So Make A Wish On Heaven

[these_balls]

Who: Participants of the Dream Plot!
Where: In your dreams!
When: Anytime your character is asleep on April 17th!
Summary: As promised, this is a catch-all log where people can post a character's dream as a top-level comment and allow other holders of our Mysterious Feathers™ to come visit them! Remember that the content of your dream is entirely up to your discretion, but we ask that you only have one, and to please also warn for content as needed!
Rating: PG, and please warn for threads that may go higher!
Log:

[Under the light of the full moon, the Mysterious Feathers™ begin to glow.

In the hours that follow after they sprawl out to sleep, those who had the good fortune (or at least the insatiable curiosity) to pick up one of those feathers earlier in the week will come to discover that something very strange is happening across the regions of Johto and Kanto. There's a saying about what happens when you let your mind wander; this time, though, it's a little more than just one's mind that's going wandering, as dream after dream stretches out before you like a horizon just begging to be chased.

Don't worry about getting lost, dreamers; as real and vivid as they may seem, your surroundings are really only visions and illusions, and in the end the failsafe way to escape from them is to simply wake up. If and when you do, you might feel perfectly well-rested or as on-edge as if you'd just jolted awake from a nightmare; like the dreams themselves, there's really no telling how the experience will play out for you, being different and unique to everyone.

But for now, you've got the whole night ahead of you, filled with places to go and people to see. Might as well make the most of it while it lasts...]

Comments

[armoredsoul]

Yeah, there's not a whole lot that can be said, honestly.

"Yeah. We had to go into hiding after that, since Bradley claimed we were the ones at fault. It didn't exactly help that I'd become the Stone either..."

[foolishwren]

Heather is squinting at him now.

It's not like she didn't know whatever story he had back home was complicated. Just knowing ENVY made it clear that all of them were tangled up in some deep shit. But it's the first time she's heard Al talk about his side of things.

"... Sometime when we're not asleep, you're gonna have to tell me just what crazy stuff you were getting into to get tied up in all this shit."

She won't say 'WHAT'S A SWEET KID LIKE YOU DOING GOING ON THE RUN', because SHE HERSELF is proof that kids of varying degrees of sweetness can end up on the run for all kinds of reasons, but. Yeah.

[armoredsoul]

"I think I can manage that," he says with a laugh. He doesn't mind the squinting too much--his life has been pretty weird by anyone's standards, and if anyone could understand it of the people he's met here, Heather would be the one.

He turns to look around then, rubbing his helmet, and Heather might notice that those patterns on the armor are starting to fade. "But for now...how exactly do we get out of here? A desert isn't very interesting to wander around in."

[foolishwren]

She picks up on the vanishing patterns, but doesn't know what to make of it. She'll ask later.

For now, she puts her hands on her hips and looks around at the rolling dunes, noting how they shimmer in the baking sun.

"Well, I got in here by walking. May as well get out the same way."

Without waiting for him (she knows he'll follow), she starts to do just that, kicking up small showers of golden sand as she goes.

[armoredsoul]

And follow he does, though after a few steps he scoops Heather up and puts her up on his shoulder, between the spikes and the collar around the helmet.

"I'll walk. You can rest your feet for a while."

[foolishwren]

... Well, it's safe to say she wasn't expecting that.

A yelp of surprise escapes her when he plucks her off the ground and plops her on his shoulder like a parrot.

"Whoa! Jeez, you could warn a person before you do that!"

But she doesn't sound mad, and she isn't. She does let out a low, impressed whistle when she notes just how high off the ground she is. Shit, Al is TALL when he's a suit of armor.

[armoredsoul]

Alphonse laughs, keeping a careful pace so he doesn't jostle Heather off of his shoulder. "Sorry! Been a while since I could do that, I couldn't resist the opportunity."

He takes a glance up at her then, curious. "Has this sort of dreaming thing happened before?"

[foolishwren]

"Heh. All right. You get a free pass this time."

She raps her knuckles gently on the helmet before settling her arm down on top of it to lean.

"Yeah. Not often, but it has. Couple years ago on Halloween everyone wound up in this big dilapitated dream castle... and when I say dream castle, I mean dream castle, like it was totally discombobulated and weird just like a real dream is, 'cept everybody else was there and we all had hazy memories of it afterwards. And then a few years before that... well. I guess that was a little different. A little different and a thousand times worse."

[armoredsoul]

Al chuckles at the rap to his helmet and keeps up his pace. Up ahead there's something shimmering on the horizon, but it's hard to make out quite what just yet.

He looks up at Heather, a little worried from the way she'd phrased that. "Different...how? Did people get hurt from it?"

[foolishwren]

"Not exactly. Unless you count mental scars."

She shades her eyes to look ahead, but elaborates. This is something she can talk about.

"You ever looked up a Pokemon called Shedinja in your 'Dex?"

[armoredsoul]

He makes a soft humming sound as he thinks. "That's...the one that's a shed skin of Ninjask, right? I didn't read much about it."

Mostly because the descriptions of plenty of the other ghost types gave him the willies something fierce.

[foolishwren]

"Yep, that's the one. Creepy stuff, and I say that as somebody who likes bugs. They don't really do much of anything but drift around... and people say that if you stare into the hole on its back, it'll suck out your soul."

