Had a whole mess of interesting-yet-confused, often stressful, but always fascinating dreams last night.
Vaguely remember myself getting horribly lost on the way to visit a friend in hospital. I wandered around through the darkened streets, seemingly inspired by the terrain around the last place I lived in Melbourne, then eventually managed to make it there. I was there visiting for a bit, then at some point I think the dream sorta, partially shifted into the plot of a book I'd been reading. Reading in the dream, I mean.
To be honest I don't remember much from that point on, except that the main character was a young female and some other, more eccentric gal showed up (I believe they were both visiting a male friend, not my IRL friend, in the hospital). They all had a bit of a chat and then the newly arrived gal asked the guy what she could do to help, whereupon he made eyes at her and the two of them disappeared to another room - somehow that worked? And he could walk freely despite supposedly being in hospital? Maybe it wasn't hospital at this point, I dunno.
Anyway, the main character felt perhaps a slight pang of jealously remembering how she had once fallen for that same look he gave the other girl, but she just waited and went back to... reading a book, I think. I dunno.
At some point after that I was starring as myself again, at a house my family used to live at several years ago, getting mauled by some gigantic black cat. Like, much larger than a house cat (say, the size of a doberman or some shit) but smaller than an actual panther. It bit me on the wrist at one point and I wrestled it at the top of our back stairs, hoping to subdue it before it could slaughter any of our pets (which, incidentally, I believe were the pets my family has now, rather than the pets we had when we lived in that house).
Not entirely sure how that worked out, I believe we eventually got it under control (also we learned from a neighbour that the critter had smashed her chickens' eggs, and possibly the chickens themselves). The next part of the dream was far later, but apparently still related to the earlier scenes.
Whatever character I was was heading some mission through a foreign-ass country filled with bush and scrub, driving some sort of tank at least to begin with. I may have been playing a videogame (actually I think I was, for certain, but my memory is fading now so I can't be sure), blasting fools with the cannons and trying desperately to keep my team, all of whom I seemed to know, alive.
Alas, the place was filled with ambushes, our fanatical enemy seemingly quite willing to die just to get a shot at us. I'm not sure what kind of vehicle we were actually in, but it proved insufficient to protect its crew from the various weapons being fired at us. In a series of cinematic shots like one would expect from a film or game, I saw as each of my crew were picked off, some dying instantly, others bleeding profusely from wounds we had no hope of patching. Whoever I was in this part of the dream, he was greatly saddened by this.
The next scene I remember, I had apparently left the tank (possibly having reached my destination despite all/most of my companions being killed) and linked up with a few other folks I knew. Can't remember exactly what our mission was, but we had to traverse a large, valley-like area on foot, probably blowing shit up as we went. Actually, there were shallow-water boats involved too, I think parts of the terrain were rather marshy - also I believe at least some of the action involved us smuggling in explosives on a disguised boat or something along those lines.
At some point at least one of us had received medical attention from the local allied forces (kinda like the Iraqi army or something I guess, although I seem to remember other parts of the dream dating it to a much earlier era of history) and, once we were patched up, we set off.
I remember barely anything of this part, except we split up at one point and just a couple of my comrades were able to join me - one grizzled veteran dude and a (possibly local?) woman, who I believe had a great deal of importance to the mission, as a figurehead or diplomat or something.
As we set off again, I realised she was wounded and trying to hide it - she mentioned something off-hand about a bullet grazing her face during the earlier action and tried to shrug it off, but we quickly realised she was more seriously injured than she seemed. Before long, the two of us were carrying her, unsure of the extent of her injuries, lacking medical training ourselves, and frantically trying to get her to the nearest field hospital or similar where she might receive medical attention.
I don't remember whether we got there or not, but it is kind of a moot point since all of a sudden the sky was filled with noise, the buzzing of engines, and myself and whoever I was with barely had time to realise what it was and throw ourselves deep into the nearest thicket of uninhabited bush before the enemy's (?) airforce began bombing the hell out of the villages and pastures we'd been traveling through. They seemed to level the whole place, as I huddled to the ground and tried my best to cover my eyes, ears and head at the same time as shrapnel whizzed through the forest.
Much later, it somehow became apparent than one of our supposed friends - the more-eccentric gal from the much earlier part of the dream - had actually sold us out. Another character accused her of having the second sight and using it for evil, and apparently when we received medical attention during the mission the medic had actually been an enemy agent; removing a hidden note from within her body which gave his commanders coordinates/instructions on where to bomb. Weird.
Unfortunately I can't remember what turned out to be true or what anyone did about it, because at around that point I woke up. Alas.
Edit: oh! Also! I just remembered, at least part of the dream was supposedly the book and/or comic I'd been reading. I seemed to wake up briefly a few times towards the end of this dreaming sesh and, somehow realising that I was on my way to wakefulness, took the precaution of screenshotting a panel of the comic so that I'd remember it upon awakening. Yeah, great plan, brain!
Unsurprisingly, the screenshot didn't exist upon my IRL phone once I woke up for real, but I did remember the title of the comic which was included in a sort of watermark under the panel I'd grabbed a picture of: Twins-Feet comic. Apparently it does not exist! Big surprise there. If I remembered more of the plot perhaps I would try recreating it myself.