aster alarie (petals) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-07-31 21:57:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log, * emily, * jamie, r: calla puri, r: jahan puri |
WHO: Calla and Jahan Puri, with a guest appearance of Dahlia Puri.
WHEN: Morning of July 31st.
WHERE: Their bedroom.
WHAT: The Puris receive their first memories.
WARNINGS: None!
After awaking to a crying Dahlia and changing her war-zone of a diaper, Jahan cajoled her into a peaceful state once more and took her back to bed with him, where Calla still lay, resting, but not quite asleep any longer either. Jahan didn't intend to go back to sleep--he read too many horror stories of rolling over newborns, and, anyway, Dahlia would want breakfast soon enough and start crying again before he knew it. Instead, Jahan just lay and relaxed for a bit longer with Dahlia resting on his chest, sucking her thumb and staring towards the window, blinking a bit longer than usual as she wavered between the urge of falling back asleep or staying up. Jahan, meanwhile, had that residual sensation of a weird and vivid dream. He closed his eyes and tried to bring it back to the surface to remember what had happened in it. The weather and scenery came back to him first--it was warm out, but nothing like a Virginian or Californian summer--and certainly nothing like an Indian summer. In fact, it seemed more like fall weather, or maybe spring, yet somehow Jahan knew it was summer, the end of July, just like it was now. What had happened? He knew Calla was there, and Vega and Remington, too, and some other guy--but no one was quite themselves, even knowing he knew it was them. It wasn't the first time Jahan had a dream like that. But what were they all doing? Then, all the details came back to him at once. His eyes opened and he turned to Calla. "I had the weirdest dream," he told her, knowing she was awake, anticipating Dahlia's breakfast just as he was. It had been Jahan's return to the bed with Dahlia that truly awoke Calla. Though she had heard the cries of their daughter through the monitor just as her husband had, her still dozing mind had recognized that he had gotten up to see what was needed, allowing her just a few extra moments to ease into consciousness. Calla had needed those extra moments, as she felt a dream on the edge of her periphery, more a concept than anything concrete. She remained on her side, curled with her eyes closed, even as she felt the mattress give way as Jahan took his place once more. Her mind was working, trying to sort out the dream. It had been odd, but most of her dreams were. She remembered a home that wasn't theirs and pain that was more familiar, but rather than dulled with an epidural, it had been treated with concoctions she'd had to drink that felt as though they should have been strange, but weren't. She remembered Jahan and others that were their friends, but they weren't. It was confusion and disorienting -- and then suddenly it wasn't, as though she'd had a moment of clarity. Before she could make sense of any of it, though, she heard Jahan's voice. Calla opened her eyes, blinking them a bit blearily as her husband and daughter came into focus. The latter would want to eat soon, though she seemed pretty content for now as she cuddled into her father's chest. Reaching out, Calla's long fingers smoothed over Dahlia's soft curls as she spoke, "Me too, but you go first. We can see whose was weirder." "Ooooh, a contest, I love it," Jahan said. "Who do you think is weirder, Dahlly? Mommy or Daddy?" he asked, giving her a squeeze from the armpits. Dahlia kicked him in the stomach as if in protest of being bothered, and continued to suck her thumb and doze. "I'll take that as a vote of confidence. Okay, so," he began. "We were British. I forgot that part at first, but now I can remember everyone's accents, and we were all definitely British," Jahan explained. "You were there, me, Vega, Remington...some other guy. And they were all guys, but somehow it was also them," he said. "And you were in labor..well, the guys weren't there for that, but I was. Anyway, you were in this weird hospital where everyone was wearing robes and giving you...potions, or something. It was all totally fine with dream us, though," Jahan clarified. "Then, when the baby was born, it wasn't quite Dahlia--not Dahlia at all, really. It was a boy and we named him Harry," he said, then paused for a moment, tilting his head. "And that's a very British name, isn't it? Harry," he repeated, then shrugged. "No clue what it means, because I definitely don't want anymore kids until this one is decidedly more independent." Calla listened as Jahan described his dream to her, but her eyes became progressively larger and finally she sat up altogether as he finished, having had just described her own dream in perfect detail. Leaning on one arm, she looked down at him as though expecting him to proclaim it a joke -- though she logically knew that it made no sense for him to have any context of what she had been dreaming before Dahlia woke her up, as she hadn't had the chance to tell him yet. That seemed to make it feel even more strange, though. "I had the exact same dream," Calla said once she was sure he was done, her brow furrowed. "Being British, Vega and Remi being there, the labor, naming the baby Harry..." She shook her head. "That's weird." Jahan turned suddenly to Calla, his expression stunned. He leaned up on his elbow to bring his face closer to hers, supporting Dahlia's back with his free arm to keep her from getting too jostled. "You know what this means," he