entrancelogs | + Am I asleep or awake? +

01. better days
This dream is a dive bar, full of raucous noise and the sensation of home. The people here are animals who stand and speak like anyone else- even those without legs, like that snake over there- until viewed from another angle, at which they all look entirely human. It should be strange, but dream-logic makes them all seem as familiar and comforting as if you'd known them all your life. The only non-animal is Greed himself, at the center of it all, making a barstool look like a throne.

02. consumed
It hurts. There are no people here. There is no narrative. There is only pain... and teeth that are sometimes made of steel, sometimes flame, sometimes terribly solid shadows. Best to move on from this one quickly. Bring Greed out with you, if you can.

03. royalty
This is more Ling's dream than otherwise. The rich halls of a Xingese palace, all silk and lacquered wood, are spread luxuriously all around you. The prince is to be found in the kitchen, to the surprise of no one who knows him. Nothing is obviously dangerous. So why does everything about this place feel so frightening?

Edited 2014-03-20 05:23 (UTC)

+ A +
Blue. The entire area was blue from the floor, to the furniture as sparce as it was, the lone chair with its back resembling something of a lyre. The whole room which looked like a spacious elevator of some sort with the racing lights outside the gated door ahead was blue. It was hard to tell while inside if the elevator was ascending or descending, but that part hadn't mattered so much. All was quiet save for this song playing in the background on an unending loop. Where it originated from was also difficult to discern. Then again, it was a dream, and the only place it could have originated from was Minato's mind, memories and imagination colliding here.

The scene that Minato hadn't quite understood--though how easy was it to understand a dream at all?--was that in that room made of blue velvet, cards floated about, suspended and hanging all around in the air. Each card, all 174 of them, had a different image on the face of various mythological divine gods, goddesses, demons and angels, and other creatures like dragons or fairies, then interspersed amongst them were the twenty-two Tarot cards of the Major Arcana.

And on occasion when one wasn't quite paying attention to the present moment, a blue butterfly would flutter by, flitting amidst those cards, disappearing behind one whenever someone paid too much attention to it instead.

+ B +
It was when the elevator stopped that the doors opened up to a white light. Then the sight outside was relatively normal, a cool, clear morning at a shrine, complete with torii gate with the name Naganaki Shrine at its entrance, an offertory box, fortune telling slips, and obligatory playground with swings, bars, a seesaw, and jungle gym. When one got close to the offertory box, the sound of a constant stream of coins being poured inside could be heard. Minato didn't think he'd forget that sound when he brought someone to the shrine and she had deposited at least a million yen coins in there.

The only strange part was that it was early morning, but a full moon was up in the sky that glowed with a faint yet ominous green tint, and in the distance also faint and faded was the silhouette of a towering, twisted, labyrinthine tower that could pierce the sky, antithetical to the tranquil atmosphere of the shrine itself. If someone decided to wander near the edges of the shrine, a feeling that they were being watched would become more obvious, but whatever was watching them would be out of sight. Minato figured it had to be Shadows, beings that would threaten to feed on the psyche or emotions of anyone who got too close to them.

And again, a blue butterfly would always flutter by when one least expected it, then glimpse out of sight once someone's eyes fell directly on it.

1. Heaven Sent

Ellen's callused hands brush over the waist-high wheat, watching it sway in the breeze. She wanders through the large field, a dog tromping along with her. Occasionally, the dog growls and disappears to chase something, before coming back and looking smug and accomplished.

In the distance, a white clapboard house stands against the bright blue sky. High scudding clouds offer no relief from the bright sun. But the temperature is just cool enough for long sleeves.

Ellen stops at the edge of the wheat field, watching the house, before turning back into the field, the dog at her side.

2. Hunting

She's done the research, she's found the problem. Carrying a heavy bag, Ellen walks through the cemetery. This is the part she dislikes: burning the bones. Still, it has to be done. She flashes her small light over the headstones in the newest part of the cemetery. Not where she wants to be.

She wanders toward the older part of the cemetery. Looking over her shoulder, Ellen keeps an eye out for cops, and for the spirit she's going to put to rest.

