Cowboys and Owlcats
Trigger Warnings: n/a
Discuss this dream?: sure
Have this dream interpreted?: nope
We were in some sort of orchard or well forested lawn, sitting at a long table with a line of muffins down the center. By 'we' I mean myself and my Cross Country/Track team. The people around me were in hearty discussion. A girl was talking to the guy on my left, saying he'd be a good counselor at Camp Bethel (a local camp I work at). I listened to the various interactions, zoned out at the space in front of me. No, I thought, reflecting on the man's behavior and mannerisms, he would /not/ make a good counselor.
After awhile lost in thought, I noticed that there was one muffin left. Just one. And nobody seemed to be paying it any attention. So I reached for it. At the same moment, a very freckled redhead from the other side of the table also reached for the muffin. We ended up asking how many muffins each had, deciding to split the last muffin in half. However, upon seeing that we were still enjoying muffins, the rest of my side of the table /also/ wanted half of the muffin. I split it into endless halves, each half the same amount as half the whole muffin. Then I ate my bit but forgot to remove the wrapper. I spent awhile sitting there, trying to separate muffin from wrapper and then pick up what mess I had left behind-- crumbs and whatnot. Everybody else stood up, and still talking among themselves, moved off and behind to my right.
Eventually I followed. They had gone to a sort of farmer's market that sold one thing (I don't remember what) in countless varieties. I was helpless. I had missed out on the directions the coach had given as to what we needed. I couldn't find the right thing, all the dudes insisted they move the tables instead of me, so the best I could do was prop open the door for the constant stream of people and request that somebody find me a rock.
The door was there because the farmer's market of tents had somehow morphed into half of the chapel of the camp mentioned prior. When I looked outside of it, I saw what I'd expect to see looking out the chapel door: a mountain's top, but in broad summer, wildflowers dotting the landscape. The trees weren't their usual pine, but rustled with leafy foliage, just like the orchard I had come from.
The people behind me faded, the building faded, and I found myself somebody entirely different.
Apples. Apples were being fired at me at high velocity. The whizzed at me over the trees and around the trunks and up from the grass. I was swinging from tree to tree with grappling hooks, a middle-aged cowboy with to revolvers, two grapples, and a rugged cowboy hat. I resembled McCree (whoops). I feel as if this were some sort of training, and I reveled in it. Being tugged one way and then free falling before swooping off in another... there was so much adrenaline and satisfaction (I caught each apple that was fired my way)! The whole time, this old cowboy who was me was monologuing in his mind about his life story (think the most recent Spider-Man), and we ended up laying on the ground, one last apple ripping towards us like a bullet, and hovering between our arm and body as we watched it in slow motion get closer to the ground. Half an inch.. now a quarter.. /boom/. We fired our gun and the apple disappeared into smithereens.
Now I was a small boy. I looked to be around twelve, though I'd later learn he was seventeen. Out in the grove, running towards me, was a cat-like thing, ragged and bloody. I rushed out to greet it. It put up some panicked resistance, but it was too weak to put up much. Once I scooped it up, there was something else laying on the ground. A bloody ear. I remember conversing with the cat thing on the way back out to my home-tent, which was literally just behind a tree. It felt like some epic journey home, but when I went around the tree, I remember feeling dumb. Why did I go all the way around this tree when I could have just gone straight home? (This was some separation between me in the boy's mind and the boy himself.) But anyway. Yeah, the cat-thing could speak quite well, it just couldn't really hear what I asked it because of panic and its lack of ears. Something had ripped them off.
Old cowboy was sitting at the home-tent table, a barrel, and waved hello. I ran up and hid the cat behind the table; somebody was coming. Blood stained the grass and the cowboy stood up, looking at something I couldn't see. I peeked around the barrel. Some hulking man had appeared. I don't remember exactly what he looked like, but I think it was animalish in appearance.
"A duel."
The cowboy gave a savage grin in response. Two rifles were tossed by the intruder into the air, both elegant, more like long tubes with honey-like lumps and embellishing than heavy rifles. They spun in the air, catching the sun's light before landing, one before my cowboy, and one before the challenger.
The challenger was killed no-problemo, dissolving into a puff of dust at the first hit. Against this marksman, he hadn't stood a chance.
Scene and person change again. Now I'm disembodied, in a warm tent watching a discussion between two half-orcs.
One pleaded, "Let the boy come home!" Hand clutched to her chest.
"No!" The other shouted gruffly. The fire in the background illuminated the pelts that covered his bulk, which in turn shadowed his pale, moon-like skin and ivory tusks. "You couldn't handle his four legs, you won't be able to handle twenty!" (You feel as if they are talking about when the boy marries and has kids.)
The perspective switches back to the cowboy and the boy. The cat-thing has grown into a beautiful snowy owlcat, larger than a panther. It perches on a snowy hilltop with the boy on its back and the cowboy holding the reigns.
"Where to, son?" The cowboy asks, gently fixing the saddlery and stroking the owlcat's downy fluff. I can't decide how the boy should respond. Where would a boy of seventeen want to go? I then realize I'm eighteen, but that doesn't help me decide.
The boy cranes his head upwards, towards the night sky littered with stars, towards you and your perspective looking down on them. He doesn't say anything, but you feel the intense desire to just fly, regardless of destination.
Notes: nop
