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

[wearyallalone]

Vanya Orlov's smile is a quiet thing, but not a disingenuous one. "Not at all. She cooks as if we have seven children, instead of just the one. And she's always glad for company." Satisfied that the mare is in good order and that Astrid is staying, he adds, "I'll get her back where she belongs, and then we can go in. Your timing was good, I was about to stop regardless."

Assuming no objections, he gets the horse back in her enclosure and cleans up his gardening tools brisky but without rushing. Worth doing a thing right, if he's doing it at all, it seems. Still, he doesn't leave Astrid cooling her heels too long.

As he rejoins her, he asks, "When did you get back to town?"

[brennvin]

Astrid drifts along in Vanya’s wake, stealing the opportunity to apprise the animals and the garden and the thatched roof and the stone walls of this cottage; usually they conduct their business at market and in town itself, there’s not much call to make house calls, and so she hasn’t gotten this up-close look at the ranch before. She finds herself fascinated. It’s not what her own home is like, but there’s something toothlessly unobjectionably cozy about it.

“Just recently,” she says, vaguely, and tries to remember specifically how long it’s been. After a moment, delivered with more confidence: “Getting ready for next week’s market day. You got any plans for it?”

[wearyallalone]

"Nothing worth mentioning," is the truth. Vanya Orlov's home is neat but not bloodless; it is very clearly a place where people live, even beyond the gardening that he'd been doing when she arrived. There are some sheets drying on a line out behind the house and a saddle resting on a sawhorse near the barn, probably in need of some minor repair. There is, one imagines, never any absence of things to do.

Elaborating on his initial answer as he leads them toward the house, he adds, "We might go in, all three of us, this time. Sometimes it's just business, but it's been a while since we made a day of it properly." A while is no more specific than she can be about her arrival, but it doesn't catch at him. (This time.)

The inside of the house is much like the rest of the ranch; tidy but not a showplace, some knitting left on a chair by the fireplace in the main room, appetizing smells coming from what is certainly the kitchen further in.

[brennvin]

Astrid follows Vanya in and finds herself rudely poking around the inside of the house, like a dog nosing around the corners of a room, poking the knitting and flipping through the books. She’s interested in what this is like: the marks of a permanent home, a settled life in town.

“What’s your wife and kid’s name again?” she asks, curious.

She must’ve known, at some point. She’s definitely spoken to them before, exchanged friendly words in town, empty pleasantries. But her memories of them are inexplicably blurry for the moment.