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ph_logs2025-01-19 03:59 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-01-19 03:59 pm
January Event - Lost in Dreamland
**Plain text version here.
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. ]
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.
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. ]
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…
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.
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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!"
no subject
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?"
no subject
He could lie. He knows how.
Phil is honest to a fault.
He stands there for a while, arms hanging at his sides. "Fever," he says, quiet. "Have you... noticed anything? I mean. Really noticed. This house, it doesn't... really... have a lot of stuff. Right?"
no subject
And he doesn't, and she will never know he contemplated it.
"Yeah, it's almost entirely empty," she replies, one hand resting on the counter now. "It's like someone forgot to actually finish moving in."
Or what's there is just for looks. Something playing at being a house, but not actually one. No real doors, after all.
no subject
He reaches over to pull open the cabinet under the sink, then the mirror cabinet above it.
"Look. There's no toothbrush or toothpaste, or floss. But what it chose to keep..."
Chemical toilet cleaner. Drain cleaner. Bleach. Glass cleaner. Disinfectant. Shaving tools. More than that, too. A lot of which Fever would have no cause to recognize, but dreams, especially shared ones, are willful things.
no subject
All of them have the same sort of warning. The same caution, danger printed in bold letters, advising someone to take care. Poisonous if ingested.
Fever looks at the bottles, and at the sharp edged objects, under the light that gives no warmth, no safety. The scent of bloody copper in the air. She thinks about all she knows about Phil. She thinks about what could possibly happen, while she was mentally murmuring numbers on the other side of a locked door.
Things that break into sharp edges. Knives. Things that hurt.
Something glinting in the mass of flesh.
How much this place would wear you down. Over and over and over.
There is an answer. And Fever hates it, hates it so much that if she felt like it was possible to be more than this fragile body
(oh, but that's what you are, because it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, there is nothing you can do to help no matter how much you scream, and there's some part of you that wishes you could have watched, right? helped? you're still here.)
she'd destroy everything down to the roots. What she's good for, set to some kind of purpose, get him out get him out get him out
at some point she's ended up dropping what she's holding,
gripping the counter as if it could provide enough stability
for the towering horror of it all. the last time she felt this way,
she had realized what she was, whose flesh and whose blood it all was.
there is no answer to the most pressing question
why you
trembling, too much tension that cannot go anywhere. Tell her she's wrong. Say it's anything else. Dismiss the suppositions with a single word. Please?
no subject
Somehow she'd never noticed before, but now that she's looking so close, it's impossible to miss; everything is covered in the finest layer of dust, and everything has his fingerprints on it. Everything in this house has his fingerprints on it.
“I didn’t want you to… to look, I didn’t think you’d just… I’m… I’m sorry. It's... it's the only thing that... I mean... it's all I've got.” His voice is soft, helpless.
(He’s really not sure what to do here. He isn’t usually… there for this part. He isn’t there for this kind of worry, this kind of concern—it feels violating, a denial and a theft of his peace. He wants to bolt. He could do it. The house would hide him.)
no subject
Breathe. Breathe, and there's more space to breathe than she remembers having - it's different, even here it's different.
Fever doesn't ask if she can embrace him, doesn't offer the space to hesitate for it. She just does, holding him close, ignoring the feeling in her bones that longs to break out. A whole storm full of rage, on his behalf - but held back by something stronger. The anger would only leave a greater mess in its wake. Okay. She's seen the aftermath, twice now. She knows. Still here, refusing to be so easily shaken.
If he wants to run away, he'll have to be the one to pull back.
no subject
Phil collapses against her. He buries his face in her shirt, not quite weeping but stricken and desperate all the same; if he could live in this warmth he would. If he could hide here, in the one place where there is light and heat and company, nestled next to the star he saw in her once, he would. She'd probably let him. But then she could never leave, and Phil couldn't live with himself if he did that to her.
"Fever... what am I gonna do?" His voice is high and tear-stained.
no subject
Impulse guides her, as it has so often before.
"You're going to get out of here. You're going to let this place crumble into dust, and you will leave. You'll return to the sunlight, and your family, and the home you pulled together with your own hands. Back to the ocean, to good food and hot coffee and the radio, and your birthday will come, and we'll celebrate that time continues to pass. This is not all there is. This is not all you have."
The words are whispered, but utterly certain. Stubborn against the face of logic, against any reasonable conclusion. And perhaps, Fever knows, she's asking too much, after everything. After how she hurt him, broke his trust, refused to be transparent until she was forced to be. But, not again. As long as it's in her hands, not again.
"I'm going to give you something to keep safe for me."
no subject
"What is it?"
no subject
"Just this. It should help."
Her heart, resting in his hand.
no subject
And he takes a hand, and he reaches in too, a motion that is not a mutilation; there is no shock, no horror. He reaches in and he plucks out his own. It is not radiant, but it is warm; it is old and battered, worn with use, which was in loving. And like a beloved stuffed animal, it is only softer for it. Still it goes on, like it always has, like it always will. And it is shaped like a key.
"Here."
no subject
"...A trade, then."
There's only one place to put it, naturally.
It is not the same shape, but it is painless to put it in. It sinks in easily, fitting within the space, and she can feel it beating, until it synchronizes with the rest of her.
(Except for the warmth. She still feels that like an invisible mark.)
Something settles with the motion, making her confident the handle will still turn when she has to try again. There is enough of her to fool the door. There is enough of him to fool the house.
"I'll take care of it. I promise."
no subject
This house hates him, but he is not the house. There is one thing; one thing he has been given to live for besides. He doesn't know what he's going to do the next time he starts to fall apart, but he'll... he'll figure it out.
He puts a hand to Fever's cheek and offers a kiss to the other, then brings their foreheads together. "Thank you."
no subject
She can feel this house sinking into her head like a blunt dagger, the twisting, throbbing weight of it. It's not good
it's not good
Intruding here and now, like it has the right. Like it cannot abide too much warmth, too much light, and must try and snuff it out. But it's too late. It can't stop what's already happened. This yawning abyssal gullet of a place cannot undo what has been done.it's not good it's stirring up things that she doesn't
want awake, not here and now, whispering how easy it would be
"I don't want to leave you."
She has to whisper it aloud so he knows. So he knows.
no subject
He takes her hand, placing it against his chest. "You won't. But you've gotta get out of here."
They both know that. She can't stay here. She can't become like him. She can't get dragged down by him. No one's gonna be able to drag two people out of this mess. She has to look out for herself, too; to live here with him in this world forever is certain death for them both.
no subject
She has to find a way out, and honor his wish for her as well.
"Walk me to the door?"
Fever doesn't trust herself to do it alone.
no subject
Pulling away, but not letting go of her hand, he opens the bathroom door and walks both of them into the dark.
no subject
Until then, she won't let go of his hand.
no subject
The hallway turns, and turns again, and turns again. There is no sign of the mudroom or the door.
Phil stops.
no subject
It changed. The thought crosses her mind, but she dares not say it, risks glancing at Phil out of the corner of her eye instead. He's been here long enough - he might have a better clue.
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