Marlow tried many times to no avail-- Who: Marlow & Issac When: 10/19, well past midnight. Where: Issac's dreams~ What: Marlow enters Issac's nightmare and gets more than she bargained for. Ratings: Mild - violence and dark imagery. Status: Complete.
For the first time in hours now, Marlow glanced up from her painting and squinted at the clock on the wall, watched it tick along to one nineteen. The evening passed her swiftly by it turned out, left her with a fatigue in the form of heavy eyes and an achy spine. She rubbed the blur out of her eyes with paint-smeared fingers and blinked away the stars to study the piece she planned to sell on the Cirque's last night in Detroit. It just needed a few finishing details. Then she could sleep, she told herself, mustering up just enough energy to pick up the brush and sweep it across the canvas with a determined flourish. Marlow made it to bed sometime after two.
Falling into sleep was easy, like dipping into the still calm of the ocean and letting yourself sink. For her, anyway. Before she went in, she thought of Issac, who she knew waded through choppier waters, a raging sea full of voices. It seemed he and sleep had a tumultuous relationship, and he had his ways of working through it. She understood that. But then she'd think about him banging his head against the wall just to make the noise stop, and worry about him even more. At least in the waking world, Marlow realized there probably wasn't a safer remedy she could offer Issac that he hadn't tried already. All she had to give was her company if he wanted it, but there was one other, possible solution. If she could get to his dream door.
Issac's insomniac sleep cycle seldom aligned with hers, making the door to his subconscious difficult to summon. Marlow tried many times to no avail...until tonight. She wove through many dreams, wondrous realms of thoughts and visions, until she was back inside the vast room lined with doors of different makes, Issac's floating right there in the middle. The unexpectedness of her find flashed across her face as she stepped toward it, brightly colored and oddly shaped, like something out of a strange fairytale, and put her hand on the handle. Sudden jitters danced under her skin, she didn't know why; she was used to walking into the unknown. Marlow drew in a breath, a small smile unfurling from her lips before she twisted the knob and entered.