[ closed ] teeth of mangled little listeners

[gramarye]

Who: Benji and Wolfgang
What: This dream is contaminated.
Where: Dreamscape
When: Nighttime, sometime late Ceidary
Warnings: Severe body horror, violence directed at children, will be edited as needed

The desert at night is comfortably cool. This far from any major city, it is also not as dark as it feels like it should be, because the moon and the stars are out in such bright clarity that they light up the whole landscape. Of course, it's hard to tell exactly whether there is any major city anywhere at all — there's nothing around as far as the eye can see but more desert. This could be anytime at all.

It's the convoy of trucks rolling in that telegraph the time period — they all look roughly circa the 1940's. They're all black with black-tinted windows except for the single silver Cadillac with them. The glare from their headlights is visible a long way off in the distance and for an indeterminate amount of time, that's all there is — headlights coming closer, illuminating small patches of desert before them. Why they stop where they do is anyone's guess, but they do stop and the doors of all those cars open, people spilling out — white men and women in suits that are at least weather-appropriate; it's about 15°C. What they're saying, in spite of the distance, is more or less audible. They're mostly British.

"Are you sure this is where she is?"

"Absolutely certain; the readings are off the charts."

They're carrying weird gadgets, almost comically so, like something out of a 40's pulp science fiction comic, almost as if they were scavenged out of materials found in someone's garage, all buttons and dials and long antennae. The cartoonish deedly-boop noises they make are enough at odds with the general tone of the rest of this scene to edge it towards surreality, but the deadly economy in the faces of the men and women wielding them swing everything back around to menacing.

This could be a child's reimagining of technology they do not understand.

They're spreading out in grid-like patterns, combing the area for something, obviously searching. A woman stops to open the trunk of the silver Cadillac and remove a case, inside of which is something that is not at all cartoonish or funny — a modern assault rifle, like the LSAT assault rifle. She's loading it when one of her colleagues glances over and scoffs.

"You're really going to use a gun?" he asks.

"Shut up, you idiot. It's Primium." She locks the magazine into the weapon and wields it like it weighs nothing at all.

"Christ. Is this really necessary? It's just a kid."

Above them, the stars shine on indifferently, but something is wrong with the constellations. None of them are recognisable, and they should be here, because this is Earth. None of the men and women searching the desert pay that any mind; they have something more important to do than pay attention to the exact configuration of stars.

Behind a dune thirteen meters away, something moves. Something that sounds human.

Comments

[cestrumnocturnum]

Fidget fidget. Her eyes track the fidgeting and, shyly, she goes to tip still somewhat warm tea into one of the mismatched cups she set out. She finds it at least gives her something to hold, and maybe that's true of everyone. It's set in front of him, before her hands retreat back into her own space. "It's funny, people sometimes ask me that," she says, not really looking at him as she speaks. "'Is it real', I mean. It's confusing to me. It's something that happens, like a-- like a disease, or." No, that's not very pleasant. She winces, tries again; "A feeling. A thought.

"I don't know what 'unreal' is supposed to be if it's something that happens. You've had dreams like that before. The..." Her forehead wrinkles, briefly, unsure what to call it, dream-like abstractions always harder to grapple with when she wakes up. "The shape," she says, finally, feeling a little silly for it.

Her blunt fingernails tap against the edge of her cup. "It was foreign, I think. We all have conflicts and nightmares, but it waged war on you. Or... I don't know. I guess not war." No more than storms are war on the sky, or black holes are war on space. She lifts her tea to sip, glancing at him over the top of it. "But it was exceedingly not nice."

[gramarye]

"There was a..." He hesitates. 'Demon' is a little offensive, he thinks, there are people in this city who don't take kindly to it being used as a term to describe malevolent entities. (Which was really alarming to discover in the middle of a crowded bar in Ludmead, yes.) He makes a gesture, shaking one hand from side to side like sort of. "Thing. It was — Flag Hill, Aspic, Howl Barrow. Some other places. That was its shape, the spiral. That was real. It killed a lot of people, it was... pretty bad." He goes on to add, a little too quickly, "I mean, it's fine now, it's gone, I just... it's hard to forget."

And hard to talk about, given how his anxiety ramps up about 200%. That was a good answer, though. About things being real. "When I imagine things, sometimes, it makes them — it gives them power. Dreaming makes it stronger. It makes it hard to tell the difference between real and... not, dreaming and awake." He is staring straight at the tea. There's not a lot of eye contact going on in this conversation.

[cestrumnocturnum]

Her fingers link together, and she places her chin upon them as she listens, eyes hooded. She comes from place with a lot of rules, but Baedal has so many new ones. "I see. Maybe. Magic's still new." Because whatever she is, whatever her friends are, they weren't magical. Everyone has their own 'normal'. "But if it is just a memory, a dream-- you're very different," she interrupts herself to qualify, allowing a small smile obscures as she wearily rubs her face, "but maybe-- mm. There's a temple, the temple of Hanuel."

She feels a bit silly, talking about gods at all, but she's given it thought. Read about it. "One in Howl Barrow, I think. They could maybe help, if-- I'm not sure I can, the way it kept eating through. But we could both go, if you like."

[gramarye]

"I can't." He looks rueful. He'd considered it, yeah, and felt guilty even for that much. "The whole, um... 'no other gods before me' thing is. Kind of a big deal." And he feels extra guilty over having participated in a couple god-run holidays here; there's nothing wrong with the pantheon, per se, just that he knows he's not supposed to, and yet.

"It's fine," he says after a moment, tugging on his hair. "I can handle it."

[cestrumnocturnum]

There's a bit of automatic argument lining up, but there's no conviction in it, and she let's it go before she can think of the words, falling silent for a moment in thought. If she can accept that magic is outside her grasp, so can she with religion. "Sorry," Benji says, instead, simply. "I know you can, though.

"But if you ever need to talk it through, I don't have to do it when asleep. And you, uh, know where to find me." Be less of a dork, Benji.

[gramarye]

When Wolfgang smiles it is usually a reflexive action that takes him a few moments to catch up to, and then he gets embarrassed about it, pursing his lips to try to contain his expression back into neutrality or else covering his mouth, if his teeth are showing. He's doing that now. He's like this all the time, like he feels the need to apologise for everything he does — breathing, speaking, disturbing the air around him — and it's probably annoying when it's constant, but. "I think I can remember that, yes."

[cestrumnocturnum]

She smiles more freely, this time slightly abashed. She knows she is older than Wolfgang, by some years, and she only need look at him to know; and yet, sometimes she just doesn't feel that way at all. "Well, good," she allows, scratching long white fingers through her hair as she tips a look back down to her tea, before bringing it up to sip from, although not before adding; "Next time I'll set out wine instead of tea."