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

[una_persson]

Jagged hands off his pipe to one of the nearby robotic footmen and clasps Dorian's hand warmly between his own. "Please tell me you're not so flattering to everyone you meet; even if you are, I do enjoy a good lie. Una, where did you find this delightful young person? And why have you been hiding him from me?"

Una bites her lip, trying not to laugh out loud. She should have realised that Dorian would be charmed by Jagged—even by a memory of Jagged, for Una's own earliest memories of him are of a man of great charm and greater knowledge. "I'm sorry, Jagged; I got him here as fast as I could, I promise you. Is that a Schnabel recording I hear?"

Jagged hasn't taken his eyes from Dorian's face, not once. "What? Oh yes, yes; if that is to your taste, Mr Gray, I have many more in my collection. Won't you two join me for tea?"

"We'd be delighted, Jagged." She glances over at Dorian, quite certain that he feels the same way.

[depicted]

Dorian is oblivious to Una's amusement, too enraptured by this charming man to even care that the smile on his lips and the soft laugh that escapes him both make his feelings at the moment very, very obvious. "It's not my habit to sing praises higher than is deserved—well, I don't like to make a habit of anything. But I would gladly make an exception if the habit was your company."

It's the steadiness of the gaze, probably, that has Dorian glancing down with flushed cheeks that definitely don't match his chronological age, though it sits perfectly well on his boyish face. "I would like that very much."

Give him a minute to remember someone else is in the room, Una, please. Lord Jagged has such a lovely voice.

[una_persson]

Jagged fairly beams and Una actually has to look away to hide her hilarity. She also can't help feeling a little sad—if only this were the real Jagged. Silently she promises Dorian that whenever they're finally free of Keeliai, she'll track him down and drag him through the megaflow to the real End of Time.

Jagged, meanwhile, offers his arm to Dorian as if he were a young lady. Gender roles are mutable here, after all. "Come along, then. Now, Mr Gray, from your speech and manner, I should place you ... hmm, early twentieth century, perhaps? How fortunate you are to have Mrs Persson as your guide—she is my finest student, though she surpassed my own skills long ago. Oh, don't look like that, Una, false modesty doesn't become you..."

He continues in this vein as he escorts them upstairs to a sitting-room with a fine view over the multicoloured plain. With a touch to one of his power rings, there's suddenly a lavish high tea spread—scones, clotted cream, sandwiches, sweets...

Ignore the fact that the cucumber comes in multiple colours and some of the fruit-tarts feature fruit that most earth humans won't have ever seen. It's all delicious.

[depicted]

"Ah, well, I've spent most of my life in the early twentieth, but I was born in the nineteenth. Una has been wonderful to me." Dorian glances over at her, and his smile knows. This is a dream, and she is letting him have a part in it. "Too kind, perhaps."

Of course, Dorian listens attentively to every word that comes from that beautiful voice, and he is charmed by that demonstration. Everything about the place that is new to him is a delight. "What treasures the end of history is keeping away from the rest of us linear individuals."

[una_persson]

That smile actually hurts Una's heart a little, and her own answering smile is just a fraction late. "What can I say? I'm generous with people I like." Said ever so lightly, of course.

The concerto ends and gives way to the pop and crackle of a turning record; Lord Jagged rises and goes to a gramophone in the corner of the room. There is suddenly in his hands another record, which he places on the machine and sets it to playing with a few turns of a crank. A Chopin mazurka, now.

"Yet without linear history this place would not be what it is," Jagged said. "We here reap the benefits of millennia of understanding, art, and science, though admittedly some of my fellows are a bit ... confused, let us say. Have you met Werther de Goethe yet?"

[depicted]

What amuses and pleases Dorian the most is that Jagged could surely switched the record in the gramophone as easily as anything. It's unnecessary to go through all of this. So it makes each action he chooses into a work of beauty.

"I have not, but I have heard of him." This time, when he looks over to Una, there is just amusement. "His name seems to say it all."

