multiversallogs | if you go chasing rabbits and you know you're going to fall

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if you go chasing rabbits and you know you're going to fall

Who: Wolfgang & Felicia, + OPEN
What: Creepy drunk witch anarcho-socialist Snow White has feelings and also terrible dreams.
Where: He can be anywhere but is especially likely to be found in Badside, the Chimer area, Flag Hill, Aspic, Griss Twist, Kinken, and Brock Marsh.
When: Second week of Kavadry
Notes: holy shit im sorry i have so many tl;dr words oh god oh man oh god...
Warnings: None in the post, in the comments: violence, especially directed at children, death, gore.

Wolfgang is not an ambitious person -- his goals mostly revolve around surviving the day. Since he got out of jail, he's spent much of his time trying to balance food, shelter, and pills -- and not always being able to afford all three. The city finally came through with steady work in the way of sewer maintenance, which... it's, okay, probably the worst job he's ever had, but he's not going to complain about it lest they manage to find him something worse. With that and his job at the radio station -- which he's not counting on lasting long -- he's getting his feet back under him, but the constant anxiety every time he looks in his wallet is wearing on him.

It would help if he stopped drinking, probably.

Since he finally bit the bullet and ventured out towards the beaches, he's been spending more time there, because they remind him of home. The weather's all wrong, it's just the smell of the sea that takes him back. He's never going to be able to afford to live out here and it's a long train ride away, but it's worth making the trip. Anyway, sometimes he's up there for work. He has contacts all over the city and usually finds himself going on hours-long wild goose chases trying to find a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get him the pills he needs and then it's 3 AM in the middle of nowhere and he finds himself crawling into the nearest bar to try to drink the voices out of his head and all he wants to do is throw himself into the river and take a nap maybe.

He is not taking care of himself.

It took a good deal of self-control to actually buy food today rather than go without, reasoning that one day won't hurt, when he knows perfectly well that not eating is just going to make him sicker. Still, he's having a hard time getting through the small loaf of bread he bought. He's never had much of an appetite and now he has none at all. Instead he's preoccupied with smoking one of his last cigarettes and staring off into the distance, not thinking about anything; he welcomes silence gladly, like an old friend he hasn't seen in years.

He is angry, of course. Angry with the Militia -- not personally, although yes, a bit of that, too -- and angry with himself for not being able to do anything about it. What can he do, what can any of them do? Protest? They'd have no problem gunning them down in the street, and he still panics every time he thinks about going back to one of those cells. Write strongly-worded letters? Laughable. They can't even gather to talk about it without looking over their shoulders, afraid of who might be listening. Everyone knows they plant plainclothes agents in meetings like that. It's how they're so swift about crushing any potential radical political action -- they swept through Badside almost immediately after, as soon as they could spare the manpower. They pulled down all the posters and made a big deal about their presence there, although it was only tension in the wake of that, not further violence. Just a reminder about who they are. How do you fight back against that?

The last time, there was an easy answer -- just leave. So he did; he turned his back on his country, his people, his family, and his God to walk away to nothing. It may not have solved anything, but refusing to be a participant in a war neither side could ever win was still an option. Here, though... there is nowhere to run to, nowhere that is completely separate from the politics of the city, short of surrendering oneself to the Fog.

So many people here have power, real power, and it doesn't make it better to think about how helpless they all are, too, it just makes him feel inadequate. Being some guy in a city where other people can lift buildings with their bare hands and blow things up with their mind is pretty nerve-wracking in addition to making him feel extra useless. He's not even very good at anything. Not for the first time, he wonders why he is here.

On a nearby fence, a long row of crows has begun to form, all staring at him -- a murder that begins to grow to alarming proportions the longer he sits here. He doesn't notice them, lost in his head as he is, roused only when the ash of his cigarette grows so long it breaks off and lands, hot, on his hand. He makes a face, flicks it off, and takes a drag.

A single, brave crow flies down streetward and hops up towards his feet, where he's sitting on a public bench. Without thinking he says, "Hello," and holds out his hand for it to examine. Then, mildly, "Stop that," when it starts pecking at his fingers. Glancing behind him, he notices the whole flock of them, perched there staring at him with blatant expectation that he would prefer to pretend has to do with the food he isn't eating. "Rude," he tells them but there's no bite to it. He breaks the bread into little pieces and tosses it out into the street, and the crows all immediately descend on it.

