More Dreams

[Morgan Lake] It's a small room, dark and cold, and Enid (not-Enid) is alone and afraid. There hasn't been enough food for an active teenage girl, and even in the dream her stomach rumbles with remembered hunger. She doesn't sit idle, though, but paces, stretches. With the fear and uncertainty, there's anger and betrayal and a hurt so sharp it cuts the air around her.

In her bed, Enid shifts, her brow furrows.

[Life Is But a Dream] ...the dark it cloys, it hangs, the cool room doing little to comfort her. Doing much to remind her of other hells. Then she hears a voice, humming then almost singing as if moving down a hallway past rows of similar rooms.

~The man of a thousand faces
sits down at the table
eats a small lump of sugar
and smiles at the moon like he knows her...~

There is no piano but little by little, the melody of the song can be heard like a faint background...not quite elevator music but certainly out of place given the dream.

[Morgan Lake] "And begins his quiet ascension
Without anyone's sturdy instruction
To a place of no religion
Has found a path to our alikeness..."

She moves to the door not for the first time (in dream or reality), tries it, finds it locked and kicks it (also not for the first time); sound dampening, it doesn't even make a satisfying clatter. Knowing who it is, recognizing the voice, doesn't make it any better here. Maybe emokid is one of them, keeping an eye on her and reporting.

(Emokid is dead. Dead is . . . not dead, apparently, but that doesn't mean he's narc-ing on me. Paranoia is not an attractive trait.)

She has no idea if he can hear her or not, just knows she wants out of this stupid room, wants away from the Uncles and her mother (knows, on some level, that if she wants out all she has to do is leave, here, that it's over and done with, but that level doesn't register in this dream), wants to rewind time so she never came to be in this place.

[Life Is But a Dream] ~His words are quiet like stains are
on a tablecloth washed in the river
Stains that are trying to cover
for each other
or at least blend in with the pattern.....~

The words stop, outside the room....silence settling as if the voice had only been in her head. A hush falls and then she can feel him there. She doesn't know how she knows he's there...but she can feel it. Like an outline through a sheet, she has an impression that his hand is pressed against the door of the cell...as if trying to make contact somehow.

[Morgan Lake] Her voice is hoarse from crying - so much was lost, here. Still, she answers - not quite in rhythm or tune, but with the right words at any rate.

"Good is better than perfect
Scrub til your fingers are bleeding
And I'm crying for things that I tell others to do without crying ..."

Stumbles, trips in the dark on her way to the door, to press her own hand there. Not Uncle Dan come to try to change her mind, to convince her that their way is right. Not Uncle Zeke come to let her out, not yet (maybe he won't, this time, maybe he thinks they're right in what they're doing, maybe they are right), but Autumn, the suicidal emokid. There's quiet for a moment, her hand pressed roughly where his is, but on the other side of the door. Her voice when it comes is broken - from crying, from anxiety, from an overabundance of emotion.

".....you shouldn't be here, Uncle Dan won't like it . . ."

[Life Is But a Dream] "....you don't have to be here, y'know...I can let you out..."

The contact to the door, she can feel it as if hands were pressed together...as if the door wasn't there at all. It was strange for him to be here...he was dead. She had seen him die. The only other time had been in her dreams? Was this a dream..a nightmare....a memory misplaced?

"...if you want out...just say. I can do that for you...."

[Morgan Lake] "Is this some . . . weird thing where I'm supposed to help you go into the light, or whatever?"

That question comes first, but of course there's a surge of hope when he mentions letting her out. Of course she wants him to open the door, if he can. "You have the key? Austin . . . I don't know where Austin is. He's hurt, needs help." Dreams are strange things, and this is more absorbing than the last, less vivid (other than him) dream of hers he'd found himself in. Still, her fingers bend as if to twine with the hand she can feel just there, as if the door weren't between them. It's reassurance, that, more so than Uncle Zeke had been when he'd arrived in the real version of this scenario.

"Yes, I want to go, it's bad here, feels bad . . ."

So bland and boring. So soul-sucking.

[Life Is But a Dream] "...all you had to do was ask..."

The hand moves away...she can hear bolts clacking and the door creaking open...light...almost blinding light with the silhouette of Autumn standing in front of it.

Outside of the cell, once the light diminishes...she finds her cell is sitting in the clearing of a garden...a small forest where she can see blue birds and red robins, can see roses of white and red. The grass and clearing is green, so vibrantly green that it would make an Irish heart flutter at the beauty of it, like a little bit of 'home'.