3. Bill

The roadhouse looks different. Not quite so dark and anonymous as when the boys show up. Instead there are more lights, the windows are open, letting in the warm spring air.

Bent over the pool table, Ellen laughs and nudges her elbow backward, trying to take her shot. There's a tall, broad man with light hair bent over her. He's blowing air into her ear.

"Bill! Knock it off!"

"What, can't take your shot? Hurry up Miss 'I can take you at pool'." His laugh rumbles around the roadhouse. He takes a sip of the coffee sitting on a close by table. "C'mon, I wanna play, darlin'."

The balls clack together as Ellen takes a shot. "Stop calling me darlin', you jackass."

He grabs her around the waist, grinning. "Make me."

Be a hero!

If you fall into Elizabeth’s dream, you will find yourself wandering through the passageways of a tower with a key in your hand. Your objective: FIND THE GIRL. That’s all you know about your purpose. You’re to FIND THE GIRL and DELIVER HER to your employer.

During your investigation of the tower, you take a misstep and fall into a large library from the ceiling. The library is cluttered with books, and the first thing you hear when you drop is the shrill SCREAM of a woman, followed by the hurling of heavy volumes of texts at your head. Be sure to duck.

[ooc: In this scenario, you’re stepping into the shoes of Booker DeWitt at the beginning of Bioshock Infinite! You are not Booker, you are still you, but you’ve taken on his role. Act accordingly to your character, however, and see if you can make it, with Elizabeth, out of the tower alive. You can choose to know that you’re dreaming or not know. You can also choose to know/not know Elizabeth in the dream and she will respond accordingly. Songbird is not happy to see you. Inspired by the following in-game video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P18lYfdPicY]

Edited 2014-03-20 13:27 (UTC)

Lindsey often dreams about work.

But when the vision vanishes it's just anyone unlucky enough to happen to end up walking into his dream, long eighties hallways - a place inhabited by eighties yuppies - or by Patrick Bateman.

The thing is, when the lights begin to flicker there is an overwhelming sense of "doom". When they flicker off - the walls are illuminated with symbols of a demonic and terrifying nature.

Dare you go down the hall?

It's a calm morning, and sunlight from the windows adds a warm glow to the world.

James is in a kitchen, just a bit older than he is now, though not by much - perhaps in his early twenties. It's a large kitchen, though it looks well-loved and lived in. There's a familiarness to it. It's his parents' house, it seems.

There's the uneven sound of toddler footsteps running, and James gets this unmistakable look mischief as he bends down and snatches up Harry, who shrieks with laughter. He couldn't be more than two or so. And James, James looks impossibly happy. Joy radiates from him in this moment, as he bounces Harry around and lets him crawl all over him like a monkey.

Suddenly, Lily's there as well. She didn't walk in exactly, but it doesn't feel unnatural in any way. Of course she's there. Perhaps she was there all along. But as soon as the dream becomes aware of her, James sets Harry down, ruffling his hair fondly before standing back up to kiss his wife good morning. It is brief, likely because Harry is still at their feet, but clearly full to the brim with love.

They start having a conversation of some kind, but the words are faded - they're clearly talking and making noise as if they're saying words, but they sound much farther away than they actually are. Their faces say a lot though - James in particular is as expressive and fidgety as ever, and Lily seems incredibly fond of him as well, laughing now and then even when she looks like she shouldn't want to. They stand close, and every gesture and look is further proof of intimacy between them.

It's subtle, but at some point James gently sets a hand on her stomach. Rather than shove him off, Lily places her hand on his and they stay that way for a moment, as if waiting for something. But then he says something else that makes her laugh, and that's when she lets go and gives him a (loving, playful) shove.

There's a calendar nearby. The month can't be seen, but the days are marked off one by one, counting down to something. The year is 1981.

And James, the real James, is watching all of this from the doorway.

