back to my own mind. I immediately put up my defenses and tuck the little thing safely away into an empty room in my mind, but leave the door unlocked so it can roam free because I feel bad just locking it there. In the physical world I hear an ear-piercing screech. Then I see the two ladies magicking, but the old woman is losing. Despite being afraid of opening my mind back up, I do so anyways to force my consciousness into the old woman’s mind and mentally ask how she is and how to help. However she simply tells me to leave, letting me know that the thing I’d saved was more important. I put my mind defenses up again and leave, physically and mentally, but I’m not happy about it. Meanwhile the thing has started to act strangely. It wanders the halls of my mind, choosing memories at random to peek into- I feel it in each memory, but don’t try and stop it because again, I feel bad locking it up. Eventually it just sits down near the center of my mind, in the hallway, and stares at the ground. Then it starts shaking and vibrating violently. I try to help it but can’t figure out how, so I just leave it be and hope it’ll calm down. The dream skips forward in time and changes perspective. The lady had been so mad at me for taking whatever I took, that she now targeted me with her disliking, blaming me for weird things like her experiments in her labs failing. I hide myself well from her and don’t let her find me but somehow she finds my family, and takes them in for experiments. However I don’t think she knows whose family she took; I think my family just happened to be chosen at ‘random’ for her experiments. I see from my brothers perspective. He’s taken to an aquatic themed lab. There are indoor pools galore, some with glass walls that allow people on lower levels to watch what’s going on as if they were watching animals in a tank at an aquarium. There’s several ports that lead to the lady’s lake, where ‘bigger experiments’ are taking place. No life has been allowed to flourish in or near the lake unless she directly wants it to, so the ground nearby the lake (cement and pavement stretching for miles, connecting to on-site labs and little fenced areas for ‘outdoor land experiments’) as well as the very bottom and sides of the lake itself, is man-made. No plants can be seen except for some artificial reeds growing at one side on a specially mud-covered area. And no animals besides the ones in experiments are seen, either. The insides of the main lab are huge and hard to navigate. I remember less about the whole lab than I do the main parts, but it’s actually surprisingly and disgustingly cutesy. The walls and ceilings are all bright colors, mostly pink but also light blue, lime green, duckling yellow, pastel orange, and sunset red- as well as a thousand other pastel or bright colors. There are simple flowery patterns on some of the walls or floors- speaking of which, the floors are smooth and modern, either white or gray, and super clean- and even the decorations and utilities have been cutes-ified. The clocks on the walls are bright and look like giant flowers or have little animals on the hands. There are paintings in some of the rooms which are of cats or ducks or something else cute and simple. The posters listing procedures, schedules, upcoming events/experiments, etc are brightly themed and have floral borders. The chairs are bright colors and simple looking, like chairs designed for a child’s room except bigger and more functional, and desks in the labs are white or light gray with cute little lamps and stuffed animals on top. I mean, it’s the whole deal. The workers there are deceivingly nice and morally striving towards goodness, too. They wear simple lab-coats or other similar laboratory gear, but most of them are slightly cutes-ified as well; they have little flower pins or pink pens in the pockets, or wear pink gloves/masks; and underneath that, their real clothes are cute too, or at least bright and cheerful. A lot of them are women, who’re smart and kind and seem to be under the illusion that they’re doing great things. My brother’s perspective starts off in an ER-type room. There are several doctors / workers operating on him, mostly just injecting things into his veins, to “loosen him up a bit.” Then the lady comes in and starts the experiment. She changes his legs into a fish tail using several large, scaly fish in a tank nearby, and with the excess skin from his legs, she creates something in his throat (almost like a filter) that allows him to breathe underwater by simply flexing his throat to ‘activate’ the gills. She also splits his eyelids in two, leaving one part to be regular, and changing the second into the clear second eyelid that cats and camels have, although she changes it so that, when closed, it allows him to see underwater. In addition she does something to his muscles to make him super strong, although he still looks normal afterwards (besides the tail, obviously). When she’s done she drops him off at a massive pool area. It’s consistently deep, about twenty feet down total, and the sides are all glass except for a few areas which are concrete- like private areas, almost. There’s the main tank, a huge pool the size of a football field, and then there are separate tanks, almost like rooms. They branch off from different parts of the main tank, with little ‘halls’ of the water (all concrete, no glass) leading smaller tanks the size of a large room in a regular house. There are several smaller ‘rooms’ with strange beds of padded material- maybe sponges?