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!”
