open | merry & bright

[exequy]

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!

Comments

I don't think you are

[wearyallalone]

Madame Orlov is an attractive woman in her early forties, with dark hair streaked with a few strands of silver. Her round, pleasant face tends toward openness, though her expression is wry as she pauses in her walk to the stables to regard her visitor and the flowers in his hand. She's dressed for riding, though she hadn't been moving with a purpose suggesting more than a leisure outing. She pauses, now, to let him catch up.

"Now don't tell me that those are for the horses," she says lightly. Not not flirtatious, though more amused than actively charmed for the present.

[extortionate]

"Thought I'd pack lunch," He waggles a daisy beside his own mouth, the tip of his tongue catching between teeth, the breath gone out of him a little. Way it always does for a look at her: Smooth and clever with her boots up to there, "Been working up an appetite."

[wearyallalone]

She laughs, clearly at him, but not unpleasantly so. "It seems your appetite is always formidable on days my husband happens to be off on a long ride. A remarkable coincidence, I wonder if the full moon is involved." She comes to lean on the fence, near enough to pluck the daisy out of his hand if he doesn't fight her.

"Maybe you shouldn't take such a long walk out here, if it exhausts you," she adds, idly.

[extortionate]

She reaches, and for a second she's got it –

"Funny thing about it," He palms the flower. "Never sleep easy without one."

Lazar leans into the space between them, presses the daisy back to her hand. Heavy fingers close over her own, briefly; his touch lighter than it's got any right. A single petal cleaves from stem: He loves me,

Hooves. A rider, coming fast, and that's odd. Vanya oughta be gone all afternoon.

[wearyallalone]

Vanya had, in fact, planned to be gone all afternoon. He'd ridden faster than he'd noticed, though, attempting to clear his head and not doing an especially good job at it. At least he'll be tired enough to sleep that night, he thinks idly as he approaches home. He's sure he'll find something else to do with the afternoon.

When Madame Orlova hears the rider too, she straightens, though not abruptly. Her tone is still warmly amused as she observes, "Well since you miss my husband so often, if there's anything you have to say to him, it seems to be your lucky day." Certainly there's no reason Lazar shouldn't want to see Vanya Orlov, her framing suggests, though the amusement in her eyes betray that guilelessness is deliberate.

[extortionate]

Lazar doesn't scare easy. Lacks whatever it is that takes a look at a bad situation, and says: Worry up. But he's got the sense to know when it's gone wrong, how to set down a fight he doesn't care to pick.

His outline ripples at the fence, gone briefly hazy as a sunrise; thinking how easy it'd be to be gone. It hasn't, the dream insists. Everything here, it's right on track,

So Lazar lifts a shaggy brow back at her, and turns.

"Ser Orlov," Gotta be a joke, that. With his money and a sword like some old chevalier. "Only riding the finest."