ph_logs | January Event - Lost in Dreamland

January Event - Lost in Dreamland

**Plain text version here.

Lost in Dreamland

Bedtime Story

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: Unreality, dream logic. Mind the CWs in individual threads, as they will vary! }

It is no secret that in the Emerald Isles, winter and sleep have a deep connection. To some extent, this is true everywhere. The whole world seems to fall asleep under the blanket of snow. Plants recede back into the ground, trees stand leafless and slumbering till spring, animals hibernate. Nights are longer. But the local folklore intensifies this, as Mortanne presides over Winter and the Beyond.

As the tales go, the Beyond is the realm of souls, the place where the essence of a person goes when it separates from their body. And while this primarily refers to death, it can also refer to the half-step between living and dying--- the unconscious mind. Sleep, and moreover, dreaming. And thus, winter and dreams have always been kindred spirits. Connected through their ties to Mother Mortanne and to a hushed and sleeping world.

Perhaps it is for this reason that when you go to sleep on the night of January 19th, 16:55, it is a deeper, more consuming sleep than you’ve ever felt. One that swallows you whole, dragging you down, and down, and down, into a sunken place that is deeper and more terrifying than dreams.

By the time you think to feel afraid, it is already too late to jolt yourself awake.

LULLABY

Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me

You wake. Or do you? It feels a bit like waking, and yet, it does not. It is similar enough to waking that one might believe it to be so. You feel ground beneath your feet, or perhaps a bed beneath your back. Or something. You feel… something. It isn’t like waking. But it’s a little bit like waking. Perhaps it is not. But perhaps it is as close as you are able to get. Let’s try this again.

You “wake.” Your mind solidifies and reality defines its shape around you. Your eyes focus and you become aware. What are you aware of?

Whatever it is, it isn’t good. Perhaps it seems good at first, but it is not. Wherever you are, only horrors await you here, pulled straight from your own mind. Or the minds of others.

Move. You must move. The dream is a landscape. You must traverse nightmares to escape. Seek other dreamers, and flee. To the center, to safety in false daydreams. To the underground, where the Necropolis will conceal you. To the edges, where you can feel your consciousness break free of this sunken sleep and return to the world of hard objects and light. But you cannot stay here. Gods help you if you stay here.

[ Your nightmare can look however you desire. Laws of reality and physics do not apply. Fuse them, reshape them, choose your flavor. Be liberal with content warnings and respect sensitive content guidelines, but otherwise, there are no rules. ]

Starlight and Dewdrops are Waiting For Thee

If you reach the center of the dreamscape (or perhaps you “woke up” there), you will find an oasis. You find yourself immediately embraced by a beautiful dream. All of your wishes granted, your deepest desires pulled directly from the core of your soul and brought to life before you in vivid detail.

What sort of dream do you find yourself in? What do you dream of? Is it success, love, peace? A life that never came to pass? For your troubles never to have occurred? Do you dream of fame or glory? No matter how beautiful or extravagant, no matter how simple or selfish, the things you desire most are yours.

You cannot escape from here. This is the center, as far away from the waking world as you can go. But the dream entreats you, as do the illusory figures within it. ”Stay,” they croon. ”There is nothing for you beyond here. Only nightmares, only terror. You are safe here. You are loved and wanted and happy here. Why would you ever want to leave?”

Time blends together. It often does, in dreaming, but this feels different. How long have you been here? Do you remember what you were doing before? How you got here? Have you ever even been to a town called Pumpkin Hollow? You can hardly remember.

Maybe that was the dream, and this is your reality. Even as the edges of it bleed together with that of your neighbor, even as fleeting memories come back to you, even as a little voice deep within you screams at you to wake up--- you have no reason to doubt the legitimacy of this place. Here you are happy and safe. Here you are everything you ever wanted to be, living the life you always wanted. Here there are no debts, no suffering, and you shall never die.

You belong here. Surely.

Sounds of the Rude World Heard in the Day

With how far you had to sink into unconsciousness to be here, it’s hard to believe one could go any deeper. But the Beyond is a many-layered place, and perhaps by descending a bit further, a bit deeper, a bit closer to death, you can find another place. Maybe you have a connection to death that brought you here. Perhaps you find your way by mistake. Either way, you may find yourself on a more peaceful journey through the Beyond through the Frozen Necropolis.

