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» nocturnal vacation, unnecessary sedation

Who: Felicia and YOU.
What: Come get your hair done or come talk to her or come be stared at her funnily because she dreamed about you and you did bad things (SUP WOLFGANG)
Where: The Best Little Hair House, other locations as you please
When: Misdi-Sukkardi at the salon, any other time anywhere else
Warnings: Bubbly personality? Language? TBA

For as much as she fakes it until she makes it, there are just some days where Felicia honestly doesn't have the energy to act like she has the energy to do anything. The dreams have been especially vivid since she's arrived in Baedal, more so than usual, and they all bother her. None of them are nice dreams, dreams about love and living life to the fullest. They're all filled with unspeakable horrors of faces both familiar and unfamiliar to her. She doesn't know where her subconscious stops and other people's start.

It exhausts her, and Felicia would give anything for an uninterrupted night's sleep. But sleeping bodies don't get fed and neither do angry landlords, so she manages to train herself into swallowing coffee strong enough that a spoon can stand easily upright in until she can make it out of the house and down to the salon. Maybe some bright sunshine or a chilly breeze will wake her up on the way over while she picks up some groceries. Maybe it won't. Maybe the cow will be happy to see her today. Maybe it won't.

No, it definitely won't. Mentos just wants its hay. Greedy cow.

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Felicia is lazily feeding Mentos bits of hay as she sits on the steps of the trailer, noticing the pink shoes before looking up to see the the rest of the person attached to them. She frowns for a second or two once she reaches his face; something about him is bugging her but she can't place it right now. Maybe it's just her tired brain making things up, so she smiles at him in the polite way she smiles at all her clients.

"About time you let me play in your hair," Felicia greets him, standing up and brushing off the back of her pants. "What can I do you for today?"

"I'm kind of a mess," he admits. He runs his hand through his hair and makes a face; it's in a bit of a state, dried out and slowly approaching a state that can be called frizzy (dun dun dun). Normally Wolfgang would never let his hair get in this shape, but circumstances have been conspiring against him. "And I've got somewhere to be tonight and I'm pretty sure he's going to murder me if I don't do exactly what he wants, but I've got no idea what I'm doing. Can you help?"

Help him, Obi-Wan Felicia, you're his only hope.

Oh God. Not frizzy. No, no, no. We cannot have frizzy in these parts. That is it. Felicia to the rescue.

She reaches out and touches his hair to see what particular kind of conditioner he needs, but when she touches him, her expression changes to one of confusion and Felicia yanks her hand back as if she's been shocked. She has, but it's a different kind of shock. A shock of realization that now there is a clear reason why that little boy in the dream looked so familiar to her.

"I had a dream about you the other day." The words come spilling out before Felicia can push them down. Damn it.

He looks surprised by her reaction -- static electricity? maybe? sure -- and then interested. "Really! What was it about?"

If he remembers that particular dream, it's not apparent in his face or his tone -- although maybe in the back of his head he feels like he's seen her more recently than he has, but Wolfgang's memory is a little... shaky, so he doesn't trust it.

He has so many nightmares, he can't keep track of them all.

She wishes she kept her mouth shut, wishes she never had that stupid dream. What Felicia doesn't wish is that she never had the dreamwalking ability, but still, sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth. How could she ever tell him that a child version of him murdered grown men without even touching them? And then about that little girl? It was too horrific to even put into words.

It's better just to ignore his interested question. She waves a hand as she opens the door to the trailer, hoping he will leave well enough alone. "Let's get your in the chair."

Felicia's reaction there is doubly confusing and he frowns for a moment before shrugging it off. Okay. Maybe it was a bad dream. It happens, especially in Baedal. The fog tends to mess people up, and Howl Barrow is pretty close to the city borders.

"Okay." He has to duck to get in the door, then sits down obediently.

It was a bad dream. No, there is no word that describes how terrible that dream was. It felt so real, realer than all the other dreams she's ever had. It scared her.

It's because of pure muscle memory that Felicia manages to cape Wolfgang without choking him, even as her hands shake uncontrollably. It had to be just her overactive imagination. This gentle looking guy couldn't possible be able to do what he did.

Certified space cadet he might be, but Wolfgang is not, like... blind, he can see that something is clearly bothering her enough so that her hands are shaking. And that troubles him. "Hey," he says, turning around to look at her; he really does look concerned. "Are you okay?"

"Who's Safiya?"

For some reason, Felicia finds herself asking who the girl is rather than if he knows somebody by that name. She can't even look at him as she asks. It's like her mind is telling her what she already suspects but didn't want to be true. She's walking while she's sleeping, with no permission or preparation. No wonder she's been so sick and tired more so than usual.

