all i have to do is dream Who: Alice, Uke Mochi, and Eris What: The goddesses come to life in Alice’s dream Where: The dreamscape of Pax When: [Backdated] Sunday, May 14
“Are you awake?” The voice was soft, comforting, and just loud enough to stir Alice from her sleep. She had been feeling under the weather for days now, but only when she was at the apartment, really. Already she had called in an inspector to ensure there wasn’t some type of mold growing and the tests came up with nothing, but still her lack of energy persisted. So her time at home consisted of foggy memories, created from allergy medication, and many naps on various surfaces--on her couch, at her desk, in her bed.
While she lived alone, being woken by a feminine, soft voice didn’t strike her as odd. She wondered, as her mind woke up, if Isobel had stopped in, but when she opened her eyes she froze. Standing over her was a woman made of the herbs of the earth. Wheat hair fell over her shoulder and her eyes were filled with bits of seed and rice. Her arms, her torso, were made of grass, barley, strands of rice that were knit together to form her being. The plants even made a pattern on the dress that covered her body.
Alice had been this woman, she had seen from her eyes, but she had never seen her directly from an outsider’s point of view. “Uke Mochi,” Alice breathed and the woman’s grains moved to create a smiling mouth. She stepped away from the bed and her movements sounded like a breeze pushing its way through tall grass. Alice, wholly human, sat up in her bed and looked the woman over.
“Are you alive?”
“Yes and no,” Uke Mochi replied. “Both alive and lost. You know this.”
Alice shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant… I mean you’re here. Now. You’re alive and in my apartment.”
“Yes and yes,” Uke Mochi replied and moved toward the open doorway of Alice’s bedroom. “Come on, child. Come with me.”
“Where do you want to go?” Alice asked, already moving from her bed like a child transfixed by a fairy. She slipped her feet into moccasins and pulled her hair back into a ponytail as she followed Uke Mochi out of her bedroom.
“I’m looking for the others,” the goddess replied as she moved through Alice’s apartment, pausing at different points to look at the various items Alice owned. Her camera, a picture of Alice and Brittany, the printed photos of food Alice had made. She pointed at the photos of various pastries and looked at Alice with a smile. “These are lovely. You make beautiful food.”
“You know what I do?” Alice asked, lingering in the doorway of her room, one hand gripping the other’s wrist, a foot curled over her other foot as she leaned against the doorway.
“I see it all,” Uke Mochi replied with a nod. “Your comings and goings, the food you prepare. That’s my particular favorite, to see what you bake. I try to help when I can, to tell you when rosemary is appropriate but thyme is not.” Her smile widened and her teeth were of white rice. “Rosemary and thyme.”
Alice let out a soft laugh that was similar to a sigh. “So you’re a part of me?”
“In many ways, but you are still you,” Uke Mochi said, noting the immediate look of worry that passed over Alice’s face. “I don’t control you, at least not that I know of. You go about and live your life, you make your own choices. I am only a witness.”
Alice nodded and moved her hands to hug herself. “But my hair was wheat…” she murmured.
“Yes, I suppose that can happen,” Uke Mochi said mournfully. “But you’re still a girl, still human. I think it’s only that sometimes I show.” Alice’s eyes rose to meet the goddess’s who moved forward and laid a gentle hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I do not seek to own or control you, dear one. I did not choose you either. I don’t believe I had much choice in the matter. I just suddenly was and what I was, was a part of you. I think. It’s all still quite curious to me.
“But of all things, I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?” This was a surprise for Alice. What would a goddess have to be thankful of from a mortal girl. Her cheeks grew pink and she shook her head. “I’m nothing special; there’s no reason for you to thank me.”
“But there is,” Uke Mochi reassured Alice. “You’ve looked into my history, you know of my past. My loss of life, my lack of defense. But this…” Her herb-made hand rose and touched Alice’s cheek. “If the moon god is alive, if he moves through this earth, I do not think he will find me when he looks upon you. Your difference is keeping me safe, so thank you. Thank you for being so kind and not disgusted by what I am.”
Alice blinked and quickly shook her head, worried she had somehow offended the woman for how she appeared. “I’m not disgusted, I promise. It was just… scary… it was scary to have all that’s happen happen. I didn’t know, I didn’t understand… I still don’t think I do entirely.”
Uke Mochi laughed and it was a laugh caught on the wind that had passed over a field. Distant and filled with air, there and gone again. “Oh dear one, I know. It is scary but please rest assured, I mean no harm.”
“I know you don’t,” Alice admitted, realizing only after she spoke that she actually believed what she said. This woman was nothing but sweet in the dreams that Alice had of her and now to see her before her, face to face, it was all the easier to realize just what this woman was to her. A weird guardian of some sort, a fairy godmother, but certainly nothing evil or filled with determination to destroy the redhead’s life. Alice took in a breath and offered the woman a smile. “So where is it that you wanted to go? Where are the others?”
