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

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. I don't want to leave you here!"

He's falling apart and she can't do anything, she never could, she can't put people back together, only ruin them in new and inventive ways, and every part of her screams to get out and leave and save herself -

"Phil, why?!"

He's trying to get away, and selfishly, she wants to drag him back, to say it's okay, it's okay. It doesn't matter what he's becoming. Why does she have to leave, to let this place have him, when it doesn't deserve him? This house, this darkness, this loneliness, it can't keep him, it can't, and she-

Gods, when did it become so difficult to walk forward? Like moving through liquid stone. Doesn't matter. She has to keep trying.

"This is all that I get!" he howls, as he goes on walking himself away, pulling on what strength he's got beneath all this dead flesh. "It's just me who's actually in here. You can go. Everyone can come in and go. It's just me in here. I wake up here, over and over, and there's nothing I can do about it. This is everything I'll ever have. Just this."

The squirming, maggot-ish mass of his fingers finds some door handle, and a doorway to squeeze himself through. "No more sun. No more oceans. No more food, good food, or coffee, or coworkers, or birthdays." The door clicks shut and locked behind him, but he's not going anywhere. It's another bathroom. (Well, it's nice that they're all over the place.)

He surveys his options. Christ, it's always such a damned pain that the fastest ones are often the most violent. "No more memory. No more music," he mutters between tears. "No more weekends or rain. No more family..."

This place wants to reject her. Wants to throw her out, is all she can think as she struggles to take steps, fighting the darkness with every motion. She's not fast enough to catch up to him, even if he's slower. That door shuts, and by the time Fever manages to grasp it, it's locked tight. Knocking on the wood, knowing he has to hear.

(her head wants to split open, tight spirals of pain burrowing deeper and deeper, making her vision worse, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't, she's just got to push through. this is nothing, this is endurable, don't make her fucking laugh with such a cheap tactic-)

"Open the door, Phil. Please."

If she summons all her strength, she might be able to break the lock. One burst of magical force ought to do it. It'll be taxing, like in the Village, but she can. Only if he doesn't open it of his own accord. Everything he says, she wants to push back - there is life, life, and if she could tear herself open, find a way to fold him up and hide him in herself, carry him out that way, she would.

Try again. Try again. Keep going, even when it feels like every movement wants to be pushed away.

(He hasn't given up on her, even though no one, least of all her, would blame him. How could she give up on him now?)

Edited 2025-01-22 09:23 (UTC)

He winces. This was always one of the worst parts about it. The concerned looks from strangers, the, the pleading, people approaching him like a scared animal. People asking him to stand another minute of feeling this disgusting. At least when he's alone he can writhe in peace.

Fever sounds so bereaved on the other side of that door, the one he's shut on her. He's done that to her. But she can't look at him like this, he thinks, as he reaches in the mirror cabinet and takes it out, feeling the cold edge. She can't see him like this. He can't take it a moment longer.

"I will," he croaks, ambling towards the bathtub. "But just... leave me alone for a little bit. Ten minutes. I swear."

She wants to be unreasonable, to say no and force his hand into opening it sooner. But who is she, to demand that? In his misery, in his pain - who is she, to demand anything of him? Just the woman who-

"...Alright. Ten minutes. But any longer, and I'm coming in."

Her hand on the door, her forehead against the wood. Right there on the other side. Count. Six hundred seconds. It's the only thing that stops her from trying to break it immediately.

Count each second. Hold onto it, in this place that wants to make time meaningless.

For some people, when they lie down, they can see their pulse in their stomach. The abdominal aorta runs through there. It's the largest blood vessel in the body. If you press down slowly into your stomach with the fingertips of both hands as you exhale, you can feel the artery wall beating right up against your fingers; then you can inch to the sides until you're off the aorta, and come back in again until it's between your fingers. You can measure the size of it that way. It's used to asses possible risk of aortic aneurysm. For most, it takes a bit of work to find; for others, it's very easy, beating close to the skin.

Fever hears the shower curtain get pulled and the shower turn on, sound flooding the room and the hall.

Six minutes later, the open-close metal clanging of the curtain again, and the sound of heavy fabric--a towel. The shower is still going.

Some nine and a half minutes later, the door opens; in the convenient way of dreams, he's only damp. The shower is off. The curtain is closed. He isn't melting anymore.

"Hi. Uh... sorry about that. I'm fine now."

She counts, because that's all there is to do. One hundred slips away easily. Two hundred just the same. Three hundred is five minutes, and she can feel herself getting more agitated, trying to not lose her place as she keeps going.

Four hundred. Something has changed by this point. Why does he need the shower, here and now?

Five hundred. And still no closer to getting through, and she feels herself tensing up, a clockwork spring being ratcheted bit by bit. The water's stopped, but why does this give her no more peace than when it was on, when she couldn't hear him?

It's at five hundred and seventy six when the door opens, and she looks no less concerned than when he went in. He's not melting, but, but, but.

"Why do I not believe you, Phil?"

She's - well, she isn't smart. But she's not that dense.

"Probably because I wasn't fine before. And I probably won't be in a little bit, but, I'm fine right now."

Something about the space seems odd, like it's not as she should have remembered it to be. If the wall tiles were just so slightly and intolerably tilted; if the curtain was a mite too high; if the faucets were crept closer, putting the barest pressure on the appropriate space between them and the basins they fill; it would be impossible to tell.

The warm steam has an animal smell to it, a sweet wetness, resinous and copperlike.

"What do you mean, you won't be fine?"

Inhale. Exhale. This place is starting to get to her.

"...just, let me wash my face. I'm getting a headache again."

The water doesn't feel right, either. Like it leaves some film where it touches, and she has to run it over her skin again. Still not leaving. And the scent in the air. She's stood in battlefields and the aftermath of enough skirmishes - enough half recalled images of sacrifice and slaughter, enough yearning for viscera twisted outwards and the body laid open - to know it instantly. Enough of it embedded in her skin.

Maybe he'll see, and try to stop her. Maybe he won't.

She pulls back the curtain, not sure what she'll see, only certain that it's the cause.

The look he gives her is a bit flat, which is impressive because he's already mostly dead in the eyes. "What, are you? Look at this place. I've been stuck here for ▒▒▒▒▒, c'mon."

He steps back as she goes to wash her face, setting down on the closed toilet and sort of deflating a bit as he does. Which means he's just a little too slow on the draw when she makes for the curtain, scrambling to his feet and reaching for her, "Hey, hey--"

Another sack of pale, shapeless flesh lies torn open over the length of the wet tub, pink clouding around it as a hazy, thick stream flows into the drain. Clear and red water pools in its folds and crevices. Something glints.

(The towel, if she bothers to handle it, is damp and rumpled but otherwise pristine.)

He yanks on the curtain to pull it closed. "Fever--hey!"

It's too late. What's been seen cannot be unseen. It's engraved itself into her eyes, into her consciousness, and Phil can try all he likes, but he can't carve it out unless he carves out her memory. (On the back of her skull, a scar. Where to drive a blade with enough force to make it happen. Everything's been erased before. It could happen again.)

Slowly, she looks at him, letting him rip the curtain from her grasp. The questions she could ask are silent, trying to make sense of what there was. What she heard. What he's not telling her. How he can be falling apart in one moment and fine the next. What this place is asking of him, to lock him in so.

Is this why he can't leave?

~~Why is there another one?~~

Just one question, then.

What's in the bathtub?

No, she knows what it is. Meat. Just shapeless, formless meat. But why is it there? Why is it that size, so much, bleeding out in the tub?

"Phil. Why did you lock the door?"

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