No one in the dream seems to notice him there. He feels a lot more awake than he ought to, but it's all been interesting to see. It's everything James has ever wanted in his life, and just seeing himself interact with Lily brings a smile to his face. It has a bit of a bittersweet feeling to it though, because he can spot the things about it that make it just a dream. Like the fact that they seem to be living in his parents' house rather than that little cottage in Godric's Hollow - he saw it with his own eyes once, in an event, but his parents' home would be more familiar so he supposes it makes sense for a dream. Then there's the year, and just the feeling that there's no war in this place.

They survive.

It's what he wants desperately, but there's a nervousness somewhere deep in him that he might never get there. But he shoves that feeling down as far as he can and just watches for now. It's obviously a good dream he's having, and he's going to let himself enjoy it while it's here.

Edited 2014-03-20 15:49 (UTC)

[Daryl's dreamscape is, predictably, the woods... But unlike the forest that'd sprung up around the Mansion/prison for his event, thisforest isn't infested with walkers. A glance around at the trees will turn up nothing shambling between them, none of the gore of present day Georgia; the air of tension and danger that usually permeates everything about Daryl right down to the scuff marks and curious stains on his boots is curiously absent.

In it's place there's something almost like peacefulness, a sense of calm that might have veered dangerously close to tranquility if not for the fact that the feeling itself, by its very nature, is out of place, artificial... At best it's a veneer of safety, because Daryl's mind, even without his consciousness to infect it with cynicism, doesn't have the capacity for that sort of thing.

But he's content enough to let it be- it's the closest he's ever gonna get and that's just how it is.

Besides, in this particular dream he has other things to worry about. He's not alone, you see, nor is he... Entirely himself. Recognizable still by the scowl on his face, the Daryl any visitors who find their way here will eventually come across is young, fourteen at most with a rifle set over his shoulder. He's flanked by a massive, dirty mutt on one side and Merle on the other, and the three of them are moving quickly through the trees, over fallen logs and around tangled messes of vines with a practiced sort of ease that anyone who's ever been out in the woods with Daryl should recognize easily enough. It's everything a walk in the woods ought to be- a light breeze and sun shining through the trees, rustling brush and the odd caw or flutter of wings... A nature enthusiast's wet dream, if you're into that sort of thing. Eventually, they push through to a small clearing, a campsite sporting obvious signs of continued use and a sense of the familiar, the comfortable.

As soon as they're settled in- Daryl depositing himself down on a log around the fire pit, Merle dropping his backpack next to Daryl and doing the same- the dog takes off, but neither Daryl nor Merle seem to be paying it any attention, like it was never there at all. Instead they get right to talking, focusing on the rifle now stretched over Daryl's lap... But their voices are muffled, indecipherable- this never happened, and Daryl's mind can't quite fill in the blanks where conversation should go, where encouragement should have replaced the heckling that comes to mind when he thinks of his brother now.

Regardless of the real world, though, and in this moment, they're together, happily so, slap to the back of the head from Merle and utterly ineffective shove from Daryl included.

All things considered... It's a nice dream. And it's far from the first time he's had it.

Members of angel stock don't really dream, since they're not really meant to sleep. Crowley doesn't dream so much as he remembers. There's none of the strange imagery or nonsensical subconscious bullshit you'd find in a mortal's dreams.

Just memories of places he's been and things he's done.

Shots Shots Shots
Imagine every pub, every bar, every tavern, every drinking house, legal and illegal, all of them crammed together down a street that could be English or American or Roman or Greek or Chinese or Japanese. If they ever invented and imbibed alcohol, it's here. Dream logic makes them blend together sometimes; here's a bit of a noisy Spanish cantina, there's a bit of an ancient Italian vineyard. A bawdy Irish pub blends seamlessly with a quiet, modern sake joint, and there's a place selling arrack right next a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

Thirsty? Be careful--some of this stuff isn't fit for human consumption. Laws regulating alcohol are kind of a recent thing, and Crowley prefers the good old days. It's Crowley's head, though, so he's buying.

Eden
The forest is endless in a very literal sense. The temperature is perfect, the weather is perfect, the plants and animals are all perfect. There are living things here that haven't been seen in thousands of years, strange beasts that look like they belong in myths and plants so green and with such large flowers that they seem impossible. It's the plants that are the most distinct, since that's what Crowley remembers best. Occasionally you might spot a single man and a single woman, wild and happy, running naked through the trees.