- coating the floor, they seem like sleeping areas. These areas have only one glass wall for observation, the rest are concrete. Each of these rooms is the size of a regular bedroom. Another (fully glass) room has a large, square basket floating at the top, with a net that extends into the water holding all of the items; the top of the basket, which is a simple plastic frame, is attached to the side of the pool, making it sit neatly in the corner. The ‘lid’ is a simple white tarp covering which attaches to the frame with a lock, but it’s almost always open. Inside of the basket are a bunch of toys and water-themed items: balls both big and small, squishy foam and hard plastic, there’s even a beach ball; there’s a set of waterproofed Uno cards and some plastic disks the size of dinner plates; there’s a few bathing suit tops, both shirts and bikinis, and an iPad type of thing tightly encased within a waterproof cover. It allows you to play simple games like PvZ, Pong, a racing game, and a few more, and every so often one of the workers comes and takes it, presumably to recharge it. A few other toys are in there but that’s mostly the gist of it. A different room has all concrete walls and that soft, bedded floor. It’s decently sized but at the same time, isn’t big enough to comfortably fit more than three dozen people or so. It also has a tarp covering over top of the pool with the slightest room above it, so people in the water could peek their heads above the water and get air or something. And the concrete ‘hall’ of the pool turns to go into the room, so you can’t see into the room from the main tank area. Inside of this room there’s a similar basket to the other one but smaller, housing a few basic items like a little ‘stuffed’ toy made entirely of soft/hard plastic, a blanket thing (it could probably nicely fit on a queen sized bed) that’s made of swimsuit material, a few empty plastic jars, and a completely waterproofed children’s book. The final room I can remember is essentially the dining room, but for people who are underwater experiments being monitored by scientists constantly. The top has a large tarp over it, but it’s raised enough so that scientists / workers can easily walk underneath of it to lean in / over the water. There’s a plastic shelf that’s almost exactly like the frames of the baskets, but filled in and longer, that covers one entire wall- it extends about a foot from the top of the tank, acting almost like a mini roof over the edge of the room- and on top of the plastic shelf thing is where food is served. It’s regular food, the kind you’d get at a hospital, nothing too fancy. Water inside of a thick, heavy plastic cup- which is attached to the shelf with a plastic string that extends to let you drink- and plastic plates (bolted to the shelf) with sandwiches or breaded fish or whatever on them. The shelf is long enough that it could act like a bar for about twenty people or so, and has enough plates / cups to do so. Anyways, my brother is taken to this tank and all of a sudden, that’s where he lives now. His tail and muscles basically make him exactly like a merman in the movies, where he can swim around and move so quickly through the water you’d think he was born there. He could talk underwater with the gills, and his hair floated about his head almost magically. His eyes were unblinking when he had the second eyelids down- he could see fine underwater and above. He ended up there with a few other people. There was a middle-aged man and woman, the man with dark skin, short hair, and a kind face, and the woman with olive skin and longer black hair, who was stern-looking but was actually playful. There was also a girl his age with long curly hair that was even redder than his, and just as many freckles as him. Her face, though, was different from his- where he had a bigger nose hers was smaller, and while he had big, plump lips, hers were small and thin. He was tall and she was short. That whole thing. Finally, there was another middle-aged man, slightly towards the older side with pale skin, dark circles under his eyes, brown hair that needed a haircut, and which had a few gray strands, and the stubble of a beard on his face. All of them decided they’d each have their own ‘bedroom’ in the water; each of them chose a different one of the rooms with soft flooring to sleep in. They started to know each other and after a week or so they were like a weird, strangely assembled family. My brother and the girl, and the woman all played together; occasionally they’d all come together to play catch or Uno or something; and they talked a bunch, too. They all ate when they heard the bell- a bell which was emitted from under the water in some hidden, waterproofed speaker- and when they heard the bell for the second time in a day, the lights would go out, and they’d sleep. My brother and the girl sometimes stayed up late though, joining each other in one’s bedroom to talk or play uno or something, because they were kids and didn’t want to go to bed yet. There were also other things added to the tank. Two large creatures that were like miniature whales were set free into the main tank, but they never left that one area. They were roughly the size of a large shark, so twelve-thirteen feet long maybe? and their general shape was like a mix between a whale-shark and a manta ray. Basically they were whale-sharks whose tails / lower bodies were flatter and flatter as it got closer to the tail. Their faces where thinner too, they were quite cute; black shiny eyes, and soft, white, fleshy skin; and weirdest of all, there was a design on the back of the creatures that was definitely unnatural. They each had a rainbow, positioned perfectly so that it covered their entire body; the beginning of the arc started by the far right of it’s head, then curved down towards its left while also moving towards the back. The end of the arc landed right before it’s tail started. The rainbows were complete with little puffy gray-white clouds, looking like they were straight from a children’s show. These whale things just swam gracefully through the main tank, diving down across the bottom, circling the floor, then coming back up to make a circle over across the top. They seemed content and were friendly, and reacted nicely to my brother and the others- they even let him ride them, by going underneath and grabbing it’s fin. They were never seen eating, sleeping, or even drinking. The dream turned back to my perspective at this point. The creature in my mind had started freaking me out- it constantly shook and made these weird, super fast, “bvrvbrvbrvbrvbbuhbuhbuh” sort of sounds, like it’s squeaking earlier but slightly bass-boosted, turned from curious into extremely focused, and put on repeat. Eventually I decided I needed to do something. I went somewhere discreet, where I was free to lower all my magical defenses so I could focus all my concentration on the task at hand, and began weaving magic from the air. It was difficult but the creature helped me; as I started to weave magic in front of me, the creature started to move from my mind. It eventually was able to pull itself into the physical world, with a little help from me. It turned, looked at me, and then started silently standing there and staring again. I picked it up and carried it somewhere where I knew we’d be safe. However soon, somehow, the lady found me. I ended up hiding the creature in the mind world, but not in my