“You dreamt of them as well,” Uke Mochi replied, withdrawing her hand and turning toward the rest of the apartment once more. She walked, the sound of steps in the forest but it was the forest stepping upon the clear floor. “Eris and Freyr, they are wonderful, and I feel them close.”
“I think I know who they are. My friends, Brittany and Rafael. They house Eris and Freyr like I house you,” Alice replied as she began moving forward, her steps quick to keep up with Uke Mochi as she went to the doorway out of the apartment. Uke Mochi paused by the door and Alice reached around, unlocking it and pulling away the chain, then opening the door wide to admit Uke Mochi to the hall.
Alice followed the woman who immediately continued down the hall and toward the stairs. “What do you want with them? I can take you to their apartments but I don’t know if they will be, you know, like you and free…”
Alice’s mind was already running wild. Rafael and Brittany would flip, in a good way, at seeing Uke Mochi beside Alice. They could ask so many questions and find out so many details. Maybe they could even figure out what was happening overall.
“That would be appreciated,” Uke Mochi said with a smile, turning to Alice on tendrilled feet before the imagery around them changed and they were wrapped in a sudden burst of sunshine.
Where they landed was not where they started. The landscape stretched desolate and sandy yellow before them, disappearing into a horizon of blue; a shelf was built out of one side, and down it dripped what looked like a clock. Another was hung from a nearby tree branch. Despite the impossibility of their conditions, they ticked, the second hand moving in a circular pattern that was native to most such creations. Mountains patterned the horizon in far more detail than the ground at their feet.
The mountains ran up against the mirrored surface of a lake; to the right of both grain goddess and mortal vessel lay what looked to be an oversized flower petal, pulled from its moorings, another clock draped across its back. Upon closer inspection, another watch lay to the side of the one dripping and slowly slithering down the side of the shelf, though this one was closed. Its cover looked like it was dotted with ants, though they did not move.
Wherever they were, there seemed to be no one in sight; neither man nor animal. No wind blew, and there was no sound aside from the ticking of the clocks.
“Well this is unusual,” Uke Mochi murmured as she turned slowly, looking at the various clocks and mountains and shelves.
“This is a painting,” Alice replied, her eyes wide as she mirrored the deity and turned on her slippered heel. “How did we even get here?” There was a quiver in her voice, one of building fright, and Uke Mochi immediately hushed the girl with a touch to her arm and a whisper of air through grass.
"Because I thought it would be fun," one of the clocks said, the one melting over the edge of the shelf. It sat up, sliding down much faster. Two eyes opened in the middle of its face, the arms still ticking away the seconds. "Why, don't you like it? Dali was always so much fun. This one is a little dry, I'll admit, but his elephants painting!" The watch hands peeled off of the face and clanged together in an attempt at a clap, either of amusement or delight. As if on cue, string-legged elephants began to walk in the distance, making them seem far smaller than they should have been if they were up close. They carried tall boxes or baskets on their backs, carefully balanced; the longer one observed, the sooner one came to the conclusion that they were not in fact receptacles but stone obelisks with runes carved into them. The blue sky tinged red.
The clock glanced at the elephants, the numbers along its bottom edge moving up and curving in a smile. Then it looked back at the grain woman and her companion. "Is that better?"
“Holy shit,” Alice whispered low and under her breath. “You’re Eris, right? I remember you from the dream and when you changed Brittany’s arm. Is Brit here too?” Alice turned, looking about for her friend as Uke Mochi moved forward.
“Hello, friend,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been trying to find you again.”
"Allo!" The clock stretched out an arm to shake Uke Mochi's hand; it wrapped around Uke Mochi's grain-laden appendage, its black composite suddenly shifting to mimic the composition of her palm and fingers. The only thing it did not copy was the fact that she was granular items pulled together; Eris' hand was whole, but while it was a solid body part, it did not connect to the whole of her. The hand floated, disembodied, the rest of the clock following suit; a piece of an arm followed, sloping to join where the wrist should have been, connected to an upper arm without an elbow. Her head bounced up like a balloon, her other pieces floating in mid-air. "Who is that?" She whispered to Uke Mochi, then pointing at Alice. "I don't know her. Or this Brittany. Who is Brittany? I think I know a Buzzfeed...?"
Her hair stretched out, floating as though it were submerged in water; her head floated forward, closing in on Alice in an attempt to study her more closely. "Do you know a Buzz Lightyear? So many bee's..." A few crawled out of her mouth as she spoke, their yellow and black striped bodies a direct contrast to the overwhelmingly whiteness of Eris' skin, if it could be called that. It was entirely smooth, without pores, almost like it was dried plaster, though it did not crack as she moved and swayed in her own way.
