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?

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Without thinking, Radar wipes his palms against the top of his pants, smearing away more color into olive drab. Hushed -- but with the faintest beginning glimmers of hope -- he says, "You mean go AWOL?"

Ohhhhhh that sounds like a terrible idea. But... does it, really? So many times, Radar's slipped a requisition, a command, a whole personnel file somewhere it shouldn't go without the brass catching him. Could he slip himself and Edgar past them, too?

AWOL is a term Edgar's heard before, and vaguely knows that it means not being where you're supposed to be. In this place it comes to him through Radar's understanding, with much stronger fearful overtones: absent without leave, it echoes, and deserting your post, and disobeying orders, and not allowed.

He hates it so much, that fear. Even flavored with the excitement of contemplating something not-allowed, he hates it. Hates whatever put that fear in him.

Edgar reaches out and wipes a hand across the two pointed gold shapes on Radar's uniform, as though smearing grime on him, or wiping it off. "You don't need anyone's permission, man," he says, half angry and half pleading, "you're a fuckin adult."

Where Edgar's hand has passed, the gold and green are gone.

In its wake: a streak of red. Not the red of operating rooms and medical crosses, though. Red as the opposite of green, the flush of life returning to pale limbs, the beginning of a sunrise. The antithesis of war and death and darkness.

(Red that's rosy, Hawkeye will say in the future. Red that's cheery.)

"Yeah," says Radar with dawning realization as he looks at the red stripe. His jaw sets. "Yeah, you know what? I am! I'm a grown man! They already let me go home, they can't say I gotta go back all of a sudden! And I'm not gonna!"

He balls up his opposite sleeve at the wrist and rubs furiously at his shoulder to scrub off more green. Like buffing a hubcap to a shine, the olive drab dims as patches of bright, glinting red rise to take its place. After a few seconds, though, Radar pauses.

"...So where do we go?"

Red like fire; red like the sun through closed eyelids. It does his heart good to see it.

"Anywhere else, man." Edgar gives him a grin, tight and hard and alive. "Which way's back?"

Almost absently, he rubs off a little more of the olive drab as he looks around. There's a trail leading away from the backyard toward one of the largest fields. Cornstalks sway gently, beckoning, so tall that they'll even tower over someone of Edgar's height.

Radar listens, just to be sure.

"That way," he says, but swallows hard again as tears spring to his eyes. "But just gimme a minute, okay?"

It takes way longer than a minute. (They don't call it a "midwestern goodbye" for nothing.) Steps leaden, Radar circles through the party, touching elbows, tapping shoulders to get the attention of each O'Reilly in turn. There are hugs and tears and attempts to foist more than one casserole dish on Radar, which he turns down with great reluctance. I'll be back, he says. I promise. I'll see you next summer.

He lingers the longest at his mom, Uncle Ed, and Dahlia. Oh, he doesn't want to leave. He doesn't want to ever let go of his mom when she wraps him in a spine-creaking hug. When he kisses Dahlia goodbye, he can barely speak, but he still makes sure he tells her what's most important. I love you.

He loves everyone here so, so much.

It's only looking around and seeing who couldn't make it -- the loved ones who never wandered into his oasis and must be waiting for him back in Pumpkin Hollow -- that finally makes Radar point his feet toward the path.

Edgar tries to keep a respectful distance while Radar's making his goodbyes.

It doesn't work. Relative after relative turns to him with the same open affection in their farewell as in their greeting; handshakes, shoulder claps, hugs, assurances that he's welcome back any old time he cares to drop by. An older cousin catches up with him for a second goodbye, shoving a bundle of hastily made and wrapped-up sandwiches into his hand -- for the road, she says firmly, for both of you. He couldn't turn it down, and doesn't really try.

Radar's mother hugs him last, and murmurs in his ear take care of my boy, will you? He does his best, again, to hug her back properly, and mutters back I will, ma'am.

And then the path through the field is opening up before them, and Edgar draws a steadying breath. "Right," he says. "We go forward."

Five or eight or ten steps, and the sun must be setting very fast, because it's growing dark.

Radar sniffles, just once, and quickly wipes his nose as the cornstalks rise around them.