There's a bittersweet air to the entire place; this is the one that feels most dreamlike.

A Right Mess
Everything about this one is misery, suffering, pain and sorrow, and yet it's not Hell. It's not the eternal misery of Hell; it's the abrupt, sharp, violent misery of human life. A volcano erupts and wipes out an island; floodwaters wipe out entire continents. Wars, bloody and brutal, with swords and guns and bombs, bronze and steel and uranium. Pestilence, famine, general Four Horsemen stuff.

Some of the scenes are more specific than that. Thousands of children and poor people marching for the Holy Land, dying in droves; crucifixes by the dozens, lining the roads; a burning library; and more present, more distinct than anything else, torture in the dungeons of Spain.

This dream might get graphic at times. Tread with caution.

Heaven and Hell
This is the vaguest of the dreams, clouded with half-memories and a patina of forced forgetfulness. Heaven and Hell aren't places Crowley likes to remember, and in the case of Heaven, often he just can't.

Hell is dark places and fire and terror and pain and the perpetual sensation of falling. Heaven is light and joy and pain and bitterness and...disappointment. A lack of fulfillment.

This is Crowley's most private of dreams, and not one he's going to be pleased to catch you in.

There's shouting. Shouting that echoes off the walls and distorts, shimmers. Where the voice should diminish in power, it grows and grows. Words with no meaning and too much fill up the already too tiny room. It is liquid and it suffocates. It drowns. Adjectives slice and bruise. Your own name grows big and flashes and leaves you bloody, frozen and gasping.

Everything clenches, eyes and lips and fists, but nothing releases. A woman shrinks. She's smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. She'd take up the palm of your hand, but for now she's crouched on the floor. Tight. Minimized. Compressed like a diamond.

The sky is a beautiful shade of blue today! Deep, with a bit of green, perfect to show the friendly fish and wonderful whales that pass by the large glass windows! Beautiful neon lines and scribbles fill the windows, and sometimes they line the streets too! But some of them have been broken - whoever did that must have been very naughty or very careless when they were playing!

Small hallways lead to wide rooms, with beautiful statues and crumbling staircases, splatters of red and rose-petals dotting cracked and colourful tiles!

Water drips somewhere, machines hum and whirr somewhere, and in the distance there are heavy footsteps and a low, hoarse, whale-like moan...

((replies may come from either

screeee or

wheresmrb, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll stay that way...))

[The woods are dark and suffocating. Katniss has seen them before and she will see them again. Similar to the woods outside of District 12, they seem to go on indefinitely, but she knows it's a trick. This is an arena, and there are limits. An edge to keep them locked in until they tear each other apart. A cage.

Movement catches in her peripheral and unease twists through body. She spins, silently tracking the motion, trying to figure out what it is, but it's gone as suddenly as it appeared. Cato. Clove. Glimmer. It could be any one of them, and she's all alone out here. More importantly, she has no idea what's happened to Peeta, and she left Rue all on her own. Rue, who's twelve, just like Prim, and who is too young to be here. Rue, who Katniss must protect at all costs.

A scream shatters the silence around her and she breaks out into a run, moving as quickly and efficiently as she can, not bothering to hide the sound of her footsteps over the leaves and branches. The trees shift around her, blurring until she reaches a clearing.]

Katniss...

[The voice is quiet, weak, but she still recognizes it. She'd know it anywhere. Prim. But, no, Prim's not supposed to be here. They called her name but Katniss took her place. She took her place.]

Prim? [She spins in place, but nothing changes. There's no one here with her. She's still alone. Another scream and the world around her shifts again. When it rights itself, she's atop a tree, leg dully aching and fabricated moonlight glinting down. She smells smoke, singed flesh and hair, and something rancid, almost chemical.

Faint buzzing above her draws her attention, and she looks up. Tracker jackers. She looks around, across to the other trees, noticing the glint of something shiny in the moonlight. A moment later, Prim appears, a finger to her lips. She points down, where a group of people speaks in hushed voices.]