Autumn just smiles at her, ear to ear.

"Who said anything about me going anywhere?"

[Morgan Lake] She actually takes a step back into the dark (nearly stumbles again) when that unbearably bright light hits her eyes - just natural, a garden, but still. After goodness knows how long in a pitch black box, it's a bit much to bear. But then she's stepping forward and out with only a brief pause to check behind her, to see if the cell is still there, or if it's been replaced by more of this garden. Just a dream, some part of her says.

"No one, I suppose. but isn't that what people do with ghosts?" Austin is not forgotten, but this new bit of dream is slowly being accepted, slowly eclipsing the old part in her head.

[Life Is But a Dream] "...I don't think I'm much of a ghost."

He smiled a bit, stepping back to give her room...looking back, the cell is still there. In fact, its just a concrete room itself sitting in the middle of the garden with a door. About as out of place as a can opener on a loaf of bread. This very much was a dream...or insanity. Both wasn't that the same thing?

"I think I know why I'm with you though...you go to dark places, like I did."

He gave an almost sad smile, fingers reaching to slide loose bangs from his face, exposing the smooth features of the young man...the soft lips that had kissed her in her last dream that had felt so real...only to be gone when she woke.

"Honestly, even if I could move on...I don't see why I need to."

[Morgan Lake] There's scoffing even as she shudders looking back at the room, then, and she glares at him. "Totally different matter. You shot yourself. You made creepy deals with . . . I don't even know what. I just went to visit my uncle when he called, and ended up in . . . there," she finishes, not going any further into it. Not-dead emokid doesn't need to know about her connections to the Technocracy - if he knows what that is - and her personal drama. (This is how she trivializes it, makes it small enough to deal with except when she can't.)

"So . . . why hang around me, then? Are you always here? If you're watching me shower, we're going to have a problem."

[Life Is But a Dream] "It doesn't work that way."

Autumn moves to sit under a tree, the only tree that didn't fully fit the lovely garden. Spanish moss hanged from the branches, giving it a drooping, almost saddened tinge to the rest of the landscape.

"...I don't see what you see....I don't hear what you hear. But, i do feel to some extent what you feel....and I do see your thoughts...."

He paused, cocking his head to the side.

"Its like I can see half glimpses....movie trailers of things going on in your mind. And its only now and then...mostly when you dream. I think that's the only time that I'm really -here-. Otherwise...its like being asleep and sort of dreaming where I can kinda feel and sense things going on around me in the room..don't know if that makes any sense."

He gave another smile, this time teasing.

"Though at least you aren't fantasizing again...I'd probably have my shirt off this time otherwise..."

[Morgan Lake] She flushes, bright, fast. "Wasn't my fantasy. I have a boyfriend." Had, whatever. Semantics. And that blush isn't fading, isn't going anywhere.

And then, business is business, and none of this nonsense, no blushing in her own dreamscape, not when induced by a . . . ghost, or whatever he is. "So, if you're not a ghost, what are you? I mean, some sort of memory-thing might make sense, I suppose, if I'd known you. And why are you hanging out with me? And what thoughts?" Okay, not completely business. This last is a startling, embarrassing thing.

"I don't understand what's going on, and I want to. Need to."

[Life Is But a Dream] "You connected with me...just for a little bit. That's about the only thing I can figure as to why I'm here with you."

He notices the bright red of her cheeks but that just makes his smile remain on his face as he leaned against the tree.

"And...different thoughts...memories now and then...other things....a boy...home...frustration with....magic?"

He paused for a moment, looking askance as he scratched his finger along his right cheekbone...embarrassed almost.

"I'm sorry I made you cry."

[Morgan Lake] ".....not that it did any good," she says of connecting, with a furrowed brow. "Boys don't do so well around me. Maybe you should find someone else to attach to."

And the list of thoughts he's heard, witnessed, gets a raised eyebrow; she's not happy about that at all, and it's all the more reason to press onward with studies in Ars Mentis (though who knows if that would work, even).

"And you didn't make me cry. It's just . . . everything's complicated. Never mind the rest, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't - I don't even know. Is it . . . do you try to feel my thoughts?"

[Life Is But a Dream] "Nope...like I said...its like I'm dreaming..."

He shrugged a bit.

"I'm about as lost as you are on this one. If you are expecting answers, this is out of my league. I just get a little insight cause well...its happening to me as well...though...not sure how you can affect someone who's dead. I'm not trying to pry....sorry."

He stops, eyes looking out over the grass...the roses, so red they almost look like they oozed the color.