said seriously, then paused a beat for the sake of suspense. "We're soulmates," he said finally, then leaned in and kissed her. Calla was a split second away from a laugh before she suppressed it to kiss Jahan in return, her free hand reaching up to run her fingers along his jaw before her hand cupped it. She wasn't sure what it was she had been expecting after that suspense, but she liked that answer. Still, she couldn't help but tease him. "That's how you figured out we're soulmates?" she asked when she broke the kiss, tipping her head back to peer at his face as her thumb brushed against his cheek. "Pffft, I knew way before anyone else that we were soulmates," Jahan pointed out, which pretty much was the truth--really, no one ever thought he had a shot in hell with Calla, except for him. And maybe his mom, but she'd probably just been hopeful. Dahlia squired, and Jahan gently set her down on the mattress in the space between them. She seemed content enough for now with her new position, surveying the ceiling with her wide eyes. "I just liked to catalogue further evidence of the fact," he continued, tracing the curve of Calla's arm with his now free fingers. Jahan turned thoughtful again. "But it is strange. I'd say we've both got too much baby on the mind, so that makes sense. But why the robes? Why the potions? Why was everyone a guy--and British, too?" he pondered. "What did we watch on TV last night?" "I'm not sure," Calla admitted, which was one of those things that she rarely liked to actually have to admit to anyone, even Jahan. (Especially Jahan, in some cases.) Her brow furrowed again, her mind turning over it all. It was a hell of a coincidence that they would have the exact same dream and she was sure that there must have been differences that they just didn't realize, but everything he'd said had been in hers and it was hard to shake that bit of weird. "Maybe it's all that Great British Baking Show I've been watching while doing my lesson planning?" she suggested with a slight raise of one shoulder in a shrug. "That doesn't explain any of the other weird stuff, though." She paused, then added quickly, "But I'm going to the store to get a pregnancy test, just in case. And it'd better be negative, or you're in trouble." "I always watch a lot of British soccer--or football as they call it on that side of the pond," Jahan reflected. "I'm pretty good at imitating them, so I think I probably know what I'd sound like British," he said. "You know likeā¦Top o' the mornin' to ya, cloudy day, innit? Wantta grab a pint and some fish and chips?" Jahan demonstrated in something that could only be described as a halfway decent merger of an Irish and British accent--if you wanted to be generous. "But they don't wear robes at the matches. Pretty sure if you tried to wear a robe there, you'd wind up getting you ass--er--butt beat by some belligerent drunks," he said, shooting Dahlia a nervous glance. She was busy trying to roll over. "It would obviously be my fault," he said, then after a beat, "Do you think it could be an alien baby?" he asked. "Dreaming together...wasn't there a movie like that? Where they'd dream of owls and then something with aliens would happen?" Jahan recalled in the vaguest possible fashion. Calla scrunched up her nose to show her distaste at any potential alien baby she might have been carrying, though the expression was ruined by the amused smile that was trying to cross her lips. Looking down, she helped Dahlia in her attempt to roll over on the squishy mattress, then ran her fingers up and down the soft fabric of her onesie that she'd gone to bed in. "Let's just verify that there's no baby there at all before we start worrying about alien babies," she said, raising an eyebrow as she looked back up to Jahan. She was fairly confident that they had nothing to worry about, given that she'd had almost immediate morning sickness with Dahlia and that hadn't been happening now, but it seemed like a good idea to check. It was easier than figuring out why they had dreamed of themselves being British. "Maybe this is what we get for eating ice cream so close to bed last night?" Jahan smiled as Dahlia laughed at being turned over--he loved that sound. Then he laughed himself as the alien talk continued. "Alright, fair enough, I'll store my alien baby anxiety away for another day," he said. "Eh, if this is the worst that can happen after eating ice cream so close to bed, I think it's worth it," Jahan decided. He figured ice cream was as good of a rationale as any--that and there was no denying that he and Calla consumed a lot of the same media, had the same people in their lives, and even the same sort of things on their minds a lot of the time, too. It was probably just a weird coincidence, and at least it hadn't been a nightmare. "Agreed," Calla replied with a definitive nod. "I'm not about to give up my bedtime mint chocolate chip, so maybe we'll have another weird shared dreaming experience again sometime." It wasn't all that often that she remembered her dreams in the first place, which made this one unique in another way. Normally her dreams faded away quickly, so by the time she was able to tell Jahan about them, she only knew bits and pieces. This time, though, she remembered it all with great clarity. Jahan was about to say more about ice-cream--truly, that was a topic he could stay with for a good long while--but then Dahlia let out a plaintive cry, letting them both know that she, too, had food on her mind. "Well, then," Jahan said, sitting up. "Guess it's breakfast time for our real-life, non-alien baby." |