A seemingly endless maze of stone walls, mismatched in their depth as if they were patchworked together over centuries. Mausoleums, slotted tightly against one another. Covered marble passageways. Stone statues and carved reliefs depicting gargoyles, knights, Virtues, mages with skull motifs--- necromancers, perhaps? Banshees and dullahans, elves and humans and dwarves and orcs and fae folk of all sorts. All of these things line a network of cobblestone pathways lined with powder snow drifts and crunchy brown grass. Names are carved into the arches above mausoleum doors. Some are familiar, some are not. Fairbanks, Gladwyn, Dirthariel, Leeds, Larson, Endrin, Applegate, Brenning. Above you, white pillar candles float magically overhead, burning bright, lighting your way through the dark pink sunset sky.

In the distance, you see the achingly thin spires of the Winter Cathedral. An austere grey monolith with ornate carvings of horses and snowflake-shaped stained glass windows. Perhaps you will find some solace there. Otherwise, make your way to the river. A familiar ferryman awaits you--- though returning to reality this way will have a small consequence.

[ Encountering Mortanne here is possible, though her threads will be heavily restricted. You can do a thread here with someone else, though! It’s fine to be here without encountering her. Returning to the island by ferry will cause your physical body to die in the process, leaving you a ghost for the usual amount of time. You can also return to the nightmare and get out through the edge. ]

Lulled by the Moonlight, Have All Passed Away

Should you find the edge of the nightmare, you will be able to push yourself through the iridescent membrane at the edge of consciousness. You float through the seemingly endless darkness for a moment, then another, then a third, senses dull and drifting drunkenly, until suddenly---

Like breaching the surface of water, you return to the solid, bright sharpness of reality. Actual reality, firm and true. You are where you went to sleep the night before, though some time has passed. It might take you a bit to figure out exactly how much, though…

Those who escape the nightmare will find themselves home sometime between 1/20 and 1/30. Those who stay in the dream oasis will be comatose until the dream ends, and will not wake until 2/8. They will find the return to reality deeply unpleasant. What are you willing to endure to keep dreaming a while more?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The poster is ripped up into many, tiny little pieces, leaving a mess of litter on the old tile floor.

There are bathrooms. She can always plug the drains and leave the water running, if she disrespects the place so much. There are electronics to turn on; blenders, lamps, even the rare overhead. (The overheads aren't rare, but the switches for them are.) There are always plates to shatter. Kitchen knives to throw, or score the walls.

The world is her oyster, really. It's a land of opportunity.

Not all of it is harmful. Doors left open, items rearranged. And others are, with a knife dragged against the plain walls, things shattered. Sounds in the painful, lonely darkness. Not a petty, wayward violence, but precise. I was here.

She walks on. Checking the rooms, confronted only with the same quiet. The same darkness.

Time stretches on and doubles back on itself. She's very, very lost.

At some point, she has to sit down. Back to the wall, on the floor. Thinking of what to do. No windows. No real doors. What is the point? Is there anything like a direction at all? Or to keep blindly guessing, trying any and everything.

Distance disappears when you're the only thing making sound in a silent and still world. There's no sense of what's out there when everything worth noticing is right here, in your hands.

Something is moving--sharp sounds. Something shattered is being messed with, back in the direction she came from.

A sound, in all of this. Slowly, she pulls herself back to her feet, and turns back around. Back towards the noise, back towards whatever it may or may not be. Careful, because while she avoided stepping on anything before, she may not be so lucky again.

Closer, and closer. Looking for the source of those sounds. Whatever's in here with her.

It's a long way back. It takes some real time to meander all the way to where it's coming from, especially as she takes care to be quiet, and especially again when there's a heavy thump and the sounds stop, and her method of tracking disappears.

But she does find the room eventually. Some kitchen or other, where bottles and plates had been shattered. There's something black spilled over the floor, leaking from a sort of pulpy, wet, shapeless sack on the ground. A broken bottle is embedded into it, sunken in like dough. It's leaking that inky water, but it doesn't look like a wine bottle.

No, no. It smells like copper in here.

She knows that scent. She does, but she hardly breathes, coming closer. Slow. Slow.

It's warm where she steps, and she knows what just happened. What she just stepped in. Fever knows, but she barely lets herself think it.

Perhaps it comes from the same place as the destructive impulses, the feeling that has her wrap her hand around the broken bottle and pull, freeing it from the shape, wondering how it was driven inside in the first place.

(When she thinks upon it later, she will wonder why she did not draw fire, and cast more light in the house. But it is not an oversight so much as a rule, that when the house asked for darkness, it is respected. This is known.)

(This is known. The darkness is not a real impediment so much as a mood, anyway; if she had lit a flame, asked the house to be less angry than it is, it would have hated her even more than it already does.)

