eswareinmal | (no subject)

Characters: Shin and anyone asleep
Open? Yep!
Where: the Dreaming
When: Nighttime, RD12
What: Shin goes dream walking.
Warnings: Lots of capitalized Ds

Even in Dreams, Shin was restless. Without the normal background hum of hundreds of Dreamers, the Dreaming felt empty. Hollow.

Far to much like it had when his Dreaming had been sealed.

There were still the doors to the dreams of everyone who was asleep, even if so many of them seemed like cardboard cut outs... It was easy to spot the ones of those who weren't native of the world. They were more real, solid, and he could feel more clearly who was behind them. It was something he had noticed before, back home. The doors to fellow Dreamers were the more vibrant and real, and those who had strong powers were a close second. Idly he drifted through the insubstantial hallway, knocking on some to announce his presence, others just phasing into the dream and looking around. After all, it wasn't as if he expected most people to hear him knocking. They'd have to be aware for that, and he knew for a fact that there were no other Dreamers around and active dreamers were rare.

[[OoC: Feel free to notice Shin entering your characters dream, or to just set up a random dream for him to step into!

Edit: Also, since Shin power allows him to manipulate dreams, let me know if you don't want him to be able to with your character's dream, please!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Since the ball Tatra had the same dream, not every night but most nights. The garden full of tropical plants and flowers stretched on forever beyond the small courtyard, and the band was gone. There was only a small stone table, a set of chairs and a complete tea set.

Tatra sat at one side of the round table and Tarta at the other. Both drank tea, although four cups stood empty around the double tea top. They spoke and laughed and argued, but everything was silent. She always felt as though she was watching herself from a distance.

Needless to say the whole affair was the source of some distress to Tatra and quite unsettling. She missed her sister dearly, and would have given almost anything to hear her laugh, but her subconscious would not grant her even that small favor.

When a stranger walked on the scene, Tatra's smile left her completely and she felt quite suddenly solidly within her own consciousness. Tarta continued talking and laughing in silence, as though nothing had changed, but Tatra turned to watch the stranger approach.

One side effect to having been in so many dreams was that it was easy to pick up traces of what things were from. Maybe it had been some part of the Dream King's role in the past to fix broken dreams, he didn't know. No one really did since it'd been so long since there had been one.

But the urge to reach out and just... smooth away what was bent or broken was very strong.

It was also a little rare to suddenly be the center of the dreamer's attention when he stepped inside and it made him a bit uncomfortable, like he had walked in on something private.

"Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt."

Tatra shook her head somberly and turned back to her sister. Even close enough to read her lips, her mind couldn't register what Tarta might be saying to her. It was like being trapped inside a doll house, where you were allowed to look but not touch. She was barely more a part of the dream itself than he was; merely an observer of the twisted little fantasy world.

"I miss her," she said, as much to herself as to the stranger, as though she were merely thinking out loud. Which, essentially, she was.

"That's why she's here," Shin nodded.

Reaching out, he put a hand on the dream echo of Tarta's shoulder, stilling her movement. "Or at least, your memory of her is here..."

"If I never see her again..." Tatra trailed off miserably. In the waking world she would be all smiles and sweetness, but here in her own mind she could let herself go. She wasn't happy here, and she would never be as long as she couldn't be sure her sister was safe and well.

Shin was quiet a moment. "I think that you will. Even if it's a while, I think.." he trailed off. "No, no I know you will," he corrected. There was a confidence in his tone that hadn't been there before. "There's more to your dream than this place."

She looked up at him with desperate hope in her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you want me to show you? It's not a future set in stone, but something like that is clear enough."

"Can you do that?" She blinked, for the moment surprised out of her revery. Seeing the future was something even the most powerful magic users of her world had difficulty with.

"Kinda," Shin looked a touch embarrassed. "It's a little hard to show, since it spreads out a lot like a fan, because the future shifts all the time, but just to show something like where you are changing, it's not too bad. It's easier to show than to explain."

He held out his hand.

She nodded, still abnormally serious, and placed her hand in his.

"Please."

The tea party faded, leaving the two of them standing in what seemed like nothing. Shin reached out with his free hand, keeping his other around Tatra's as he focused.

After a long, tense moment, trails of images began to spread out from Tatra's feet in a fan like pattern, each thread branching off into two or more until the space before them was filled with them.

"Walk with me," Shin instructed, not letting go of her hand. For a short while, all scenes at their feet were from around Schwanheim, familiar and unfamiliar faces moving by in ways that were hard to see across the threads. But then, like a pattern changing color, a thread would shift, the background of the town vanishing, replaced with something far more fantastic and lush that was familiar to only Tatra until the entire fan had changed.

She followed, stepping delicately over the images through the dream space. She gasped when they reached a scene of Cephiro, then Chizeta. Her friends and her family and her people and her home. It nearly brought a tear to her eye.

"Is this real?"

"As real as anything can be."

She watched the scenes play out all at once, enthralled. If anything seemed coherent it simply blended together in her mind so that while she couldn't say what exactly was happening, she knew it was home, and her heart ached.

"Thank you," she told the stranger, still captured by the images beneath her feet.

Shin smiling, letting the streams fade as he let go of her hand, leaving them back standing in emptiness once again. "Next time you dream... you can hear her voice. Because she'll be waiting back there. So you don't have to be upset when you're dreaming."

She tore her gaze away from the now black emptiness to look him in the eye.

"Who are you?"

"Just a Dreamer," Shin replied with a smile. It was a big understatement, but he wasn't about to go around introducing himself as the King of the Dreaming. Not even back home. ... Not that he ever had to, everyone there always seemed to know who he was already.

"The name's Shin. Shin Tensou."

She smiled, though it didn't hold nearly the enthusiasm it did in the waking world.

"I am Tatra," she introduced herself. "First princess of Chizeta."

"Nice to meet you, Princess Tatra," Shin returned with a small bow of his head.

"And you," she agreed, her smile turning just a bit more genuine.

"I won't forget," she promised as well, although it was a bit hollow.

"Even if you don't, you'll remember it again. You don't truly forget what you've dreamed, it's just hard to remember it when you wake," Shin smiled. "Your dream will remember."