eswareinmal | Action: but you never tire of dreams

Characters: Any willing dreamers
Open? Yes
Where: In your minds
When: After the party
What: Part two of the dream plot!
Warnings:

The party went on, with the beast's head on display. A proud, twisted thing. Behind false ruby eyes, it waited. And as the music became slower and the wine less plentiful, it waited still.

Those who had gazed upon it at the ball. Those who had seen it once living in the forest. All heroes who dared to look upon its face and dream still that they would be able to live another day...

There are all sorts of ways of living. In waking. In sleep. Perhaps, now, they would find one in between.

(ooc: Feel free to keep tagging into the party post! Once your characters go home and go to sleep of their own accord, that is when the dreaming will begin. Remember, it is up to you to set up what kind of world your character is trapped in and how best to help them. Plotting post is here, make use of it!

The beast's power will wane once the bulk of the dreamers have escaped his curse. If your character was not at the party but you still want to involve them in the dream plot, that is fine! They can either help get people out or have seen the beast wandering in the woods before it was killed and have caught its attention that way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They were delicious.

He didn't bother to think about how late the black berries had survived into the winter frost. What mattered was that they were technically on his property and that they tasted fantastic.

The sky had been the color of steel when an antler-free James Walter went fence walking. He'd found the berries and for a short time, thought he'd been imagining them. Then he tasted one. And five more. Nobody was around to bother him so he was alone with his thoughts.

Or almost alone.

A dark horse on the other side of the fence seemed to have its ears trained on him.

And the horse seemed to have a rider, although a rider it seemed to mistrust and one, judging by its nervous fidgeting, that it would throw at the first opportunity.

That was suspicious enough. Giles was normally good with horses.

He pushed back the hood of the cloak he'd been given and stared around at the landscape, frowning as he tried to hold on to himself, to what he suspected, to the knowledge that things weren't right. It was all he had.

"...always hated snow."

Then he noticed James, on the other side of the fence, almost hidden by the bushes and his lack of antlers. And, without the antlers, Giles finds himself without recognition.

"I know you..."

James almost sucked a blackberry up his nose when Giles's voice invaded the scene. He coughed and spluttered and leaned around the bush to stare at the man on horseback. He froze with juice dripping off his face the same way a kid might freeze with his hand in the cookie jar.

Did these bushes belong to him?

The 'technically' in technically belonging to James was more or less 'I can't see anybody's house from here so neener-neener.'

JW swallowed hard and forced a toothy grin. "Errrr, afternoon...mornin...ish." He squinted skyward. It was hard to tell. "Hi there."

"Good..." Giles squints up at the sky, and after a few seconds he shrugs. "Yes." Cautiously, very cautiously, he makes to get down from his horse.

"Are you supposed to..." The horse cuts him off at the last minute by neatly sidestepping, ensuring that Giles loses his footing and falls flat onto his back in the snow.

"Blasted thing."

JW wiped his mouth off on a sleeve and leaned across the fence to make up some bullshit story about why he was so far out in the backwoods when Giles just kind of...flopped onto the ground like half a sandwich. It was sudden and unexpected and for a second, James stared at him and let it sink in.

Then he burst out laughing without shame.

"I'm glad you're amused," Giles grumbles from his sprawled position on the snow. Even the horse seems to be laughing at him as the ex-Watcher gets back to his feet, dusting himself off with as much dignity as he can salvage.

"What are you doing here, anyway?"

"What am I doing here? I live out here. What are you doing here?"

You...the ghost guy. It struck him then that he had met Giles before. That he didn't belong in the Hawksaw back country. That he was somewhat familiar with him. His brows peaked in confusion. That didn't make any sense at all! The grin finally fell off his face as he stared at the ex-horseman like a startled buck.

"I haven't the faintest idea, actually." After an internal debate, Giles decides to leave the horse where it is. Let it run off and get eaten by a mountain lion if it wants to. "I take it you don't get visitors out here very often, then? You seem easily startled, for someone in their home environment."

He draws a bit nearer to the fence, confident enough that a wizard who's less of a wizard than him is probably going to need a bit of a run up to actually attack him. Besides, there's a fence in the way. "If you don't mind my saying so, of course."

JW takes a step away from the fence once Giles reaches it. He was still trying to work this all out in his head. Was it a hallucination? Had the berries gone off? Had...he time traveled again?

God, he hoped not.

"I aint startled." He showed his teeth when he spoke. "I've seen you before."

Action: but you never tire of dreams

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