Saoirse (seersha) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-01-28 23:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-07-01, saoirse |
in dreams
Who: Nic and Saoirse
When: 4 AMish
Where: Nic's dream. No, seriously.
Dreamwalking was a tricky thing. Well. Kind of. In practice, it was actually a very easy thing. What was tricky was that Saoirse still knew very little about how it actually worked - simply that it did work.
She had never tried to reach the dreams of anyone in particular. When she did use the ability, she just wandered aimlessly. But Nic had once told her to try, and tonight, that was what she was doing. She waited until a late hour, where there was probably a higher chance he'd be asleep, and settled comfortably in a corner in her attic, sending her presence away from her body, away from this realm, focusing on the thought of Nic as an anchor.
Nic was dead to the world, solidly asleep after a night of mischief. Messing around with Whisper had been an enjoyable exercise, but also one that was likely to haunt him. He doubted she'd let it go, such a blow to her pride, so from now on out he'd need to watch his back. It brought back strange memories in his dreams, moments that fluttered on the edge of his mind mixed with memories that had never happened.
In his dreams, he was cold, sitting on the floor, wooden panels beneath him. He could have sworn he was on a boat moments ago, but now he was some place familiar. A pecking at the attic window startled him and Nic looked up as a crow peered inside from out. He turned, his palms brushing across the floor, then hissed in pain. Picking up his hand, a large splinter stuck into his palm.
"Don't waste it!" a red-headed little girl said to him. Nic looked over at her as she took his palm in her hand and carefully extracted the splinter. She looked about eleven, still the tomboy he remembered from back then. With the sliver of wood removed, a bead of black blood rose in the palm of his hand. Nic watched it slowly grow as the girl used the splinter to soak up the excess blood before dropping it in a little glass jar. "You're wasting it, Nicky," she said with a glare. "Stop it up or pour it out." Instinctively, he followed her instructions, pressing his thumb over the wound to help the blood clot faster. "Good," she said, then scurried towards the attic stairs. "I'll be right back!" she called out, then he was alone.
Lifting his thumb off the wound, Nic looked at the tiny drop of blood and frowned.
When Saoirse actually found herself in the dream, she couldn't help but be a little stunned that she had actually been successful. But there she was. There he was. She wasn't sure where they were, or if it was important, but it did feel like she was seeing something she wasn't meant to. A lot of dreams tended to be that way. It often felt like an invasion of privacy - which served to be the main reason why she'd never tried to find the dreams of someone she'd met before.
She wondered if she should simply leave Nic in his dream and report back to him when he was awake. She believed that would be the right decision to make, actually - the least invasive, anyway. But Saoirse could not ignore her nagging curiosity. She had seldom attempted to communicate with people in their dreams - often, she simply observed, or drove nightmares away. She had the power to influence the dream any way she wanted it to go, after all. She could feel all the energy available to her; she need only to reach out with her mind and pluck at it, and it would bend to her will. But she wondered, if she left things completely as is, if they would be able to communicate. Some people were extremely lucid dreamers - she had been one in her human life. It was worth a try. "So this is what a necromancer dreams about..." she murmured, by means of announcing herself.
Her voice startled Nic, as he'd been sure he was alone just moments before. He spun around, surprised to see Saoirse there, then even more surprised that he hadn't felt her presence. That was followed by a small moment of panic wherein he realized he still couldn't feel her, and that her mind was quiet, even when he reached for it. Then her words sunk in-- dreams. This was a dream. Now he remembered, and he doubted that he'd be able to read her mind when they were technically within his own.
"Sometimes," he answered, pressing his thumb back down upon his palm. "Depends on the day." He wondered what had brought this particular dream on, before Saoirse had appeared. Perhaps forcing vulnerability in someone else had forced him to examine the chinks in his own armor. "You found me," he said with a small smile. He was glad to have this particular dream broken up.