When he whistles at the first one, his friend, it comes hopping back and tries to untie his shoes with its beak, which makes him smile. He should probably be frightened by the sheer number of them; in a post-Hitchcock world, most people are cautious around birds, but he likes crows, clever, funny little things that they are. They're pretty much the same everywhere. Even if some of them have three eyes.

He crooks his fingers -- on a good day, he can coax them to get close enough to touch.

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Sleep is inescapable. It finds him at the most inopportune times, little brief kidnappings on the train, or the longer hostage situations in his room. No matter what he does, he can't ever really outrun it.

-- It starts all at once, in a city by the sea. More accurately, a camp by the sea, surrounded by desert. The hastily-constructed buildings are largely made of stone and brick and in poor condition. It's a large camp, but not large enough to contain its population -- some eighty thousand Palestinians, packed to the walls in tattered clothes and with haunted eyes. Somewhat incongruous are the beautiful water murals on the sides of some of the buildings -- the largest among them being about a thousand square feet. A thousand square foot appeal to humanity is pretty depressing. It's just light enough to see by but it's rapidly getting dark and electricity here is not always reliable.

It is behind one of these wall murals that that small, high keening originates -- the sound of a child crying.

There's a fence surrounding the other side, broken in some places and rusted in others as if no one's bothered to ever repair it, rendering it totally useless. The area encloses a playground, a thick layer of sand covering the ground, presumably to protect little feet. The dearth of real play equipment makes it a little sad, and what is there is poorly maintained.

Tucked into the corner is a little blond child. His knees, with the half-healed scrapes on them, are curled up to his chest and he has his face pressed between them, like he can hide that way. His age and gender a little hard to guess, but he's maybe seven or eight years old and either a boy or a tomboy, judging from what he's wearing. He can't possibly live here; he looks nothing like any of the people who do. He's the one crying; he must be, there's no one else there.

Sleep is an activity that's hard to come by for Felicia as well. She lives on a steady diet of energy drinks in between all her organic vegetable smoothies and it's the only thing that keeps her coherent most of the time. When she does sleep, it's fitful and she wakes up more tired than when she went to bed. The only good thing about being in Baedal so far is that when her head hits the pillow, she actually falls asleep without any medical help.

She doesn't know where she ends up during sleep, though, thinking this is just a dream of hers and nobody else's. It can't be, anyway. All Felicia's done is lie down; no ceremony, no reading of spells. Unintentional dreamwalking hasn't happened in years.

But it happens tonight, without her input, and Felicia finds herself in a world she's not familiar with. Surrounded by sand, she notices randomly that in jeans and a winter coat, she's not dressed for the area, but she doesn't feel hot. No, she's not even breaking a sweat under the strong sun. Moving along the way, she takes in the scene of desolation, of bricks held up by defeat instead of cement. She should get inside before it gets dark, she thinks, and find somebody to show her to a phone or a bus.

Her attention is torn from finding home by the sound of mewling. At first Felicia thinks it's a kitten, either injured or looking for it's mother, but as she walks closer to a playground, it becomes obvious that it's not an animal making those sobs. It's a kid, not one she knows, but he looks around the same age as her little brother and that's enough to give Felicia a pang of homesickness in her heart.

"Hey, are you okay?" She doesn't get too close to him, but with her only being a few feet away, he can't think she's talking to anybody but him.

The boy looks up immediately, startled, and with obvious wary anger on his face, an unusual reaction to the presence of a strange adult. That face, though, that's definitely familiar, even if he's roughly thirteen years younger and a lot smaller. He has the same dreamy Bambi eyes.

He glances around to see if they're alone, and only then does some of the obvious tension dissipate -- as if he were expecting to be found by more than one person. Still, he's cautious, wiping his face on his sleeve because it is suddenly extremely important that he not look like a baby. "Who are you?" He's not speaking English -- nor does he really understand it, only a little bit from school -- but in dream-logic, that doesn't seem to matter.

The fact that he hears her and responds to her gives Felicia the impression that this is one of her dreams. They never talk to her or notice that she's there, otherwise. The little boy reminds her of someone, but she can't place the face right now.

