dǫçţǫŗ şɭęęƥ (shone) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-02-17 19:05:00 |
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“Spirit, slow down, buddy!” Adora chuckled as her puppy’s little paws pressed up against the Chakrabarti Clinic’s front door just before she reached out to open it. Spirit trotted in ahead of her, tugging on his leash and letting out a little yip in his excitement. The sound startled a few waiting patients, and she flashed an apologetic smile into the waiting room as she shushed him and approached the desk to check in for her appointment. The new puppy had become the little star Adora’s life revolved around since she and Catra brought him home from the adoption event on Valentine’s Day. It was a good distraction for her. Her memory still had its faults after her concussion last week, and she’d agreed to bench herself from duty on Team C after the argument that followed her sneaking out to join the murder turkey fight on the last day. Having Spirit around let her forget what she wanted to forget and focus solely on him. With Catra at work, Spirit was her responsibility, and with his tendency to chew up everything he could get his teeth on, she didn’t want to leave him at home. They’d been given a crate to leave him in when necessary, but she was trying to keep the use of that minimal. She thought he deserved to roam more freely than that, but it meant keeping her eyes peeled at all times. She pulled out his bone toy from her jacket pocket to entertain him while they waited, keeping the leash clipped to his harness. Before long, she was called back to the Snooze Room to meet with Dan. She got Spirit back on his feet and followed after the receptionist who guided her back. She knew the general lay of the land after visiting twice in one week to take care of her murder turkey injuries, but she’d never been in here before. “Hey, thanks for seeing me.” She smiled at Dan and gestured at Spirit. “Sorry about the puppy. I haven’t left him alone at home yet, and I didn’t want him to feel abandoned.” The Snooze Room was ready for Adora’s arrival - she’d called to make an appointment first, so Dan had a chance to set things up. To wash and change the sheets - they were now soft as velvety clouds and fresh, printed with clouds too and decorated with throw pillows that heralded the upcoming spring season. Those were daisies, six white petals, with a squishy center. He had regular pillows on the bed too, but giving the room some personality was important to Dan. Blue walls, as blue as a dreamlike sea, and the perfect internal temperature with warm lighting - he liked to think the room was also welcoming and he waved her inside, stopping to pet the puppy and give Spirit a few butt scratches. Dan had never had a dog before and technically Azzie wasn’t his - they’d just kind of formed a bond while working at the hospice center in Frazier - but he would probably be just as worried about leaving one alone too. “He’s okay here,” Dan assured. “Come on in though, make yourself comfortable. If you want to take a nap you can get cozy in the bed - I can help you sleep - or if you want to talk first, just sit wherever you feel like.” There were chairs too, and a table, plenty of places to have a conversation. The room did have a very soothing feel to it. Adora was still learning how to properly relax — she’d never had much of an opportunity for it and, as a result, she kind of sucked — but this helped. She ran a hand over the fresh sheets on the bed and decided to settle there, just sitting for now. She didn’t think she’d have any trouble napping in a bit, but she wanted to know the details of how this worked first. “Can I ask — what exactly is it we’re going to do? How do you help me sleep? And does it automatically get rid of the nightmares?” Dumb questions, maybe, but she wanted to know what she was getting into here. It was amazing how with some people it was like pulling teeth to even get them to sit on the bed - for others, not so much. They made themselves comfortable easily. Dan never put the blame on anyone, however, if they were wary of sleeping here or wary of the Shining in general. Everyone had different experiences - and not all of them were good before arriving in Vallo. “I’m not sure if anyone told you about my skillset but - we call it the Shining, where I’m from,” he started, flipping a chair around to sit in it, setting his clipboard down and adjusting the stethoscope around his neck. He probably looked like a doctor but he wasn’t one, not officially - just a nurse in the throes of his schooling with a nickname that he was hesitant about at first, but now considered it a badge worn proudly. Doctor Sleep, and these days, that sleep wasn’t always so final. “It’s - powers of the mind, basically. My niece calls it magic but I don’t know if it’s that. I just can do a variety of things with it, including sort of easing the brain into a sleep state. It’s not painful and it doesn’t affect anything long term, but here I just use it to help people with insomnia get some rest. Because - ” Here’s where the other part came in. Addressing the nightmares that could often be monstrous, a blitzkrieg all on their own. “When you’re not getting good sleep, it’s harder for the brain to process those traumatic experiences. But yet the nightmares make sleep fitful. So what I do with that is - I help people train their brain to lucid dream. It means being conscious of the fact that you’re dreaming, and then changing the narrative all on your own. You get to rewrite the story.” Spirit, predictably, didn’t want to stay on the ground for long after Adora settled onto the edge of the bed. He jumped up