When the bell rang in the morning, Fae quickly gathered her things and walked towards the first class. Her arms and legs are shivering a great deal. It was only for a short moment that she regretted the light clothing she picked, because she knew she wouldn't choose anything differently the next morning. Thick clothing would be too annoying to take off and put back on whenever she went swimming. That's why light clothing was best. It was easy to change and to put away in her bag.

Her first lesson was introductory biology. The course was certainly very interesting to her, but way too easy. She already studied this stuff and trying to pay attention in the lesson would be a waste of her time. That's why she took out her handbook and starting reading ahead to keep herself occupied. After the first course, she read the messages Erin sent in the group chat.

It was crazy what Erin experienced, but Fae had to laugh about how typical of Erin it was to propose trying the weird stuff out. As she didn't know how to react, she went on with her day until she read the replies Damon sent. Apparently, the idea had spiked his interest as well, since he obviously had been researching it during his lessons. Fae on the other hand didn't really know how to feel about this. On her way to the meeting spot, she thought about what to respond to this crazy idea of entering different worlds in their dreams. Fae decided to keep it simple.

I'm in if you guys are.

Max had been sitting in the back of his Intro to Art History lecture, halfway listening as the professor droned on about Renaissance architecture. His sketchbook was open on his lap, as he was doodling a bunch of cartoon characters. Around him, other students were either taking notes or scrolling on their phones, but Max’s focus was not on the lecture. He understood the importance of history, but would rather be doing actual artwork than listening to someone yap about it.

He paused mid-sketch, sipping from his thermos of hot chocolate, when his phone vibrated on the desk. Curious, he flipped it over, unlocking it with a quick swipe to reveal a string of texts from Erin in their group chat.

Max immediately texted back

Max Hudson
Omg Erin, what kind of class are you even taking? 😂 That sounds insane.
8:27

He glanced back up at the professor, who was still rambling about flying buttresses. He couldn’t help giggling like a child. That name would never not be funny. This earned him a glare from other students. Undeterred, he shot another quick text.

Max Hudson
Honestly, sounds kind of fun. I’m down.
8:28

Tucking his phone back into his pocket, Max returned to his sketchbook. He added a pair of cartoon wings to one of his doodles. Max’s thoughts wandered to the idea of dream jumping. It sounded too good to be true, but Max was intrigued. Dream Jumping definitely beats this lecture.

Since it seemed as though all her friends were more or less on board with things, much of the rest of Erin’s day was spent reading through the odd forum her probably insane demonstrator had posted, trying to figure out what the ‘optimal’ process was supposed to be for all this dream jumping stuff.

After some searching on the internet, Erin was pretty sure all the techniques described were for the most part procedures intended to cause lucid dreams, which would certainly support her earlier hypothesis that this was just a rather odd roleplaying community – one wherein the participants dressed up the techniques in false mysticism and then presented the contents of their dreams to one another as though they were real events.

On the one hand, that was significantly less amusing than her hope that everyone on the site was just batshit crazy as her demonstrator had seemed, or that it was just one guy with like a hundred alts, a lot of free time and an insane commitment to the bit. On the other hand, it did make her somewhat more interested; lucid dreaming wasn’t actually something she’d ever thought to try, and even without magical dimensional travelling it ought to be pretty interesting.

After going on a bit of a tangent reading up on techniques for lucid dreaming, and the topic of lucid dreaming in general, Erin couldn’t help but notice there were some slight differences in the recommendations provided on the forum as compared to the rest of the internet that stood out as just a little unusual.

The fact that there were differences at all didn’t really stand out as odd – from all that she read on the wider internet, it almost seemed to Erin that every man and his dog has their own protocol for lucid dreaming. No, what struck her as being odd, was the level of consistency shown on the forum. Sure, they still seemed to have a million and one different techniques and variations thereof, but there seemed to be a certain level of consistency to them that wasn’t necessarily seen elsewhere Erin had looked.

Clicking through the section of the forums dedicated to beginners, Erin even managed to find a bunch of threads asking about or dedicated to explaining what techniques were better or worse for dream jumping as opposed to regular lucid dreaming.

The fact that people even acknowledged lucid dreams existed and were actively discussing them struck Erin as a little odd; they were super dedicated to keeping up the façade of mysticism around every other aspect of this whole lucid dream journal thing, but they also acknowledged the existence of actual mundane lucid dreams and even had some kind of lore about it?

Reaffirming to herself that this whole forum was kind of insane Erin couldn’t help but grin to herself as she thought about how fun she was going to have testing it all out. Then Erin glanced at the time and realising she’d gotten distracted once again, her grin faltered, though only for a moment before she hurried off to find her friends, eager to chat their ears off about everything she’d read and better yet get them all together to try out this whole dream jumping thing.