To her, it's fluent and clear English, easily understandable and nothing she has to ask him to repeat. Felicia stoops down in front of him, rear end hovering just a few inches off the ground. "I'm lost." This seems like a legitimate answer to a question about her identity. "What's wrong?"

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't speak to an adult -- not about this, anyway, although he is absolutely certain that she's not one of them. He has been aware of the importance of discretion since before he could speak and certainly before he knew what the word discretion means. (He still probably doesn't.) But this isn't real, it's a construction based on a memory, and largely defined by his emotion at the time -- please let an adult come take care of this.

That isn't going to happen. It's not stopping him from wishing so, though.

Uri sniffs and rubs at one of his eyes. "They took my friend," he says in a small, wavering voice. "I told Hassan I'd find her, but..."

"Where did they take her?" Her first question should be who took her, but nothing will be making logical or rational sense for the rest of the day. All that matters is this little boy's friend has been taken and he's upset over it. It's not anything Felicia could turn her back on, not when he's alone, she's alone, and there doesn't seem to be another soul around for miles. His problem first, then hers.

"I don't know. I have to find her." Which he should be doing, right now -- he knows how, he can track her, they left a trail for him that is not as obscured as it should be. They think he won't realise they left it that way on purpose; it's killing him to know that they took her to get to him. He sniffs again, and puts his head down on his folded arms. "But I'm scared."

Scared. He shouldn't to be nor should she, but they are. It's obvious why he's afraid, but Felicia's reason is a bit muddles. It could be because she's lost, but in truth, she's feeding of his emotions, blurring the line between his and her subconsciousness. It'll hit her how wrong this is later, but for how, he needs help.

She extends a hand towards the boy, fingernails each painted in a different hue of green. "Come. Let's find her." Where, Felicia doesn't know. He can lead the way.

"Okay." He offers a wobbly, trying-to-be-brave smile when he takes her hand and gets up. He would never actually abandon his friend, he loves her, and he knows this is something he has to do. If he's scared, he'll just have to work through that fear.

The dream takes most of the actual leg-work out of the search, although there remains the feeling that a great deal of time has passed. There isn't a single soul outside, the whole camp feels deserved, which even in the dream feels wrong.

Uri is seven. He doesn't understand complicated moral questions like is it ethical to mind-control thousands of people in order to protect their safety; he's only thinking how clever he is for having thought of it. This way, after all, no one else will get hurt.

He doesn't call his friend's name, nor is he physically looking for her -- rather, he seems to know where he is going already, or at least he's walking as if he's been here before. Sometimes he stops and cocks his head to the side as if he's listening very intently to something only he can hear -- and then he'll turn and walk off in another direction. In the memory this dream comes from, he wasn't so much looking for Safiya's voice as he was the absence of it; maybe he already knew then how this would end.

(Very little surprises him.)

In what feels like more time than it was, they're standing far to the east, near an ancient, derelict building that pulses with terror like radio waves. The entire area is coated with a strong compulsion to turn and walk away, which washes over him like water. He shudders once, but that's all.

It's really something to be seen, these waves. They remind Felicia of hot pavement on a summer's day, only filled with the distinct feeling of fear. They tell her somewhere in the back of her head in a voice that she doesn't belong here. Her only, Felicia notices. In the singular. That voice does not include the little boy.

There isn't enough time nor is it to the moment for her to mull over that as she feels the shudder through his hand that she grips tighter than any adult should. If she's terrified, Lord knows how this kid feels. Felicia should stop and tell him that they'll find a cop to help them or maybe his parents, the girl's parents, some other adult who is more capable of handling this than the one standing here, lost as ever in a strange land. There are a lot of options Felicia can choose, but the one she picks involes her just looking down at him, with the expression of an unasked question, waiting for his next step.

"You don't have to come," he tells her as he pulls something out of his pocket -- a long bit of white string, tied end to end to make a circle. He winds them through his fingers in a kind of cat's cradle, but this is not a game, not really. "It's not safe."

The real string is a stand-in for the metaphysical ones that only he can see -- the threads of reality and probability which govern all things. It is not hard to reach in, unravel a bit, and alter fate, especially not with a child's understanding that nothing is impossible, merely improbable. It's how he collapses their compulsion spells, clumsily like sweeping his arm through a house of cards, but resolutely in the same way. Invisibility is one of the first tricks any child-mage learns, mostly for sneaking out of the house and having harmless adventures, and with seven years of practise, he can shroud himself in not-being as easily as putting on a blanket.