and pawed at her legs, whining pitifully until she scooped him up and laid him across her lap — she didn’t want to cover the pretty sheets in dog fur just yet. His head lolled against her stomach and she started gently scratching under his chin. The Shining sounded vaguely magical. Her only experience with people who could root around in others’ minds was Shadow Weaver, and thankfully, she’d never been on the receiving end of that. She knew plenty of other cadets and soldiers that had been, though, and it seemed unpleasant. She didn’t get that feeling from Dan, though. She’d met with him a total of three times now, but she truly felt at ease with him. Whether that was because of the room or because he just had that kind of presence — she wasn’t sure yet. But he reminded her of Micah and that wasn’t a bad comparison at all. “Okay, uh. That sounds really helpful, ideally. But how does it work? Do I need to tell you what the nightmares are? Or do you just see them?” “Either way. If you want to tell me about them, you can. Or I can look. I don’t go looking into people’s heads unless they give me permission though,” Dan clarified, twisting his wedding ring around on his finger. “I hear surface thoughts fairly frequently - things just kind of float to me as I pass someone by, or we’re waiting in line for coffee. Or I get impressions, I just know things.” That had happened ever since he became sober - when he wasn’t drowning the Shining in booze and drugs, and there was no helping that. Some thoughts were like a whirlwind, others flitted like birds - some were strong, they were all he saw in his field of vision. Other times it was just a whisper. “But the deeper stuff I don’t go rooting for. Do you want to tell me about the nightmares now?” he asked. “And I can get you started with some lucid dreaming homework. Tasks you can do to build up the muscle, so to speak. It takes a couple weeks for the brain to switch on to doing it but it’s very beneficial when it starts becoming a regular thing.” His lucid dreaming pupils were doing so well too. Dan was very confident that Adora could learn. He heard thoughts. Dan had said The Shining was essentially powers of the mind, but Adora hadn’t realized that meant hearing thoughts, too. She figured he wouldn’t do that purposefully — he just wasn’t that kind of a person — but it was a little intimidating. If they’d even come up against someone who could hear thoughts on the battlefield back home, she’d have been screwed in a second. Here, the worst battlefield she’d been on was, thankfully, a battlefield of turkeys. (And that hadn’t gone particularly well for her, but that was a thought to dwell on another time.) “Um. Sure.” Adora gave Spirit’s neck a scratch before speaking. She didn’t typically talk about these things. She’d told Catra, but Catra had just dismissed her. Not in a cold way — she just didn’t have the emotional connection to that particular nightmare because she had come here before she’d lived through it. Adora hadn’t. She didn’t expect Dan to have any emotional attachment to this, either. But they also weren’t close, so it was easy for Adora to talk to him. She just had to power through and get it out there. She had come here because she wanted help, and if this was going to work, she needed to get it out there. “Okay. So. Back home, there’s…this bad guy, I guess. Horde Prime. He kidnapped my best friend and Catra. And when I found him, he still had Catra. He chipped her which is basically how he mind-controls people. He’s like a thousand years old, maybe more, but he stays alive by transferring his consciousness to his clones or people under his control. And when I was trying to get her home, he threatened to use Catra as his…next vessel. So, that’s what I’ve been seeing. It never actually happened, but my mind’s created the image and I can’t get it out.” Dan listened, brow furrowing. Maybe he wasn’t familiar with what a Horde Prime was specifically - but there were some aspects that he could identify with, about this whole thing. “Back in my home we had - well, technically they’re psychic vampires. They do similar things, they siphon off the psychic essence of kids to fuel themselves. But it’s like that guy, they’re hundreds of years old and it’s how they stay alive - by taking what belongs to someone else. They wanted to use my niece as their next food and power source.” The True Knot seemed innocuous at first glance, when you didn’t know what they truly were - just a bunch of crunchy-looking folk traversing the dusty freeways and backroads of the country in their camper, searching for food. The worst part was that Rose had been motherly, a caring vibe about her - she was deceptive, an executioner's blade wrapped in black velvet. And dead and gone, which was relieving. “But if you start to lucid dream, you could recognize that you’re having the Horde Prime dream and change it. Re-write what happens so that instead of him putting the chip in Catra, you push him off a cliff or something. Or he explodes in a shower of rainbows and confetti, I don’t know. Whatever you want.” Adora had to chuckle at that idea. Horde Prime exploding into rainbows and confetti would definitely make him less threatening. Really, just hearing that Dan had something similar enough from his world to genuinely try to relate helped ease her nerves a bit more. It sounded simple when he said it, but she was sure it would take practice. Thankfully, she had a bit of a perfectionist streak to her. “Well, for the actual chipping part, I wasn’t there. And the hybrid of Catra and Prime, it’s more of an image than an event?” She never recalled hearing any sound, seeing any action. It was just usually