My day had been physically exhausting but in a good way so when the time came to fall asleep, I collapsed pretty soon after hitting the mattress.
When the surroundings materialised, I saw a familiar place from my childhood. It was in fact the small treehouse I played in as a kid. It was outside our garden but hidden in the woods nearby so local authorities never spotted it. Because of this fact, I wasn't surprised to see a family there swinging and climbing on it. People usually did come by to play during their walk.
The family included a short mother, who I could tell would be outgrown by her son in a few years, her son of course who I just mentioned, a father who's face I could not see except for a thin, wide, creepy smile, and a nimble, young girl who appeared to be the most active member of the family.
I joined them to take turns on the gymnastics rings hung from the most sturdy branch. Everything SEEMED so normal it was easy to let the dream take me where it wanted. Soon enough, things slowly began to change. The rings I swung from joined to form a trapeze. All the family faded away apart from the girl who grew taller. She replaced me on the trapeze to swing up onto my treehouse.
During a moment of lucidness, I swung up the same way she did to follow her into the treehouse. When I reached the top, time turned back changing the platform into the original treehouse my dad made before my stepdad built the new one.
It was brand new again plus the straw roof my own hands thatched and maintained for about a week before giving up to let the straw blow away in the wind was there. To be fair, it was more like a den you'd build in the woods just resting on the tree above the platform.
Carefully, I crawled onto the platform under the thatched roof where there was no sign of the girl other than a small trapdoor. Again, I tentatively climbed inside...
The scenery looked familiar like something out of a book I'd read recently. A ladder took me down onto a bridge where I spotted the girl skipping along. Immediately, I ran after her curious. 'Where is she going and what does she know about my treehouse'.
Now I find that thought rather strange because surely the fact that there was a trapdoor leading to another world should be the biggest oddity. Dreams sometimes make me lose sight of the important things. At no point did the situation frighten me either... I guess I need to experience a lucid dream to have any sense.
Keeping up with her was hard and every corner turned, revealed another for her to slip behind. The bridges were very rickety so my feet tripped a couple of times. Soon the realisation came over me:
We were slowly making our way up the side of a tree! Every branch I reached provided a resting platform larger than many oak trees put together. At some sections, bouldering was necessary to arrive at new bridges and platforms so looking down was off my list of things to do.
The girl on the other hand, didn't need to climb because she now had fairy wings of some sought. At one resting platform, a close friend from school called Al was waiting there. For the rest of the ascent, we climbed together which gave me a boost of courage to keep going.
What felt like all night in real time, was spent forever climbing after this girl. Something told me she was leading us to some kind of life changing secret. Something that would give us the answer to life. I thought I had unlimited time to scrabble up this tree but soon enough, the dream ended when we had finally started to make some progress.
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Waking up was frustrating because it was then I knew returning to the same dream was like picking the same card from a deck twice. Almost impossible but out of the thousands of dreams you experience in a life time, still doable at least once. I can recall a few times this occured at a younger age but nothing recent.
What did I learn from this dream? Dreams don't always finish and time is limited so I have to move fast if I want closure.