This was awkward. Not unpleasant, but awkward. Saoirse couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of smug, 'I did it!' satisfaction with the whole thing. "Much easier than I thought it would be," she admitted. "And I wasn't sure what to expect if I got here." He seemed rather lucid! She'd entered random dreams before to see nothing but things that looked straight out of an acid trip - or dreams in black and white. She always found those rather disorienting. This place felt more real than imagined, though; she had to wonder if she could sense something like that, but almost immediately realized she simply had no clue. She didn't know how this worked, other than it did. There was no instruction manual.
He couldn't have told her what to expect because all dreams were different. Some dreams were slow and others raced by, some flowed coherently and others were sporadic images that seemed to flash behind his eyes. And then there were these, the ones that felt like real life except wrong. "I can't feel you here," Nic said. "It's as if you were human and your mind was off limits. Which is normal, but weird." Only because he'd felt differently when awake. "I think we're in my grandmother's attic, except I remember more stuff." As he said so, he looked around, feeling like there was mounds of stuff around them, but all blob-like rather than concrete. His brain filled in the holes making boxes covered with sheets, clutter all around. "I don't think I'd have noticed if you weren't here. That's cool."
"Really?" Well, that was interesting. And unexpected, though now that Saoirse paused to think about it, it made sense. "I'm in control of whatever dream I'm in," she explained. "Instead of your subconscious, I'm in the driver's seat." She wondered if she tried to give him that power back here, if it would actually work. The thoughts and logic behind it nearly made her brain hurt. "Where did your grandmother live?"
"It's okay," he smiled, still pressing his thumb into his palm. "The logic might break my brain, so it's not worth it." While there was logic, there was still magic in there, and he didn't think they all worked together if forced. If he thought about it too long, it would just confuse him further. "She lived in New York. Still does, actually, though now she lives with my mom. My whole family's spread out across New York City. There's a lot of us out there." They had quite a name for those poking around into black magic. It was significantly easier to be on the police force in Scarlet Oak rather than at home.
Saoirse grinned, and looked around briefly before her focus shifted back to Nic. She could see what he was doing with his palm, and it struck her as a little disorienting when she realized she couldn't smell the blood. That was a little earth-shaking. It had been over a year since she'd been able to avoid the scent of blood. Not wanting to have to think about it anymore, she reached out with her mind to stop the bleeding. That needed to go away now. Yes, please. Even if she couldn't smell it, seeing it was still quite distracting enough. "So why are you dreaming of your grandmother's house, do you think?"
"I dunno," Nic said, looking down at his palm in wonder as he drew his thumb away. How very weird. Without thought, Nic stuck his thumb in his mouth, licking off the blood. "I spent a lot of time here as a kid. We all did, me and my cousins. My grandfather had been a necromancer, like me, so Nonna-- my grandmother-- would tell me stories and try to help me learn control." Nic cast a quick look towards the attic exit, but it was still just the two of them. He hoped it stayed that way and wondered how much control he had, now that he knew it was a dream.
Augh, that was distracting. Saoirse found it beyond frustrating. The blood was fake, it had no scent, it was nothing - and she still wanted it. Not fair. "So not everyone in your family is a necromancer? It's not automatic?" She understood that elementals were that way, and psychics could be that way... but she still knew next to nothing about necromancy and how it worked. Other than, you know, zombies. And that shit was weird.
"It's hereditary, but no, not everyone ends up a necromancer," Nic said, pulling himself to his feet now that his hand wasn't bleeding to distract him. "Magic runs in my family. My whole family practices. But everyone hopes that the necromancy will just fade away. It skips generations, siblings, whatever, and then just sneaks back in again," he said with a shrug. He'd lived with it his whole life, but that didn't make it easy. The hard part had been learning what it would do to him and making the decision on how he wanted to handle it.
"Why do you want it to go away?" Saoirse asked, curious about the idea. While she could see how zombies wouldn't be a welcome addition into most peoples lives, it had to come in handy. For instance, Nic would never be attacked by a vampire. It was obvious why someone like Saoirse would like that idea.