"I... don't know." He sounds genuinely confused as he wracks his brain for anyone he might know by that name -- an Arabic name, and he doesn't know a lot of Arabs. Not here, certainly, and not from home. It does sound familiar, but in the sort of vague way one recalls names from newspaper articles or friends' Twitter feeds, and again, when he goes back far enough in his memory, it's just -- a wall. Utter blankness. "Should I?" he asks, tentatively, wondering if it's someone he was introduced to whose name he promptly forgot -- it happens sometimes.

"In the dream..."

In the dream, what? She was dead? She was dead, tied to a chair, and still able to move? Nothing makes sense here. If he doesn't remember, it had to be Felicia's dream, her own brain's creation. But why? It's never been like this, so vivid and real.

Felicia shakes her head to clear her thoughts, but it doesn't do much but add more questions. "In the dream, she was your friend."

"I don't have any friends by that name, but --"

He hesitates, because he doesn't want to pry, he respects other people's need for privacy no matter how curious he is, but on the other hand... "Do you want to talk about it? You seem..." A vague gesture to take in her general state. Disturbed? Shaken? Pick one.

All of these above. He probably thinks she's batshit insane now and if he ran right out of this trailer now, she wouldn't and couldn't blame him. She would probably do the same if she was in his position, being told some hairstylist she once let out of a room dreamt about him. It's stupid, but when he offers, she runs with it, twisting her fingers around themselves.

"She was dead. She was your friend and you were looking for her and she was dead."

"Slow down." By contrast, he's so calm, like the eye of a storm; it's not a command but a gentle suggestion. This stillness is not unusual, these quiet, slow gestures he makes like he's slightly drugged. "Start at the beginning. What happened?"

You were small, like seven? I don't know. And you were crying and you said that somebody took her away and you had to find her because you told somebody... Hassan? That you would find her." Even though he told her to slow down, the most Felicia can manage to do is sit down in the chair under the hood dryer. Her hands continue to shake, though lesser now because the trembling has moved to her voice. Each word she says vibrates between clenched teeth.

"You had to find her and I said I would help you and we did find her." But it was too late. Those are the words she's having trouble saying because Felicia knows what's coming next.

Why is that name so familiar? Hassan. He doesn't know anyone by that name, or Safiya, for that matter. And yet they both trigger something in his head, a kind of internal reverberation from something that's just enough out of his reach so as to be frustrating. It feels like staring at an optical illusion everyone but he can see through.

That dream, though... That's familiar in a more immediate way. Not like anything that's actually happened to him, that would be ridiculous, he would remember that clearly, he's sure -- but it sounds like so many of his recurring dreams. The bad ones.

(They're all bad.)

He's looking intensely at nothing as he seems to process this, trying to sort through this sudden rush of emotion. The pause is just beginning to border on uncomfortable when he moves, an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He doesn't want to ask, because he feels like he already knows the answer, but -- "Then what happened?"

Edited (words words words) 2012-02-18 20:08 (UTC)

Why does he continue to ask for more? Why does he push on without even noticing he's doing it? Felicia can't blame him for this either. Curiosity is a powerful thing. She would be hard pressed to leave well enough alone herself.

"She was dead. She was already dead and..." Felicia covers her face with her hands, trying to not look at him as she finishes the sentence. "And you killed the people who took her."

She might not have it in her to give him the gritty details.

Wolfgang exhales a breath he didn't realise he had been holding in. "I have had that dream before," he says. His tone is oddly steady -- in some ways, it's almost a relief to admit to that. This big secret he's been carrying around for nearly three years. He would never admit it under ordinary circumstances, but she already knows. He doesn't know how she knows, but she does, and that... should freak him out more, yes, but this is Baedal. Everything's weird here.

"It comes and goes. I can't remember when, the last time..." He trails off as he searches back in his memory and realises -- no, he does remember. It was... a week or two ago, maybe. He had just started that new job. "You were there. Last time. No, that's not --" That isn't right, that's not how the dream goes. It's always the same; he's lost and looking, and he finds her, but she's gone, and someone is yelling at him and telling him to never, ever come back. There's never a woman in it. "That isn't right."

"No." She shakes her head hard enough once her hands slip from her face. Her hair, back to it's natural dark brown color but with streaks of pink clip-ins, swings back and forth. What he says is wrong. It should be wrong. "No. I shouldn't have been there. I didn't do anything to be there. I didn't do the ceremony. I didn't do anything."

She sounds like she's babbling senselessly, but to Felicia, what she says is completely logical. This hasn't happened for years, since she was a preteen hitting puberty. It's impossible... but what's impossible is possible. She of all people knows this.

Suddenly, she gets up with a speed and moves to the shampoo bowl to splash cold water on her face. Droplets of water fall off her chin into the ceramic bowl beneath with sharp splats. "I thought it was my dream. Not yours."

