IC: Dream Post

[doesnothappen]

The space you are standing in is cold and grey and very still. There is nothing beneath your feet, nowhere to go. You hang for a long moment, in this place with no place, without direction or a proper sense of time, until the light dims...

...and your feet touch ground. Your eyes are closed. When you open them, you find yourself here.

((OOC warnings/notes))

Comments

On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

It is night, and the stars overhead are brilliant. You stand on uneven ground, on a wide ribbon of crumbling black rock and sharp white coral... the edge of a reef. Behind you, it borders a calm lagoon, but it's a long swim or a trek along the coral to reach the strangely distant shore. The reef curves away from where you stand in both directions.

To the left, it makes a wide arc until, far away, it runs into the sand of the beach. Waves crash against its outer edge, filling the night with their steady, hollow boom and beading your skin with cool salt spray.

To the right, it continues for only a few feet before it drops off abruptly at a gap, much too long to leap across. The sea pours through the break, a deep current pulling steadily down and out to sea. The seaward edge of the gap shelves out shallowly enough that you could wade into the current a little way.

Directly in front of you, the water is oddly still. Tiny, gentle waves lap at the edge of the reef. You can see the stars reflected thickly in the water. They form a shining path, leading out to sea, and up... the stars themselves continue the path, unbroken, into the heavens.

Re: On The Edge

[orange_sun]

*he knows this place from Mau's memories and descriptions, and while it's nice to see the Nation...

...heading out to the right, the water supporting his weight, his aura flickering slightly as he invokes his magic*

Re: On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

You can feel the tug of the current under your feet, deep and powerful. The sea is choppy and ahead of you, in the open water, the swell runs high. Something silver glimmers, under your feet...

Re: On The Edge

[unionoftheheart]

[just...soaking it up for a moment]

[and then. whoa. starpath. clearly I need to hop on the shining path dino yes.]

Re: On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

The water wobbles under your feet, but bears your weight, and as you follow the path across the water it slopes gently up into the air, a glittering path of white light, unsteady but solid enough. The air gets colder as you climb.

Re: On The Edge

[performing]

[well then '-' after taking a good look around, heading to the left. even in a dream I do not trust water to take my weight.]

Re: On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

The coral crunches and crumbles under your shoes, and your progress seems strangely slow. The beach remains distant, almost as if it's moving away from you as you move toward it.

Re: On The Edge

[glorious]

[...The right seems to be a long drop into the abyss, so clearly I must check it out.]

Re: On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

Are you wading out or diving in?

Re: On The Edge

[appleofhiseye]

This is...

[heading for the left, hesitantly]

Re: On The Edge

[doesnothappen]

The coral crunches and crumbles under your shoes, and your progress seems strangely slow. The beach remains distant, almost as if it's moving away from you as you move toward it.

The Shining Path

[doesnothappen]

Quite suddenly, the path under your feet runs out into glittering black sand. Are you standing in the sky? The stars still swing around you, huge globes of cold silver fire, nearly close enough to touch. Steady sound surrounds you, almost like the boom of the waves you left behind, but different... more like a slow heartbeat, or the beating of huge wings. The air is thin and painfully cold, hard to breathe.

The black sand slopes down to dark, still water... a grey canoe waits on the shore, dragged up the beach. The world is monochrome, sharp light and shadow, and more shadow than light, but out there across the water you can make out a different kind of light, warmer than that of the enormous stars overhead -- a flickering red and yellow, the light of a fire.

Re: The Shining Path

[unionoftheheart]

[pulling his jacket tight around himself, breathing slow and deep. if it wasn't so cold and weighty it'd be beautiful and wondrous, and instead it's a little terrifying]

[crouching and touching the water, careful and hesitant; he's dubious about swimming in it, but equally dubious about whether he has any idea how to get about in a canoe]

Re: The Shining Path

[orange_sun]

*landing in a crouch, and surveying the scene calmly*

Okay. Let's do this.

*heading to that canoe, and as he steps in, his aura flares up and coalesces around him, forming a golden suit of armor.*

Under the Deep Water

[doesnothappen]

The grass curtain falls back into place behind you. You have stepped onto a cool, smooth stone floor. The air is comfortably warm and smells of green growing things and clean salt air. It's quiet except for the soft ragged sound of somebody breathing, close by. It is almost completely dark, here -- too dark to make out the walls or the size of the room. The only light comes from a few dimly glowing coals in a firepit a little way ahead. By their slight flicker you can make out only two things -- one, that there is a large cauldron sitting directly over the firepit, and two, that there is a figure kneeling in front of that cauldron, his face bowed over it, his hands pressed to its sides.

Re: Under the Deep Water

[glorious]

[...slowly approaching.]

Hello?

Re: Under the Deep Water

[orange_sun]

*approaching him, quiet*

Mau?

The Beach

[doesnothappen]

Greyness fills the air, which tastes like ash. It is warm, humid and still, almost sticky. The air is filled with the sounds of birds, oppressively loud, shrieking and fighting in the trees up ahead. The sand is also damp and grey with ash, the beach littered with debris: jagged chunks of trees, lumps of coral, huge clots of seaweed and driftwood. Even the green, ruined jungle and fields ahead of you seem coated with grey -- everything is a mess, muddy and tangled. And the vines are tangled not just with broken branches, but broken bodies... there are bodies everywhere, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the debris at first, except that the birds are settling on them, tearing at them, and now you know why they are fighting.

Re: The Beach

[performing]

[picking his way carefully through the area, going to examine one of the bodies]

Re: The Beach

[appleofhiseye]

. . .

[stopping to take in the scene, going half a step back--and then heading for the nearest body]

Re: The Beach

[unionoftheheart]

[picking his head up to look around and]

[oh]

[fuck]

[biting his lip hard against a rush of nausea and then. wobbling slowly to his feet and croaking at the birds] Get off of them.

OOC Notes

[doesnothappen]

This is a multi-path interactive nightmare! I am just going to paste some blanket trigger warnings for the whole thing up here, for: suicide, corpses, ...violence..? Yes.

Also just... general play warning, your character may die or get hurt, let me know if you want this to not happen.

And some info that might be helpful:

1. You are not powercapped.

2. This is not a heart, it's just big multi-layered dream.

3. You can alter the dream.

I THINK THAT'S IT, ask ooc questions here I guess? Or just pm me.

And then they woke up.

[doesnothappen]

[Meanwhile, back at Sapphire, Mau is blinking and sitting up in bed.]

Re: And then they woke up.

[performing]

[AFTER A MOMENT, rolling out of his bed (somehow now the top bunk??) and landing semi-gracefully on the floor]

Ugh.

Re: And then they woke up.

[unionoftheheart]

[Ven isn't knocking on Sapphire's door, but he's just kind of. flopped nearby it in the hall, staring up at the ceiling. this was an intense night all around.]

[so when you go outside you'll find him]