Open Dream on

[Shiress]

The news of the missing Squires had reached the Rearing Stallion. Every table, it seemed, murmured some kind of discussion on it. Who, what, when and why. Every patron in the Taverne had there own idea of what had happened. The Rogue Knight, an evil mage, a more evil Myrian out hunting for his dinner, a Dire Wolf gone mad. She had heard enough over the last few days to set her nerves on edge.

Stepping through The door of her small apartment, the barmaid tossed her apron somewhere near the table and began unlacing her bodice as she moved across the floor to her bed. Her feet hurt, her head ached and her back was as stiff as the wooden floor her now bare feet stepped across. All she wanted was sleep. Sweet, beautiful, restful and peaceful sleep. With a yawn, the girl slung back her blanket and sunk down into the bed, green eyes gradually fading away beneath heavy lids before her head hit the pillow. An uneasy sleep ensued.
........................

She felt the cold earth beneath her hands before forcing her fingertips into her palm. Brittle leaves crushed within her fist, the sound of it magnified ten fold in her ears.

She opened her eyes, blinking several times to clear her vision, but it never did. Slowly the sounds of a forest drifted through the blackness surrounding her form. She sat up slowly, eyebrows furrowed, eyes darting about. She lifted her hand to run a fingertip along the rough bark of a tree fading into view directly in front of her. "What the.."

She came to her feet as more and more trees, limbs, thickets and bush manifested everywhere her eyes lingered. Finally, she stood deep in.. "A forest?" The last to emerge was the moon, bright, full and on display high over the canopy above her head. It's soft light fell gently down through the arms of the trees, with it was brought a veil of mist, hovering just above the forest floor.

Shiress turned slowly in place. She knew what was happening. She'd done this before, but something was different, off. This wasn't the same scene that had plagued her sleep as of late. The same fear, however, pricked at her skin. A deeper knowing of evil began to fester in her core.

Where is Jordan, his henchmen? Where is Hadyn?

The sudden sound of a stick snapping spun the girl around and slowly a perfect ring of stones became clear in her sight. She took a hesitant step toward the circle, only to leap back, startled, as a fire sparked and blazed from its center. The rustling sound of footsteps sounded out in the darkness beyond the fire and slowly a hazed form appeared stepping into the edges of the firelight. Her eyes widened with surprise. "A-Alex?" She called, taking a step forward, but the form melted and shifted leaving in its place a white Wolf. "Alex." She called again, her tone more reserved and quiet as she took another step. But the wolf lunged over the fire landing just in front of her and stepped slowly forward, its head bowed in a fierce snarl, its tongue slipping past razor like teeth to lap at the air between them.

Shiress stumbled backwards just as the wolf lunged again. Throwing her arms between them, she closed her eyes, screaming and then...nothing! She slowly opened her eyes. The wolf was gone and the forest had fell silent around her as a bitter cold breeze wafted through the trees to bite at her skin, exhaled breath becoming a thin vapor of smoke before her face.

With arms crossed tightly around her chest, she stepped toward the fire and lowered herself down beside it and, as if involuntary, stretched out her body over the cold ground, eyes closing as all around her faded again into the darkness.

[Uleru]

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"Are you cold?" the fire asks.

Well, not the fire, that would be absurd. But water doesn't talk either, yet how do the Otani exist? Ah, thats what's different. The moulding blinks and looks through the back of her hand. The water from which she was made has been replaced. She is harbouring her most deadly enemy in her own body; she is made of fire.

The hand shimmers and flickers but keeps it's contained shape, and the ground can still be seen with a opacity just like her real body. But there is one difference that she isn't truly prepared for. She is warm. A sensation she has never been able to generate herself, or gather from the water where she makes her home. The only time she has been able to indulge in this sensation is when she leeches the heat from another's body. But now the feeling is rising from her like she has tasted Syna's poisonous kiss. She can finally share what she has always taken from others.

She has watched the whole scene play out on the dingy forest floor; the sounds, the girl, the white wolf... The moulding is not sure what it means. She feels out of place and disconnected, like she's nothing more than an intruder being fed a vertical slice of someone else's life. Her pupiless eyes cast around the dense foliage for a sign of this Alex, but the wolf seems to have disappeared. Though she has no doubt the animal will be back.

The Otani turns back and smiles at the girl laying by her crossed legs. She's a pretty thing. Young, in that human way. Yet these visions she is conjuring hint at a much more damaged soul than the body suggests. She offers the girl a flickering golden hand to warm herself and chase away the darkness and the fear that is pressing in from the forest at all sides.

"You'll catch your death of cold, or so they say", Uleru continues, shifting the weight on her hips and dislodging one of the stones in the circle that surrounds her. "I wonder what that means... I suppose death rides in on the cold. Then it gets caught in your bones and you die from the inside... Are you cold?"

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