Who: Ariadne and Arthur Where: The Dreaming, and then their apartment When: Sometime after midnight, March 24 What: When you give an Architect complete control over the Dreaming, things are bound to get interesting. Rating/Status: PG-13 for language most likely; closed/incomplete
The hallway was full of doors. It stretched in either direction as far as she could see, dark wood with brass fittings and dim light. Even though there was no dust the place gave an impression of being unused and forgotten, with only a single set of footprints on the marble floor. It wasn't a place she had built and it wasn't the sort of place she would imagine either; no curves, no twists and turns, no mazes. Unless there were branching pathways - but it didn't feel like they were there when she reached out with her mind, sensing what lay ahead as if it were under her own blueprints. Just to be sure, Ariadne reached for the nearest door and opened it. A neatly lettered plate on the door bore the inscription Enlistment.
Inside was a neatly pressed uniform, with insignia she didn't recognize, hanging from a wire that ran up to the ceiling. Huh. Definitely not her subconscious. The next door, marked Sixth, had a small table with an old rotary telephone sitting on it; it rang, but when she picked up the receiver there was nothing but silence. Five doors down from that was a door marked New Orleans, and the blast of humid warmth that hit her made her realize just how cold the hallway was. Seeing a confusing whirl of color inside, she shut the door and kept walking, trailing her fingers along the wall and not realizing that they were leaving a red trail as they passed, as if she were unraveling a ball of thread behind her.
Further down the corridor was a single figure, slipping out of one room and preparing to open the next. The ruby pendant resting on her chest flashed and she was standing there, looking up and not at all surprised to see Arthur. "Where are we?" she asked, even though she was fairly sure she knew the answer already.