She shifts in place a little, wondering if you can get sunburns in dreams. Because man, she sure doesn't have any lotion on her.

"Anyway, obviously that's mostly bullshit, since there's plenty of weirdos out there who own them for... whatever reason. But then in the middle of the summer a few years back, a shitton of 'em drifted into the region. I don't really remember WHAT was up with them exactly-- I think they came from a lab? Anyway... anyone who looked at that goddamn creepy hole went into a coma instantly. Wish I could say I wasn't one of 'em, but guess who was a moron and went off into the woods to try and knock out as many as possible?"

She jerks her thumb at herself.

"Yup. THIS KID."

[armoredsoul]

Al shudders when Heather explains the legend--yyyyup, never getting near one of those ever at all! Folk tale or not, Al wants nothing to do with that level of spoopy.

Heather doesn't get rattled for any of the rest of it, though he does lift a sympathetic hand to her knee. "If it makes you feel better, I probably would have been out there trying to corral them somewhere, too. But what happened to the people in that coma? It doesn't sound like it was just a simple nap."

[foolishwren]

"Yeah... there were a lot of us out there doing it, but I was a pretty big idiot for lettin' my guard down. It only takes a second, man... Anyway."

She puffs out a sigh, patting the big gauntleted hand on her knee.

"Yeah, it was... Hm. How do I describe it... kinda like this. Everybody wandering in and out of each other's heads. 'Cept, well, almost everything I've seen here has been relatively peaceful. No major night terror shit. That time... not so much."

[armoredsoul]

There's a sense of a smile when she pats his hand, but it fades as she continues the story. He figured it would be something like that, but...

"So all the skeletons in everyone's closets went out on display, so to speak?"

[foolishwren]

"Pretty much. Or a lot of them, at least. If not all."

There were a number of people she'd run into in her OWN head without necessarily getting to take a peek inside theirs, but she'd seen plenty. For a moment, her flesh crawls at the memory of fighting that spidery woman who'd been keeping a little insect-child chained up, and then again at the thought of getting pulled underground by a thousand groping arms.

"Anyway, I know I look all sunny and harmless, but I PITY the fool who winds up getting stuck in MY brain, because lemme tell ya, there's some weird shit up in there. So naturally, it turned into a veritable vacation spot for like... everybody."

People she hadn't even KNOWN had popped up in there.

"Poor bastards."

[armoredsoul]

Al remembers those weird fetus things from the strange weekend, so it's not hard for him to believe Heather's home wasn't a very good time. And considering she'd said she could relate to Envy on a lot of things...well. "I'd say 'at least it was only a dream', but waking up doesn't always help. What got everyone out of that coma in the end?"

[foolishwren]

"Not sure. I think people woke up as whichever Shedinja got their souls was knocked out. I was totally useless for a good few days after that, but I guess enough people were out cleaning up that eventually everybody went back to normal. That's the boring part though, to be honest."

She grins, leaning on his head.

"While we were all goin' in and out of each other's heads, Envy wound up in mine. He got stuck in a broom closet and I had to rescue him."

[armoredsoul]

There's a brief shudder at the mention of the souls thing again (so creeeepyyyyyyyyyyy....), but the bit about Envy gets a much bigger reaction.

"He got--no way, Envy did?" Al comes to an abrupt stop and looks up at Heather as best he can before bursting into laughter. "You're kidding!"

[foolishwren]

With a grin about as wide as the desert expanse they're walking through, Heather holds up a hand.

"NOPE. That's the genuine truth, may god strike me down if I'm lying. I was makin' my way around these hallways and I heard all this banging and cursing-- opened the door and he exploded out of it like a bat outta hell. I think I punched him in the face, actually-- since I was just. Not expecting that at ALL."

[armoredsoul]

He is trying VERY HARD to not bend over with the force of his laughter (psychosomatic reactions, aw yeah), but it finally dwindles enough that he's able to speak again. "Oh god, that is amazing! What the heck did he see that could freak him out so badly?"

[foolishwren]

"HAHA, dunno, I didn't see it personally-- but I mean, let's be fair here-- knowing the kinda shit that was running around in my head during that whole fiasco, he was probably perfectly justified in being that freaked out."

She sure as hell wouldn't fault anybody for being scared.

[armoredsoul]

"I guess, but still--!" Al lets out a few last chuckles before shaking his head. "Sounds like it could give some of the stuff in our heads a run for it's money."

[foolishwren]

"I'd bet money on that, yeah."

She says it lightly, and with a laugh.

But she is grateful as hell that she wandered into Al's head and not the other way around. Even if he's probably got a lot more hiding in here than just endless desert... she'd rather deal with his demons than expose him to any of hers.

Silent Hill isn't something she'd wish on anybody.

[armoredsoul]

It happens rather suddenly. Where there had once been dry sand there was now sodden grass, and a hot desert sky became a torrential downpour. The area around them was a small farming village, the only house nearby sitting at the top of a hill, a great old tree growing in the yard. A clap of lightning lights up the landscape, but there's a glow around the place that doesn't seem to leave.

If Al had a stomach right now, it would be twisting up something horrible. As it is he stops abruptly, posture stiff as he stares up at the house he grew up in. "Oh no..."