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[tetractys]

Who: Bill Cipher and YOU?
Where: Anywhere you're sleeping, Real Side
When: Any night, before, during, or after event
Rating: G, will update as needed
Summary: What are you dreaming about? How have your dreams changed since you got your happy ending? Bill wants to sneak around and gather information about you based on it.
The Story:

The sun sets over every side of Wonderland. Everyone is in their proper places. Eyes are hidden in many spaces. Night casts shadows on strange faces.

Going to sleep, are you? Well, I'm sure you think that's perfectly fine. But, of course, we often don't realize our greatest mistakes until far too late.

A shadow passes from the borders of the Dream Side but can't quite reach the Real space. Instead, it slips into the dreams of residents, invisible, to observe.

What are you dreaming about tonight, Wonderland?

Or, if you prefer: What do you usually dream about? How have your dreams changed since the event began?

Comments

After the event, and I hope you like me being weird about dreams

[ssmisery]

This has actually kinda happened before.

Lapis doesn't need to sleep, but she likes it. One perk is that her dreams are really weird; they tend towards vague and abstract, disconnected impressions and feelings and setpieces unmistakable for reality. Everything's so much easier when you don't have to worry about it being real. If her subconscious chooses to echo back at her some ideas she's actually concerned about, it's still a deconstructed, playacted approach more than anything, a way to puzzle over things while still holding them at arm's length. So tonight she's dreaming about distance and about waiting.

There is a deep impassable empty space, like a gorge, or like a river of nothing. As usual for Lapis, she should be easily able to fly across, but she obviously won't manage that. Someone else is going to cross over and find her instead this time. More incongruously, there is a campfire. By the rule of whatever dream logic is involved here, Lapis is slowly feeding leaves into the flames: different ones, in all shapes and sizes and states of deadness. Each one releases a few new tendrils of sharp smoke. There is something delicious about it. Even people who don't have stomachs could start to feel hungry.

The thing is, even as an unseen specter, Bill's arrival is a complication. Abstraction doesn't hold up to the addition of another real actual person; no, if there's someone else here, then there needs to be a here. If he wants to observe, things will have to be observable. So the details slowly begin to take clearer form. The gorge begins to look like a night sky full of stars, and the location of this little camp on its shore becomes a bit more delineated. Lapis becomes aware enough and expressive enough to start to maybe question what she's doing. Which, like, yeah, she totally should question that. She frowns down at the leaf in her hand (large, oval, streaked with purple).

Something is amiss.

[tetractys]

Bill can tell right away that this isn't a human's dream. There's a texture to it that's different. It's a -

For the first time in years, Bill reaches for the knowledge he has access to and it actually responds. Thank fuck. He won't be taking that for granted again.

Gem. The species is called gem, and that's what Jasper was, too. Imperialist species, light-based, caste system... This explains a lot about her. Gems don't usually sleep. This one does. This one is... Lapis. Hello, Lapis. Lapis is now lucid in this dream - Bill feels the pattern of it change - and that means either she's on the very edge of waking up and leaving him high and dry or he has the chance at a coherent conversation with someone that isn't a deeply unhelpful reporter or a Pines.

Small wonders.

Now, he could open with something creepy and invasive, like a snide remark about how maybe she'd have more bridges across the gorge if she didn't keep burning them - but that won't get him what he wants, will it? And as much as Bill likes to amuse himself, his goals always come first.

A leaf in the pile by her, yellowed, vaguely triangular as if from a birch, opens a teeny tiny eye.

"DREAMS, RIGHT?" it says. "HEY, DO ME A FAVOR AND DON'T FREAK OUT."

[ssmisery]

She doesn't freak out. That's also one of the nice things about dreams, whether or not Lapis is fully aware of it. The hijacked leaf is out of place, and the pile wasn't clearly defined as a pile before, but of course there would have to be one. The ground seems to be pale dusty dirt, but for some reason she's sitting on the edge of a deck lounger.

She raises an eyebrow at the amazing talking leaf while nonchalantly adding the one she was holding into the fire, neither impressed nor displeased by the interruption. "Okay."

[tetractys]

Good, cool, one problem dodged.

The leaf lifts up, sprouts limbs and a hat.

"PHEW! I CAN'T GET ANYONE TO HEAR ME IN HERE. THE NAME'S BILL, I'M TRAPPED IN THE DREAMSCAPE!"

Hi!

[ssmisery]

Lapis takes her time. Her thoughts continue to slowly grow clearer, and obviously this is strange, but still, nothing can be too threatening inside her own mind except herself. She picks up another leaf.

"Good job not getting eaten," she says.

[tetractys]

"YEAH, YOU'RE TELLING ME."

The leaf, somehow, looks extremely stressed out. Its little eye has a bag under it.

"I'M ALL ALONE WITH THE BIG DRAGON IN HERE! WHATEVER YOU CALL HIM. I DON'T EVEN HAVE A BODY."

[ssmisery]

"Well, keep it up. I'm sure you'd be delicious."

Not super encouraging, but at least she seems mildly interested. Actually, maybe it's more that Lapis already has this dream scenario leaf-based... uh, 'cooking'? on her mind. What would her unrefined palate know, anyway.

