SLEEPING BEAUTIES: DREAM LOG

[yourkeepers]

Bewitched by the thorn's touch, you have been ensnared in the deepest of sleep. Fortunately for you, the world of Faerie doesn't end with the waking.

The world of your dreams is brighter now, more clear than you've ever witnessed it. You've been it before, you think, there fragments of yourself become reality. But now you are somehow more lucid in its presence, and it's more real - something you can reach out and touch.

You find yourself in this world, and you are not alone. Your dreams and those of other join at the edges, pulling into each other along similar threads.

And you are watched by something even greater.

Comments

[intothehedge]

"I'm glad to have met you," she says. "I hope you can find your way here again."

[chromaticscale]

"I'm sure I can manage!" She floats, a little awkwardly. Does that mean she should say goodbye? She doesn't really want to leave yet.

[intothehedge]

Apparently she means it the other way around. Because a few moments later, the woman seems to have simply vanished from existence.

[chromaticscale]

Well then. Not much she can do about that. She considers the ruby in her palm again, then shrugs it off, and goes back to playing with the fish, hoping the girl will be okay. There's not much she can do but she's sure it'll all work itself out.

[keepscalm]

It's hard not to respond to the vibrancy of her smile, and the Darkling finds himself returning it with a smile of his own, just a small one.

"It would be wonderful to learn how," he states, enthusiasm a reserved but steady undercurrent in the words. He really does like it here, and he's certain that he would like it even more if he could change it just so, reaffirm that this place is, indeed, his.

He doesn't know if he's ever going to wake, but even if he doesn't, this young lady sounds as if has other places that she has been to. Which probably meant places that she still needed to go to, as well. How to go about finding her again after that?

Eventually, he ventures, "Is there any name I can call you by? If— if we're to meet again, perhaps— it seems appropriate to have something to call you." Again, he stumbles over the words; it feels unreasonably strange to admit, even indirectly, that he'd like to see her again, but it's the truth. He wants to learn how to change this world, and it seems like she can teach him. It would be a shame to lose good company.

[subtleserenity]

"Thought you'd died," she admits. "Glad to see you're still breathin', intruder or not. This place ain't like my other dreams. There's someone I was lookin' for, an intruder." Her brow furrows as she tries to remember. "He hid here. On Serenity?"

A wave of emotion connected with the name hits her and she grips one of the few railings available, staring down. Serenity is family, laughing, fear, danger, death, joy, empty, full, hope, pride, regret, and so many other things. Most of all, the feeling of belonging is here. It's not the Keeper's house, his hand. It's this place; it's Serenity.

"This is my home," she says to the typewriter. "Someone's in my home that ain't friendly and don't got an invitation." As if on cue, a woman screams from somewhere in the corridor leading off from the cargo bay below them.

whoops sorry

[vinetattoos]

"Any music is better than screams. Let's go." He accepts the nudge and begins to walk, trying not to see his surroundings. Anywhere not here. It isn't real. It's a dream.
But anywhere not here.

"Huǒ? I think we met in the gardens, soon after I woke up. I.... I don't have a name either, I guess."

[vinetattoos]

"They're beautiful," he responds, reverently. "Ancient. Wonderful. There's so much.... power in them. Quiet power, but there." The tree vine winds around his fingertips, and the vines growing there respond in kind.

Re: whoops sorry

[manelesscatking]

"All there really is to finding a name is to think of something that describes you the way that a friend would," they say, raising an eyebrow to Tongues to see if she's coming or, better yet, leading the way. "Actually, it's best if a friend names you. I wasn't the first one to call me Huǒ. As long as you have something better than what Mason called you," they chuckle, violet eyes twinkling as they dance over the boy.

[fuzzyduck]

She can't say the name "Tongues" doesn't rub her the wrong way. What she actually says in response to it, though, is nothing, choosing instead to squint at Huǒ, disgruntled.

"Your name can be Vines," she says to the boy as she steps ahead and walks in the general direction she remembers coming from. "Almost sounds like a real name."

[fuzzyduck]

"Oh, yeah?" The idea makes some sense to her, even if she isn't sure if it's quite right - either way, though, she feels oddly reluctant to admit it outright.

"What 'bout all the empty space? Whaddya figure that means, Typewriter?"

[fuzzyduck]

"Oh." She crossed her arms. Like she was supposed to know. "'Kay, whatever, but why's it on fire?"

[nosentimentalist]

"It's the state of your mind," he replies, but he gives it a good minute or so before he looks back at her with a grin. It was a joke, obviously.

"To be serious, though, maybe you just don't like people? Or you need or want space, away from the hassle of life...though like I said, interpreting dreams isn't my job."

[fuzzyduck]

"We met like 15 minutes ago and I already wanna kick your ass." She doesn't really mean that, either. Mostly.

"Anyway, how come you're in my dream?"

[nosentimentalist]

He's about to say somehow, he doesn't think so, that he's the more knowledgeable of the two about that particular topic, but he stops himself. That's...kind of silly. As far as he knows, he hasn't died, well, ever.

"Twice? My condolences. And you really think it's a past existence? Maybe it's past lives in plural- people can't die over and over, you know."

[ovidscholar]

He hesitates.

"It seems the sort of thing wolves would do."

They're a little lost, now, wound up in the ever-shifting boundary between his dream and theirs. Dingy snow piles up on the smooth cobblestone, stains the stuccoed houses.

[ovidscholar]

Even as the woman kneels he can tell she's tall, much taller than him. He bends to help her up. Her hand is broad, and coarse. No: her hand is not a hand, it is a chunk of bread, the torn edge damp with spit. The clerk recoils from the bird-creature and falls onto his rump.

"I thought," he said, "I thought--"

[peafowl]

"Pass the time?" the pink peacock says, raising an eyebrow. "You got a deck of cards or anything? I don't see any dance halls here, is all."

The blue peacock rolls his eyes but says nothing, only crosses his arms and pouts.

[armedanddangerous]

The bird creature is stunned, but only momentarily. He staggers to his feet - or tries to, anyway. He only makes it halfway before teetering over again, but still manages to lurch forward until he's towering over the other man. "You there," he demands, seizing him by the shoulders. His voice is hoarse, on the verge of breaking. "What's going on?"

[armedanddangerous]

The sound of the plate breaking makes him jump. He whirls his head to face the disturbance, a slice of ham still lifted halfway to his mouth. "Get away!" he snarls. "It's mine!"

[nosentimentalist]

"That's very true, but this is a special case,hmm?"

He thinks about it for a minute, before he shrugs lightly, reaching up to push his glasses up his nose.

"You just have to do opposite of what the dream wants you to do, I think. Or just wander around until you find yourself in someone else's dream. That's what I've been doing."

[nosentimentalist]

He chuckles at that. "Good to know I've made such a good first impression, then."

At her question, though, he just shrugs. "I was wandering, I came into your dream from another dream. They seem to mesh together, somehow. So, basically, I just found myself here with no control over where I was going."

[ovidscholar]

The librarian crouches away, or he tries to. He thrusts his palm towards the bird-creature's chest and the sharp arc of his keel.

"You were a pretty woman," he says. "You shouldn't feel obliged, but I preferred it."

[armedanddangerous]

"You too, huh?" From that, he gathers that the kid ended up here the same way he did. "I don't have a clue." Figuring the page is similarly clueless, he glances around, searching for some kind of landmark, or at least a place to rest.

[armedanddangerous]

He pulls back far enough to avoid the brunt of the blow, but no farther. Having neither seen nor been (to his knowledge) a pretty woman, the man's comment flies directly over his head. "I said, what's going on," he insists, this time attempting to grab and shake him by the collar of his shirt.