Wolfgang straightens, alarmed by how distressed she is. He's eager to dismiss it as a coincidence, like he always is, but when he chooses to believe things that can't be true (I've never been in Baedal before, this woman I don't know was in my dream the other night, etc) he never really believes it, and that disquieting sense of wrongness just stresses him out more. The more he thinks about it, the more true it always feels.

After all, what are the odds that they both happened to have the same dream? And hers featured people she's never seen before, and his randomly included her even though that has never happened the other several dozen times he's had it, or any dream?

Not good, apparently.

"I don't understand -- ceremony?"

It's less of a ceremony and more of a ritual, but Felicia doesn't quite feel up to explaining anything to him or anybody right now. She's fully freaked out, confused, scared... the whole shebang. She's never felt as alone as she feels now. Nobody else is around to explain to her what's going wrong and how far it'll go. It hasn't only been one dream so far; it's been many, one on top of the other.

Maybe she should forget it. Fake it until she makes it again. Pretend that she sleeps like any other person and pretend that she's just mentally unstable. It'll be good for her reputation, the little she has here now. It was a one off thing, right? Right. It was only him. The other dreams didn't have anybody she knew in them. This totally sounds like a complete and rational explanation to her because it's the only one she has.

Felicia wipes her face dry with a towel that she pulls from a stack. She doesn't bother to unfold it, just dragging it over her worn looking face. The fact that she hasn't been sleeping well at all shows more now than it ever has. "I have to do your hair."

Wolfgang pauses for a moment, pursing his lips. "I have that dream often. It must have been mine, and I apologise. I am sorry if -- that it disturbed you." He really is; it's bad enough dealing with that on his own, but the thought of having unintentionally inflicted it on someone else troubles him, especially as it dawns on him that that might have been him and not her --

No, that doesn't make sense. He's ill, and none of the symptoms for any mental illness ever documented include projecting your dreams into other people's heads.

(Could be the city fucking with him, though. Wouldn't that be the cherry on the shit sundae his year has been so far.)

"I've never, you know. That never happened, it's not real. I don't... know why I am this way, but." He would like to assure her he's not some kind of homicidal psycho, although to be fair, a very young child who just witnessed his friend being tortured and murdered lashing out at the people responsible is understandable. A grown adult would have trouble containing their emotional response to that. "This city... sometimes it does strange things, especially when you are close to the fog. There is a lot of magic here and it's not always... contained." As unassuring as that is about the city itself -- really, though, it can't get any worse than the kidnapping -- he hopes her knowing that it's not something wrong with her helps.

Part of it is the city fucking with the both of them and Felicia just being who she is. Getting to sleep and staying asleep has been worse than ever lately and what she doesn't know is that Wolfgang's explanation is so much closer to the truth than anything else. But nobody's told her anything about how exactly magic works, much less how she works. That old dusty book she found in the attic is still misunderstood and practically illegible in her grandmother's handwriting. This is where flying by the seat of her pants has gotten Felicia and it ain't too far either.

But still, she thinks it's something wrong with her. It's her. Not him. His dreams were his business unless he gave her permission to poke around in them. It's her fault this time, and no amount of reassurance will help.

"I've never went into the fog." She's heard stories, mainly from bypassers and the old man she bought the trailer from. They've been enough to scare her good. "I'm not supposed to be able to do that. Not like that."

"You don't have to go into it for it to mess you up. I hear." That may not... be strictly true, but it's not like anyone has any empirical evidence one way or the other -- in 500 years, people haven't figured much out about the fog. Not much that's concrete, anyway.

He runs his hands over his face like he's tired -- he is -- and needs a moment to collect himself. Okay. In terms of weirdness, someone else in his dreams isn't even close to the tip of the iceberg, even if that's a part of himself he would really rather have kept private. Baedal seems determined to drag his secrets out of him; how odd, because in terms of scale, they're not even that interesting...

Anyway, she's only seen one -- and that isn't even the worst one. Not by far.

"I mean, it could just... it could be backlash from someone else, that happens? I mean, this isn't --" He pauses, because something about the way she words that... "This hasn't happened before, has it?"

One was all she needed to see. This is the worst part of her ability; the nice dreams she can deal with, even joke about. The dreams where people get killed, tortured, or otherwise made miserable are the ones that stick with her through the day, the week, for however long until the next nightmare shows it's face.

"Not like this," Felicia answers as she runs a hand over her own face, feeling sick to her stomach all over again and showing it on her face. She can't help but keep saying that. It's like Felicia wants to convince herself this isn't a part of her that she won't be able to figure out because nobody tells her any damn thing. Let this be all on the fog, this weird place, not a facet of what she can do.

» nocturnal vacation, unnecessary sedation

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