multiversallogs | birds singing in the sycamore tree

This an underwater dream. Cool calm floating serenity. Colourful luminous fish of all sizes swim in schools around the visitors - some of whom are clearly new to aquatic life and may be trying on some unfamiliar shapes to deal with it. The drink here comes in bubbles, there are no glasses or cups.

This dream is a building, or maybe it's several buildings as designed by a great fan of MC Escher. Staircases, landings and parts of floor plans have become intertwined in ways that define euclidean geometry. It has been furnished with generous plush sofas (lion paws and everything), floor pillows and elaborate rugs that sometimes stretch far enough to cover more than one plane. There is food here too, and drink presented in elegant crystal carafes. There is no clear up or down, gravity seems to shift and adjust itself according to where the dreamer goes.

Everything is very flat and brightly coloured in this dream. Visitors may find themselves outside of their bodies, watching a 2D representation of themselves interact with a stylised and equally 2D version of what must be inspired by the Apache back home in Baedal. The perspective may be odd, but the feeling, the music and the drink is absolutely familiar.

The forest dream has tall trees and all the leaves are really sleeping hummingbirds nesting among open flowers. Dimly glowing moths drift gently to and fro illuminating a clearing where hanging cornucopias offer visitors an endless supply of fruit and pastries. There are soft mounds of fragrant grass to sit on and a few swings that seem to have grown naturally out of vine. Strange and familiar animals sleep or wander sedately at the outskirts of the clearing.

This dream takes place at the heart of a nebula. It's surrounded by the light of millions of distant stars and soft glowing gases of blue, purple and green. Visitors can float free from the restrictions of gravity (and sometimes even form) if they choose, or they can stay the solid glass floor where refreshments are served. Space can incredibly vast and awe-inspiring, it is thanks to the logic of dreams that it keeps from being starkly intimidating as well.

This dream is held in the center, grassy square of a castle that is somehow both small enough to remain unintimidating, yet large enough to hold an obstacle course and racks of stadium seating. Vendors walk among the crowd offering snacks and drinks, while those who wish to participate in the steeplechase event are encouraged to make their way down to the field for pre-game body painting.

When he fell into the dreams, Sebastian had been briefly tempted by the forest but he felt drawn to the odd, shifting perspectives of Maurits' dream instead. While there's no mirror at hand, somehow he knows that he's not wearing his contacts and his limp has straightened out; overall, the aggressive normalcy that usually cloaks and protects him has faded away.

The dream that is the Network glows with neon lights and thrums with a neural energy. There are many interconnected rooms with many screens and there is even a bar that serves stims and things that glow strongly in the dark. Visitors are encouraged to take on some aspects of the digital environment and may pull visual representations of code and text out of thin air.

Nuala is nothing but stars.

Just stars, distant and bright and beautiful and self-contained, hidden from other dreamers that she might better simply observe, a cool opacity absorbing the heat and reverberation of the molten intensity of her own psyche - she is but a part of the landscape, here, and to sink into it that way gives her some strange sensation of like home, which is not the least but the most that she could ask of this experience.

She dreams.

When the monsters came, he sent forth the white beasts one at a time; they roamed the landscape in silence, passing through like ghosts, and with their eyes he witnessed each visit. They did not turn back to him, but lost their shapes and returned as mist to the air.

Since his arrival the prince has dwelt among the trees in the north, silent as his cervine apparitions, moving with the fog's slow approach and recession. Not once has he left the chill of its vapour. Not once. The moisture saturates his hair and his garments. Each morning he shakes off its dew. Day and night he breathes it, blinks through the condensation, licks it from the corners of his mouth.
Weeks of suffusion.

In the dream, his presence is an unfurling, its emergence like the slow reach of a vine. A shadow skirting the edges of stars. Nuala, it breathes, silent to all but them.

The calm of Maurits' dream combined with the impossible spacial logistics make for a compelling setting—one that Mycroft doesn't bother resisting the urge to visit. It's his first stop; though he's planned to meet someone tonight, he's not sure where, and he'd prefer to wait somewhere quiet.

Being in the dream feels strange for Mycroft, though not as disorienting as he'd anticipated. What makes it odd, more than anything else, is how natural it feels—how there's no jarring sense of wrongness despite gravity changing locations in each room. What there is is a lingering feeling of having been here before he actually arrived, and Mycroft quickly notices that the passage of time seems difficult to wrap his mind around, but such is the way of dreams. Normally, losing his sense of time might unnerve him, but after being under so much stress for so long, it almost feels like a release.

After wandering around the dreamscape for only a few minutes, he comes upon a young man who appears to be Sebastian LeMat, though the changes in his appearance are radical. Years seem to have been lifted off of him; he stands tall and possesses an air of certainty and calm that he hadn't before. His eyes are now green, and his missing fingers have returned as phantoms, pale and translucent.

Mycroft can't say he's surprised.

"Mr. LeMat," he says, sure to give the man fair warning before he approaches despite how put-together he seems here. "You're looking well."

