♕ |[100]| I dream'd a dream to-night

[had_not_lived]

The air is yet a little chill, but the sun streams brightly enough to make up for it. This dream starts between the roots of a great tree-- too wide around for five men to circle it with their arms, and even half a dozen would have to stretch.  Its branches start low, arching and splitting and reaching to claw the clear sky, as brilliantly blue as it ever has been.  They're still largely bare, neither leaf nor bud, but the scent of life is in the air.  The soil beneath your feet is dark and rich, a few bedraggled strands of half-dead grass interspersed with the shadows of branches.  

A little distance away, where the sun streams unhindered, a riotous crowd of flowers is starting to rise.  Crocuses of every color, the blinding green of new growth on low bushes, the heady scent of lilac.  Daffodils stretch their yellow maws toward the sun.  A hundred thousand other wildflowers creep along the withered grass and claw their way out of the earth, some seasonable and others not; some familiar, others strange.  The further from the tree, the greater the quantity; soon enough your line-of-sight fails, blocked out by the rising curtain of wild color.  There is, for all intents, nothing in the distance.  

And now, perhaps, you might notice a splash of color on the tree.  Hanging from a low branch is a crown of twigs and dry branches, twined with a rose vine which trails down to root in the earth.  These flowers, too, are in luscious bloom; the petals are colored a pale green, their perfume delicate but oddly energizing.  

The roots and branches, over here, are gently sloped and close together. If you squint, they almost form a staircase, winding its way up and around the tree... 

[ooc; separate threads will be considered separate incidents with different people, unless otherwise arranged, and will pan out differently for everyone <3 No continuity expected and OPEN to ALL comers. Extremely backdating friendly!]

Comments

[unflagging]

[Let us walk that staircase. Even so, let us do.

And so this interloper on the woodland and pastoral scene walks.]

[had_not_lived]

[This place, this tree, this dream, is wildly alive; it breathes, it watches, it reacts. The stair will always grow up, but will never find the same scene. A familiar face might find something a little cozier; as the stranger climbs, however, the branches spread and curve, enfolding the tree in a tunnel of sorts, widening out into an auditorium. The thick trunk he climbs stays in place, part of a veritable forest of narrow trees that curve around the back of the stage, the dark expanse beyond it filled with velvet seats, stretching into eternity. Here and there distraction shows; a bough lined with books and knock-knacks-- a potted cactus, a glass jar of sand, a scatter of coins.

Where will you go, stranger?]

[unflagging]

[Towards the stage, of course. Perhaps there's something to be seen there.

But perhaps with a momentary step to the side to regard those books, that jar of sand, those coins. They are things rife with meaning, clearly.]

[had_not_lived]

[The books are mutable; dream-books, the bough fair groaning with the weight of a hundred thousand half-remembered words, the titles shifting aimlessly with the pattern of random neurons. Books on his shelf, books from home, books from the shop; chimeric combinations of all three. They're out of focus, unreadable; old and lovely but practically useless, filled with snatches of poetry, lines of plays.

The coins, too, are unremarkable enough; a handful of change, mostly the City's colorful currency mixed with a few quarters and dimes circa nineteen-fifty-something and before, United States of America, and a single Ferryman's penny from long ago.

The jar of sand is a jar of sand. It's small, sealed tight. Maybe there's something buried?

The auditorium isn't silent; there's a faint susurration, like breath or the wind in the trees or a distant ocean. Indistinct except as the absence of silence.]

[unflagging]

[The trinkets are nice, but that soft noise is more intriguing. The absence of silence is sound, which speaks loudly enough.

Yes, let us go into this arboreal auditorium. Give o'er the play.]

[had_not_lived]

[Ah, but the play is done; the heroes and monsters mere men, the paint wiped away, the lights dimmed. Quite dim, in fact. Almost dark; like a moonlit night, there beneath the trees. Very like.

In fact, perhaps he's forgetting the auditorium altogether.

The trees are old, tall enough to cut the moonlight into quicksilver trickles and ebon shadows. And somewhere, perched in the branches of one, a boy lazes.].

[unflagging]

[A bird is better suited to such branches. A crow could alight there easily. Yes. A crow, then. The stranger shall become a crow.

And having become such, for such things can be done in dreams, he too shall perch in these branches.

Who is this boy? Why does he rest in these moonlit trees? Are these his books or does he belong to the dreamer too?

Bright-eyed and dark-winged, the crow flickers through the moonlight.]

[had_not_lived]

[Evermore, crow, evermore.

The boy-- for when he sees himself in his mind's eye, he is still some years younger, untouched by the time he's spent in that unreal City-- leans forward to examine his visitor. The boy is bright-eyed as a bird himself, wild as his woods, flowers and a stray leaf or two stuck in his hair. He's bare-chested save a silver chain on which a faintly tarnished gold ring hangs.]

That's not a bad idea,

[He muses, with a note of faint admiration. He was a bird once, he thinks.]

[unflagging]

[The crow cocks an eye at him.]

Think you so?

[universaltranslator]

[Uhura shivers in her nightgown, but the scenery is too beautiful for her to resent the cold...much. She wanders over to admire the flowers.]

