riddle quest

I was on a trek with two other people; at times I was with my partner and my brother, but sometimes I was with my ex-partner and my sister. We were journeying together on foot, on a quest of some kind. It was dusk and we were at the edge of a vast forest. With the fading light, creatures of fanciful appearance began to emerge out of the dense foliage. Moose-like animals with soft grey dreadlocked fur ran about us; mammoth cows with dark grey wool-covered backs; and wild gorilla creatures, again with soft grey fur. A young gorilla came close to us and eventually I nursed him, stroking his soft fluffy head. With the threat of total darkness and other, more dangerous animals, waking in the night, we felt an urgency to move on. As we walked, we witnessed a strange sight: the mammoth cow creatures grew restless and affected by the moon. They stampeded madly about, whilst a dog barked uncontrollably, jumping in the air, fighting against his leash, which was tied to a hills hoist clothes line, over and over again, the leash cutting into his throat and mouth with each jump, until his blood splattered our faces and spotted the ground. The two others with whom I walked, became infected with the madness of the night, and began to leap about with the dog, howling at the moon. I urged them to stop and we walked on. We came to a building and intuitively we knew we were to enter the stone walled courtyard and find the right path in the maze therein. We selected, knowing that it was our path, and we climbed the fragile, narrow staircase that led somewhere important to us. As we climbed, one of the others practised her signature over and over and over again, knowing that she would need to write it perfectly at some point on our journey. Funnily though, when I looked at what she was writing, it was my name, written again and again across the page. Being the slowest climber up the rickety stairs, I went first, careful with each step as the climb was fraught with danger. The winding staircase, some flights made only of cardboard or rotten boards leaning against each other, whorled up and up perhaps a hundred levels. Nearing the top, we heard voices saying “Here they come. Are we ready?” When we reached them, there were about seven people dressed in a caterpillar suit; out of every hump of the caterpillar’s back, poked a head of each of the seven people. The person at the head of the caterpillar asked us “What do you want to know?” and we answered “The password.” The caterpillar people repeated “The password” over and over again. They agreed to tell us if we could produce our name written correctly – the moment for my companion to write her signature and my name. Just as she wrote it, the floor underneath the caterpillar gave way and the seven people plummeted down the stairwell cavity, disappearing from view. I was dragged by the pull of gravity toward the hole in the floor and I too fell through. Realising that I would drop to the bottom and die, I reached out and latched onto a crossbeam, swinging my body back onto the stairs. I had to climb up several flights again to rejoin the others. We continued on.