Overhead, in the growing dark, a familiar thudding starts to rise. Choppers. It's so distant even Radar can barely make it out; Edgar might not be able to hear it at all. On this path, they're sheltered from view, separated from the war that wants to press in on all sides. I'm not going back.

"The whole thing was just made up, huh." Dully.

There's a faint rhythmic sound somewhere out there in the dark, maybe a thud, maybe more of a rolling rattle. It's both too faint and too familiar to even register with Edgar; it might as well be his own heartbeat.

"I dunno, man." Quietly. "... They really like that? Your family?"

"Yeah," he says, and smiles the tiniest bit, pained and wistful. It's the kind of smile that doesn't look quite right on a face like Radar's. "I mean Sunday dinner's not usually that big though. Norm and Ethel moved away ages ago, and Aunt Edith's all the way out in St. Louis so we go visit her usually instead of her coming out to Ottumwa. And I really got no idea what my mom's gonna say if she finds out I'm going steady with a tiefling, heck, she even gets funny about Catholics sometimes, what's she gonna say if I ever get to tell her about Dahlia?"

Away from the warm glow of the backyard, it's much easier for all of Radar's vague fears and worries to take shape.

"But... but that's them. All of them." He swallows, painful. "That's home."

He considers that for a few moments, then nods, and leans to bump his shoulder gently against Radar's.

"Wasn't made up, then," he says. "Not the whole thing."

A faint breeze wafts by, and the tall cornstalks brush against each other with a soothing whisper: shh, shh. Radar's red shirt is the brightest thing in sight, almost glowing in the deepening shade.

A pause. Then, hesitant, Radar starts to smile again: steadier now, and more of a proper fit.

"I guess not, huh," he says, and has to wipe his eyes one last time. He reaches out to trail his fingertips along the cornstalks. They're new grown, still the deep rich green of healthy plants, the leaves not yet gone papery from drought or cold. The shade of green he used to always think of first before the army came along.

"What'd you think of them?"

"I like em," he says, without hesitation. "Can see where you get it from."

He chuffs out a tiny laugh, pleased, even as he ducks his head.

"Wish you could meet 'em for real sometime," he says after a moment, then lapses back into quiet. Just their muffled footsteps on dirt; the swaying of the cornstalks; the barely-there thud of the choppers. It's so dark that Radar has to put a whole lot more concentration into feeling their way along the path, figuring out where to go without the field spitting them out into the middle of the war.

Can they get out? There's something they need, he thinks. Something important.

Underneath their feet, the dirt begins to sink, shifting. They're walking on sand now. The choppers still sound far away, but the cornstalks have started to thin out.

Sand. Sand is what you get on beaches. Maybe that means something.

"Think maybe we're close," he says, trying to make it certain.

"Yeah," says Radar, distantly. "I think so."

He parts a couple of stalks right in front of him, and they open up on a wide expanse of coastline, lit a cold, chilly silver by the full moon. A section of it curves away into the far distance, and that's where the war seems to have gathered. Out there, there are flickering lights barely more than pinpricks, hunkered buildings like dollhouses, choppers circling with a soft insect's buzz, planes charging down a runway to liftoff. Radar watches it all in silent contemplation.

But though he squares his shoulders and draws a big breath like he's steeling himself, he doesn't walk toward it.

Instead, he says in that same faint voice, "We gotta get our discharge papers first," and starts marching straight toward the sea.

His first impulse, he thinks later, should have been to protest like he did over the idea of going AWOL. To say they don't need to get anything, they don't need any fuckin papers with anyone's say-so, they can just walk away.

Maybe he'll never know why, instead, he just follows. Why he feels like Radar's right, and this is forward, this is the way they have to go.

Shh, shh comes the sound of the corn behind them, and the sound of the waves on the sand ahead of them.

Nighttime has a way of draining the color out of everything. So does getting a piece of fabric wet. That might be why the vibrant red of Radar's clothes seem to dissolve to a muddy brown as he steps into the water.

It isn't, though.

