open | brain heat meme

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Nightmares, slumber parties, etc.
WHEN: Throughout Justinian
WHERE: Kirkwall and surrounding areas
NOTES: Ignore the first prompt if you're bothered by bugs. Also, while this is primarily to help people RP about their nightmares, feel free to use it for any kind of RP you want. (I.e., you have permission to set up a truth or dare game at the slumber party.) Talk about dreams OOC over here

This month, our heroes' sleep is getting more and more troubled. Here are some excuses to write about it.

I. SLUMBER PARTY: Mid-month, an infestation of hardy, prolific Antivan fleas requires everyone to avoid spending prolonged periods of time in their bedrooms while local alchemist Lloyd Meyers eradicates the bugs with his proprietary smoke bombs (and an equally proprietary flea bath for the Gallows' many pets). While the rooms air out for two or three nights post-treatment, bed rolls are available on the floor of the unstaffed dining hall. Sleeping outside in the courtyards is also an option, but a sudden squall of a thunderstorm will drive people inside on the second night.

Footnote: Characters who live in the city are welcome to join this slumber party anyway. Maybe they miss the ferry ashore, maybe they're afraid of tracking fleas into their own homes, maybe they already did track fleas into their homes and Lloyd is treating them too, etc.

II. ROOM SHARE: Does the thought of sleeping in the dining hall with all of your coworkers make you break out in hives? Have you missed the ferry on any other evening of the month? Lowtown has inns, and Riftwatch has a docks-side warehouse with a few side rooms outfitted as bedrooms. But there are only so many rooms available, so you might wind up sharing a room (or a bed) with a friend or whoever is nearby and desperate.

III. CAT NAP: A lack of sleep—whether it be from the nightmares, the workload, routine insomnia, or staying up too late playing Truth or Dare during the Antivan Flea Incident—might make a cat nap on a desk, in a reading nook, or over breakfast particularly appealing. And bad dreams don't need more than a few minutes to get rolling.

IV. CAMP OUT: Investigating reports of enemy scouts in the mountains, traveling along the roads to a neighboring city-state on a diplomatic errand, looking into reports of weird magic on the Wounded Coast, or heading north to provide some assistance to the war effort? All might require pitching a tent and bunking down for the night with your colleague, whether you like them or loathe them.

V. NORMAL NIGHT: If you’re already sharing a room or bed with someone, you don't need this post. But you can still use it for your nightmare threads.

VI. BETTER IDEA: Do whatever you want. Live your dreams.

Comments

kostos.

[tender]

Is a cheap, comically tiny room over a cobbler's shop better than being packed into the dining hall of the Gallows along with the rest of Riftwatch?

It's a toss up.

But the company is good, at least. If one has to share a narrow bed, then it helps to have to split the space with someone familiar. With the shutter pushed open, there's enough of a breeze to keep the room from growing painfully stuffy. Having arranged themselves more or less comfortably, sleep eventually happens.

For a little while, anyway.

It's hard to say who woke first, and whose waking disturbed the other's sleep. What is certain is that Derrica speaks first, soft and breathless in the dark, asking, "What is it?"

A nightmare. Obviously. There's little chance of it being anything else, but still.

[exequy]

When she speaks, Kostos stops holding himself still and quiet. His exhale is heavy. He jostles her a little, sitting up and swinging his legs onto the floor, and leaves her behind to go to the window. Elbows on the sill. He leans through, as if seeking a lungful of fresh air, except it's Lowtown, and the air only comes smoke-scented and scratchy.

When he straightens and turns back to look at her, he stays there. There's enough diffused moonlight coming in through the thin clouds and open window to be able to see her shape across the few feet of space the room affords.

"Someone is going to give in," he says—to the demons. Of course it is a nightmare. "Sooner or later."

[tender]

He doesn't need to clarify. Derrica understands intrinsically what shape his nightmare took.

"No mages here are weak enough to do it by accident," she reminds him softly. "It's not inevitable."

Which leaves off the idea of it being a choice, of someone growing desperate enough to reach for such a thing. Derrica can't imagine it. They both saw it once, when that desperate man in the Gallows had melted into a horror right in front of them. (What else has Kostos seen?) But who among them would give themselves to such a thing?

There is a soft rustle of sheets as she sits upright, drawing her knees up to lace her arms around them as she looks at him.

[exequy]

Something about that makes his mouth twitch. Almost a tired smile. And perhaps it's invisible, besides, with the moonlight at his back. But that same almost is in his voice when he says, "They harrowed me early. Sometimes that is a compliment, but with me it was not."

He might have been useful, to the Mortalitasi. But he was difficult, erratic, a poor student of any magic he hadn't been born holding the keys to, a general problem. He might also have been a massive waste of time and resources. Better to find out early.

"I can feel them, in the Fade. I can feel what they want—to make me proud or afraid or angry." If he were given to similes, he might compare it to a character knowing the genre of the story they are in. "That is the only reason I'm alive."

[tender]

The room is so small that she could bend forward to reach him. Derrica turns the impulse over in her head, weighing whether it would be welcome or not. It is always instinct, putting her hands out, reaching to smooth away pain when she senses it.

"I can feel them too."

There has never been a time in her life to her recollection that hasn't been true to some extent. They have always been there. She feels the pressure of their scrutiny, the way they yearn even if that desperate need is edged sometimes with malice.

The weight of that sits for a long moment. That is the only reason I'm alive. How close has Kostos come to being otherwise? How small was he when he was Harrowed?

She puts a hand out, in this narrow space, and asks, "Come back?"

[exequy]

One of his shoulders peels forward from the wall. He nearly does it. He's used to her, in a way he's rarely been used to anyone. Her hands and sympathy and affection all feel more like sinking into water, not having it thrown at him from a bucket.

But he's still himself. Contrary and stubborn. Not, at the moment, interested in adding the mattress and sheets to the feeling of the stuffy evening air. The half-peel of his shoulder becomes only a repositioning fidget, and his head leans sideways, more visible than anything on his face.

The challenge in his counter-offer— "Come here." —has warmth underneath.

[tender]

A satisfactory counter-offer, judging by the ease in which Derrica disentangles herself from the last folds of the sheets to close the distance between them. Here means edging into his space, looping arms around his waist.

"Can I ask about it?"

His Harrowing. What he feels, peering at him behind the Veil. Any of it. All of it. She doesn't need to be told that they're painful, fraught topics.

Kostos can say no. There are other things they can talk about, until one or both of them decides to attempt sleep once more.