The bottle is pulled free with some resistance and a sharp thwock of the air seal being released. The sack deflates a little around the suddenly empty space in it.

Noise, again. Softer ones. Further down, out of here, backwards again.

Casting the bottle aside, she strains her ears to hear the sounds, and picks her way over shattered glass to follow it. Every step, she can feel it - the wet warmth of the unknown blood, knowing she's leaving a trail. Backwards, back along the same path, trying to stay soft, to stay quiet and still track it down.

The house knows she's here. But the unknown does not. Not yet, at least.

Something in the air feels heavier - not physically, but in a sense where her nerves prickle to keep going. Like the nightmares where everything is still, everything has left.

(If a window was allowed to exist, the red sun would hang low in the sky. But it cannot penetrate the walls. It cannot go where it is not allowed. So it stays inside, muffled and dark.)

Slowly, creeping downstairs, following. Breathing deep, wondering if she'll find more blood.

Not more blood, no. The sounds stop again, too, but it won't be hard to find the room this time; there's light, but not a friendly one. Not one that actually illuminates in any meaningful way. Lamps have this wonderful habit of lighting up every corner of a room; this one does no such favors. There's as much darkness now as there had been before.

It's also not hard to find the room because this time, the hall leads directly into a living room where she'd ripped up the fake windows. The small, boxy television has been turned on. The screen is flat, blue, and silent.

Curled up on its side on the couch, unmoving, gaze fixed to the screen, is Phil.

Edited 2025-01-21 07:46 (UTC)

Her heart leaps in her chest, twin emotions striking her - a deep relief to not be alone, to know where he is wars with a sensation of dread. He shouldn't be here. This place isn't safe. This place isn't kind. He shouldn't be here.

It's dread that means she approaches carefully, hands open and empty. Something's very wrong. She half expects to not see him breathing. The blue washes out anything that the lamp's feeble and unfriendly light might have illuminated, including his face.

"Phil?"

Without a response, she'll go so far as to step in front of the screen, blocking the view as she's looking him over, trying to evaluate his condition-

(and what if he was dead? what would you do? are you sure you didn't do it? do you really and truly remember your hands being empty, earlier? are you sure you remember all of this time? wouldn't it be easy to forget again?)

He's breathing, but he goes on staring like she isn't there. It takes a moment--one, two, five--before his eyes, both of them unclouded, find hers. She's seen this look on his face once, a long time ago. From behind bars. He doesn't look surprised to see her.

(He hasn't got wings either, but it doesn't look like an act of violence. He just hasn't got them. He wasn't always a bird, she knows that.)

"Hey."

Small mercies.

Fever falls to her knees next to the couch so she's not hovering over him, trying to think, trying to coax her brain into somehow cobbling together a flash of intelligence to get them out. Wandering through an endless unknown, a space bending darkness would...well, it wouldn't be fine to be alone in it, but every ounce of bias and selfishness resolves itself into the words not him. She has to get him out. Both of them, if she can, the promise that she wouldn't sacrifice herself still weighing in her mind, but the first guaranteed exit goes to him.

Her hand reaches out to lay on his upper arm, hating that look in his eyes. Timelessness. Somewhere that is not here. Somewhere that's right here.

"How long have you been here?"

Long enough to get that look on his face. The one that seems like his life has been whittled down to the essentials.

“Forever.”

One day. Ten thousand days. Eternity. It all ends up meaning the same thing. He doesn’t move as she touches him.

“You should go.”

"We should go," she insists, because otherwise is unfathomable. Leave him? After she just found him? Leave him to this place and its ill intentions, this house that imprisons without a single ray of true light?

No. No. She doesn't want to have to do this again, seek an exit and promise a return.

His eyes find the screen again.

“I can’t. I tried.”

"Then I'm not likely to have better chances. But things could change, if we go together."

Maybe it was built to contain one. Maybe the cracks will show, if there's two of them. There has to be a way out, because there was a way in. One of those tricks, where the world needs to be fooled into accepting a twist of words, or fate.

There has to be something. One thread of a chance. That's all that's needed.

He shakes his head, shakes his head, shakes his head, a slow bobbing back and forth.

“No, you can. Try the door. I mean… one you didn’t rip up.” There have been a few, after all, not just the one in that dark foyer.

… He can feel himself starting to sink into the couch. Just barely, imperceptibly, but he can feel it. Oh, great. Now of all times, in front of Fever, sure. Why not. You know what?

“I’ll show you.” He sits up, slow, one limb at a time, the springs of the couch creaking as he creeps towards standing. He seems heavy.