When the sea closes over his and Edgar's heads, all that changes is their buoyancy. They can still breathe just fine, though inhaling water feels heavier and thicker than breathing air, of course. After a glance to make sure Edgar's close behind, Radar pushes off the sand and begins to swim. His jacket billows like a parachute, but his hat and glasses stay firmly in place.

The light dwindles. The pressure increases, making their eardrums bend inward before they pop. As they swim deeper, long bioluminescent streamers circle around them, lighting the way. Not that there's a whole lot to see this far down besides little flecks of plankton that drift like snowflakes. Not for a while.

Until there is.

There, up ahead on the sea floor: long, deep gouges, like something sharp skidded a great and violent distance over the sand.

It's so quiet down here. Dim and quiet and somehow empty. Not quiet like a comfortable moment of peace, but quiet like lying awake and alone at night, quiet like when you've finished crying your eyes out and haven't started thinking about what's next yet.

He sees the long scrapes along the sand below, and thinks dimly that's what's next.

How they're meant to get papers or anything like it here, at the bottom of the ocean, is something he figures Radar knows.

It rises into view, humped up like the body of a massive sea creature. A three-finned tail; a long, narrow body, broken and crumpled. One bent wing. (The other has snapped off entirely, nowhere to be seen.)

.S. AIR FORC says a chunk of lettering along its gouged-open side.

A stream of bubbles trails from Radar's mouth, like he's breathing so hard he's started taking on air again. He kicks desperately to propel himself as fast as possible to the crater in the plane's side, arms swinging with a newfound wildness. One of the glowing eel-like creatures darts ahead of him to light the way.

It illuminates a bellyful of dead bodies in the middle of the wreckage. Skeletal, crawling with deep-sea scavengers, skin eaten away by the tide and animals and impact of a flight hitting the sea at full speed. Among them glints a hat peppered with fishing lures.

Edgar is almost sure he's never seen an airplane. Not for a moment, though, is he in any doubt of what he's seeing. Maybe because he's heard of them, of course he has, one of the wonders of the world before the ice; maybe it's just that this is Radar's dream, and Radar knows.

Nam thinks the thaw's coming, murmurs a voice in his memory. There's this crashed plane he's been watching. He said more of it gets uncovered every year.

He follows Radar, drifting more slowly toward the wreckage and the dead, lost so far from any life. You could almost mistake the sand for snow, in this light.

I gotta hope he's right, man.

He goes straight for the rotten body in the fisherman's hat.

Radar's hands are shaking, and the stream of bubbles rising from his mouth grows denser as he feels along the ripped-up vest still clinging to the person's ribcage. "It should be here," he says, voice muffled by the water. "I know he's gotta have 'em somewhere. Soon as we find our papers we can go."

(His voice is shaking nearly as badly as his hands.)

Edgar moves closer, and rests a hand on Radar's shoulder.

Not to stop him, or pull him away; just to say I'm here without speaking.

"...Oh no."

His search grows more frantic. The body's clavicle bone slips at an odd angle, and just as frantic, Radar tries to shove it back into place.

"Help me look," he pleads to Edgar. "I can't find them. I know I must've given them to him, h-he wouldn't've been able to go home if I didn't -- " He stops, a newfound dread blossoming in his stomach. "Is that why the plane went down?"

No, no. He claps his hands over his mouth, and even though he doesn't say it out loud this time, it rings in Edgar's ears -- we gotta find them, please, please, help me --

Radar's panic is making the water around them go cold, or maybe that's him.

"Hey," he says, speaking underwater for the first time, "no. This is the wrong place, that's why we can't find em. You gave him his papers, but we still gotta get ours. Right?"

And christ, Radar will never forgive him if this doesn't work, but --

"I know where we gotta look. Follow me, yeah?"

Oh. Oh, that -- yeah. That makes sense. Doesn't it?

"...Right," he says in the smallest voice. Still, he hovers anxiously over the skeleton, looking between it and Edgar. "It's not gonna be too far, is it?"

He can't just leave all the bodies behind like this.

(One body in particular.)

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hate_gettin_older - 2025-05-02 17:54 (UTC) - Expand

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incomingchoppers - 2025-05-05 01:58 (UTC) - Expand

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January Event - Lost in Dreamland

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cw: description of corpses

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