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

[magewarden]

His eyes widen at that, eyebrows going up in surprise.

"You think The Keeper has stolen something?" His head tilts, considering this. "Yet how are we to know if the note is to be trusted? Or, even, what such a thing might be? I suppose it is no business of ours, in truth, although..."

Glancing around he winces at the surroundings, rather self aware.

"It has been rather made our business, if the attack is as related as you say. Perhaps we might ask Mason?"

[subtleserenity]

"Stole us," she replies with a slight shrug, feeling herself go on edge just a bit at his suggestion it's none of their business. "Wouldn't trust him to stop at that." At least she thinks it must have been thievery. She wouldn't have left whatever this place is willingly, would she? The sense she gets in this place is too strong for her to have done that.

At the suggestion they ask Mason, she eyes the man with skepticism. "You tried talking to Mason? Only time I did, he didn't much seem in a sharin' mood."

[magewarden]

"Stole us?"

He squints at that, trying to process the concept. Where would he have been stolen from? He is a servant of The Keeper, it is his job to be a companion and keep the peace!

Yet --

Yet some part of him fishes up the dream he had. Dream? Vision? Memory?

They're not going to kill you, Jowan.

He struggles against it, blinks slightly as he fights an internal war.

"I have spoken to Mason," he says -- voice cool and calm despite the struggle making his expression twitch. "He did not have the most even of tempers, it is true, but surely Mason wants what is best for this place if he is keeping it for The Keeper's return. If there is a threat, Mason would want to know. If someone wishes to steal... something... or someone..."

[subtleserenity]

The confusion in his voice is enough to put her off the subject for the time being. He isn't being obnoxious about his loyalty to the Keeper like the peacocks, or overly forceful like Stripe. He just sounds honestly perplexed, like he can't even fathom the possibility. She suspects he hasn't had the right memory yet. Or he's ignoring the ones he has.

His logic about the house is decent, as well. For all the fuss, if Mason's gotten caught up in the mess of vines, too, he might have a better idea than the rest of them who might have sent them. Still... "Don't seem the sort to ask questions, but it don't hurt none to try." She glances upward, then looks back down at the man. "You remember anything 'bout how you walked into here? Anything you were thinkin' before it happened? Anything you touched? We wanna walk out, expect we'll have to find a way. Not sure what those vines're doin' to us."

[magewarden]

He nods slightly, accepting her assessment, then frowns at the questions. What was he thinking about, before? What did he touch? His eyes drop away, expression pinching as he tries to spin his memories backwards.

"I... remember only the vines, taking over everything. I had been trying to find a place to barricade myself, as I said, somewhere to be free of them but they seemed to fill every room. Seemed to follow me, in fact, enough that I felt they were aware of what they were doing."

[subtleserenity]

She nods. "Got that feelin', too. Seemed to know they could get at me on my wood seein' as they weren't havin' luck with the metal." It's a very brief moment, but she does wonder if the vines might not have been some sort of changeling like them. Perhaps one that can't control itself? That's unlikely, though. The vines seem much too combative for unknown powers running rampant.

"So you wound up here first, Porcelain?" she asks. "First man I met was runnin' 'round in his own dream afore mine."

[magewarden]

'Porcelain'? An interesting nickname, but he supposes she could have thought of something a lot worse. He shakes his head after a moment, though.

"No, it was as you say this other man experienced -- I was... I suppose this must be a dream, must it not? In which case it must have been my own dream, yes, in so far as I saw nobody else there. Only long, dark tunnels. I heard voices, but... I saw nobody. It was... strange."

[subtleserenity]

Voices, but no bodies. That, at least, sounds familiar. "I been huntin' for someone in here who don't seem to be anything but a ghost. Whispers and footsteps." And screams, but that hadn't been the one she was looking for. The person those screams had belonged to had seemed to fit here, even if the screams themselves hadn't. "Voices you were hearin' mention anything useful?"

She suspects the answer is no, but it can't hurt to ask.

[magewarden]

Useful?

First day they come and catch everyone.

He shivers, brow furrowing in thought. That was a voice that would haunt him in the darkness for a long time to come.

"I... no. No, I would not say so. If anything I would say the person sounded a little... unbalanced."

[subtleserenity]

"Lot of unbalanced folk around here," Brimston says, no malice in the words, only detached observation. "Comes of havin' memories put in your head that don't make no sense. And hearin' things..."

Her ears pick up the faint scuffle of movement from down the corridor that she'd come. "Got a feelin' we ain't alone." She turns in the direction of the sound, rifle at the ready to follow it. It's a pointless endeavor, she knows, but she can't not go after it. There's someone watching. Whether they're real or not, she can feel it."

[magewarden]

His eyes widen as he watches her, rifle targeting the sound with seemingly no source. Instinctively, he wants her to put the weapon down, To stop any fighting. After all, an unseen person may not be a threat -- they might be friendly. Might be just as lost as they.

Yet, the rhyme cycles in his head over and over again.

Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate.

He doesn't know what it means, doesn't know why this is happening, but it makes his skin prickle like goose-flesh and he finds not the heart to tell her to stand down.

"Be careful," he says instead. "We know nothing of the rules of this realm."

[subtleserenity]

She nods briefly because a wise word of warning, even if unnecessary, should be heeded. "You might wanna try walkin' into another dream, Porcelain. Dangerous here for your sort." The noncombatant sort, she means.

[magewarden]

The fairest hesitates at that, some instinct deep down warring with the thread of fear pulling at him. He should not leave her, should stay and fight -- yet what skill has he? He is no weapon, he is a playmate. He is decoration.

"I know not how I came to be here," he says, "but I suppose if simple walking carried me here then it might carry me elsewhere. Are you sure you wish to stay here yourself?"

[subtleserenity]

Brimstone is still alert, senses trained toward the phantom sounds she hears beyond her line of sight, but she reaches out with her free hand and places it on the metal wall beside her. She can feel the small vibrations in the metal, a machine humming with life. Her life.

"Serenity's my home," she says, flicking her gaze over to him briefly before returning her hand to the grip of her rifle. "Ain't no place I'd rather stay myself."

Without waiting for a reply, she starts forward.

[magewarden]

He watches her a moment, brow flickering in confusion. Her home? Serenity? Does she this place?

She's determined though, and he only finds himself taking a step back. He's intruding. He shouldn't be here. This may be her home, but it definitely isn't his.

Maybe she is right, it would be better to walk and hope he finds himself elsewhere.

He nods after a moment, as much to himself as anything since she's already moved on, then slinks away into the shadows to try and find a safer placed -- or a way back to The Keeper, to Mason.