Take my hand....

[yumemi_no_ou]

Characters: Shin and anyone.
Open? Yep
Where: In your dreams
When: GHB 14
What: Shin's playing around with the Dreaming to try and find some of the answers. Or at least something more than he can find in the Waking.
Warnings: Shin will likely god-mod the setting of whatever dream he enters. It's just kinda what he does. Also, purple prose inner monologue. Again, it's what he does :)



There was sometimes a fine line between the Dreaming and the Waking. Like twilight times between day and night where the memories of dreams still lingered even as tired eyes looked forward into the daylight.

It was a tricky state to replicate, but something Shin had been working on ever since he had realized that his soul didn't fit right in his body any more. Walking the Waking world as a Dreamer, bridging the two worlds as only someone who was becoming the Lord of the Dreaming could... it was almost easier than walking while awake in his broken body.

The only trouble was that it was as if he were a ghost, drifting effortlessly through the streets, searching for the echoes of dreams from the houses around him. The pale bubbles of the locals paper-thin dreams were like those from soap, popping as he drifted near, fading at the slightest touch like shadows to the light....

It was frustrating. To go from a world so rich in dreams, where every person who slept had a rich full dream he could walk into, to one where the number of true dreamers were like flowers in a desert....

He smacked away the thin dream of a napping guard out of spite as he drifted by. Surely someone with a soul was asleep...


[[OoC: Anyone sensitive to spirits or whatever, feel free to spot Shin floating around in town. Everyone else, set up a dream and receive a visitor!]]

Comments

[yumemi_no_ou]

It would be. Even as Shin ran beside her, he made sure the creatures dissolved and shifted the fabric of the dream ever so slightly to give Liara more control over it. What she expected and hoped for, she would find.

[shadow_sage]

She pulled up as they came to the landing pad, a shuttle waiting for them to one side, and a view of a city beyond, along with a monster machine larger than some of the building walking through it.

She turned enough to look at Shin, frowning, looking him over. Then she looked back where they had come from, as if expecting something, but clearly not sure exactly what she was looking for. Slowly, she turned back to him, tipping her head to the side.

"You can't run." It was almost an accusation.

[yumemi_no_ou]

"And I shouldn't even be here at all if this was really what it was," Shin agreed with a smile.

[shadow_sage]

"...but it's not," she concluded, turning to look over the city. "Since you are here, I'll hazard a guess that this is a dream, and not the city where I was born. Can you prove that?" She turned back to him, but any terror she might have been feeling was gone, now that there was puzzle before her. That, and the Banshees are gone.

[yumemi_no_ou]

"I just ran and kept up with you and you need more proof than that?" Shin remarked lightly, still all smiles before observing the landscape. Well, the easiest way to do it...

The sky began to shift, all clouds vanishing, leaving behind an unmarred brilliant blue before letters began to form against it, like sky writing: 'Definitely a dream.'

[shadow_sage]

She looked up at the display, and gave a ghost of a smile. "Cute." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Could we...go somewhere else? I'd rather not see this all again." She took a slow breath. "Watching my civilization fall again isn't something I'm thrilled about."

[yumemi_no_ou]

Shin nodded, letting the dream fade around them so that they were floating the the blue sky. "Where too?" he smiled. "Beach? Since there isn't one around here."

[shadow_sage]

She looked at him, and then laughed, softly. "We weren't all that far from one before, in fact. But I don't really care where we go. Did you have somewhere specific in mind?"

[yumemi_no_ou]

"Yeah, I have a place."

The sky slowly dissolved into a field dotted with a few trees. There was a large garden plot with a sprawling two story building that looked like a house that had been added on to behind it, a forest lining the back of the properly.

Shin leaned back against the tall tree behind him, looking down at the worn ground under it with a faint smile before looking over at Liara. "Better?"

[shadow_sage]

She looked around, taking a slow breath. "Much." She shook her head, looking at the house for a moment. "I'm sorry. There is...a lot on my mind." She crossed her arms, rubbing at them as she looked out across the landscape.

"Is this yours? Back home, I mean."

[yumemi_no_ou]

"Yeah, kinda. One of the places that's home, I guess," Shin returned with a smile. "That over there," he gestured over to the building in the distance. "Is Mrs. F's school. The Pathen school for the Unusually Gifted or whatever the official title is. No one calls it that outside of paperwork, so..." he smiled. "Basically a school for kids with powers that no one's figured out how to get a handle on. Or for kids with powers that have no other place to go."

[shadow_sage]

She looked at the building again. "And which were you?" She didn't look at him, studying the school a little more carefully. "How many children were there?" She glanced over at him.

[yumemi_no_ou]

"Neither. Mine was a more complicated case," Shin explained, following her gaze. "And I think there were about 30 of us or so. Or at least there was, everything kinda went crazy for a while."

[shadow_sage]

"It seems like a wonderful place." She turned towards him, crossing her arms. "How many people can control dreams like this?" She waved a hand around. "I've never met a human with anything like this kind of ability before. There are things that aren't dissimilar where I'm from, but nothing quite like it."