"I assume you want to get rid of me."

[Morgan Lake] "Well, you're not proving a distraction or anything so far, so far be it from me to stop you hanging around if you want to, and you're not a creepy perv," she says frankly. "And . . . I can't affect someone who's dead. But I know people who can, in their ways."

She sighs, brushes a hand over her messy hair (she'd been dreaming of time spent locked in a cell, after all, with no shower and no brush) absently.

"I'm kind of a nerd. I just want to know everything, you know? And so long as you aren't purposely poking around in my head . . ." She shrugs. It's not really a problem, essentially, but he'd felt enough like a problem alive, no need to make him feel like one now, too.

[Life Is But a Dream] He nods some before he looks to her.

"...if you feel locked up like that again...or feel trapped in your own mind...or dream...I can always get you out. To here...or somewhere else. Just say my name and I'll do what I can..."

He offers, the deep blue eyes staring at her face as she stood over him right now.

[Morgan Lake] "Tell me how you do it. And about your deal, and who was at the other end."

She moves, crouches - doesn't sit next to him, but squats on flat feet with her arms wrapped around her legs and chin on her knees so she can watch him.

"And I will, thank you. Is your name really Autumn? I've never known a boy named that."

[Life Is But a Dream] "Do what? And I told you about the deal already. As far as who it was with...well...not to sound like Donnie Darko, but it was with a rabbit."

He cocked his head some and gave a smirk.

"...yeah, my name really is Autumn. It was my mother's favorite time of year. She wasn't ever really one for doing things by the book."

[Morgan Lake] "How you hear or feel my thoughts. Whatever it is you do. And . . . that's right." The last, though, gets a snort. "Given the blue diamond you had on your hand, and what was on the invitation, I'd say more like Alice in Wonderland than Donnie Darko. But that's just me. "I'm Morgan, by the way."

Except her thoughts say another name, as does the hesitation before she says her new name. If she'd introduced herself last time, she doesn't remember; it was a dream, after all.

[Life Is But a Dream] "...that's not your name...but that's fine."

Autumn shrugs, eyes looking past her.

"...that name was born from that..."

He stares at the cell room sitting in the garden before he looked back to her.

"And that part, I don't know how it works...it just does."

[Morgan Lake] "Huh. I don't know if it'll get harder or not, for you - I'm learning to keep people out. Long story." And her glance at the room says that it, too, was born from her time there. "So . . . what's this heart thing about?" She doesn't show him - in her current position, it's all but impossible to do so.

"I can't see it, but like I said, I know people who can. It's red, and kind of like a tattoo, but not . . . you know, visible by normal people. Like your blue diamond, I guess."

[Life Is But a Dream] "....I don't know..."

He pauses, eyes squinting before he finally stands...then slides out a card.

Its a simple playing card, the Joker though the caricature of it an odd ghost looking thing with stitches and a jester's cap on its head.

"Anytime you're stuck in a dream...and I'm not here....just think of this."

[Morgan Lake] [WP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Morgan Lake] ".....alright," she says, and unwraps her arms so she can push to a stand herself - she's fairly tall for a girl at her five foot eight (and a half), and all long limbs that'll be full of willowy grace some day, one might think, but for now, she's still a bit on the gangly side. "So we have diamonds, hearts, and a white rabbit. It's an interesting puzzle, anyway."

She smiles, small, and reaches out to nudge his shoulder. "Where else do you go?"

[Life Is But a Dream] He lets her take the card before he looks to her.

"...I don't know...maybe Heaven for awhile.....maybe Hell. I don't quite remember. I just know...that for the most part, I'm at peace. And visiting you...is nice, if even in a dream."

He looked over her shoulder again and then sighed.

"This is where we part ways for now...you're waking up. The card...I almost forgot. It will protect you from other things too...not just dreams. Just remember that."

...indeed, his farewell seems to be coming true as the vision of him is starting to fizzle out..the background starting to get the television snow look...everything giving way to a blearly gray of the waking world...

[Morgan Lake] A hand reaches out to squeeze his briefly - friendly enough, but nothing more, and then she's slipping into the waking world. She knows she'll remember most of this - if it's like the last time they met - but still she clings to little details, wanting to keep it all in case it's important.

And when she finds herself awake in her bed at Solomon's? She's looking for that card to make sure she still has it.

[Life Is But a Dream] ...she finds indeed the card....though its the awkward place of under her shirt...as if Autumn had slipped his hand down there to stuff the card there....so much for him not being a pervert...