thenearshore | Nights, Into Dreams

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Nights, Into Dreams

Who: Everyone at Forrest's Sleepover
What: The 'sleeping' part of the sleepover proves slightly more eventful than planned.
When: The night of June 21
Where: Lakshmi's temple
Warnings: Some violence (implied and explicit) in individual threads; see warnings in headers.

Well, you know what they say about sleeping on the job.

It's well into the small hours by the time Aya - like many of Forrest's guests - slips into sleep, something she had assured herself she could do tomorrow. It's late, her eyelids are heavy, and she's eaten far too many snacks and, happily nauseated, really doesn't want to move. She curls up on a pile of pillows; at some point she pulls a blanket over herself. Her eyes fall closed--

Morpheus sleeps, and it really should have occurred to her what that might mean. It had been a joke, really: of course the God(dess) of Dreams would be right at home at a sleepover. But it's during sleep she is at her most powerful, weaving a tangled and chaotic web from the threads of Forrest's guests' dreams.

*

OOC: Aya is the reincarnation of Morpheus, God of Dreams; her powers include dreamwalking and bringing back small items from her dreams. Tonight, her powers are affecting the guests at Forrest's sleepover, allowing any of them the (entirely optional) chance to take a trip into one another's dreams. As to what they might find there, well, that's where this log comes in. Start a thread about your own character's dreams, or or drop in on other people's and hope they're not having that one dream about showing up to an exam in their underwear.

(If you would like Aya to retrieve a small item from a dream for your character, please let me know! Items have to be obtainable on present-day Earth, inanimate, small enough for her to keep about her or carry and not used as a weapon.)

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[She gets huffy because this is her dream self, the kind of thing she'd never say to him out loud.]

And what's wrong with making friends?

[All of her Selves ask in unison.]

[ Yikes.

Yata gives a startled jolt, because even if he is his dream-self, that many Kairi's is still terrifying, especially when he doesn't even know which one to look at. ]

N-nothing! I'm sure you... make a very nice friend. [ Probably. Maybe? At the moment he's not so sure. ]

You're lying!

[She sounds more hurt than angry though.]

Otherwise you wouldn't treat me so different than your guy friends. You just don't like me because I'm a girl.

[And Kairi's selves all turn away from him, starting to cry.]

[ Oh god, she's crying, why os this life? What the heck is he supposed to do with this???

Yata flails, hands outstretched as he steps closer, waving off her protest, even though he's not even sure which one he should go comfort. He settles on the one that looks the most like her at the party, because that seems easiest. ]

What? No! Stop that! I don't have those either. Look, stop crying, I don't know what to do with crying girls. If I treated you differently it's because I didn't want you to do this!

Well that worked out fine didn't it!!

[Kairi's original self breaks from the assembly to shout at Yata and wipe away some of her own tears.]

How do you not have any friends at all? I don't believe you.

[Sniffle.]

You're not a bad person or anything.

[ Yata just groans and buries his face in his hands, because there's something about her words... He shifts uncomfortably before sighing. ]

Is that really that important here? Isn't just protecting and being useful to our gods good enough?

Why wouldn't it be important anywhere?

[ She tries to walk closer, pressing her hands against his even while he's got them buried. ]

But especially here. We're not things, are we? Being useful or not doesn't make you a better person.

[ He jerks backwards, uncomfortable with anyone invading his personal space unexpectedly, for reasons he still hasn't been able to figure out why. It always sends alarm bells ringing in the back of his consciousness. ]

I never said I wanted to be a better person. [ Even if he did. ] I don't know. Argh! [ he makes a frustrated sound, scowling at her. ] Why'd you have to go and make it all confusing?

... It's not confusing.

[She tries to reach forward again.]

It doesn't have to be. Your god can be your friend and your partner too. I would do the same kinds of things for my best friends as I would for Roxas. He's my friend first and my god too. What's wrong with that?

That's what makes it confusing! It's complicated! [ He scowls at her anyway, because he doesn't have a way to put it into words. he doesn't know why he feels that way, he just does. And it's kinda freaking him out to think about it too much.

And about the way he might have been holding himself back from making many real connections since getting here. ]

Maybe that's easier for you, to be friends with everyone. But that doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else. Maybe I don't want to make more friends here!

[ Or maybe he was just scared of what would happen if he did. He was dead, wasn't he? He couldn't even remember if he'd had friends, but he'd forgotten them all anyway. If that's what happened, what was the point? ]

[Only because this is Yata's dream does Kairi's own feelings on the matter escalate to well-meaning yelling instead of a more gentle conversation about friendship of all things. She leans forward and pokes him in the chest.]

COMPLICATED! ISN'T! BAD!

[Then she pulls her hand back to cross her hands over her chest and stomp her foot.]

Every single friendship I have with someone is different! Complicated, even! No one's the same! You don't have to be friends with everyone, but if you KNOW everyone, then you'll find out who you DO want to be friends with! No one gets through life alone! When we have friends in our lives, we learn from them and they learn from us and everyone grows stronger! It doesn't make you tougher to go at things alone! It means you lose out.