Whether she wants to stay or go, the dream takes her anyway, in that sudden leap from one scene to another -- one moment they're outside and he's picking their defenses apart, and the next they're inside a grimy underground room. There is the feeling that this took more time than it actually has, again. They were waiting for him, they knew he'd be coming -- and he is vastly outnumbered. There are twenty white men in this room, not a single one of them belongs here and none of them are speaking the right language. The occult symbols written on the walls in someone's blood are foreign to him, but he doesn't need to understand them to know what they've done.

His friend's lying on the floor, still attached to the chair they tied her to. What's left of her, anyway. That dessicated corpse shouldn't still be able to move, but when Uri runs into the room, her head turns and her lidless eyes stare at him, somehow still pleading. Safiya was dead the moment they took her, but they have been keeping her alive to lure him in.

Uri screams.

They are suddenly aware of his presence and they move to grab him before he can act, but it takes five grown adults to restrain him. Magic against magic, they have better firepower but it's all spread out over twenty people -- Uri's is consolidated in one body, attached to one mind. He's shrieking, fighting them kicking and clawing, trying to reach for his friend as if, if he could just get to her, he could bring her back, knit the flesh together, keep her spirit from fleeing her body. Safiya, his friend -- she was seven.

Someone's yanking his head back by his long hair, holding a knife to his throat -- they're not going to kill him, they're going to drag him through the Caul, inverting his avatar and making him one of them -- these mad men who want to see the world burn. He can feel their hooks digging into his soul, trying to drag him down with them, but he isn't even thinking of his own body right now.

His friend. They butchered his best friend.

When Uri's blood spills, it happens all at once -- the man holding his torso in place has a half-second to scream while the man with the knife explodes from the inside out; then his face bubbles obscenely, blood and skin and meat boiling over before he bursts like an old boil. Uri pops them from the inside like kernels in a microwave, gore and bone splashing high over the walls. One by one at first, then all at once, together, he splatters them all over the room. He is screaming her name and when he's free of them he runs to her, but when he touches her without their magic holding her together, what's left of her collapses into dust.

In the waking world, Wolfgang is not aware that he is also calling her name.

Uri is still crying when the building explodes. The last thing he says is, "I'm sorry."

"If it's not safe, somebody has to go with you," Felicia replies matter of factly. In a few moments, she's going to wish she listened to the little boy or better yet, left him where he was crying. Things would have been better that way. For her. Maybe not for him.

There are literal and metaphorical signs on the wall and she wants to run when she sees the girl, dead yet still living somehow, tied to the chair. Felicia's screaming at the men to leave him alone, let the girl go, stop being horrible people to innocent children, but no one hears her. No one even notices her standing there. She can't even move. Her feet suddenly feel all too heavy and even her arms lie limp at her sides. All eyes are on the boy and through fear alone, she squeezes her eyes shut when the blade is held to his throat, only opening them when something wet splatters against her face.

It's blood. Not a little boy's blood, but a grown man's who seemed to have just exploded by himself somehow. In the next moment, a shard of bone coming from another man whizzes by her, grazing a cut into her cheek where her blood mixes with one of the killer's. She wants to look away, to run, but it's impossible. Her eyes defy her commands, only letting rivers of tears flow out. The boy is paying attention to the girls, still ignoring Felicia's presence. She's not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

In her own waking world, Felicia barely makes it out of bed into the bathroom where she collapses in front of the toilet bowl and vomits forcefully. It's the telltale feeling of the after effects of dreamwalking, but she knows she didn't do it purposely this time, doesn't know how she did it if she did. It was just a nightmare but that enough worries her, but she is too exhausted, too drenched in a cold sweat, too dizzy, and too busy throwing up pure bile now to think about anything but what her mind just saw. For a second, she doesn't realize the sting on her cheek until she rubs a hand over her face and flinches when her fingers brush up against the skin. There's no cut there, but the skin is sensitive as ever.

And it's enough to send Felicia into sobs on the cold bathroom floor.

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if you go chasing rabbits and you know you're going to fall

☽ dreaming.

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tw: violence, torture, gore, child death

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