[had_not_lived]

[The flowers are... Well, flowers. Unremarkable individually, though perhaps a bit surprising in their quantity and wild variety. They vary with the simple fluidity of dreams; as attention wavers, so does their existence. They don't vanish, just change; ripplings of shape and color through the field. The details vary. They are flowers.

By Uhura, they waver warily; a few bristling thistles and wildgrown roses with wicked thorns, defensive but still lovely.

It might be unwise to wade too far.]

[universaltranslator]

Ouch! [One of the thorns snags on her nightgown and cuts into her skin. She licks her thumb and gently tries to wipe away the blood welling up.]

[had_not_lived]

[Well, that's not very nice, is it? Mistrustful as he is he's not inclined to be hurtful, though really those roses ought to be their own warning.

If she wipes the blood away, there won't be any wound. But there's still nowhere to go.]

[universaltranslator]

[That's a little eerie. Though that's the nature of dreams, isn't it? She backs away from the flower bed -- message received.

Instead, she looks around to see if she can find the dreamer.]

Hello? Is anyone here?

[had_not_lived]

[There is nothing; no one. That's perhaps the sort of sense one would expect from a dead and barren dreamscape-- a waste land, not this flower-strewn field teeming with life-- but facts are facts. The dreamer is not here. Only the wall of blossoms.

Well, that and the great tree.]

[universaltranslator]

[It's getting a little eerie, this solitude. Hesitantly, Uhura makes her way to the great tree and peers up into its branches.]

[had_not_lived]

[The tree remains as it is; caught at the cusp of what is not quite properly spring, branches near bare (save that splash of pale green), roots curling up just the slightest bit in suggestion.

It is as it has been since the dream began.]

[mumbled_truth]

[Maybe it isn't surprising that Todd's wound up here, of all people that could have found their way into Neil's dream. It probably also isn't surprising that as much as this place feels foreign, definitely not his own, there's also a sense of familiarity. It's a warmth, like being someplace that he knows - or someplace that knows him, perhaps - even though he doesn't remember ever having been here. One hand trails along the trunk of the tree as he looks up the staircase, taking a few steps up and pausing to reach out and lightly brush the hanging crown with the fingers of his other hand.

That, he certainly recognizes, and he lingers on it before he turns his gaze back up toward the higher boughs. His ascent of the tree's gnarled steps will follow after a few moments.]

[had_not_lived]

[There is infinite variety in a dream; Neil expects no visitors, here, but he has something in mind for any one who comes, an echo of waking thought (or waking unfamiliarity, as the case might be). Todd is perhaps the only one who might choose, if he tried, to visit whatever dreamscape he might wish. There are few doors here that will lock for him. (The doors of the great dark house would not open; but it's rare for Neil to visit there, these days.)

The City being the City, Todd and Neil have shared dreams before-- dreams of midsummer snow, twice now; one worse than the other. This is nothing of the sort. The snatches of sky stay clear and blue, though as he ascends less and less can be seen as the branches twist and weave, here sketching an echo of a column, there book-strewn and half-unthought, until a room opens up.

It's a bit of this and that; a familiar window looking out on a world left behind, the trees out there brilliantly colored. Autumn is the happiest way to remember this place. But here and there their lives mix; Todd's notebooks of poetry rest atop his school books, the typewriter sharing desk space with a slick, futuristic computer.

And on the bed-- their single, big bed, unwieldy in the corner of the too-small dormitory-- is Neil, cross-legged in an old green sweater, smiling the way he only ever has for Todd.]

[mumbled_truth]

[He watches the scenery as he climbs, shifting as bits of shapes catch his eye and then fade again, until he reaches the room and stands there, for a moment, caught up in taking it in.

It's an interesting juxtaposition of their lives, the collision of the two worlds they've spanned, the wildly different environments blurred together with themselves as the only connection between the disparate realities.

And there, of course, sits Neil. The smile, of course, inspires its match from Todd - a warm beam that lights his eyes as it spreads across his face.]

Hi.

[had_not_lived]

[It makes sense, in a funny dream way, that this is what he thinks of as home. An impossible admixture of two places that are wholly and solely theirs, the safe little space behind a locked door where they are what they are with no apologies, no glancing over their shoulders.]

I've been waiting for you, [he says, unfolding a bit to stretch out and make space.] I think. It's hard to tell. But I'm glad you're here, either way.

[mumbled_truth]

[And Todd crosses the melded room, settling on the bed next to Neil with a light laugh.]

You might have been waiting since I'm here - though if I wasn't, maybe you wouldn't have been. Who knows in a dream?

But... I'm glad I'm here, too.

[had_not_lived]

[He grabs Todd's hand, drawing it to him.]

Are we dreaming? I think I have been, but it's hard to tell.

[And Todd being here feels right enough that it doesn't draw him toward the surface of his consciousness.]

[mumbled_truth]

I was, I think.

[And now he's here, his hand contentedly wrapping around Neil's in his grasp.]

But then my dream slipped, and now I'm here.

[had_not_lived]

[And really what more needs to be said? There's no sense of urgency here, no subconscious drives to interrupt. Of all people in the City, Neil is most honest with Todd; and the longer they spend here there's less he tries to hide, less sadness under the surface, less guilt. It will never be gone, but it doesn't intrude. Not as often.

He sighs comfortably.]

Well, if we're dreaming, what should we do?