own mind; it’s complicated but it worked, and the creature seemed chill with it. The lady took me to her lab and tried to do that thing all villains do, where they attempt to explain how the terrible things they’re doing are actually GOOD, and how they’re working towards something better- how some sacrifices have to be made for the greater good, and how I could join them and help create a better world. Blah blah blah. Et cetera et cetera. I straight up denied her and she got mad, and next thing I know, I’m in one of her experiment rooms. She’s saving me for a particular experiment along with a bunch of other people, so we’re just stuck in this hospital-type area, which is complete with cute bedrooms (and drawers full of clothes and deodorant), a kitchen / cafeteria with the same hospital food as my brother had, a workout room, a shower room, several bathrooms, a ‘relaxation room’ (a common room, with a few chairs and sofas, a fireplace that wasn’t real, some bookshelves, and a table with two chairs and a chessboard on it), and an empty room with several scary looking chairs that were definitely for experiments. I live there for a little bit while formulating my escape. Eventually the lady takes us to the experiment room but thankfully doesn’t have us do anything in the chair yet. Instead she tests and experiments with our magic, telling us to use it in different ways while people inside of a room- which is attached to ours via a pane of one-way glass- record data and stuff. I manage to escape, taking along two or three kids that I’d come to trust, and immediately go back and retrieve the creature, who’s still chilling. I take him into the physical world and go to the lab holding my family as fast as I can. The other kids who escaped come with me, determined to help fuck up this lady’s experiments as much as possible. The perspective switches to my brother. He and the girl his age are now dating / in love / whatever. There are four of those whale creatures, and my other family (parents and sister) have tails now, too. Again, they’re all kind of just living there, not really happy about it but they manage to enjoy themselves. The rooftop of the pool’s room is glass, and lets in beautifully warm sunlight that my brother basks in sometimes. They play, and eat and drink, and talk, a lot. They go about business as normally as they can- the adults discuss politics and they ask the workers about what’s happening and whatnot, and the workers talk back to them, happy to explain how things are going and the latest news. There’s even a waterproofed radio and TV set up just beside the main tank- the radio is chained down to the concrete, right next to the pool where somebody inside can reach it and change the channels. The TV is much farther away, a large screen set into the wall of the room itself, but the remote for the TV- which is waterproofed and attached to the concrete with a plastic string just like the cups- is right by the pool, so they can all watch the news and my brother, sister, and the girl my brother’s age can all watch cartoons. The kids and I manage to break into the water-themed lab, and have a small plan. We assessed the building using combined magic, so we wouldn’t get caught, and found that there’s a small space between two of the walls, right next to the pool room. We break in and the other kids run to the little space. They make one of the walls into a hidden door, with a specific part of the wall turned into a hologram-like illusion that can be toggled into a real wall. They stay in that space, which they turn into a sort of ‘secret base’ by creating a floating orb of light, teleporting in a table and chairs from a nearby unused (as far as they can tell) room, as well as some paper and pencil from that unused room, and writing down plans and maps with their magic to make it look like it was printed. I haven’t told the kids about the creature (it’s still in my mind) so I decide to tell them now. They can’t see it because it’s in my mind but they’re like, okay cool. Then I sneak out and go to the pool room, avoiding staff. It’s dark out so there’s not many people here, but there’s still a few. I’ve turned myself invisible but can’t jump into the water without there being an empty space in the shape of my body there, and I can’t maintain the magic too long because of the risk of someone here finding out. I manage to get my brother’s attention when he surfaces to change the channel of the TV, complaining. I hiss his name and he turns like, ????, and I run to where he is near the tank, and tap his head. I risk showing just the features of my face, and just barely- I probably look like the ghost version of myself with only a head- and then I tell him I’m gonna help everyone in the tank, but I needed his cooperation. In the end he brings all of our family to the surface near where I am, however the strangers don’t come, mostly cause they don’t place as much trust in me as my family does. It’s starting to become daytime and the staff are bustling around so half of my family acts natural, like they’re gazing at the sunrise, while the other half listens to me. Then I get to work. The kids from the hidden base room are lending me their magic, by feeling for what I’m doing and then helping me- and also by bending the air and magic around me, so my magic goes unnoticed. I slowly turn all of their tails back into legs, although I have to use a bit of some more advanced magic to give them back the skin the lady had used to make gills- and even then, their legs are all skinnier than they used to be. I place an illusion over each one though, so it still LOOKS like they have tails, and tell them not to move their feet apart from each other. I don’t bother removing the second eyelids and gills yet because that can always be done later. Then I tell them I need to get to the doorway, fast, without being seen; there are staff all around the edges of the pools, blocking me off. My brother tells me to catch a ride on one of the whale creatures and I do, grabbing its bottom fin and pressing against its belly so I’m hidden by its flapping wings and tail. When I get to the end of the pool I run to the hidden base and quickly hand the physical creature to the other kids, telling them to keep it safe while I was out- I needed all of my magic to do what I was gonna do next. I planned to turn my entire family invisible and, at the same time, create realistic and moving illusions of them from the air. The dream ends before I do anything else.