faderift | open | merry & bright

WHO: Anyone!
WHAT: Everyone lives happily ever after, forever, for real, wait don't look behind that curtain—
WHEN: Late Haring
WHERE: The mountains
NOTES: No one is late to this. Feel free to get around to it in January. Or February! And if you have questions you can ask me here, but for any question that's "can I do this within my character's dream?" the answer will be yes! You can do anything.

The snowstorm that blows up around them in the mountains isn't unexpected and isn't a disaster. It only dashes some thin hopes that it might not come on so strong or so swiftly. But they've almost reached what they're aiming for — a cave along the cliffy coastal road that's associated with the disappearances of several caravans and now said to be home to a rift — and there's a village up ahead, glowing warmly through the snowfall once they're near enough.

They're not the first waylaid travelers here. The one little inn is full to bursting, with just enough room for Riftwatch's contingent to squeeze in at tables if they get creative about the seating, the lower floor so packed that body heat and the little fire combined make things outright toasty. The beds are all spoken for, but the innkeeper, a warm, upbeat woman with frizzy hair escaping a bun, says not to worry. She's not turning anyone out into the cold. Blankets on the floor is better than that. If anyone finds it too uncomfortable to sleep curled with old blankets on a creaking wooden floor surrounded by the snores of colleagues and strangers — no, they don't. It's comfortable. It's warm. The sniffles and rough coughs from the other side of the room have the rhythm of a lullaby, and the snow-covered roads and the rift and the missing are all problems for a tomorrow that does not immediately come.

They wake, each of them, in a world where there is nothing of significance left for them to worry about. Not the road or the rift or the missing. Not the war; that's over now. Not poverty or obligation or illness. Between them and the life they've always wanted, the way has been cleared of obstacles, and there is nothing left to do but enjoy the comforts of a well-earned easy life — and if something is a little off, no it isn't. Shh. If the victories feel hollow, or the details blur, or the seams begin to show, the world will tighten around them like hands around a wounded bird who needs to be kept from thrashing, whispering that they don't need to worry. Everything will be fine. Just hold still and let it take care of you.

The first to pull free of the delusion on their own will find themselves in the twisting grasp of a lucid dream that's trying very hard to snare them again, stumbling out of their happy endings into the worlds of others'. They might be pulled beneath the surface for a time: the entity saying, all right, if that didn't work for you, maybe this? But the more of them who congregate together, with their incompatible wishes, the more the fabric will begin to fray, until at last it rots away altogether and they find themselves waking on the floor of a cold, abandoned inn, covered in moldering blankets and lingeringly queasy from half-rotted food eaten at least a day earlier, surrounded by the bodies of the inn's other occupants in various early states of decay.

And after, because rest for the weary really is just a dream, they do have to go find that rift.

ooc | Final confrontation with the spirit that allows breaking out into the real world will happen via a log in here I will link when it's happening. But you're also welcome to say your character wasn't involved in that part and went straight to waking up!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Could it be the same craftswoman behind it? He ponders. The lamps at home were more practical and functional; they looked nice, yes, but most importantly they illuminated—

For a moment there’s a furrow in the sorcerer’s brow, trying to line up two disparate realities at once. This is not his first time snagging on the seams (spot five differences in the picture) and it makes him hesitate for a moment, going still, movement frozen with the glass raised mid-sip. As if he moves too much, he’ll cause a ripple in the tapestry. It feels paper-thin, like a backdrop held in front of his vision.

The moment passes, for now.

“You’ve certainly become quite the art historian,” Stephen says, after a beat. “Or critic. Who’s your favourite artist here, then?”

Because many of them do attend personally, and he’s certain Benedict must have a preference; whether for their work or their personality, a particular relationship as a particular patron.

"How can I choose," Benedict exclaims, but takes a moment to look around the room, fervidly convinced of and basking in its reality. He says a name, gestures, but the syllables of it are unmemorable, not the point; the explanation he gives is erudite and passionate and leaves no lasting impression.

He pauses a moment, like he's unsure of something, and looks at Strange with a questioning expression as the room ripples again.

And Stephen might have rolled with it, might still have been tidily wrapped up in this comforting and comfortable illusion — an uncomplicated world of wonders that he does, in fact, wish he lived in — except. That Benedict’s mouth moves and nothing comes out, just the vague idea of speech and dialogue and specifics, a glitchy blur in the tape,

and Doctor Strange, accustomed to picking his way through dreams and the Fade and diving through astral dimensions, hesitates.