Nic could feel the chill that question gave him and wondered if he was really cold, or if it was all in his head. He'd noticed the temperature before her arrival, and it made him wonder if he was cold awake and this was how it translated to his dream. It was somewhat of a mystery. "Necromancers don't live very long," Nic said, meeting her eyes with a sad smile. "We live longer if we practice use the magic in our blood, but it eventually catches up with us."
...Oh. Well, that explained a lot. And as a person (er, vampire?) who didn't want to form attachments to temporary people? Not very happy news. "How long do you get?" Saoirse asked, frowning faintly at the news. That definitely blew. First non-vampire she'd made friends with, and he was doubly temporary. Great.
"I don't know," Nic said, any chances of a smile fading. "Ten years maybe? We've been trying to figure out a way to slow it down, but... I try not to think about it." It made him depressed, and then that made the short life he had even worse. Unfortunately, it was hard to keep it totally absent of his mind. It was too big a part of him to forget. "Who knows, with all the information that's out there now, maybe someone will figure it out."
Yikes. Now Saoirse felt like an asshole for asking at all. But at the same time, she wanted to know. It would give her a lot to think about. "Maybe," she replied, managing a small smile. She also felt like an insensitive bitch, as she knew odds were good she'd trade him in a heartbeat, was such a thing actually possible. Yeah, not saying that out loud. "I hope so."
"Me too," Nic smiled back for her. "I just try to live life, you know? But sometimes it's hard to follow all the rules when you know the destination. Least let it be a wild ride." That was what made his current job difficult. Nic was good at the investigation part, but obeying the law? Not so much. Luckily, he'd been keeping below the radar so far.
That made sense to Saoirse. She knew that, as a human, if she'd had the knowledge of what was going to happen to her, she would have done things much differently. Saoirse had always been a 'live life to the fullest' sort of person, but she had let fears and past experiences ruin a few things for her. Oh yes, she would have done so much differently. Lived so much harder. Got all her human experiences out of the way. "Probably not a good thing for a cop to admit to," she pointed out with a smirk. Oops.
"I never said I was a good cop," Nic smirked. "I doubt it'll last anyways. Humans have a hard time trusting their lives to someone who can raise an undead army, even if they don't realize how damn difficult it is to get a corpse out of a coffin that's buried six feet underground. I'd rather raid the city morgue." Was it bad to say that he'd actually scoped the place out? If that wasn't bad enough, he'd seen the local funeral home and knew there were bodies that could easily walk out of that place.
Saoirse couldn't help but wince slightly. No, she was not a fan of this dead walking around thing. It was a toss-up on whether or not she just felt that way because she was a vampire, or because she had a genuine respect for the dead. She was quite happy never seeing Nic's magic in action. "So, if it doesn't last, what will you do when it's over?" Casual subject change for the win.
Noticing the slight reaction, Nic wondered if all vampires were bothered by the dead-- this was his second one in 24 hours to seem bothered by the idea. Then again, Whisper's issue seemed to be that it was a dog, first and foremost. Huh... "I don't know. Start a rock band? That would require practice though. Be a bounty hunter? Eh. It's as hard a decision with limited time as I'd think it would be with all the time in the world."
Saoirse grinned slightly. "And here I thought the obvious answer was puppetmaster," she joked. "You could try to get necromancers together. Figure it out, and all that," she pointed out. She wasn't sure where she'd start, but necromancers already had magic in some way, they'd probably have a leg up - right?
"Oh, well, that's already a super-secret past time," he grinned. "But we don't talk about it." He didn't think Saoirse would appreciate how much fun it was to play puppetmaster with a vampire. It wasn't something he would dare do to her, but he was sure she'd disapprove of him doing it to anyone. "My cousin's into blood magic, and she's been trying to figure it out. Necromancers are hard to find, especially since we don't want to go public. We need, like, an online support group."
"Then maybe it's time for you to take up some computer classes," Saoirse suggested, chuckling softly. She was able to completely hide the fact that the mention of a blood witch in his family didn't settle well with her. And that, she knew wasn't just because she was a vampire. Blood magic had always bothered her greatly.
