Event | Landfall | Dreaming

[ironwood]

Characters: Any and every!
Date: August 10th - 31, 2013
Location: The realm of Dreaming as accessed via Sinbrilee
Situation: Dreaming is but one of the three realms and here characters are subject to their fanciful thoughts.
Warnings/Rating: Please place content warnings in subject headers!

Sinbrilee | Dreaming | Death

Life. Dreaming. Death. Three realms overlaid upon one another and yet each distinctly their own. They dwell in Life and do so live upon the back of the great turtle as those of Sinbrilee did upon the shell of his sister. However, there stand numerous arches of marble throughout the ruined city that are inlaid with runes beyond understanding. Those that live and breathe which step through those whose runes glow with faint, iridescent light tread instead into the realm of Dreaming.

Here, there exists no single defining characteristic beyond the visitor's imagination. The landscape sculpts to their individual thoughts, the events to their dreams. From a drab gray nothing to the most brilliant of displays, the senses perceive all that they wish to perceive for all that nothing here truly exists. This far from Tu Vishan, the ability to shape their surroundings is all they have, for Sinbrilee's Dreaming does not have the energy to sustain powers, only the bodies of those that dwell here.

Should two parties near, then the Mesh begins. Dreams, you see, not only can be shared, but they strive to be. These visions sculpted into reality reach out for one another and blend. They begin an exchange akin to a linking of the minds, within which one visitor can learn the other's deepest thoughts. Their limitation is but compatibility, for two minds that cannot flow upon the same current cannot hold the Mesh.

Happiness or loss, the landscape and events play out memories and fancies with a most convincing air. The mood rises and falls with the tide of the visitor's mind, detached as they are from the soothing influence of a great turtle's mind. Nothing here, however, is real; 'constructs' simply fade if taken through the archways and even the greatest scientific minds or tools will reveal nothing of its source. This is an ancient magic of an ancient realm, long practised in concealing itself from any prying.

Note: Due to the fluid and highly individual nature of Dreaming, no official subheaders will be provided in the comments of this post. Feel free to post and thread however you like, so long as the rules of Dreaming are adhered to.

Comments

[depicted]

"I'm not that interested," Dorian murmurs in reply. He walks through the atrocities before them without flinching. He will never grow to really like sights like these, but he can more than endure them. It would be foolish if he couldn't.

[leviathaned]

"And I swore that off when I left London, but my point remains the same."

The door on the far side of the room opens to a rainy parlor, dark from the thunderstorm outside, and three identical doors. Sei heaves a sighs, and idly flexes the fingers of his injured arm before picking a roll of bandages off the table to...deal with that.

"...Though at this point I sort of feel like I should apologize for my subconscious' flare for the melodramatic."

[depicted]

"What, the thunderstorm?" Dorian leans back against one of the walls and half-smiles. "It's all right. Usually, the most disastrous days of my life were good weather. It's nice to have a thunderstorm on a tempestuous day for once."

[leviathaned]

"It wasn't even raining while I was here, either. December in New Orleans isn't exactly thunderstorm season." Sei shrugs, and continues to awkwardly wrap the arm, which is already starting to blister.

"I miss the snow, though. The snow and sleet and the fog, weird as it sounds."

[depicted]

Dorian's instinct is to offer to help Sei, but he holds back. He expects to get rebuffed. "You could try willing it in. That degree of control isn't too difficult."

[leviathaned]

"...It feels strange. I can't change the weather as easily as I could....even here, I only feel it bend, I can't touch it..." He looks out the window, eyes faraway, before someone comes through the far door, a tall man who is blond and unearthly beautiful, with chilling ice blue eyes.

His voice is like smooth velvet chocolate with a buried razor, and Sei has frozen stock still without moving. The family resemblance is uncanny.

"Of course not. After all, you had to have that stripped from here or you'd never stay to fight somewhere you couldn't spite me, isn't that right, Seiryuu?" There is frost filling the lounge as fast as old cigarette smoke, but it's not enough to stop Lucifer's chuckling. "Oh, come now...even in your dreams, is this any way to greet me? Who's your pretty little friend?"