“The girl… the girl you live in,” Alice replied softly, her eyes watching the bees lift into the air and hover. She glanced down, meeting Eris’ eyes. “She’s my friend, she’s the girl who had the crab arm? Do you…were you able to see how the halls changed? How there was a floor for each of us?”
“Alice is the body that I inhabit, I believe,” Uke Mochi said as she stepped closer, interrupting Alice but giving her a sorrowful glance. She was trying to help as best as she could. “That’s what we do, no? Inhabit mortal shells now? I’m still trying to understand it all myself.”
Eris' balloon-like head rolled back toward her body; she laughed.
"Oh, I've seen it. And yes. We've done this all before." The last word echoed as she revolved, eventually reaching her shoulders facing backward. Hands rose to fix this, turning her head back around to look at both Alice and Uke Mochi once more. She grinned as her eyes found them, her form coalescing into water in one fluid motion, before solidifying into a more human-like state. Water fell away, splashing the ground, before dissipating completely.
"Did you like the floor change? Some of my best work yet, I think," she offered, clapping again. Her entwined hands hovered near her face, arms, elbows, and shoulders fully connected this time.
Alice and Uke Mochi both had looks of surprise and spoke at the same time.
“You changed the floors?”
“We’ve done this all before?”
The goddess and girl looked at each other and both seemed to blush. Uke Mochi stepped forward, and she smiled. “Can you explain both? What do you mean that we’ve done this before? How did you change the floors? We both would like to know…”
Eris, the woman that was Eris in that moment, shrugged. Her arms looped loosely around her chest in the same motion.
"Well, I can't take all the credit," she started. "It was a group effort. After all, I don't know enough about each of them to really have done so much detail." She moved, floating over the ground -- which was sand? Earth? Something, something cracked and now slightly vibrating, but not enough to be alarming, merely alive -- and moved toward her companions, her fellow dreamers, then circled around them before ending up on the opposite side.
"But yes, before. As in, before all of this, and probably after, too, I mean, you mortals are so destructible. Flammable. Un-immortal. I'm not surprised you don't remember, Uke Mochi, dear, star, grainy lady," she continued, looking first to Alice and then to the goddess she'd named. She pressed a hand to her chest. "I didn't know, at least, not until I ended up here." Where here was, exactly, was up for debate.
Alice looked between the beings, her eyes wide and eager to take in everything that was happening. “So you’ve been here before,” Alice said, trying to get her understanding of the situation as straight and narrow as possible. “The… the apartment. It was active before I moved in. It was owned by someone else and there were people who lived there. Then it up and closed, rumor is because of a murder.” Uke Mochi bristled at the word but remained silent. “So you’re saying that you were a part of this then too? You… but not everyone. Because Uke Mochi wasn’t there.”
“The last memory I have is of my own murder and my body coming back together again. Then these travels, these repetitions of memories and meeting others, and vague windows of your own life,” Uke Mochi added. “But no, I do not believe I was here.”
"It's an apartment? What is an ah-par-mint?" Eris drew the word out, dissecting it, letting it roll over her tongue. "Wherever," she added, shrugging once more, before dropping to the floor in a rush. A pile of clothes was all that was left, before a lizard scrambled out of them and turned its head to eye Uke Mochi and Alice.
"But yes. Before. But not now. Never in the moment. Like now. Are you on fire?" The lizard's head turned to the side, a tongue leaping free from it's mouth to move over the yellow orb embedded in its head. "Your head is on fire."
Alice glanced down at the messy waves of her hair and smiled lightly. “It’s just because it’s red. It’s the color I was born with. I’m sure you could make your hair red too, or set it on fire.” Alice smiled at the lizard, but her attention was drawn away by the touch of Uke Mochi’s hand.
“Did you get your questions answered?” The woman asked. Alice smiled and gave another nod as a bird somewhere in the landscape began to chirp a familiar song.
“I think I’ll always have questions though…”
The chirping continued, growing in volume. At one point, it almost seemed like it was coming from the lizard's mouth.
"That's good," it said, between chirps. "There are more questions than there are answers. If you reach the end, that's a problem." It chirped again, licked its other eye, and then scuttled off toward the horizon, narrowly dodging an elephant's stringy step.
Uke Mochi laughed beside Alice, and Alice even caught herself smiling when Uke Mochi stepped in front of Alice’s line of sight. The chirping continued, growing all the louder, and between each pause of chirp Uke Mochi spoke, “Alright, dear one, time to wake up.”
“But I’m not asleep,” Alice replied.
Uke Mochi leaned close enough that Alice could see an insect making its way through the knitted pieces of grass and wheat that created the structure of her face. Her eyes of millet were playful, yet serious. “Oh, but you are. Now as I said, it’s time to wake up.”