Saturday, November 24, 2012

. 09.10.11 treasure hunters .


  I'm in a team of four. My persona in the Dream was not much different than who I was in real life. There was a cat-human who stood on two legs, and her name was Puss. She was white all over and had a large fluffy tail. Her eyes were crystal blue and she had on an adventure suit of silver and dark grey. Something told me she was the spy of the group. The other animal being in the group was a large mouse we called Dormy (as in dormouse). He was the size of a dog but he was very timid in nature. What he was doing in a group of treasure hunters, I'm still not sure. Lastly, our leader was a grown man, looking his late-twenties, who looked like an all-American hunter. He had large, orange-tint sunglasses, and a cowboy hat. He wore a maroon, plaid, collar shirt with his utility vest and a pair of slacks and tracker boots. He reminded me of the Sniper from the game Team Fortress. I named him Gunner.

  These were the characters, here's the story: We were squeezing into a small entrance of a stoned ruin, buried in sand and mud. The deeper we burrowed into the small tunnel, the deeper we treaded into a level of sludge. The mud-water was thick and I was on all fours, leaning on my elbows and it was reaching my chin. Dormy the mouse was the most unfortunate as he had trouble keeping his head above the sludge. He said something about having to crawl on his belly, and when he had trouble getting air, Gunner took action. The ceiling that was cramming us in was loose and Gunner pushed it upwards, lifting it with his own back, letting the others pass easily and out into a larger corridor. I was still at the front of the troop when we came across a stone wall.

  It looked like a door and I had a feeling that it would open any minute, but I felt an ominous atmosphere the closer I approached it. Before I even touched the stone slab, it slided upwards and revealed to us the next room. It was a plainly large area, brightly illuminated by flaming torches. It was a barren room, everything almost covered in sand and dust. In the middle of the plain room was a crypt, half buried in the sand. Its entrance wide open and staring at us from afar. I felt the disturbing atmosphere again.

  Just then, the stone door drooped down shut, and we heard a thunderous laugh from the other side. Gunner moved to my side cautiously, his hand ready at his holster. I felt a little safer, anticipating what would appear when the door opened again. When it did, the crypt was still empty, but just a few inches from our doorway were two items laid out before us. On the left was a box of matches and on the right was a book, its details I can't recall now. But it had a white cover. Gunner whispered to me, “It wants you to make a choice.”

  “Then... which one's the right one?” I asked him back. Gunner didn't answer. Either he didn't know it, or it was up to me to decide. Cautiously eying the open crypt, the air thick with fear and evil, my trembling hand reached out and grabbed the book. My fingers tight on the object and my body coiled, ready for a quick escape. Puss and Dormy had already retreated to the front of the tunnel, waiting for us to exit. As soon as I pulled my hand back in, the structure shook from the bellowing roar. Immediately my eyes darted to the crypt and in the darkness I stared into a pair of glowing, red eyes.

  I don't know whether we made the wrong choice, or whether it was mad that I made the right one, but we didn't stick around to find out. “GO! GO! GO!” Gunner rushed me, telling me to forget about the book. I flipped through the pages and after realizing the contents were useless, I dropped it. We scrambled through the tunnel, out the exit and into the open, desert plains. There was a gate surrounding the ruins and Puss and Dormy had already made it past. Gunner helped me up and over the gate. He had just made it over the flimsy, metal boundary when the evil spirit charged and rammed into it.

  Luckily, as if like a magical barrier, it didn't do any damage or ram all the way through. From the other side of the gate, I saw the shape of the ominous spirit that guarded the ruins. It was a white hippopotamus with large, red eyes that burned like rubies. That was the end to our first mission.

  On our second mission, it was just me and Gunner and the Dream kind of shows exactly what kind of relationship I had with the male protagonist. I was a teenager of 17, 18 – almost a young adult – and Gunner was my guardian. A drifting treasure/bounty hunter who took me, an orphan girl, as his ward. In the end he taught me all his skills of fighting, and especially handling weapons. That night, after the hippo incident, Gunner gives me my first automatic pistol. He tells me to practice shooting targets using metal cans and I get started right away.

  The Dreams cuts to daytime, and we're riding the back of a jeep, treading through more deserts. We reach a large plateau where I see red rocks and trees together in one environment. Standing atop  the plateau, we discover where the distress calls were coming from. We witnessed dinosaurs running amok, chasing the herbivores and surviving humans around the terrain. The area looked like it was designed to be some kind of zoo. I saw one of their jeeps and I saw the words Jurassic Park. I exclaimed, “God damn, not again.”

  Gunner analysed the situation. Fortunately the dinosaurs hadn't noticed us yet. The only species I remember seeing were the Raptors, running in packs, other two legged predators, but gratefully no T-Rex. They were chasing the plant-eaters, Diplodocus, and other humans trying to escape in their jeeps and motorcycles. I look at Gunner, “I'm going to need a bigger gun than this.” I point at my minuscule pistol. He looks back at me with a raised eyebrow, “When you do, you'll need a lot of practice. You're gonna poke someone's eye out if you get anything bigger than what I give you.”

  “OH COME OOONNN!!” I whine, like the teenager I am. “I've been practicing!”

I was glad I didn't need to face off the dinosaurs in my Dream cus it just ended there. It was like a sneak peek into the lives of me and Gunner. I have to say that even though it was just for a short while, I really enjoyed the depth of the relationship I had with Gunner. In the first mission, when I was younger, it looked more like a father-daughter, teacher-student sort of relationship. But as I grew older, becoming a young woman of my own, I develop more tender feelings for my guardian. Though it didn't really show that in the Dream, I was thinking of possibilities of what would happen afterwards had their future developed. Sad I didn't see any more of Puss and Dormy though. Their roles in the Dream are still a mystery.

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