She won't survive and you know it. [Haymitch. His voice is harsh. Condescending. Katniss is intimately familiar with it.] Not without you, boy. Don't be a hero.

That's why I have to do this! I have to give her the best chance. [Peeta. Katniss shouldn't be hearing this. No use comes from knowledge of things already passed.] She's the best one out here. You know that. [There's a pause that feels tense even twenty feet in the air.] Are you going to help me or not.

[She opens her mouth to protest, to tell Peeta that it's useless, that they won't escape even if they survive, but the world shifts again, and she's trapped, wrists bound behind her back, bow lying on the ground next to her. Her knees ache where they're pressed into the hard ground and she can't draw a breath as a Peacekeeper approaches, whip in his hand.

It's then she realizes that she's back in District 12, the square, tied to the whipping post. She inhales a ragged breath, drawing herself up as tall as she can as the Peacekeeper approaches.]

You can't do this. [The Peacekeeper does not respond, and instead raises his whip.]

Don't you know who I am? [She's screaming, she feels like she's screaming so hard it'll tear her throat up.] You can't do this!

[Unsurprisingly, he doesn't listen.]

Everything is leaking. Water drips from above, wells up from the floor--which is sand, or pulped paper, or black and white tile, depending on where you step.

Overhead is a cloudless night sky, full of strange stars. Look up too long and they'll start to move, dizzyingly. Best to leave them be.

Ahead of you, behind you, is nothing but open, endless blackness. Despite this, the air is close and stale, and it is far from silent here.

Stay long enough and you'll find Mark kneeling on a spit of sand, digging slowly, with his bare hands.

Edited 2014-03-21 00:59 (UTC)

[Sometimes Wash's dreams are more dreams and mostly fictional, and sometimes they're more memory-based, him reliving some of his experiences in the military. Tonight, it's more the latter...

Surrounded by the vacuum of space and a ton of debris from the scrap station they've just left behind, Wash is on edge. He's still not sure he trusts these jetpacks, especially not after what he heard before the mission started, but...it's their only way back to the ship. Plus, the rest of his team is all around him, they'll keep him safe if anything goes wrong, right?

He's barely listening to their conversation about the objective they've just failed, too busy trying to keep focused on his path, on staying on track and not using too much thrust with his pack.

And then they get a radio call in from Four-Seven-Niner, informing them in a rather panicked tone that they're a nuke that's been dropped behind them, and with the surrounding debris...there's no doubt it'll hit something and go off any second now. That's more than enough encouragement to get them all to speed up, hit the thrusters on their jetpacks to get themselves back to the ship as quickly as possible.

Well. Everyone except Wash. He's panicking, even freezing up a little now. On the one hand, he absolutely does not want to be blown to smithereens by a nuke. But on the other? What he heard before, about Georgia accidentally going off course with his jetpack and never being seen again? He doesn't want that, either. To be endlessly floating through space and die that way, with no hope of being saved?

Breathing shallow now, he keeps his thrusters on as low as they had been during original extraction. The ship arrives ahead of his team, and he watches as one by one, they all fly on almost gracefully. And then they turn back to stare out at him, still several feet away from the back entrance of the Pelican ship.]

Wash, what're you doing? [He hears Agent York calling out to him, stepping toward the lowered platform at the back of the ship.] Get in here, use your jetpack!

[He's using his jetpack, though! Just...too scared to boost the speed. His heard hammering in his chest, Wash just stares in at all of his teammates, his face paling behind his helmet.]

I-I don't wanna end up like Georgia!

[If you could liken the way he calls that out to anything, you'd be dead on in saying it sounds like something akin to a wail. But Wash doesn't even care right now, he's terrified, nuke behind him, possible slip-up leading to him floating through space alone forever ahead of him.

That's about when he hears Carolina sigh something, and reach for her grappling hook.

And then she pulls the trigger, shooting the hook out at him, only to have it...grab his codpiece. Wash barely gets a chance to look down at it, and no time to ask for a redo, before he feels the team leader yanking on the line, pulling him in toward the ship.

