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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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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.

"Okay." Wolfgang winces. Why does it seem like every time he talks to her, he's the bearer of bad news? 'An extradimensional city just kidnapped you, like, for reals.' 'Something is super fucked up with your dreams.' All the guilt in the land, hooray. "Listen -- I'm sorry. Um, I can... I can go, if that would be better." He probably wouldn't want to look at him after that dream, either.

Suddenly, Felicia's entire facade changes to something less disgusted and more determined. Her hand wraps around the rattail comb she always keeps in her back pocket, pulling it out to walk steadily towards him. "No, you wanted you hair done. You're going to get your hair done."

The dreams back home never stopped her from doing her work. She isn't about to start letting them do it now. Things can be dealt when she closes up for the day.

"Okay." That's a little disarming, actually.

(To be fair, Wolfgang is intimidated by his own shadow.)

"Let me know if there is anything I can do, though, all right?"

It's supposed to be. Maybe it'll make him stop asking questions long enough for her to ignore the issues at hand so she can trim those scraggly ends of his. Though ignoring things never make them go away, it'll be doubtful if her sleep gets any better.

"Just tell me what you want me to do," Felicia answers softly as she guides his head with one hand and combs through with the other. Time to get back to work.

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