[una_persson]

Lord Jagged could summon an entire troupe of musicians if he so desired, or simply willed the music to appear out of nowhere. The gramophone is a current favourite affectation, and he wears it with a flourish.

"He is a remarkable fellow, our Werther," Jagged says. "He was born naturally, you know, very rare these days. Jherek Carnelian is another such. At any rate, he is quite fond of certain old-fashioned gestures. He had a most diverting adventure with Mistress Christia recently; have I told you about it, Una?"

Una knows exactly what story he means—it is, after all, a revisitation of her own memories, and she's dined out on that particular tale more than once, in duller eras. But Dorian won't have heard it. "Do go on, Lord Jagged. A seduction? A romance?"

"Both. Quite extraordinary. Werther, you see, was feeling quite inconsolable about the absence of any ... hmm, how shall we put it? The absence of Death, I suppose, the absence of what we might call Sin—"

He went on from there, telling of how Mistress Christia had arranged for an exceptional drama to appeal to Werther's deeply romantic nature, creating a scenario in which the Last Romantic must needs fall in love, and suffer for it, and punish himself in the most extreme fashion.

"—he was resurrected, of course, and everyone congratulated both him and Christia on their marvellous performances. He has been unusually quiet on the matter, however. He is far too polite to say that he is anything but satisfied by the experience—and Christia is, justifiably, very pleased with her own handiwork—but there is a new seriousness to the fellow; most fascinating. We shall see if it lasts."

[depicted]

It is a ridiculous, fantastical story; to hear it in Lord Jagged's words and voice seemed to turn it into some strange resurrection of stories he used to know, like something out of The Savoy but transposed over centuries. He laughs at passions that are familiar to him, and every now and then he frowns at some transgression that even he would think too much. Of course, he is still as smitten with Lord Jagged as he was on first meeting him, so if there are failings, he ignores them, and Una is an anchor, a promise that someone here is on his side. The tale is so bizarre he forgets this dream's unreality. He wonders if these people are truly the ideal Harry spoken of. He wonders if they have realized their natures perfectly.

'—but there is a new seriousness to the fellow; most fascinating,' Jagged says, and for just a moment Dorian is shaken by the impression of Lord Henry Wotton, cigarette in hand and in recline, as he turns careless words through the smoke and vivisects those around him to see their effect.

This is a world, Dorian realizes, where everyone is responsible for all they are, but consequences don't exist.

Dorian ignores his jarred stomach to find the moment they had been in. "Silence may be evidence of his emotions' Reality—as he would put it." He resumes the weightless brightness that dominates these scenes. "Perhaps he is truly altered. What do you think, Una? Cheating is permitted."

[una_persson]

Una knows the story well, of course—she has even read the version of it that will be published in a collection of stories in another time-stream, in another age. And so while she seems to be listening to Jagged, she is really watching Dorian—seeing where he laughs and where he frowns (and she has to admit, Christia's decision to appear as a girl of fourteen has always troubled her, even if she understands how it was meant to elicit the greatest possible anguish from Werther). As Jagged's tale winds to a close, she thinks she sees an odd expression pass across Dorian's face, one that she can't quite interpret, but which she suspects indicates some deep perturbation, touching deeply on some hidden aspect of his psyche.

But when he addresses her, she laughs brightly, as if she hadn't been examining every shift of expression, and takes a sip of her tea.

"In truth? I think he may well be altered, though I think he won't understand it himself, and may not even truly perceive it. Werther's looking-glass has always been and ever shall be a Claude glass. Nevertheless, I can only imagine such an adventure has changed him. No one can remain unchanged by the experience of confronting death and believing it to be final. But it may be a very long time before he realises the nature of the alteration."

Jagged chuckles. "Mrs Persson understands us well," he says. He sets down his tea-cup. "However, my dear lady, I should say that your assessment is one that may be generally applied! Who amongst us truly recognises that moment when our souls have truly altered? It is a change in the pattern of our lives that only becomes clear when we can at last step back and see where the colours shifted."

