(Heart of the Dragon) Sweet Dreams

[Cayce]

Eventually, the sun set upon Sacramento and the day faded into shadow. All across the Sacramento skyline the scintillating lights of the city glowed gold, drowning out the stars with their brilliance yet barely keeping the night at bay. Darkness and gloom swept into the city, and drowned all around it, and under night's reign many of the inhabitants of the city retired to their homes and set their heads to pillows. For when the world grew dark and life stilled, that was the time when the imagination was given room to blossom, and into the depths of dream all those pillowed heads tumbled.

Among those wandering dreamers, all weaving their own stories into the skein conjured of fantasy and nightmare, there were some beings that were certainly not lost, but rather prowled with purpose through the ways between, brushing past the gauze edges of reverie and fevered imaginings. One such creature found it's way into the dreams of four of Sacramento's lost, the dank scent of water and rot heralding it's coming...

Bronson Jman Origins Mhairi Ankaa Please describe your characters dream, and their reaction to an intruder in their dreamscape (though don't call for dream combat :P )

[Benji]

Imagine, a gazebo.

It is a thing of beauty. Rose vines delicately climb six white marble pillars and intertwine in the dome of copper scroll work in the shapes of foxes, robins and antlered deer, now gone to verdigris, that cap them. The blossoms are white, filling the space with a pleasing floral scent. An elegant garden table made of bronze, also gone to verdigris, sits within with matching chair alongside. A vintage phonograph sits on it's own matching stand, playing Vivaldi with a clarity you can't actually find on a vinyl record.

Within the chair is Bronson. Nude and perfect, an ornament of spun glass and gold that the roses faintly reflect off of. He looks out over a landscape that resembles a garden, or a painting of a garden in oils, almost abstract and undefined. Parts of it are tighter and more distinct, as if someone is slowly giving areas more definition before stepping back and considering the whole setting and adjusting another piece.

Bronson wrinkles his nose and sighs. He gestures and spins up a matching chair and a tea service in green china. Six madeleines are fanned out on a side plate. "I do not require solitude often," he says to his unseen but not unnoticed guest, "but when I do, I enjoy putting a great deal of effort into my dreams." He gestures to the new seat, a silent invitation to sit.

[Mhairi Ankaa]

As of late, Mhairi's dreams have not been pleasant. RL Pepper Potts, Ramona, Daniel, Ava, Coco...each weighing on her mind, coiling their way into her dreams. In the waking world the wisp was sure everyone could see the dark circles under her eyes despite the makeup carefully applied to hide them.

All of the Lost were lucid dreamers, so tonight Mhairi was trying to not wake in a cold sweat.

A tank top, a pair of cut off shorts with a red plaid shit thrown over it. Feet bare and toenails painted. Nothing she'd ever let the Lost of Sacramento see her in. Mhairi sat on a porch, feet resting on the steps, she sure there's a house behind her but it didn't matter, what mattered was the pitter patter on the roof above her. The rain pouring in front of her, the lightning dancing across the sky, the thunder rumbling off in the distance.

The rain that Mhairi brought forth to comfort herself masks the heavy water scent of the intruder, but not the rot. It coils it's way through her peaceful moment in nature, until fell-flames can't help but search for the interruption, the intrusion.

Lynn's words from the Symposium come to mind.

'Who are you?' 'Why are you here?' 'What are you doing in my dreams?' 'Leave!' are all quick to come to mind, but not to her lips. This wisp waits for the intruder to make the first move.

[Morgan Bellanar]

The landscape of this dreamer's realm was somewhat schizophrenic. There were urban streets, nondescript in nature but most assuredly they had the feel of a city street. The feeling of familiarity and safety for the dreamer, even if the streets had fences and various obstacles obstructing them. What made it schizophrenic was the cut off in the terrain. At two points it seemed as if the land and air itself had been cut, like a pair of photographs snipped and taped together. The smallest was half of a warehouse smack in the middle of the street. Only half like someone had chopped a model of a warehouse in half and plopped it down. Unlike the rest of the city the warehouse was lit by moonlight.

The other odd aspect was a primeval forest, wrapped in the darkness of night. The gnarly trees looked like something out of a horror story, the gurgling brook oozing its way through the landscape added to the depressive atmosphere. Morgan hadn't noticed this as it was "behind" her.

Most noteworthy though for a visitor would've been the blue light playing across the urban landscape, its humming source coming from the changeling manipulating her own dream. Morgan would fully admit that she wanted a lightsaber. She'd tried to make a token one, failing, so why not at least "have one in her dreams." Her dream self was wrapped in an entirely black outfit, cloth ties securing the garments tightly to her at arms, legs, and waist. Her head was left exposed, nose starting to twitch.

Morgan paused in a swing, the grin she'd worn faded. Her nose twitched, face scrunching up at the strange scent. It reminded Morgan of...sewage maybe?