Startled, and not exactly loving being pulled through space and debris by his balls, Wash screams the whole way, flailing his arms and his legs like that might slow him down, but of course it doesn't. It all happens so fast, and yet at the same time feels almost like slow motion.

Up until the point where he makes the most graceful entrance ever, tumbling into the ship painfully and embarrassingly, but at least alive. It's a moment he relives a lot, even in his dreams, and sometimes...he does actually end up like Georgia.]

Because who can resist sleeping on a swinging bed? Not America, who spends a good few hours playing on it almost every night before he actually falls asleep. Dreams come in bits and spurts--a few minutes of awkwardly floating in space here, odd dreams of turning into a bear there--but a few settle amidst the incoherency of his mind into something accessible.

Night 1

[ The Arizona desert, full of stunning canyons and, probably, meth labs.

Is this America's dream? Johnny Joestars?? We just don't know. There's some weird shit going on, like a tree that has enchiladas instead of fruit and a Toyboata chugging its way up a river, being driven by a 100 year old blind dog who's texting while driving and drinking a smoothie, but this could be a Stand for all anyone knows. America's even dressed like he belongs in JJBA, a land of scantily clad muscular men flaunting their asses. ]

Night 2

[ The horizon seems to stretch into infinity, a long stretch of golden wheat fields and a perfect blue sky that… look like the clouds are jellyfish.

A much friendlier version of space squids than the ones he'd been told about appear, meandering about until arbitrarily startled and their ink blots blots the sky into a clear night full of stars. Think ink dissipates after a while, once again leaving the sky the same shade of blue as America's eyes.

A herd of buffalo wander through. Get close enough and it sounds like they're whispering--in English, French, German, Algonquin, endless languages. Just when you think you're about to decipher it, it goes back to buffalo mode, snorts, and does buffalo things like eating and wallowing on the ground. There is only one thing they say that is consistent: calling America's name in old, rumbling voices. It sounds like distant thunder trying to soothe a restless child.

Tonight America is small, except when he's not. It's hard to keep a consistent shape when some parts of your head seem to go on forever, so he shifts between child, adolescent, and adult in jarring changes that are so sudden you'll miss it if you blink.

It's a weird dream, but America's enjoying himself. He's either lucid or just doesn't care that this isn't real. ]

Night 3

[ Some dreams aren't dreams at all, but memories raked over the coals, raw and painful in a way most people in Wonderland would know well. But they're not accurate snapshots; it's a nightmare of moments that have bled together, pooling their collective guilt and misery into a surreal sort of Hell.

Smoke hangs heavy in the air, tinged pink and tasting vaguely of copper. Everything smells like death. Soot falls as steadily as snow, ceaseless and smudging the world with the ruins of cities that burn in the distance.

The worst part isn't the corpses that litter the ground. It's that they don't have faces. It's like a mask has been placed over each one, blurring and distorting the features into shadows that drift aimlessly across the muddied visage. Most of the bodies are men, most full grown, most in some type of uniform to suggest that they're soldiers, but not all. The smaller bodies are the ones he doesn't want to look at.

America looks as he did in his last Wonderland visit: younger, terrified of mortality, hunched over on the ground and staring at nothing as he grips a broken bayonet. His uniform is different though; blue and red, something from the eighteenth century. Through the haze of soot and what appears to be rain, one can barely make out the figure of a blond man in a redcoat kneeled in the mud, hand covering his face and shoulder shaking with quiet sobs. His voice goes unheard; only distant gunfire and cannons sound.

In the real work, America sweats and shakes in his bed. Rather than tossing fitfully, he lies paralyzed as though his unconscious body is too afraid to move, a learned response after years and years of making the mistake of moving too suddenly in his sleep and catching the eye of a vigilant marksman.

After tonight, he's reluctant to sleep for long periods, settling for naps or testing whether he can do that half-sleep thing some types of marine life do while he's a merman. Finally he falls into a few blissfully dreamless nights. ]

Night 4

[ AND THEN IT'S FUCKING JURASSIC PARK. A NICE DREAM FOR HIM, A NIGHTMARE FOR EVERYONE ELSE.