He is holding a cocktail. He can’t remember what he ordered; it’s sweet and cloying and strong as a punch, is the most important part, except that his memory is usually a steel trap. What was the name of the artist Benedict just mentioned?

Something prickles on the edge of his senses, his hackles rising, the sense of the room tilting slightly beneath his feet. Disorientation. Vertigo.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the name,” he says after a moment, his brow crinkling; searching out and finding that fault-line, applying pressure.

It's not just a sense: the room is quite literally beginning to tilt, but nobody other than Strange and, now, Benedict, seems to notice. The latter takes on a nervous, faraway look when asked to repeat himself-- he clears his throat, opens his mouth, and grimaces as the world shudders beneath his feet.

In another setting, he might shout, panic, do something to protect himself or those around; here, he simply meets Stephen's eyes again, looking quite lost.

It isn’t anything so dramatic as Stephen jolting and coming to gasping, suddenly awake like being struck by a bolt of lightning. Nothing so obvious or immediate or clear-cut.

But Benedict looks so lost and there’s something painfully familiar in that look on his face — almost like dementia patients, forgetting where they are — and the surroundings are tilting underfoot. And when Stephen closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his eyelids, trying to clear his vision, then opens them again, he can see

the gaps in the negative space, the shimmer behind the curtain, the fragile corners of the dream where he is so accustomed to finding and applying pressure, moulding and shaping a landscape, and Benedict’s mouth is moving blankly like a startled fish, and for a moment Stephen simply wonders if he’s dreamwalked normally, meandering into his sleeping comrade’s subconscious.

There’s a headache throbbing in the back of his skull. Has he done this before? (He cannot shake the feeling that he has done this before.) “At least I didn’t walk into a sex dream,” he says, more to himself, but then turns his attention back to the other man. “Benedict, have you dreamt this place before?”

It still seems like it might be normal. Maybe.

"This--?" Benedict asks, shaken from his stupor by the question as he looks worriedly around. He has, at least, come to grips with the fact that he's not about to die, even as concerning as this is.

"--it's my house," he says oddly, glancing back at Stephen.

“See, the thing is,” Stephen starts, “is that I don’t think it is.”

The sorcerer was holding a cocktail. He turns his palm in a complicated gesture, and— suddenly his hands are empty, like a stage magician doing flashy sleight-of-hand except he somehow pocketed an entire glass full of liquid. It’s gone.

He feels a little better, a little more in control of himself; grasping at the threads of the dream even as the dream itself, or whoever’s behind it, or whatever’s behind it, pushes back. He examines the details as he remembers them, as they’ve been subtly fed to him, and considers the picture it presents and which he’s supposed to buy. (He wishes he could buy it.) If the Venatori here were never really a thing…

“How’d you get that scar on your neck?” Stephen asks, offhand, deceptively casual.

If Benedict’s throat was pristine and unharmed a moment ago and it seemed like he didn’t have that gnarly scar anymore: well, he does now.

Benedict's hand flies to his throat, and the building gives a lurch, sculptures tipping to shatter on the floor and hanging art beginning to tumble fatally from the walls. The gathered crowd is silent, shadowy, going out of focus.

"I," he stammers, and tears his eye contact from Stephen's as he begins to acknowledge the state of the room. A draft blows through; water begins to drip from the ceiling, and to seep over the floor, which has somehow turned from fine and seamless marble to dirty flagstone.

"Why are you doing this," he asks, in a despairing whine, "don't do this. Please don't do this."

The plea cuts him to the quick — he’s never actually had to see Benedict like this before — but the sorcerer’s faced begging teenagers with very effective puppy-dog eyes. So his expression isn’t callous, just: grimly bitterly resigned. A little sympathetic, but stubborn and digging in his heels nonetheless.

“The truth can be ugly, Benedict,” Stephen says,

and as if in sync, there’s an awful throb in his hands and lancing through his palms, a remembrance of the nerve damage which hadn’t been noticeable until now. It had been a nice party. He’d genuinely liked the party. His hands hadn’t been hurting him and the magic had come easily and there had been nothing to worry about. It would be so much easier to lie down and accept the illusion. But—

“But in the end it is, still, the truth. We ought to face it.”

open | merry & bright

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