#dreameat

[prestochange]

A mass text

(txt): I am aware of the situation and am busy trying to handle it.

(txt): To those of you sleeping, I've taken the liberty of turning your devices to make a loud alarm to forcibly wake up. I apologize for overclocking your devices.

(txt): Please report to the Saffron Dojo for an emergency meeting tomorrow night.

[chounaifu]

i think you'll end very. very badly.

" You think I will? "

Proton is just a man.

What's a dead god's excuse for failure?

" I know I will. We will both end badly. "

[cursedmystic]

7. Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

BOY DOES HE. BOY DOES HE!!!!

he's always had strange dreams but just before and immediately after an encounter with black fog, an enormous eldritch haunter that kills by drawing people further into nightmares, he's had two specific reoccurring nightmares for over a year.

- he's sitting on top of the bell tower, where ho-oh roosts. he's alone. he's always alone, but he feels something watching him very closely, like it's expecting something from him. the world below is obscured by a howling wind storm, so the tower feels miles above anyone who could ever see him or help him or hear him again. he stays there for a long, long time, until he's not even sure he wants help anymore.

- he's laying in his room. there is someone standing in the doorway. he can't tell if he's asleep or awake, but there is always a person shadowed in the doorway. they stay there as long as matsuba looks at them - if he looks away, sometimes the figure comes closer. he's never sure if he's awake or asleep in this one, but it has caused bouts of sleepwalking and wandering around the estate in a dangerous manner.

character dev questions.

[missingstarter]

The hisses turn into shrieks, and screams, muffled as if underwater.

He looks at you, seriously. And he says he forgives you. And then he burns.

[ gore tw under read more ;; dont rb unless youre Rabid or Cas!! ]

[gildead]

CONTENT WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ASK CONTAINS THEMES OF CHILD DEATH, AS WELL AS BODY AND EYE HORROR. BECAUSE OF THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS POST, THERE WILL BE NO ICONS OR IMAGES DEPICTED HERE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

@dreameat used nightmare.

You dream, somehow. Perhaps the dreams of ghosts are always like this: the dead feel more alive in their dreams. It's such a simple thing, too. It's a day where you are you again, and nothing horrible happened. You walk the route from Newbark onward, and you can feel the sunshine on your skin. You taste the air. You feel alive. It takes all but a few minutes to recognize it for what it is, a dream, and you walk through the sun until your body begins to tell you the same. First its the sensation that leaves you. Then its people's eyes. They don't see you. And then its your eye, rolling from its socket out into your hand with a wet pop. You rot as you walk, and you remember that you are dead. This is all a dream. You will never live again. Not really, and the dream cost others so much. And you can't wake up.

Gold isn't the one who wakes first.

Rather, it's his Typhlosion, who feels the tiny bundle of blankets besides her quiver violently, groans of pain escaping from within. She raises her head and turns around, sensing that something is wrong. Hurry approaches Gold, his tiny head tilted in confusion. She gently ushers her baby away, as if asking him to give Gold some space.

It's a good thing that she did so, as Gold bolts upwards, forcing the blankets off of him. He screams like a wounded Pokémon, his sleeves generating instantaneously to claw at empty sockets. Despite the lack of fingernails, his sleeves come away raw, angry, and red with blood. It only serves to worsen the problem as black sludge travels down his face from his sockets, out the torn crevices of his jaw and empty nose hole.

His shrieking is terrible, enough to wake Forever from his slumber. The Houndoom sleepily approaches Gold, sniffing at them. He pauses and lets out a whine. "There's something bad," he says to Typhlosion, his dark eyes wider than usual. "Bad smell. Very bad smell. Like trouble."

"He speaks the truth." Gossamer wings flutter, like the tinkling of bells. Typhlosion doesn't have to turn her head around to know Celebi has arrived.

Celebi doesn't elaborate. Not that it ever does. Rather, it draws the blankets closer around Gold as he stops screaming and breaks down into sobs.

With the blankets up, Forever drops his head into Gold's lap, applying grounding pressure for when his trainer needed it. Typhlosion follows suit, nuzzling her head on top of his and resting her paws on his tiny shoulders. It's not only a comforting embrace, but a practical one too in case his head decided to pop off again and roll away on the ground.