AMERICA IS TRYING TO PET A STEGOSAURUS, UNAWARE THAT MASSIVE CARNIVORES MIGHT BE TRYING TO EAT PEOPLE.

EVERYONE IS ALAN GRANT.

But it could be worse.

It could always be worse. ]

Edited 2014-03-21 04:43 (UTC)

Every night is the same: hall after hall of color-coded walls, shelves of books with text that is only half-decipherable, the sound of fists pounding on closed doors.

And the paintings. Painting after incomprehensible painting that evoke gut reactions or subtle nostalgia or frustrated confusion. But no people. Full walls and empty halls.

My Darling Clementine
Crowley walks into the bustling saloon and rests his bag on the bar.

"Hiya, Doc."

Without looking, Crowley pats the bartender's arm, eyeing Wyatt from across the room. There's chatter in the room, but he hears none of it, not even the things directed at him. He's too busy stalking over to the poke table that Wyatt sits at, but it's not Wyatt he goes for. Instead he knocks off a man's top hat.

"I told you to get out of town and stay out."

***

Chicago

Crowley steps out of a dark cell, scantily clad in barely enough leather to constitute undergarments and he's got a saucy, seductive weight to his hips.

"I met Ezekiel Young from Salt Lake City about two years ago and he told me he was single, we hit it off right away."

He cuddles up to his dance partner--who may or may not be the other dream occupant--and his hand slides into their hair.

"So, we started living together. He'd go to work, he'd come home, I'd fix him a drink, we'd have dinner."

Crowley pushes them down to the ground, spreading his legs and lowering himself onto them.

"Then I found out, single he told me? Single, my ass! Not only was he married, oh no, he had six wives One of those Mormons, you know?"

He leans down over them.

"So that night, when he came home from work, I fixed him his drink, as usual. You know, some guys just can't hold their arsenic."

Without missing a beat, he rolls off and falls into step, dancing impressively light on his feet in a way he's clearly only capable of in dreams.

***

Casablanca
Crowley is standing very close to the other occupant of the dream. Nothing short of a physical blow will distract him from delivering all of his lines perfectly timed.

"And the names are Mr. and Mrs. Victor Laszlo."

He carries on as if the other occupant has delivered Ilsa's lines.

"Because you're getting on that plane... I'm staying here with him 'til the plane gets safely away... Last night, we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You're getting on that plane with Victor where you belong... Now, you've got to listen to me. Do you have any idea what you have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn't that true, Louis? ... I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

Through all of it, he pauses, not reacting to much that wouldn't be present in the film until he's finished it all.

"We'll always have Paris. We didn't have it before...we'd...we'd lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night... And you never will. But I've got a job to do too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now. Here's looking at you, kid."

Edited 2014-03-22 04:52 (UTC)

I hope you're not afraid of heights and falling.

Because that's what this dream is all about.

Sometimes you'll be falling down a shaft, with broken machinery and supports crossing it now and then.

Sometimes you're just free falling in blue skies... But maybe there's the occasional piece of something to land on, just floating out there. It might even resemble a certain, recent event (sorry, Kid).

Other times, the falls are shorter - in halls of sterile white and black and steel, where you have to make leaps from one narrow platform to the next. Sometimes these platforms are see through, which makes it easy to see what's below you - but that's something you might want to avoid.

Sometimes, there is a bottom to these artificial shafts and canyons. Sometimes it's just black, and you'll fall until you wake up or land in another dream. Sometimes, though, there's spikes, or oily, noxious toxic sludge, or spikes and scrap. Or, sometimes, it's the heat and flames of an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator.

In any dream but the one with blue skies, there may also be the need to get out.

_{[If you're unlucky enough to saunter into Adam's dreams (no, nightmares) in the last day or two of the event, you'll instantaneously wish you hadn't.

As some people in Wonderland know from experience and some like Michael know from paying the inside of Adam's mind a visit, somebody who's been to Hell rarely dreams about anything but. You wander into Adam's dream, you wander into the maw of the pit--worse than that, Lucifer's Cage, the prison built in the worst part of Hell to hold the worst of Heaven's offenders, Lucifer himself.