There's a flicker of Una's grey eyes in Dorian's direction as she realises, whilst Jagged is in full flow, exactly what he is saying, and to whom. Oh damn. She hadn't intended the conversation to bend that way, not at all.

[depicted]

And Dorian laughs.

Dorian can feel her gaze on him in that moment, but it doesn't burn or make him feel like a watched wild creature. Even now, there is something about Una Persson's grey eyes that reassures him. Grey is for storm clouds and grey is for stone, Dorian knows which suits him; in Una, the best aspects of each meet.

Still, he can't answer immediately. Dorian touches his fingers to Una's arm, only briefly, and for her, the corners of his lips lift. Then Dorian swallows to clear the dryness of his throat, and he turns back to this man whose dream reminds him so much of Lord Henry that Dorian can't help but wonder how much he himself is feeding the dream.

"You're right. To know oneself in such a manner—it is an uncommon curse. As for myself—" and when he pauses then he sends Una a smile that almost teases "—as for me, well, I say let Werther have his Claude glass. Some people like the picturesque, and maybe that is what his soul looks like. Perhaps he is a Romantic landscape in this very chaotic gallery. Perhaps, if you removed the mask of Werther's sorrows, you would find it reveals nothing more or less than what you pulled away." He lifts his teacup in an easy salute. "I'd hazard it's a consistency that he has over all three of us here, wouldn't you agree?"

[una_persson]

At that touch to her arm, Una releases a breath that she was unaware she was holding.

Jagged, for his part, laughs and extends his hand in a gesture of assent. "A wise man once said, did he not, that man is least himself when he talks in his own person—'Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth'. And you may very well be correct about the Last Romantic, and I have no doubt that he would be flattered by your perceptiveness." He inclines his head slightly. "Ah, I feel I have monopolised the conversation terribly. And there are so many other pleasures to sample here at the End of Time, many far less verbal, as well."

Una knows Jagged well enough to know that he's offering exactly what one might think he is—he is as liberal with his pleasures as anyone in this era—as well as anything else that one might like, even something as innocent and simple as a joy-ride in his swan-shaped air-car. (And apparently in this dream he has not yet married the Iron Orchid, though that wouldn't stop him either—he'd just invite her along as well.) This is all familiar ground to her, and so she will follow where Dorian wishes to lead. "Anything you like, Dorian," she says.

[depicted]

Dorian lifts his eyebrows a fraction and glances to Una, his astrolabe in these strange waters, before he smiles and says, "Anything new, then—anything I haven't experienced before. As I have no idea what that might be, and all the better for that, I am in your hands."

[una_persson]

Jagged considers a moment, and then he rises, extending a hand to Dorian. "Come along then, Mr Gray," he says. "Let us ascend to the roof and I shall take you and Mrs Persson on a tour of this land. You shall meet Werther himself, and Mistress Christia, and the Duke of Queens, and Bishop Castle—and we shall see what novelties their desmenes hold. I am sure the End of Time will hold at least one experience that you may count as new."

"An exemplary host as ever, Jagged," Una replies with a smile. The dream feels so steady, so solid, that it's as if she were there, and she hopes that it will sustain long enough that Dorian will find those new adventures that he craves.

[depicted]

Dorian stands and takes Jagged's hand—Jagged is very charming, no amount of realizations will ever ruin that—and agrees, "From what I've heard of this cast of characters, I look forward very much to meeting them." He hesitates then, with a look that is only convincing because of Basil's artistry. "But—nothing of the menageries? That territory is familiar." Familiar as he wishes it were not. Even so, he will be grateful to Una for a long time for this indulgence.

[una_persson]

"You know I'm none too fond of the menageries myself," Una interjects, and Jagged inclines his head gracefully in acknowledgement.

"Of course, my dear; we shall be quite sure to avoid that. Well then! Come along; I promise you an exceptional experience."

And with that he leads them to the roof of Castle Canaria, and the jewelled swan air-car.