Wow, I haven’t posted here in ages, but I had an odd lucid dream experience that I thought was worth sharing and perhaps getting some feedback on.
(Sorry if this isn’t in the right forum… I know this dream isn’t akin to OOBEs, etc., but it’s more of a discussion-prompt than something that would fit in a dream journal and… I guess I’m really not sure where it goes 
It’s been so long since I was active here. Feel free to move it if it fits somewhere better.)
So… even though I haven’t been actively trying to lucid dream for years now, I still have them now and again, especially this summer since I have fallen into a sort of polyphasic sleep rhythm. But during my last nap I had one of the oddest LD experiences I have ever had in my lifetime.
When it started out, I was in my house, walking through the hallway, and I saw multiple clones of my dog playing with each other. I thought that was odd, but when I saw my old cat run by (he died several years ago) I realized I was dreaming. It was then that I became aware of how intensely vivid the dream was-- I could see every detail of the house clearly, and it was exactly like my own house, no weird dream distortions or anything. It all felt so real that I ended up reality-checking several times throughout the dream-- I simply could not believe it.
After getting over my awe I decided that I wanted to go meet a dragon. So I floated down the stairs and ran outside. At this point I felt the dream start to fade so I spun circles in the driveway, which helped immensely. However, I could not manage to fly-- only float a few feet off the ground for short periods of time. So instead I looked up at the night sky, hoping I would see a dragon I could call to me.
Soon I saw the shadow of a dragon shimmering in the sky, but it was very static and generic, almost like a piece of clipart on a piece of cardboard being dragged through the sky. Nonetheless, I started to call it down to me, but began having my doubts about whether or not my imagination would be able to bring a fictional creature into this intensely vivid, realistic dream. I wasn’t sure my mind would be able to construct a three-dimensional, photorealistic image of a creature I had obviously never seen in real life.
But then, as if my mind sought to answer my questions, an illuminated screen appeared in the sky, and began flashing a variety of beautifully detailed images that (I believe) I had never seen before. They ranged from landscape paintings to cartoon skunks to photos of animals I was unfamiliar with. The mind-screen seemed to tell me that all these images were created by my own mind, so I began to believe that perhaps if my mind could create images like that, it could create a dragon for me to interact with.
Unfortunately I was so absorbed in the images that I didn’t feel myself waking up 
So I didn’t get to meet my dragon after all.
A number of things made this dream strange-- one being the extreme vividness of it all, another being the apparent conversation I had with myself inside the dream. I have never had anything even remotely like that happen to me before-- it kind of weirds me out, to be honest. But what I don’t know is if this is just a random act of dream-chance or if my subconscious genuinely was trying to communicate with my conscious mind.
I am tempted to take the dream slightly out of context and apply it to my waking life-- lately I’ve been struggling a bit as I write and draw (purely for pleasure) and seem to be doubting my abilities, which has stopped me from taking on any projects that I feel I don’t have the skill or talent for, and my skill advancement has been very, very slow, perhaps as a result. So perhaps my mind was telling me not to doubt my limits in waking as well as dreaming.
But I might also be fooling myself… I am pretty skeptical by nature. I really just don’t know what to make of it. It seemed too -real- to be just another random dream.
I dunno, any thoughts guys? 
Have any of you ever had a similar experience you wouldn’t mind sharing or any alternate interpretations? Do you think events that take place in lucid dreams have more credibility than events in normal dreams? Am I just going nuts?