DREAM #3

Context:
If I remember correctly, this one came during my freshman year of college.  A girl I had had feelings for at the time was in a rough place spiritually.  Our relationship hadn't always been the most well defined item in the past, and I sure wasn't taking any steps to do so in the present.  Instead, I liked being around her and felt like I could "fix" her, so I kept quiet and let things progress at their own volition.  Though this was about 5 or so years ago, I still have particularly strong feelings attached to this dream.  Not to the girl, but to the allegory of restoration at the end of the story. 

The Dream:
A girl and I were getting ready to go out for a bike ride amongst the buildings of an ambiguous city when I catch a news flash on the T.V.  The report precedes to tell of a man-like creature that is on the loose, posing a threat to unsuspecting citizens.  I apparently don't see it as too stern of a warning because the girl and I proceed to go on the bike ride.  Now, this bike ride really just involved the girl on the bike and me running alongside.  Not too far into the trip we come across this creature the news was referencing.  It had the basic humanoid shape, however, it stood almost twice as tall and had what appeared to be tree trunks for arms and legs.  This characteristic made it rather slow moving, so we were able to avoid it pretty easily at first.  However, as our journey progressed, we continually would run into situations where we would have to circumvent the creature until it got to a point where we were no longer really on a bike ride, but in hiding.  Eventually, we were cornered.  Seeing that flight was no longer an option, I chose to fight the creature.  I stood up to it and told the girl to get on the bike and flee.  Now, though this creature's creatures movements were slow, they had power behind them.  It wasn't long before one of it's cumbersome, bark-covered limbs sent me hurling across the asphalt.  Seeing this battle ending badly, I decided running would be the best option.  Luckily, the blow had sent me far enough from the creature to make my escape on foot possible again.  I ran for some time and felt I had put enough distance between us to start feeling a little bit more comfortable.  However, as I continued to run, I felt my limbs start to become more and more rigid.  It was if the joints were slowly calcifying and my muscles were tightening to the point of seizing.  In fact, they weren't just loosing functionality, they were changing all together!  Like a process of petrification, patches of my limbs were turning to wood; and the infection was slowly spreading!  As my run began to slow and my movements became less and less fluid, I cam across another T.V. report.  This one explained that investigators have found a cure for the epidemic that the tree-like creature has been causing.  The remedy lied in the person of a being they referred to as "The Eagle Man."  I had my solution.  I had to find this Eagle Man.  After some rather cloudy time span of searching, I saw what I could only identify as the Eagle Man driving by in a beat up old steel bodied, maroon and rust colored car.  Desperate, I followed him in the fasted hobble I could manage.  He pulled into a rather nondescript library; so I followed.  Inside, after some searching, I found a man in line at the checkout.  He was clad in rather ordinary clothing and was pretty unimpressive in build, but he had the mask of a white feathered eagle over his face.  This must be the Eagle Man!  So, I shifted over to him and gave him the deepest hug I could manage.  As we stood in the embrace, I heard myself whisper, "I don't know if you know this, but you are saving my life right now."  Immediately the infection left my body and my mobility was restored.   I then took a step back and looked at the underside of my forearm.  Sticking out from my veins was a small green shoot. I preceded to pull it out from under my skin and it disappeared.  Suddenly, in a cinematic sort of fashion, the camera pans to a row of book shelves where the girl from the beginning of the story and I are reading about this very story in a book from the shelf.