eswareinmal | (no subject)

Characters: Snow
Open? Yes!
Where: Where Gretel's beanstalk is
When: Rebirth's Height 6, late afternoon
What: Snow is starting to realize that the world she's in is not a hallucination. And is attempting to be sober.
Warnings: Snow is her own drunken warning.

The transition from "real" world to the storybook world of the kingdom had not been an easy one for Snow. Things like this were just hallucinations, after all. Castles and princesses and thorns and elves and horses had stubbornly refused to fade, leaving behind the deep fear that she had truly fallen to madness this time.

But if she was mad, then it was a solid madness. The beanstalk her hands rested on was solid. Bloomed from her hallucination into something she could touch. The texture under her fingers, the feel of pulpy chlorophyl as she dug her short crooked nails into it's green flesh, the oh so slight give to the thick trunk as she pushed against it...

She'd dreamed this. Right out of the bottle it had come to her and wouldn't leave her alone, drunk or sober. And she was sober right then, or as close as she ever came to it.

But how.... How could this be...?

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Gretel had taken a break from staring at the stalk to try to find spell ingredients. But curiosity had brought her back to the plant, if only to see if it had changed in the hours she had been away. She stopped her trek towards it when she noticed someone already there, watching to see what the woman would do.

Snow turned after a moment as if finally becoming aware of the girl's presence. She blinked twice. "Oh... you..."

"Me?" Gretel came a little closer.

"You were there, weren't you? With this?" Snow asked, looking back over at the beanstalk. "And you're here with it now..."

"Yeah." Gretel frowned. "How did you know?"

"I saw it... I didn't think it was real, it's never real unless it hurts." Snow shook her head slightly, looking up at the sky. "It'll start to fall soon, you know..." There was a distant sound to her voice as she spoke before she blinked, putting a hand to her for head as she looked back down.

Gretel frowned, confused. "I don't get it."

Snow's laugh was humourless and almost drunken. "Neither do I," she sighed.

Gretel's frown deepened and she stepped back. "You're weird."

"Crazy," Snow corrected.

"Crazy." Gretel repeated, twisting her hands into the folds of her dress. She still stood there, watching and waiting.

Snow was still a long while before giving another deep sigh and sinking to the ground, head in her hands. "Though I wonder how crazy I really am if this world is real..."

"It is real." Gretel replied, tone implying she thought the older woman was just as crazy as she had said.

"Dark Chyld's world wasn't strange as this... werewolves and gods and shadows that spoke all hiding in plain sight... now it's beanstalks and floating women and clouds of light that speak."

"What?" Gretel's confusion began to fuel irritation. "What are you talking about?"

"Things in this world and in the last that weren't quite right. Like my head..."

"You aren't making sense." She insisted. "Werewolves aren't even real."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? My grandson is one..." She gave a very soft laugh. "Grandson... from such a son of mine..." She smiled, entire expression tired. "They hide in the world, like the Shadows and the vampires, so no one knows that they are real. And then you see them and you don't know what's really true any longer..."

Gretel couldn't process all of what the older woman said; it reminded her of the rhymes the Spider-Witch spoke in when she was planning something and that sent jolts of fright down her spine. She tried to hide it with stubbornness and responded in the best way she could. "Nuh-uh."

"You didn't believe in witches either, I'm sure," Snow sighed, leaning back against the beanstalk. "No one ever does."

"How did you know that?"

The woman blinked a few times. "Know what?"

"Know about the witch!" Her voice rose, checks heating up as she became upset.

"Oh... so that was real too...?" Snow blinked again, looking utterly befuddled. She wasn't normally right so much.

"You just said you knew it!" She shouted.

"I say a lot of things.... sometimes they're right. Sometimes they aren't and Dark Chyld gets mad at me. Or they're right and he gets mad. He gets mad a lot...."

Gretel stared at the woman with a mixture of irritation and fear. "Are you a witch?"

A blink. "I don't think so..."

"Then how do you know stuff?" Gretel argued. "Only witches would know stuff they shouldn't."

Snow shook her head. "Witches are full of magic and enchantments and tricking people. They actually know what they're talking about. I never know what I'm talking about, even if I do," she sighed, slumping back against the stalk. "I need a drink..." she half mumbled. "It's too hard being sober."

Gretel's frown deepened; nothing the woman said made sense to the girl. "You shouldn't drink."

"Drinking's the only thing that makes it go away," Snow tried to explain. "When I'm drunk, it doesn't matter what I see or know, because it's all just the drink. If I say something I shouldn't know, it was just a lucky drunken guess."

"But drinking is bad for you. They said so in health class."