She can't spark up her fire to warm him. The monster that betrayed her boy made sure of that. But it's the least she can do.

Hurry waddles back over to the group, perching next to Gold like a tiny loaf of bread. A ghostly blaze burns low on his incorporeal back. It may not be real fire, but it's warm-- an acceptable substitute.

Gold's team stays huddled around him for hours, until he's run out of energy to cry. Until, they hope, he forgets again.

[telekinetiq]

You dream.

And in this dream you are floating through the air without weight on you. The world around you seems so impossibly immense. It's as if you travel the entire globe somehow, and through each place you go, you see hundreds upon thousands of individual decisions being made. Hundreds of thousands of memories. Hundreds of thousands of reasons.

Pokemon everywhere. You watch the history of each one of them. Every breath, every success.

You watch a bird hatch, and grow up. You watch a little girl grow up, leave home.

And as you pass each one, you end every single connection. Every time your shadow falls upon them, the grotesque and quick way their existences are snuffed out makes your stomach sick.

It's not just people, it's not just monsters, its the land that rots under you.

There is so much information, and the world is infinite. Every single blade of grass lives until you pass, and it dies.

And it dies, and it dies. And you don't.

And you are reminded that no matter the pain, you won't.

You will just watch everything, and everyone pointless spots of existence, die.

There is no point to this, It says, quiet and sad. If you had a sweetheart, you imagine them to sound like this.

But it is all you can do.

And you can't wake up.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ THIS IS LIFE, AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL. those are the first words you awoke with when you came into this world, full of violence and an inexplicable sorrow.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ much like your experiences before birth, with a friend who no longer exists and its your fault, you fly around now, like a shade, a ghost among the living— and then they aren't. each time you draw near, seeking connection, and your shadow falls over them, the light leaves their eyes. they fall to the ground, lifeless and hollow.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ you don't understand. so you try again.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ they continue to fall, and the trail of bodies grows longer as testament to your destructive purpose. you don't understand. are you really so repulsive, so vile that they would rather drop dead than endure you ? or is out of their hands, a consequence of having had the misfortune of crossing in your path ?

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ as you've heard it said, ' all good things must come to an end. ' that explains why you're still here. it is proven with every soul that shrivels beneath your touch.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ the trees are no longer alive with birdsong. the flowers no longer grow. the sun no longer shines. all is darkness and all is death, and you are at the center of it, timeless and terrible.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ this is not a place of honor. no highly-esteemed deed is commemorated here. nothing valued is here. what is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. the danger is to the body, and it can kill.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ you wanted the truth so badly, but this is the truth and it is ugly, just like you. you represent all the sins and wrongs you wish to purge. you are what you despise in others.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤyou want to fix this world, but you are what doesn't belong. the rot tells you this. the corpse of the world cries out for mercy— you have none to give.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE NOT.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤin your heart, blackened as it is, you know this. you've always known this. the tears fall, as do the bodies. you've stopped reaching out, but even as you try to stay away, there is no place on Earth safe from you. by some awful accident or cruel fate, you're not sure which, they come to you now. and they die for it. no matter what you do, you can't stop them. you run, and they follow.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤthey ask you what's wrong, they wonder why you flee— they just want to help, they cry. your pain is their pain, until it isn't. until they don't feel pain anymore, and you're left with their lot of it. it grows, and it grows, and it grows. you can't stop it. you can't wake up.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤterrible things happen to good people every day. ㅤ ㅤ ㅤconsequentially, you are not one of the good people.

ㅤ ㅤ ㅤyou are one of the terrible things.

[primordialfell]

Do Gods Dream?

The ones that wish they were human do, without understanding of what mortality will truly mean. What nightmares would scare a god?

Perhaps a dreamed life. An entire dreamed life, day by muddled, muffled day, and imagined memories concocted by the hour. It was a mundane life, a wasted life, each day just slightly to the left, and each aspect of each day not exactly right but with no reason or rhyme to be wrong.

Until the entire mortal life feels wrong, and everything and every memory feels wrong. The dream continues, and somehow encompasses an entire existence, with every pain and broken bone. Every single car crash, every death, every fight, every misery.

