In high school I overheard someone talking about flying in a dream. It hit me--I had NEVER flown! Not once. It seemed terribly unfair. I trusted the psych books that said despite the huge differences in daytime behavior, we were all basically the same in our dreams. I wasn't so sure, now. I was earthbound, where others flew. Why?

So without knowing how, I set out to fly. Night after night, I insisted "I'll fly in my dreams" just before falling asleep. I expected quite a struggle. My whole life without them! There must be a reason.

Instead, my dreamlife changed within the first week.

I dreamed I was a gull, flying over the Great Plains--Kansas, I think. It was early summer, and the fields were green and yellow. I was high up, a thousand feet or more, spiraling counterclockwise, above a square white farmhouse--just a small diamond shape set in green velvet.

It was beautiful up there, and I loved the wind under my wings.

A FEW DAYS LATER

Each night I said "I'll fly in my dreams"... and I did. The second flying dream in my life happened within days of the first.

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. I and my dream-brothers and sisters (I have no brothers, and not those sisters!) were exploring a castle of smooth black stone, with flowing steepening spires, like Tolkien's conception of Isengard. If the builders of Notre Dame had hired Frank Lloyd Wright...

It was spooky and beautiful, but we had no time to admire it; we were raiding it, like Prometheus, to recover some magic powers. I don't know if they'd been stolen from us, or third parties. Certainly magic was our birthright--each of us had comparable and complementary powers, even without the castle's trove. My little sister could call down lightning storms (and had, to cover our raid). That's why it was a dark and stormy night. My sister had made it one.

Mostly I recall hurrying through the corridors and magically slamming doors--not running, but flying. Hard to do, my wings brushing the walls, slamming and bouncing around bends. Not a place built for indoor flying!

And then out--into the storm wind! Felt like whitewater rapids, a big fierce hand caressing me once like a carrier pigeon then flinging me high, fast, and far. The feeling of power as I caught that gale and soared was wild, fierce and sensual--utterly unlike my meek, precise, repressed day persona.

NEXT MORNING

I woke overwhelmed. There had been far more to the dream, but it'd all blown away in that stunning flight. But the conviction that we had psychic powers--magic--and the satisfaction in working together to right a wrong... those were terribly compelling. It became a buried measuring standard--now I knew how different I could be. And powerful.

At that time I thought "it's just a dream--it can't be literal. Humans can't develop magical talents any more than they can fly."

I was just beginning to experiment with Rhine-type tests, and had trouble enough accepting my scores (and my sister's) as they rose further and further from chance. I didn't connect such dream-flights with these growing abilities. I was still a good little scientist, who didn't want to see what the dreams were showing me.

Yet.

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