He does, and so she stays near, more of an instinct than anything else. Even without the wings, she won't be able to catch him if he falls, but she can try to offer some support. Something. She feels helpless without any words that might bring the light back to his eyes, and greater than the fear of this place is the idea of leaving him in it, even if he's adamant that this is how it should be.

If he can make one of those doors open, she'll push him through it. It has to lead somewhere not here, and that's good enough. But for now, Fever follows, keeping her eyes on him as much as one can when also needing to not stumble into anything, in this darkness.

It takes a bit of wandering as he plods along the hallway, every footstep dragged, both shoulders hunched. He throws a glance towards a kitchen or a bathroom or a ceiling fixture or two.

They come to a mudroom that’s got big, lovely window posters, and one of those big door posters again, which presumably leads to a yard. (There no shelves and no drawers, and no shoes and no socks and no gloves and no hats.)

“Try the handle.”

(He seems to be sagging a bit. Or—or maybe that’s just the slouch. He’s not exactly the most energetic here.)

Fever looks at him carefully before reaching out and-

Oh. That's a handle, under her touch. Smooth, metal, as frigid as the tile is. It turns, quite easily. Unlocked. But she doesn't pull it open, and steps back, resting her hand on his arm again.

"I'm not going without you, Phil."

If he can't open the handle, then she will, and push him through. There has to be some crack, some loophole to struggle through so that they're both free. There has to be. She repeats it in her mind, over and over, because the alternative cannot be. She's done the impossible before-

(and this place hates, and hates, and if it had hands to strike her down it would. any knife turned against it will dull and chip. any blow will miss.)

(And it does not hate her as much as it hates him.)

Phil stares a long, tired stare. He takes a few steps back. (He doesn't quite slip as easily as he should from her hold; like her fingers could dig in just a little bit more.)

"Pull it open."

(And it will be beautiful out there. Beautiful and warm, some light, some Place--perhaps it leads directly back to someone's oasis, perhaps it's just someone else's nightmare--but it will always bear the comforting sense of a world that is not-this-one.)

Opening it fills her with dread, because she knows the light the moment she sees it. Knows it's the Last Light, only gone completely silent and devoid of life, and to walk in is to invite the question of why. But even so, she steps back, turns away from the open door. Reaches for him again.

"Come with me."

Or she will shut that door and tear it down and stay. How long has he really been here, alone? She's always been stubborn. Refusing to listen to actual sense. Willing to fight even if her only weapons are her nails and her teeth and her words.

(What's the point of all the power locked in her chest if she can't use it for this?)

Edited 2025-01-22 02:51 (UTC)

This is why he didn't want to do this. Light, real light, even light from a silent and still place, breaks open into the room, banishing the dark so thoroughly it makes his eyes hurt--how dare you remind a dying man of what was taken from him. Of what he can't have. How dare you dangle the apple over Tantalus.

Phil reaches for Fever. He puts his hand in hers, her hand pressing marks into his fingers.

Like two repelling magnets, the moment he gets too close, the impossible door slams shut on them both. Phil bursts into tears.

He's too soft. She shouldn't be able to leave marks with her hands, shouldn't feel him being as if he was moldable, but there will be time to solve that, fix it, if she can just get them out-

The sound of the door slamming behind her makes her twitch, but the sound of his tears is more akin to any wound than any shattering, any destruction. In a heartbeat, she's there, embracing him, trying to be something solid and stable to cling onto.

Are there even words for this? For an agony this deep? For watching the light be torn from another's eyes?

(If the house hates, then she hates it back, with all of what was written into her flesh, her bones. She'll tear it from the foundations and fill the earth with life that eats away anything that tries to build atop it. If she cannot trick it, she'll ruin it, and bring the heavens to bear.

And yet, it is but a child's hands fruitlessly clawing against a door, all rage and no consequence. All you do is chip the paint, while the lock remains untouched.)

It's not okay. It's not alright. But he can weep, and as before, if anyone or anything would shame his tears, they'll have to contend with all she can bring to bear.

Something has to change. Something must change. Think, she shouts in her own head. Think of something.

Phil grasps for her but his grip's not all there, and he wails a kind of wet, rattling noise. He's sinking, and he cries, he sobs because he hates for her to see him like this, this ugly, awful, weeping, wet, creeping, pathetic thing, less than an animal, not even able to put him out of his misery. "I'm sorry," he gasps.

The house, merciless, does not resonate.

He wriggles from her arms; there doesn't seem to be enough bones in him as he does, wresting himself away from around her fingers, which drag against his skin and clothes. He's collapsing on himself. "Get out," he weeps. "Get out."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject