maskormenacelogs | void dream ; open

WHO: The Outsider & you?
WHERE: A Shared Dream
WHEN: June, whenever
WHAT: The Outsider dreams of the Void, and sometimes people wander in
WARNINGS: Outsider often talks about or alludes to death, murder, violence etc, though he rarely goes into detail

[ You were asleep, and it almost feels like you've woken up again, but something is... strange. You get up, turn around and wherever you were sleeping is open wide to the Void.

Nothingness as far as you can see, except the strange black rock and some sort of species of whale floating in the Void, and the objects and things on the rocks.

The Void draws from the minds of who is there. Some of what is here may be random objects from this world, a hovercar or televison. But some are definitely from somewhere else - there's machines and objects and bits and pieces of architecture from the Outsider's world. Other things you may recognize from home, as the Void draws from your mind. There may even be people you know, from here or home, frozen and unmoving as if in a tableau.

While you look at something, the Outsider appears beside you in a cloud of his telltale black smoke. ]

You've found your way into the Void.

(( OOC: check here for more on how this power works. His vision power is still an option too! If you're cr, he may have pulled you in. If not, people can randomly wander in if they're sleeping the same time he is. If you have dream powers of some kind, feel free to have your character have more control over aspects of the dream, or jam with me about what that might do.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Allison's had three dreams that fuck her over in the last month, and she's had to contend with five brothers for her whole life. A little irritance in a tone doesn't garner much more than a raise of eyebrows. ]

If this is your place, shouldn't you already know that? [ There's a tilt of her head, trying to reach for something clear that feels just out of reach, just out being there. Something about dreams. Something about the other dreams. None of them had actually known each other, if they didn't, had they? ]

How did I even get here?

I thought everything with the dreams was supposed to be over now.

I am not Ronan Lynch.

[ He dissolves into smoke and reforms in front of her. ]

You haven't realized you're the intruder, have you? I told you. The doors of the prison have been left open, and now anyone can wander in.

[ Okay. So that part? A little unnerving. Even if fear as a response seems about as drowned out as the rest of them. Not to mention fear just isn't Allison go to emotion under threat of danger either. There were reasons she was in the top of her siblings according to her father. ]

I didn't choose this.

[ Honestly, those words almost echo.
They might be the truest thing about her in all of this.
Her head. Her bed. This whole world, asleep and awake.]

[ He folds his hands behind his back. ] Then here we are together, without it being a choice for either of us.

[ He isn't inclined to demand her name and story outright - that choice will always be hers - and once he would not have to have done anything to know. But he's growing tired of answering questions. ]

I could leave you here if you would prefer. I can travel to another part of the Void, one without strangers. You can wait until you wake. Alone.

[ Allison looked at the man in front of her and to one side that large, unending void. ]

What happens if you do? Am I just stuck, right here, until that happens?

[ Then. ] What do people who get stuck here usually do?

Go mad, usually. But you'll wake up long before your mind starts to crack under the weight.

[ He blinks away again, smoke swirling, to the edge of the rock they are on, to look over it at the nothingness stretching below. ]

Most likely.

If you would rather I stay, you could spend the time telling me about yourself.

[ Again, with the disappearing and appearing. Allison tries to blink, tries to focus on the whisps. Though she's distracted by the whale moving -- flying? floating? swimming? -- out there, again. Not that she's exactly keeping count, but he's said that twice now, too. There's a strange touch of uncertainty, and wariness to her look. As she's trying to piece together the things he's been saying as he keeps adding things to it. ]

Why?

Does it somehow keep me from going mad, too?

[ Is that a touch of just barely sharp cheekiness? Potentially. ]

[ He turns away to pace a little. ]

It will help keep me from going mad.

[ A joke or a threat? Either way it's said lightly. ]

[ There's a little bit of speculativeness to what has to be her next question. Even though she can tell he's bearing with all of this, just barely. But it's one worth asking. Given the unclear line between this is my prison and this is me that he didn't want to come clear about.

This being a pretty big thing, and pretty powerful enough already, if it was him. ]

Do terrible things happen if you go mad?

[ Almost but not quite, have you been mad before? and how really would one be kept here, alone, in this strange place, without it being a very real conclusion potentially? too. But Allison has some wherewithal and restraint, all examples to the contrary. ]

That's a good question.

[ Which he knows implies he hasn't, so there's at least that. ]

I imagine there are those that assume I already have.

[ It's a very Klaus type answer. But there's madness and then there's not, and she doesn't know him well enough to have a clue. Or at all. Aside from a name, a very strange dream, and a puzzle he'd rather not focus on. Which was rather like Klaus, too. Even if he didn't seem much like Klaus beyond those two small instances. ]

That would lead to the question why this place would bring anyone in if they were mad.

Why shouldn't it?

[ He paces. ]

Generations of scholars, cultists and natural philosophers have tried to figure out the Void. They wrote books and posited theories, performed unspeakable rituals and brought themselves to the edge of death to seek it. Every person, young or old, short or tall, in an entire world knew at the very least the briefest vision of the Void, though few stepped foot there.

This isn't even the real thing. It's a shadow, a piece of it that I brought with me that exists in dreams.

Do you think you can ask a few questions and understand it? Do you think any answer I can give you will be sufficient? Once this place was filled with the spirits of the restless dead, the dreams of a world, the whales of the oceans, and those who I chose to bring there.

Now it is only me.

You will eventually wake and leave this place, and there will be silence again. And you won't even allow yourself the basic courtesy of a guest.

[ Allison's eyebrows go up and she opens her mouth, but his reaction is so sudden and so certain. And it just keeps going. And so maybe that's why she looks a little awkward, even as she does pay attention to the long stream of an explanation that rolls out form him. All details she hadn't known might come that easily or that suddenly, in a rushing waterfall of annoyance and detail, until it finally reached its end.

It's the paragon of a sister and a daughter who long learned when to listen before correcting.
Shifting her weight a little from one foot to the other, her head tilting slightly, she said, simply. ]

I wasn't talking about ... your Void.
I meant, more, this planet.

But it wasn't very specific. Sorry.

[ He pauses. ]

...Very well. Usually when I make mistakes the consequences are much larger.

[ He folds his arms and turns away. Sulking or embarrassed? Or dismissive? Who knows. ]

I think the Porter brings in those it finds interesting. Often those people are not sane.

It's fine. I think I'm getting used to being misunderstood.

[ This, not aimed at him as Allison looked to a side with something a shrug. Like it was. Normal. Part and parcel with her life now. Not like this. Where just for the briefest of minutes she sounded like herself again, and never when it could be shared with the right people without the world falling apart even worse than it had before getting to this.

She didn't usually tell people, out there, that they had. ]

Though, I haven't met many of the insane ones, so I'll have to take your word on that.

void dream ; open

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