"Thank you." In comparison to some of the other dreamers nearby, Sebastian seems somehow more solid than many of them. There is a clear space around him that easily differentiates between who he is and his surroundings. As a result of a great deal of practice resisting legilimency, it's fair to deduce that he has a well-defined sense of self.

"It's odd that the way we view ourselves in dreams can be so radically different from the everyday. You'd think that it -," he stops, frowns and gestures that he needs a moment to shuffle his thoughts to better express what he wants to say. "I was going to say that you'd think it would be easier to be someone else in dreams, and certainly, a false-face isn't too difficult to slip on," he makes a practiced gesture with his right hand and his appearance slides into that of a different young man and then back into Sebastian's own. In the waking world, his magic is slowly coming back to him in fits and starts, here it works as well as it ever did. "But I get the feeling that becoming someone else would grate more. What do you think, Mr. Holmes?"

With his subconscious closer to the surface, Sebastian is less guarding and is willing to talk more freely. He's happy to be here in a dream in general, quite pleased to talk to Mycroft, whom he finds interesting, and curious to see how he can affect the world around him.

Mycroft raises his eyebrows with interest as Sebastian changes faces easily. The older Holmes has significant experience with lucid dreaming (at least compared to most baseline humans), but when conscious in dreams, he tends more toward exploration and observation rather than focusing on his own presence. Dreams have always been the one of the few places he didn't have to worry about doing that.

This is partially why Mycroft isn't aware of what he looks like here and now. The ultra-sharp reality spreading out around him like an aura seems normal to him—a lack of such clarity would grab his attention more quickly (in fact, he has found himself admiring the level of detail in the dream and thinking that this dreamer must be more observant in the waking life than most). In the midst of this halo of aggressively bright realness, his avatar seems particularly forgettable, like a sheet of manila paper in a billion dollar frame. His facial features are hard to distinguish from those of another man, the intensity of his eyes is dimmed, and even the fine tailoring of his suit seems unremarkable.

"I suppose it depends on the dreamer," Mycroft replies, similarly feeling more open to conversation than usual. "If one is accustomed to being someone else, would such a thing not come more easily?"

Edited (word choice neurotica) 2012-04-01 04:50 (UTC)

The dark purple, floor length dress is probably inappropriate for the way Steph is treating the trees in the forest like her personal jungle gym. It never seems to catch or trip her up, despite the fact it curls around her legs like smoke - or maybe that's why it doesn't seem to hinder her at all. She's having a lot of fun, experimenting within the dream and finding out what she can do to the world around her, and herself. Her scars are gone, her hair is cropped short (for now) and the smoke dress is just another part of that.

She'd been drawn to the unfamiliar landscape of the forest; they're not exactly common in Gotham. The trees and vines offer something interesting to do, and she climbs and swings with the same ease she'd have with buildings and zip lines. Occasionally she finds herself in the clearing to grab something to eat - everything tastes delicious, and it's not like she's going to have to burn the calories off later - then heads back up to the trees to eat and people watch.

"That's pretty impressive."

Hellboy's first instinct, as it had been during St. Kelley's Memento, was to steer clear of this festival and stay on the job. He has, for a little over a year now, been actively cognizant of just how much he's enjoyed certain substances and how that's gotten him in trouble. Also, dreams have never been especially good experiences at the best of times, and he just recently had an unusually bad one. A holiday of drugged dreaming seems like a double recipe for disaster, at least for him.

However, there had been assurances that the dreams were safe, that he can leave if there's trouble, and that the gods kept the city safe while people slept. After the recent horrors and losses, he finally decided to have a little faith, settle in comfortably at home, and take the plunge. As he dropped down, the main things he had in mind were safe, quiet, for once I'd just like a dream that's actually relaxing.

And thus, the forest. Not for him, the dreams of buildings, sports, space, or the ocean. One of the things he's liked about living in Sobek Croix is that its quiet woods would be an excellent place to get away from it all to unwind after a difficult case. He hasn't taken advantage of that nearly as much as he really should, though, and so the forest dream affords him the opportunity to finally do that.

Having discarded all responsibilities for the time being, Hellboy's left all of his standard gear, including Excalibur, back in the waking world, keeping only his modesty in the form of his usual black shorts. His experimentation with the dream has largely been limited to expanding one of the swings into a hammock large enough to fit him comfortably. He lounges in the hammock, his tail dangling through a hole in the bottom and lazily moving around, a bunch of grapes from one of the cornucopias at his side to snack on.

"Steph, right? We talked on the network once."

Steph looks down at him with a grin, taking a few seconds to move down to a lower branch, some sort of pastry held carefully in one hand - it's filled with nuts and jam of some tart fruit she doesn't recognize. She gets herself settled comfortably a few feet away from his hammock, her legs dangling from a branch and the dress still swirling in a light breeze.

"That's me," Her voice is a little softer than it is in reality - she's taken assorted damage to her throat that's gone while here - but her smile is as easy as ever, "And you're Hellboy. What brings you to the forest?" As opposed to the other possible dreamscapes.