"Maybe," Nic smiled. This was such an odd conversation for a dream. He kept expecting something crazy to happen, like for the ceiling to fall in, or for ants to crawl through the floorboards and smother them. "Is there anything special that we can do cause you're here?" he asked, looking around. "I'm not used to such a... an aware dream."
Saoirse looked around and had to grin, realizing that yeah, this was pretty weird. It was easy for her to treat it like a normal conversation, because... she was real, here. Nic was real too, but he was still going to wake up wondering what the fuck just happened. "I can do anything here, I think," she said, making the floor change colors. "I'm not really sure what my limits are. I wasn't sure I'd be able to go to a specific person, and... here I am."
The floor was suddenly fascinating, and Nic watched it with wide eyes. He knew it was wood, and that this wasn't a hallucination, and so it could only be magic, if that's what he wanted to call it. Dream control, he thought, was a kind of magic. "Cool," he smiled, then looked up at her. "So... you could walk out in the sun and be okay? Or have ice cream? Can I eat in dreams?" He tried to remember if he'd tasted blood when he's licked his hand, but he couldn't remember.
"I could walk out in the sun normally, actually," Saoirse commented. "Regular fae blood." Very regular. No matter what. "I could give you food, but you wouldn't get any benefit from it. You might just wake up hungry and craving ice cream," she added, grinning. "But, um... hm..." Saoirse thought it over for a moment before pointing towards a window. The view outside had a large scoop of ice cream in place of the sun. Amazing how trippy things could get, and how fast.
"Oh. See? I didn't think of that," Nic smiled. He knew different blood types did different things, but he tended to forget what did what. It didn't matter that much to him, since he wasn't drinking anyone's blood. As she pointed towards the window, Nic turned to look, laughing out loud at the sight. "Awesome," he grinned. "You know I'm gonna wake up and think this was the biggest trip ever." At least it was enjoyable. "Can vampires do drugs?" he asked, his mind on the subject of hallucinations. It just seemed like a connection, but who knew how his mind worked when he was sleeping.
Saoirse damn near felt like she was on drugs. Just because she was causing the weird things didn't make them any less weird. "Not directly. A vampire would have to feed on someone under the influence to experience the effects themselves," she explained. "I've never been interested in trying. I didn't even like drinking as a human."
Nic was up for trying just about anything because... well, why not? So long as he didn't get caught, it didn't hurt to try once. Then again, he'd not actually tried anything too addictive. He had enough other addictions that he didn't need to get hooked on coke. "What about blood types?" he asked. "Does it taste like... blood?" All coppery and shit? He couldn't imagine drinking it.
"Oddly enough? It doesn't taste the same way as it did when I was human," Saoirse admitted. "There are still hints of it, but mostly... it tastes like life. There's no other way to describe it," she went on. "Every type tastes different. I guess everyone has their own unique taste, too. The first time I ever fed as a vampire I was horrified with myself for liking it. I don't really remember the taste of food."
"Not like liquid copper, then," Nic smiled. "It's not horrible, I don't think. It's instinct. It's what you are. And it'd be so much worse if you didn't like it and you had to drink it." That was something he'd wondered about, since humans didn't like to drink blood. How awful would it be to eat lima beans every day forever just because they were the only thing that sustained him? Blood was just as bad. "Can I ask you something personal?" he asked, then paused... "Maybe nevermind. I don't want to ask and then forget when I wake up."
Saoirse raised an eyebrow, unsure as to whether or not she wanted to encourage him to explore that, or even ask what he'd been thinking in the first place. Saoirse didn't offer up a lot of personal details in her vampire life. "Your choice," she said. "You can ask. I can't guarantee I'll answer."
"I wanted to know why you became a vampire," Nic said. "You don't have to answer, I was just... wondering." If she did answer, could he focus on it and keep it in his mind so he remembered when he woke? He didn't think dreams worked that way. "I can't become a vampire, so it's always been a bit of a curiosity."