[yumemi_no_ou]

"A lot more than you'd think. Most of them are in hiding. Or at least they are back home, dunno how it is anywhere else. It's one of those things that's really easy for other people to take advantage of since it's not one of those abilities you can defend yourself with."

[shadow_sage]

Liara looked away; she was, after all, planning on using Shin, herself, at least to an extent. She managed a little laugh, however. "I can see how it would be difficult." She shook her head. "You can make nightmares, but once they wake up, nightmares don't mean so much."

[yumemi_no_ou]

"And most of them can't drag people into sleep either. Heck, some of them can't even change the dreams of others, just walk them and observe. Most of them even..." he sighed.

[shadow_sage]

Liara studied him for a moment, and then sat down on the ground, leaning her chin on her knees. "All good reasons to keep yourself hidden, I would think." Closing her eyes, she sat there in silence for a moment. "Do you miss them?"

[yumemi_no_ou]

"Like a drowning man misses air," Shin sighed deeply. "Drives me crazy sometimes in this place. I can't find anyone anymore, they're all too far away, which shouldn't be possible. I'm the friggin' king of the Dreaming, I can reach where no one else can and here I am in this stupid place cut off from everyone." He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at it slightly. "I swear to god, if something happens to any of them when I'm stuck here I will make sure none of these idiots ever sleeps again."

[shadow_sage]

Liara was quiet for a minute, then smiled. It wasn't exactly a friendly smile, either. She fixed him with a look that was impossible to read. "You're not the only one." She shook her head, making fists with her hands. "And after we're kidnapped to babysit, they won't even speak openly of anything that might help us fight their war." Letting out a heavy breath, she turned her back to Shin. "I may not be a King, but that doesn't doesn't mean I'm not responisble for lives, either. We'll find a way home. I promise."

[yumemi_no_ou]

"It's not like a real kingship or anything..." Shin looked rather self-conscious. "It's just... it's kinda..." he sighed deeply, running his hand through his hair again. "They're my people, you know?"

They were his people and he had never been important to that many people before.

He sighed again, shifting to look at her properly. "So how do we do it? Get rid of those stupid thorns or whatever?" he kicked at a small stone. "Should be what we need to get our ticket home, right?"

[shadow_sage]

"In the last few weeks, I haven't seen any other options. That's not saying it isn't there," she said, shrugging. "But how long do I wait before everyone back home is gone?" She took a slow breath, looked around, and then faced him again, face hard. "We were brought here to fight a war. So it's about time we started, don't you think?"

She considered him for a moment, and then gave a ghost of a smile. "You're going to have a bit of a challenge, I'm afraid. I need you to get inside their dreams, however shallow they might be. You're the King of Dreams, so I'm sure you can figure out how. Because I want them to dream all about those thorns. The King, his guards, anyone you can find and slip into. Burn their houses down every night; the forest just went up in flame, so it's obviously a concern they should have. Make the walls grow thorns, trap them in the city. Anything you can think of. There's nothing more important, I think, than making them fear the thorns, not merely worry a little bit. I want them talking about the thorns over drinks in the tavern, and whenever they take a break while they work, and at night, after dinner, with their families."

Her smile grew a little more cold. "Most importantly, I want them talking about the thorns to the king, loudly, every single day. I want his guards to shake on their patrols, expecting thorns to snatch them while they're alone. In the meantime, I'll see if I can get some things in place to use that fear to our advantage. Because the King's going to have to give us what we need if everyone thinks the thorns are in their backyard, not off somewhere past the horizon." She bit her lip, thinking for a moment, but didn't press on, at least not right away.

[yumemi_no_ou]

Shin was quiet a moment, prodding his foot at the ground. "Put the fear of god into them, you mean?" he finally observed, voice betraying how unsure he was of the whole thing. Could he even affect soap bubble dreams....? All they did was pop when he went near...

And somehow....

It wasn't like it was with the alliance, these were just idiots, not some grand conspiracy that was harming people he cared about!

"I'll see what I can do with the king. He's the one who'd we really need to work on, right?"

[shadow_sage]

Liara closed her eyes, and took a slow breath. "Until the people are worried, no one will do anything more to help us." She shook her head. "Worlds were being killed, and the council didn't throw everything it had into fighting the reapers. It will probably cost my people almost everything." She looked back at him, but if one expected sorrow, it was conspicuously absent. Liara was, after all, the Shadow Broker, and that meant that she was one of the most influential people in the entire galaxy. That was what she showed Shin, now.

"I want to scare them, because they need to be scared. If they're scared, then maybe we can make sure they don't get hurt. But unless you've learned something I haven't, we can't stop the thorns, doing what we've been doing, and every day, they're coming closer."

She turned away from him again. "And if we can't stop them, we won't have to worry about home anymore, because we'll suffer the same as everyone in this world."

[yumemi_no_ou]

Shin continued to kick at the spot of dirt. "I'll see what I can do... but I don't know if there's enough dream in those people for me to do anything with...."