[tetractys]

The leaf glances back at the fire, not seeing terribly afraid.

"HEH! GOOD ONE. BUT REALLY, I'M HERE TO ASK FOR HELP! IF YOU NEED A REASON - YOU REALLY DON'T WANT IT GAINING THE POWERS I HAVE!"

[ssmisery]

"I'm not much of a helper." Lapis adds her next leaf to the fire; it smells spicy. She can't guess exactly how appetizing Bill might be for the Jabberwock, but she still has a hard time seeing such things as any of her business at all. "What do you expect me to do about it?"

[tetractys]

"COULD YOU TELL PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD THAT I'M IN HERE? SOMEBODY - ANYBODY, REALLY."

The leaf looks pleading. As much as a leaf can, anyway.

[ssmisery]

"Anybody?"

[tetractys]

"EVERYBODY? LOOK, I REALLY DON'T LIKE IT HERE. I'VE BEEN GOING OUT OF MY MIND, IT'S GREAT TO JUST BE ABLE TO HAVE A CONVERSATION, ACTUALLY!"

[ssmisery]

Lapis considers. "And now you're in my mind. That's pretty rude, you know." She's still probably not as alarmed about it as she normally should be, but she values her privacy and her boundaries, and on a related note, multiple people who've gotten into her dreams before have ended up dream-murdered. Just pointing that out. Her hospitality may have limits. "So if people hear about you, that gets you into theirs?"

[tetractys]

"I'M DESPERATE, OKAY?"

Little leafy frown.

"NO, I WAS HOPING YOU COULD GET WORD TO SOMEONE THAT MIGHT GET ME OUT OF HERE BEFORE I GET EATEN. SOME KIND OF WIZARD, OR SCIENTIST, I DON'T KNOW."

[ssmisery]

For a moment, Lapis is about to express some skepticism about this extremely vague, slapdash plan. Wonderland doesn't even have the kind of population it used to, what makes this guy think some rando around here can do that?

But then, she doesn't know about wizards, but they do have scientists, arguably even mad ones. She knows one or two. And that's a grounding thought, among other adjectives. That is after all why she's dreaming this dream; it's also why she can't make any commitments right now, even if she wanted to. She's already waiting for something else and nothing can be decisive or decided until that's settled.

"I'll think about it," she says, taking up another leaf. The river of night sky laps at the edges of its gorge. In a dream, everything seems so very significant.

[tetractys]

The leaf with an eye in it drifts up and settles beside her; it sprouts tiny, nonthreatening arms and legs.

"YOU SOUND LIKE YOU'RE NOT IN A GREAT PLACE YOURSELF, KID."

[ssmisery]

It looks more and more vaguely familiar. That's probably not a big deal, all things considered. More importantly, Lapis is not about to get far into her dumb relationship drama with some rando dream leaf. She sighs.

"I've been told it'll work out." And she even believes it, but anticipation is what it is, and there's hardly anything to do in the meantime but dream.

[tetractys]

"SO, THAT'S A BIG YES."

The leaf crosses its little legs in a self-satisfied lounge.

[ssmisery]

"It's a mediocre yes. What do you care?"

[tetractys]

"I CAN'T HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU? YOU LOOKED SAD, I'M SYMPATHETIC!"

Like a person!

[ssmisery]

She fiddles with the leaf in her hands, one that's big and broad and familiar to her.

"Yeah, no offense, but you're some guy who broke into my dreams and I'm not that desperate to talk about it. It's... going to resolve itself anyway." Honestly, that right there probably counts as a little more talking about it than she's desperate to do.

[tetractys]

"SURE, NONE TAKEN! HOPE YOU GET WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR."

Perfectly cheery. Pushing would be more suspicious.

[ssmisery]

What she's really looking for she doesn't expect to get, but that's okay. The important thing is that she doesn't have to be alone.

"You too, I guess."

There are decent odds that Lapis will forget about Bill's request or the fact that she said she'd think about it, since she's going to get distracted. But we all realize that even if she went for it, she'd just make a snarky announcement to the network, right? She's not gonna track down any wizards or drag her mad scientist(s) in.

[tetractys]

"HEY, YOU CAN TAKE DIRECT ACTION ON THAT COUNT, SIS."

Bill flicks a tiny twig into the fire, which FOOMs into a blue fireball for a moment.

During the event!

[mothmansplaining]

Ford's mind feels different. His usual mental landscape doesn't have the holes in it anymore, no fears crowding in on a functional workspace. It's relaxed.

There's a beautiful starfield, but its vast expanse stretches over a beach at night. Even though it's dark, all the colors are vibrant: the starlight, the planets whose strange and wonderful features you can almost see, all of it gives plenty of light to see by. The grass is a lush green; a spaceship is docked in the ocean. ?? Just go with it.

Everything feels like it's within reach, like if you tilt your head just right you might see a path that'll take you to one of those planets, or to anywhere you need to go. And Ford himself -- his mind's unguarded. The metal plate is there, but it's not a barrier anymore. For the first time in over thirty years, his thoughts can be read.