Wander into this dream, and you wander into the fire. You wander into searing heat that will char your bones, into blades that gouge your flesh, into whatever torment will best rip your soul apart and drive you mad.

You wander into pain like nothing you'll ever imagine or withstand.

As if the place where condemned souls go to waste away isn't enough, you also wander into the chaos of two archangels caught in an eternal battle. Adam dreams of Hell, but he also dreams of Lucifer and Michael, two of Heaven's most fearsome archangels as they truly look, things of wings and light that are too bright for the average human to look at, voices too loud to listen to. Because this is Adam's neck of the woods and he can see them for what they are, being near them won't burn your eyes out or make your ears bleed, but if they touch you, you'll wish they had. If they touch you, their anger makes the Cage's torment seem like child's play.

Wander into this dream, and you better hope your soul is headed to Heaven when you die.]}

Over the years, Cordelia had found peace in her dreamless sleep. The visions were like being asleep with her eyes and senses open — everything was so vivid that it stuck to the walls of her mind as if they were her own memories and her own experiences. She hadn't found herself dreaming too much in Wonderland, but as the months rolled on by, she found herself experiencing a few. And they always happened to feature people who she wished would show up in Wonderland, even if it was just for a minute or a day.

Cordelia found herself in an office — spacious and bare, with only a couch and table sitting in two corners, she recognised it as one of the last places she saw Angel. But she didn't linger — something was pulling her towards the door where Lilah Jr had stepped out of an elevator and wigged Cordelia out with the grossest information she cared not to remember ever. Looking at the couch and picturing it made her skin crawl and her footsteps quicken towards the door that would lead her far, far away from this hell of a room. Entering the elevator, Cordelia found she could only pick one button, and she pressed it without hesitation, feeling the elevator move up at a speed as slow as a snail.

And when the door opened, Cordelia found herself in the corner of a nondescript club. It was dark and loud — the music was pounding, the words slurred and indecipherable, but the song playing wasn't the thing that had lured her into the change of scenery.

She found herself standing next to a girl she couldn't remember the name of. Her nameless friend was looking at a guy who had his back towards them — grinning like she'd somehow been a cat that struck the cheese — and nudged Cordelia with her shoulder. She smiled, not recognising him at first, but her heart seemed to skip a beat at the strange sight of him being here. She found herself reciting a line she hadn't thought to remember in years, "Pick up the phone, call 911. That boy is gonna need some serous oxygen after I'm through with him."

She walked over to him. Even though she thought of him a mere stranger a few seconds ago, some part of Cordelia knew those broad shoulders better than she knew the back of her own hand; while a part of her was walking up to a stranger, Cordelia knew she was coming home. "Hey, gorgeous."

[ It's all so familiar, isn't it? Dark, hard wood, peeling wallpaper, a wall full of books. For all intents and purposes, it's every bit Blake's room, both in design and atmosphere, surely the inspiration for design of the one space in Wonderland he can call his own. It's night, and it's cool in temperature, but warm in lighting.

From the doorway, the room sprawls into a general living space. A small television occupies the corner in silence and in front of that, a hefty and worn recliner stands empty with its back to the tiny kitchen. To the left of the television, a window — the only window, with its view of the neighboring building — hangs open. A small breeze blows through, disturbing the curtains, quickly followed by the pages of a coloring resting sitting on the floor.

Soon enough, Blake arrives from the other side of the tiny apartment. He's young, certainly no older than seven or eight, and the boy is dirty from a day of play. Peeling the paper from a crayon, he flops down on the ground and flips back to the page he was on (in this case, a very imprecisely colored under water scene, complete with a rendering of Merman Daryl Dixon. Dreams are funny like that, aren't they?

Behind him, someone knocks on the door, hard and loud. The boy looks up, but he's not moving to answer it, and from the looks of it, no one else is coming to do it either. He's alone, save for the observer this dream allows. ]

Greedling's dreams

+ Minato +

Ellen Dreams