"Drat, hopefully mine toilet hath not backed up as I retire under my bed. Wait," Morgan sniffed that air, turning to follow the rank scent. And saw the woods. Morgan could only think one thing to stay: "Oh."

She then kicked a can away, its bounce starting with a clank upon asphalt before softening onto moss. "Hath preferred to have shit in my apartment. Well," Morgan eyed the "streets", the warehouse, and darted her head back and forth. She opted to run for the warehouse and its fire. Who knows, maybe she could armor herself with dream fire.

She'd run after that. Or, "Or could sic the rancor on ye if ye attack" she sing-songed over her shoulder towards the new landscape and whatever was creating it to visit her.

[Cayce]

Within the beautifully ornamented gazebo crafted by Bronson , the pungent odor of fetid water and rot grew stronger, and then autumn leaves spilled into the gazebo, a small gale of brilliantly colored pieces of ochre and orange, gold and brown, dancing through the air in a ballet of autumnal brilliance.

A key appeared, somehow affixed to the back of a large, gilded leaf, and it floated gently down to rest upon Bronson's table, easily within reach...

In the world of clouds, vines began to suddenly sprout, and from the vines came a small patch of pumpkins, yet one more special than all the others. A door was carved into the pumpkins side, and phantom candle flame shown out through the door's outline, flickering as though, somehow, to beckon Scamp ( Jman ) forward...

Across the porch of Mhairi Ankaa came rolling a glass orb the size of a fist. It was a seamless thing, a perfect sphere of clear glass, and inside the orb was a captured vision. Waves thrashed against the side of the glass as a miniature ocean storm battered at its prison, and very faintly, somehow heard above the muted sounds of thunder and surging waters, came the phantom cry of a young girl...

Meanwhile, upon the rooftop that housed Morgan Bellanar ( Origins ), she caught a vision out of the corner of her eye. A scaled thing, slithering away. A flicker of a scaled tail disappearing down a fire escape. Yet in the things wake were leaves. Rotten, spoiled leaves, reminding the Archivist no longer of sewage, but of the last person to hold her courtly title...

[Morgan Bellanar]

"Ava?" It took the new Scrivener a moment to process that smell without her fear tinting it. When she did, "AVA!!!"

The lightsaber was dropped along with fear for her own well being. Morgan was a coward by her own admission. She had also admitted to feeling greater fear of a friend dying then of her own death. And here was a sign that a badly hurt friend wasn't going to die. Morgan needed to know more.

She sprinted after the tail, a twitch of disdain running through her at the thought of using a mere fire escape. But she had to follow, "Ava! I did nay mean to scare or threaten thee! Are ye alright?! Tis it ye, where art ye?! Prithee please return! Ava!" was what she shouted as she tried to follow what she thought could be Ava. She felt a lot of guilt for making the threats too. Which was probably why she kept talking: "I shant sic a rancor on ye! Please come back!"

Much like a certain toucan, Morgan was following her nose to try and pursue Ava Campbell. The intrusion she felt made her confident that this wasn't a guilt induced manifestation. Morgan was fairly sure her mind wasn't crafty enough to have faked an intrusion before manifesting a false Ava Campbell to hit her with a guilt trip. She'd even forgot that her athletic body did not guarantee she'd be able to catch someone in a dream.

[Mhairi Ankaa]

When she tensed, waiting for the interloper's next move, she wasn't expecting a perfect sphere of clear glass.

Tentatively Mhairi stands, and steps away from her porch. The vision held within mesmerized Mhairi's fell-flames, the waves, the storm, the muted thunder mimicking the thunderous sounds rumbling off in the distance.

Mhairi moved closer, crouching low to the ground, painted toes curling into the wet earth beneath them, but it wasn't until she heard that phantom cry that a drippy fingered hand reached forward to grasp the orb. The wisp might be wary, but if someone was reaching out for help, then Mhairi would help. And if not. If this was some sort of a trap...well Mhairi would deal with it then.

[Benji]

Fine.

Bronson dismisses the scene, letting it dissolve back into his subconscious save for himself, his chair, the phonograph, the table and his... gift. That project was ruined, even if he could scrub it of every trace of intrusion he's never forget what happened. Forgiveness wasn't in his nature. That sort of thing would just poison and ruin it, like mixing the wrong paint in when trying to make a masterpiece.

Fine.

Bronson stood with fluid grace and seized his phonograph, hurling it away in a rage. It exploded like spun glass against empty air a few feet away, shards drifting lazily in the air. It wasn't enough. He seized his bronze chair and swung it around to shatter it against the nothing of dreamstuff, leaving the wreckage of chair and phonograph to tumble and whirl around each other in silence broken only by his breathing.

Fine!

Between one thought and the next Bronson was clothed in green, somewhere between leather armor and haute couture. Someone invades his dreams? A shard of bronze chair wreckage bolts to him and settles neatly in a sheathe at his belt as a dagger with a leaf shaped bronze blade. Someone wanted to see if this rose had thorns? He'd cut out their fucking eyes.

He seized the key, prepared for what he expected to come next.