the end of a dream and — well, maybe her mouth was moving, but Adora had no idea what she was saying. “Can I still work with that?” “Yeah, of course. It doesn’t matter if what happened in your dreams came to pass or not - the whole goal is to change them so you can start to process the whole trauma of that idea, and not let it control you anymore,” Dan explained. “It’s ultimately good problem-solving.” So he figured he’d get Adora started on the first steps. “Okay - ” Dan reached for one of his ‘Healthy Sleep’ checklists, just tips for how to get more restful zzz’s (the paper was printed with clouds and there was always a joke at the top - this one was How do you know when it’s time for cows to sleep? When it’s pasture bedtime), flipping it over to write on the back. “First thing, get a dream journal and start writing in it - record every dream you have, writing all the details you remember even if it’s the same thing. This helps the brain pick out lucid dream triggers, to identify that you’re lucid dreaming. Second step - everyday, set your alarm about an hour before you normally wake up. You’ll wake up and go back to sleep, but before you go back to sleep say this phrase a few times - ” He wrote it down, as he said it out loud: I’ll remember that I’m dreaming. Then he gave Adora the paper. “The long and short of it is - this is a step that will get the lucid dreaming parts of your brain activated.” Adora took the paper and looked it over, nodding to show she was still listening to what Dan was staying. She liked that he stayed on theme — pretty clouds did give off an inherently restful vibe, and she had to smile at the joke at the top. She could pull this off, maybe even pass the tips over to Catra to see if she was interested. She wasn’t the only one having nightmares, and she didn’t want Catra to suffer either. They’d been through enough in their lives. They didn’t need to relive it in their dreams now, too. “I can do that,” she agreed. “I’ll stop by and pick up the journal on my way back home.” She glanced down at Spirit, who seemed to have accepted they weren’t moving anytime soon and was drifting off to sleep himself, then back up at Dan. “Should we try it now? Or should I try myself a few times, then come back?” He was definitely a theme type of person - some thought it nerdy, Dan thought it to be...well, he supposed it was nerdy but it seemed to bring some level of comfort to the people he saw, so he’d keep at it. They had already been through so much before arriving in Vallo and anything he could do to help them sleep better and ease the burden of nightmares, he was happy to try. “Let’s give it a shot now,” he offered, scooting closer to the sleep spot in his chair so he’d be exercising some bedside manner. Adora’s pup seemed to have the right idea, snoozing away and taking advantage of the true spirit (oh, that worked out well) of the room. “And when you leave you’ll keep at that for a week or so and then come back and we can add more steps.” This way if she took a nap here he could kind of observe what was going on during her REM cycle too - and napping was healthy anyway, if it was the right length and at the right time of day. “Get comfy in bed and when you do, think of something happy - a memory, one of your favorites. Pull it to the forefront of the mind.” He’d done this so many times but it never got any less interesting. First step for Adora was pulling her hair out of its usual ponytail. There were plenty of times she’d slept with it in, but Catra always harangued her to take it out, insisting she’d be bald by thirty if she didn’t let it flow loose sometimes. Adora wasn’t vain, but that bothered her, so she obeyed. She’d even taken to wearing it down just during the day sometimes, or on the occasion they went out. The ponytail was all for practicality in battle, and thankfully, she’d stepped away from that path since coming to Vallo. It took her another minute to settle in on her back and get comfortable, arranging Spirit beside her. He whined a little, perturbed by being moved, but settled down again when she wrapped an arm around him. She hadn’t had the heart to let him sleep anywhere but with them since his adoption, so he was used to a warm body being near. “Okay.” Adora let her eyes close and took a deep breath. Trying to force herself to sleep had never worked well for her, but she had to assume that was where Dan came in. “Happy memory…” Happy memories had been easier to come by since she’d joined the Rebellion, but that didn’t mean they were lacking in her Horde years. She’d had Catra, and even when they fought and got on each other’s nerves, they loved each other. And that was where Adora’s mind drifted, to the two of them in their preteen years, snuggled up in Adora’s lower bunk in the barracks and whispering to each other under the sheets. Adora got herself situated and Dan did too - the Shining unfurled like how a springtime flower bud would; it became a pinwheel, touching the corners of her mind. He saw that memory, the place where her thoughts went - it was an intimate moment but sweet somehow, and he focused on the way it felt. Like the heft and softness of a down comforter - he let it wrap her up as he projected the feelings that memory elicited, letting them ease her into slumber. The warmth of it was sunshine on a glass pane, welcoming in its subtlety, permeating her whole system. That was so she’d simply drift off - here one moment and sinking into rest the next, nothing abrupt or stressful, just floating away on a lazy river. Sleep, he encouraged - inside of her mind, he and his psychic fingers pulled the figurative curtains closed. There was nothing to worry about now. |