He nods with a small smile, acknowledging his identity. "Had to get away from anything city-like. Been too much of that on the job, especially lately, with not enough time to rest. Space is where horrors from beyond are back home, and I've had bad experiences on and in the water. I like the forest, though. How 'bout you? Just looking for somewhere to play Tarzan?"

"Makes sense. I'm feeling the same about the city right now," That won't last for long, Steph loves cities too much. She'll probably end up there before the night is over, not that she's keeping track of time that well.

"I could play Tarzan in the city," It's easier to be honest in the dreams, which is something she should be careful of, but, oh well. "I don't have much experience with forests. At least, ones without carnivirous plants," The way she says it, and she way her mouth twists in a wry smile makes it clear she's not just talking about run-of-the-mill venus flytraps.

One of those sprawling summer days that seems like a memory even as you're living it. Sunlight—warm and reassuring as a clasp to the shoulder—pours down over the diamond. The grass has been trimmed down to an immaculate carpet of green, foul lines freshly chalked. As infielders lob the ball around it lands with a crisp snap, the sound carrying like a gasp in a silent theater. Calls of “peeeeanuts!” and “cold beer!” boom through the stands.

It's a space at once vast and intimate.

"If you're too often other people, you'd just be a blur, a mish-mash of shifting parts." In his experience, the best way to pull on another person's identity is to know yourself well and work from here. "When I was younger, I had some practice keeping out unwanted psychic visitors and for all the useful skills I don't remember, it seems that one has stayed with me."

When he mentions his youth, there's a brief impression of a younger man: whippet thin from exercise and not eating well, wearing an outfit that is a cross between wizarding robes and muggle clothing. The clothing is neat and relatively clean, but shows signs of long-term wear and repair. The robes have a couple of singe marks, but the damage doesn't extend to the charmed embroidery around the edges. (How could Mycroft know for sure that the stitching is magical? Dream logic, that's how.) Peeking out from under the robe, a young Harry is wearing a customized holster that carries both a handgun and a wand and shows regular use.

Mycroft takes in Sebastian's even younger appearance, the avatar full of telling details that jump in and out of sharper relief as Mycroft quickly glances over them. So far, he's mostly seeing more confirmation of what he'd deduced about the man upon meeting him previously—a child soldier with a background in magic who'd been at war for years. It's interesting to see the wand and robes, though, since it's well-known at Hellsing that despite being a wizardry consultant, Sebastian doesn't do magic himself. Furthermore, the style of the robes solidly connects him to a particular group of witches and wizards in Baedal who all seem to have come from the same world.

"Do psychics often intrude upon the thoughts of strangers, or is it a chore to do so?" Mycroft asks, partially because he wants to know for his own sake (he's done some research, but there's no reason not to get an additional first-hand opinion) and partially to try and prompt more stories about the past out of Sebastian.

"I realize that, what with the nature of this place, all people with such talents may not operate within the same... parameters, as it were, but in your experience."

"Back home, back before I retired, I'd take a couple weeks after a particularly tough case and go wandering somewhere, clear my head. England was particularly good for that." He shrugs and settles a little more into his hammock. "Sometimes I'd still run into stuff anyway, but that's just my crap luck. Here, there's just too much going on." It's kind of sad when the closest thing to a relaxing walkabout you can get is while back-tracking a dead Shoggoth's path through the sewers.

Steph's comments cause Hellboy to peer more intently at her. In his world, costumed heroes were only a very tiny phenomenon that rose and fell on either side of World War II. Even though Hellboy received training from one and read the fictionalized adventures of another as a kid, it's still not something he automatically thinks of, but he can tell she's hinting at something. "Well, at least it seems you're pretty well prepared for dodging curses. Or... other things, I guess."

She eats a bite of the pastry as she listens, nodding in agreement about things being too busy here, "Even if there wasn't so much going on, there's nowhere you can really go. Unless there's a secret day spa out in the fog." If only.

That gets a small laugh, just because other things has come to mean a lot in the last few weeks, but rather than saying that she shrugs with one shoulder, "You have to be, in Gotham. You either learn to move quick or you learn to take a beating." Saying that doesn't seem to affect her mood much; maybe she should worry that it doesn't. It's not that she's jaded, she just doesn't want to let it upset her.

"Except in very rare cases, it's a tool that can be wielded if one is so gifted." As he mentions the word 'tool', there is an image of a large, shallow dish held up on fine wrought-metal tripod and filled with molten silver. The liquid moves under its own power and ripples, distorting any images that Mycroft might be able to see. As it is, there will be brief, choppy split-second single frames related to Harry's time learning occlumency.

Even for Mycroft, the quickly flickering images are hard to make out; he first focuses on the dish itself and the liquid silver inside. It's a curious thing; he's never seen anything like it (though that can be said for much of what he's encountered in Baedal).

"What is that?" he asks, eyes now fixed on the changing scenes within it.

birds singing in the sycamore tree

ADETOKUNBO

MAURITS

SANAA

VIDAR

WHETU

BASSAROS

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HERMAN

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