BIG. TIME.

[Yata is getting the brunt of her frustrations talking to Sousuke about the same topic.]

So don't talk to me about being friends with everyone! I never said that you had to! Get two or three best friends and stick it out with them! But you have to FIND those people first! And if you don't want to find them, then don't come crying to me when you can't get any stronger than you are now!

[ Is she... She's yelling at him? He just stands there stupefied for a moment because even the Jungle has seemed to shrink back and slink away in the face of her argument.

Almost absently he lifts a hand to rub at the spot where she poked him, looking completely baffled. ]

I... I'm not crying to anyone! [ That at least gets a heated response from him. ] It just feels weird, trying to make friends here! I don't even know who I am, how am I supposed to go find friends when I can't remember anything? Or even remember anyone?!

[ And maybe that's the lingering root of the problem, at its core. Who had he forgotten? Had there been someone important? Or more than just one? Was it really just okay to start over like that? ]

That's exactly how! You just hang out with people, of course!

[She folds her hands across her chest again and turns slightly away.]

What do you THINK is going to happen if all you do is sit around at home focusing on your own problems by yourself? You don't learn anything that way - plus, you'll probably get blight thinking about your past too hard.

What you SHOULD be doing- [Here she raises one accusatory finger again.] is spending time around people and learning about yourself that way! It's okay to experience new things and decide you just didn't have that much fun and don't want to do it again. The point is that you TRIED. And you can keep trying new things with people until you figure out yourself all over again.

Along the way, you make friends with people. Is that really so hard to consider?

[Unless he's just afraid of failure in general, which is possible, but she doesn't want to 'lead the witness' by asking that just yet.]

I don't care about my past. [ Which isn't entirely the truth, but... ] That's all over and done with, right? I mean, we're dead. It's not like we could do anything about all that anyway.

But fine. Although I don't know why you're still yelling at me, it's not like I locked myself up in my god's temple or anything since getting here! I've been out training and I even went to that sleepover thing, didn't I? How is that not trying?

[Kairi points into the air and a little speech bubble with his face in it goes "Maybe I don't want to make more friends here!" from literally moments ago.]

I don't believe you that you don't care about your past.

[Plus this is his dream so she gets to call him out like that.]

But if you're rejecting that now, then I'll agree that maybe you're trying to make friends, instead of just getting dragged around because your god told you to.

[ He jolts at the sudden appearance of a speech bubble beside him and then glares at it for good measure, because that's just not fair, using his own words against him. ]

And what's wrong with doing what my god told me to? Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing anyway?

[ That was easier to retort back than her calling his bluff anyway. ]

There's a difference when it comes to making friends. You shouldn't only be making friends because your god tells you to or tells you to go somewhere specific to make friends. You should make friends because you want to. You should--

[But as she looks over Yata's shoulder while she speaks, the forest seems to almost close in on her. And maybe only her because it's his dream, but she takes one step back and suddenly she's backed up against a tree.]

[ Ah shit. He'd forgotten about that. She'd distracted him from what had been bothering him in the first place.

Except now he was irritated and annoyed instead of uncertain and he spins around to glare at the jungle around them, noting how it's pressed close while they were arguing.

Fed by a fit of frustrated temper, his Aura wells up within him, spilling out until it wraps around his entire form. Then it expands, making a widening circle as a barrier around him, the flames growing wider and higher as it sweeps out to include Kairi in the protection of power. Although the flames lick and lap at her, they don't burn, merely feel like a swirl of warm energy around her as the circle continues to widen. ]

Dammit! Get out of our way!

[ He all but growls the words, gathering his strength and then flinging it outwards in a way that has his fire exploding in a burst of power. It flares out from its core around them, hungrily devouring the trees and vines reaching for them, looking for a way past. The fire flares white-hot, eating everything in it's path, making the dreamscape shudder, waver - whatever held them here retreats, loosens.

The jungle starting to fade around them, he glances back over his shoulder at her with a fierce frown, something more intense than the frustrated shinki he's been so far lurking in his gaze. ]

You don't need to tell me that. How is you telling me I should be making friends any different than me doing it because my god tells me I should? When I figure out what I want to do, I'll do it. [ And there's something in his manner that hints that he won't let anything stand in his way then. ]

Ah!

[Her hands come up to protect her from the fire but... nothing. It doesn't burn? Wow, he's this powerful, or the dream fuels him this much... She decides maybe she shouldn't be so surprised given what he showed her that first day they met. She chuckles a little as the trees are consumed, knowing it's not a real forest.]

There's a saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees. Well, I guess now you can.

[Kairi nods at him as the dream fades.]

That's the important thing.

[She'd wanted him to make friends, sure, but her dream self in his dream is more content with the fact that he won't stand still. If he's actively trying to figure out what that is that he wants, then that's good enough.]

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Nights, Into Dreams

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Figured we could try wrapping

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