In all honesty, Saoirse found the idea that he couldn't become a vampire far more interesting than her origins story. "I didn't have a choice," she said, smiling wryly. "It was made for me. Very unusual for my house, it required a trial." But she hated thinking about that trial. She didn't swing the axe, but she was under no false illusion of who really killed Zachary. As angry as she had been at the time, he hadn't deserved that. "My sire was attacked and on the edge of death, and he had to feed from the first human he came across. He wasn't in control of himself though, he went a little overboard. The options were death, or turning. He went for what he found to be the lesser of two evils." Easier to tell that story if she detached herself from it.
"Oh, God," Nic said softly. "That sucks." He didn't know all the specifics, but he imagined that anything that required a trial probably wasn't a good thing. He also had the common sense to realize this wasn't something she was thrilled about-- and who would be? From the sound of it, she had as much choice in her fate as he had in his own. "Thank you for sharing with me, though. Even if I forget."
Saoirse gave a lopsided grin and shrugged. "Bleeding out is a very quick way to go," she said, dismissively. She was good at faking it, even if it didn't well sum up what had actually happened to her. She remembered the sound of her bones breaking and the feel of gravel against her skin. "No sweat for me if you forget," she added, chuckling faintly. "I'm kind of curious as to how much of this you'll remember, though."
"There are definitely worse ways," Nic agreed. He knew a number of the ways necormancers went, and he'd rather bleed out if it came to that. Saoirse made it sound so casual, that Nic didn't think to question it, though there was something nagging in the back of his mind, a worry that made him feel like he was missing something. If only he could keep his focus, but it seemed to be slipping. "I hope I remember everything," he smiled. "Though you know I'd rather hang out with you when I can be sure of it. At least you didn't visit during something horribly embarrassing."
Saoirse had to grin. "There is that," she gave. "Though had that happened, I would have, you know, left you to it. Don't worry." Yeah, she had no desire to join anyone's most, ahem, private dreams. She took a walk across the room, finally shaking her head to make the floor stop changing colors. That got old, real fast. "I should let you get back to your own dreams now, probably. I'm glad to find this works, though." Who knew if it would ever come in handy.
Nic wasn't sure he wanted to get back to his own dreams, but he also didn't want to talk too deeply about things that he wouldn't remember come morning. He also wasn't sure what direction his dreams would take now that he'd been made aware of the fact that it was a dream. "Can I come see you sometime soon?" Nic asked as he leaned back against the attic wall. "In the waking world. I don't have any other mode of seeking you out." He could maybe try and broadcast to her, but Nic didn't think that would work. It was weird enough listening in.
"You know where to find me," Saoirse replied, smirking faintly. Despite the dead people thing kind of weirding her out, despite the fact that she did not like the idea of temporary friends, she and Nic got on well. "Do you want me to leave you with anything before I go? I don't know if it'll stick around when I'm gone, but... hell, why stop at one experiment?"
While he might not remember the details, Nic was sure he would remember that Saoirse was in his dream. That would be enough for him to go find her when he woke. "Sure," he smiled. "Can you take me somewhere else? Like... the beach? Or a lake? Something about those seems more soothing than staying here." While he had happy memories of the place, he also had a lot of negative ones. Better to leave before they got bad.
That was a telling statement, considering they were in his grandmother's home. That wasn't soothing? Interesting. "Easy enough," she agreed, smiling pleasantly. She brought up a memory of summers spent in Grand Haven, and the shores of Lake Michigan. And as easy as that, that's where they was. At sunset, no less, as she'd felt that was when the place was at its best. "Will this do?"
It was like he blinked, one second he was at his grandmother's, the next he was on the beach of a beautiful lake. The tension almost immediately seeped out of his shoulders, along with the feeling that he had to stay on guard. "Yes," he smiled over at her before looking out at the sunset. "This is perfect. Thank you." He couldn't have asked for anything better.
Saoirse noticed the immediate change in him, and that only served to fuel her curiosities. But she was attempting to file it all away under 'firmly none of my business'. Good plan, that. If it worked. "You're welcome," she said, taking a look around herself before preparing to leave. "Sleep well." And just like that, she was gone.