a woman in the shape of a monster; a monster in the shape of a woman --

[cestrumnocturnum]

Who: Benji Ryans and Ayse Bitlisi
What: A misplaced dream has a dreamwalker following it back to its source.
Where: Dreamscape
When: Coardi, the 30th of Ceidary.
Warnings: Death and babies.

The second time she attempted sleep, her faculties had been regained. She had never been so out of touch of her own abilities since Baedal, fraying at the edges just like everything else; her own sense of purpose, for one, but a loss of control of dreaming felt a little, for a moment, like she'd lost what made her her. A brief cup of tea downstairs, quiet so as not to wake the other sleeping bodies in the house, and back to the trenches, even if it took a little while to get back to sleep.

In her own mind, Benji turns the dream over, feeling its texture. The layers of history peeled back over the bones of the ship and the ice and salt of an ocean that is otherwise impassive to the steady march of time. The bloodied child, its old soul; she tries not to focus so much on that, but does note blood beneath the nails of thinner fingers.

A thread. A tug. She is wary of it, at first, before she tells herself what she always does in moments like this: if she cannot be brave doing what she does, what can she be brave about?

That, and she's curious.

The dream is brought with her, almost like a cloak, worn and dragging behind as she goes in search if the mind that tug draws her to.

Comments

[armida]

The sleeping mind that Benji approaches is currently a relatively serene one. The ship begins to rock, close to the shores; it's the Mediterranean, Turkey, an old place but it doesn't look as old as it does in the 2000s. The buildings are comparatively quite new, as 14th-century Anatolia comes into focus. The Ottoman Empire is alive and kicking, but in its early stages. It has begun to flourish, but has not completely extended its reach into neighboring countries.

The boat hits the shore with a thump. The child begins to disintegrate--not in any real alarming way, but in the way that dreams segue on, sometimes more abruptly than is entirely comfortable for some minds. People are shouting, in the city on the shore. It is dusk. Something is on fire. They are singing, now, too, carrying torches down from the mountains (there are no mountains in this part of Anatolia, but Kurdistan and the coast have begun to blend in memory), toward a roaring, massive, fire. There are men and women, dressed in the heavy silk and damask attire appropriate to their stations: women wear tunic-dresses over trousers. They are not veiled, because they aren't Turkish, and those aren't their customs just yet.

It's Newroz. That means there's a party.

[cestrumnocturnum]

She does not quite fit in with this place; sometimes, Benji can simply blend into her surroundings, but usually when she has a sense of time and place. She does not, here, just new and innate knowledge; she has never physically set foot outside of America, but she has walked the coasts of Sicily, England, Israel... but never outside of more than a few decades. Sometimes, people paint fictional realities, depictions of what they have seen and can stitch into imagination, but these always seem painted.

This does not.

Her mission is not forgotten so much as set aside, unable not to be a little fascinated as she absorbs, readily, the provided detail and information. She climbs to shore, dressed not to blend in but to be ignored. She could be walking down the streets in Baedal, but it's less what she presents as visually so much as she simply chooses to not seem important to the avatars this stranger has populated her dreamscape with.

This can be reset by the lady who dictates what she sleeps about, but until then-- she moves, seeking the centre of the dream, which is, without fail, the dreamer.