I have symbiotes.

One is a dragon-cat big as a lynx: loving, serious, firm-willed. Rubs cheekbones on me like a cat. We have a hazy telepathic bond; today I get only a general warning that something's up, a social issue we'll have to address soon.

I also have--we also have--several cute little flying beings called flannan--feathered wings and clawed feet like birds, but bodies and faces like micro-angels, plus insect antennae. They fly through space and time! Time ahead and sideways--potential--not just time past. Our flannan can be gone for days, but they always return to perch on me and report what wonders they've seen.

I don't know if they're part of me or I'm part of them. But without them I'd feel worse then lonely--amputated.

My interpretation will sound peculiar--but it's based on peculiar life-experience. I have a faint sixth sense, warning and advising me on people and events--not just present events but sometimes future ones. It can be socially awkward, inadvertently knowing things I shouldn't. But it's quite as useful as a sense of smell; ignoring it'd be silly.

I think this dream warns that, influenced by my culture, which insists on only five senses, I've been oversimplifying. My "sixth sense" is really two senses, and each is differently embodied in the dream:

1. DRAGONLYNX: a catlike, sensual, body-rooted sense looking out for us here and now, something that perhaps all animals share but human adults mostly talk themselves into ignoring--a sense helping us read each other's emotions and intentions, spotting short-term opportunity and trouble.
2. FLANNAN: a roving probelike sense you can send out over spatial and temporal horizons. Not instinctual or animal, but a latent ability we must imagine, train and direct--like advanced music or math. Siberian shamans traditionally depict their roving souls/senses as birdlike; such scouting may be unique to advanced dreamworkers.

Though this sense needn't be limited only to human dreamworkers! I find it quite possible some nonhumans have this shamanic sense and others don't, quite like humans. It's likely limited to those with conscious willpower, since you have to send out a part of yourself... an option only available to the self-aware. But many apes, cetaceans, elephants, corvids and parrots are self-aware, at least by the mirror test, the current gold standard. A dolphin or an elephant matriarch may well consciously seek dreams of future-warnings useful to their tribe.

Notice anything else about my list of Gaia's brightest? They all live long. Few wild animals make it to twenty--hell, ten's not bad--but apes can pass fifty, humans ravens and parrots a hundred, whales TWO hundred!

Seems like traveling through time, lots of it, spurs self-awareness--and possibly the idea of a future to explore. Or else peering into your future--listening to your flannan--helps you live long and prosper. Which is cause, which effect? Or is it a feedback loop?

Well, anyway. I think this little dream is arguing we all have six senses working for us--if, of course, we let them--and some of us cultivate seven.

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