[depicted]

Even Dorian, single-minded and oblivious as he so often is, cannot mistake Sei's reaction. Dorian isn't twenty anymore. A beautiful voice can't send him spinning in a moment like this.

"Leaving. As is Sei." Dorian takes a step to be between Sei and the other man, facing Sei. Wanting Sei to focus on him. "Aren't we."

[leviathaned]

Sei looks down, numbly and unseeing, and his appearance is nothing short of unhuman. His eyes flare in his rage and glyphs start to crack and glow across his head, and for a single moment it seems as though he will simply tear through Dorian and his deal on the way to his father.

And then he closes his eyes and raises his hands over his ears, trying to breathe, trying to not hear Lucifer's delighted laughter as he comes over and drapes across Dorian's shoulders.

"Oh, you can leave his head all you want, but there's no getting away from me, hon. I'm in your bones and blood...pretty literally, in his case, but it's just the same for you, isn't it, pretty little Mister Gray?"

[depicted]

Dorian wants to reach out for Sei and calm him. He wants to get them both out of this. And then there's something on his shoulders, and Dorian, who has never shied away from physical touch, feels cold.

"You're not my devil." Dorian shuts his eyes. Breathe, focus. When he opens them again, he pretends he can't feel the presence at his back. He focuses only on Sei. "You said you'd lead the way out. So lead."

[leviathaned]

"No, you're doing pretty good for yourself, aren't you?" Sei snaps his eyes open, ice brilliant and gleaming, and shoves a hand in Lucifer's face, pries him off and shoves him back before grabbing Dorian's wrist and ripping a hole straight through the wall and pulling him through it.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, and it is immediately apparent why. It is Outside, and it is horrifying. All of reality, all possible ones, spin and twist through Sei's memory, and lurking in the corners of vision are dark things that defy the only rule this place is built on; nothing exists outside the Shards.

It is only a second to the gate that Sei forcibly dreamed up, and now he stands in a Parisian apartment, full of the smell of bourbon and smoke and amaranth, and he lets go and heads for the stairs, down and out the front door that would, he hopes, be the gate out.

[depicted]

Sei doesn't stop so Dorian can't, and so, like half the other horrors he has endured, he never has the time to process it. He follows down the stairs and past the scents that remind him of another time with better friends long dead. (Somewhere, the Fitzgeralds are bickering with Hemingway.)

[leviathaned]

"Stop that, wrong apartments." Sei corrects him without time to think, steps through the arch and then hisses sharply as he comes to a stop. His arm is still burnt and still hurts and he stares down at it, wide-eyed.

"...Son of a bitch. It really did..." He sinks slowly to his knees, suddenly exhausted, and sighs.

"...I should have known he'd turn up. Funny how he's so good at that now."

[depicted]

"You're the one who took over my house in Kew," Dorian retorts. And then they're out.

Dorian frowns as he looks at the collapsing man in front of him. Wounded for real, but the bandages are gone. Nothing real out of Dreaming except the pain.

Instead of answering, Dorian says, "There are gems around the agora that help speed healing if they're put on a wound. They aren't especially difficult to find."

[leviathaned]

"I'm not sure it'll work. Nothing seems to heal...this kind of damage any faster. I can't even heal it on purpose."

Dorian's being helpful, and Sei's first thought is to wonder what he wants. He'd tried to get him away from his father, too, but that was out of spite, wasn't it? But Dorian has no reason to be kind to Sei, not without something else driving it (and, Sei notes, it's not like he's given Dorian much reason to be kind), and he is wary when he looks up, the too-bright light behind his eyes gone as if it never were.

"...The information's appreciated, but unfortunately they're as useless to me as they are to you, although for different reasons."

[depicted]

Dorian has been doubted for a long time. He doesn't let it get to him now. He just sighs and tucks unruly, youthful curls behind his ear. "Are you going to be able to get where you need to on your own?"

[leviathaned]

"Never am. I'll live anyway." He picks himself up carefully, teeth gritted against the pain, and tilts his head to one side, as if listening to something he still can't here.

[depicted]

"Right, then. See you." Dorian lifts a hand to wave him goodbye.

[leviathaned]

"Yeah, sure." He doesn't bother to stop him, just picks himself up and starts to walk away.