And no joy. There's no joy in it. The world is plastic grey and there are claw marks on everything.

And you have no power over it.

And you can't wake up.

what, you have nothing to say this time?

you're normally so insistent on barging in to my every sleeping moment. so insistent that I never be allowed a moment's peace. you're obsessed with me. with my pain. you call it sanctity and holy but I know that you are a cruel creature of low cunning and low remorse. have you finally learned sorrow? finally decided to leave me in peace?

Your feet find purchase on shifting sand.

oh god.

YOUR NAME IS ETERNATUS. You are the Worm Our God. At least, you are in waking. In sleeping, you are a creature of isolated weakness and quiet contemplation. It is here that you are vulnerable, dreaming deep beneath the sea as you consider old things, great things of high import and such wondrous magnitude. Your castle is old and it is interminable.

SOMETIMES YOU WONDER what it might be like to be human. You have worn their skin and walked among them, as you have for every species you have visited, but it is not the same. You're old, incalculably so, and because of that a lifetime for them passes by you in a blink of an eye. You breathe and an entire generation is dead. In the time it takes you to smile, you have watched a nation fall. You know this. You know what you are. You are a coiling ouroboros. It would take a man a hundred years to walk your length.

YOU'RE OLD. You're very old. As if that makes what you're about to go through any easier.

You wake up. Your hands are rough and calloused as they fly to your face and all your memories come rushing back. Fuck. The alarm on your bedside table blares without mercy, screaming at you to get up and get dressed already, you're going to be late for work. Fuck again. It's Wednesday, worst day of the week for Poke Mart freight.

You prepare yourself for your terrible manual labor job. You arrive late and your manager yells at you again. He does it to everyone. Your abuse isn't special. Neither are you.

You see on the news more stuff about stuff. Terrorist attacks in a distant region, the Kanto bill is dropping in value. Wow, another PWT. You'll get to watch rich assholes with millions of yen fly out to a stadium and get sponsored by corporations to battle with their purebred, IV trained, six-stacks of absolute monsters from the comfort of your ground floor studio apartment.

The news hums at you again. Black pyramids found in Hoenn. You change the channel. Mt. Silver claims another life. You change the channel. Political unrest in Sinnoh. You change the channel.

You switch to your streaming services and watch worthless TV for the rest of your night.

You wake up. Your hands are rough and calloused. All your memories come rushing back as you look at your alarm. Fuck. You're going to be late for work. Fuck again. It's Wednesday. worst day of the week for Poke Mart freight. You prepare yourself for your terrible manual labor job. You get there late. Your manager yells at you. Black spit flies out of his lips and hits you on the face as he does and you sit there and take it.

Your abuse is special. It was made for you. Only you.

You get home. You watch the news. Another terrorist attack. PWT. Met Gala. Climate change. Silph Co coming back. Kanto bill even lower. Unova pyramid found. Unrest. The world is getting worse and you can't do anything about it. How could you? It's like the world was designed to make everyone so miserable they just have to sit there and take it. Like how your boss calls you all family; it's just a tactic to make sure you put up with all sorts of degrading shit.

The man in the corner of your kitchen stares at you and you try not to look at him. He makes you cry.

You wake up. Your hands are rough. Memories come back. Alarm. You're late for work you drive very fast to get there and you rear end some bitch on the highway. Hit and run but it's fine, she'll never catch you. Dog eat dog world out there. Manager yells at you. His jaw snaps off halfway through, his tongue kind of uselessly flopping around the gory, chunky black mess where it used to be. He sounds like someone shoved a fistful of organs down his throat but you know he's still screaming at you.

Home. News. Unrest. Terrorist attack. Economy in shambles. Mundanity. Wealthy people flaunt it in your face. The man in the kitchen takes a step closer and you scream and cry under your couch. No he doesn't. That would be something new. Something interesting. You don't get that luxury. Climate change. Sky blotted with ash. Mt. Silver erupts. PWT. Your Cleffa dies that night. You take her to the Pokemon Center. You can't afford to keep her ashes.

stop it. stop it stop it stop it. i want to wake up. why? how can you do this?!

You think this is me?

it could only be you.

Not every bad thing in the universe is my fault.

Wake. Hands are rotting stumps. Bone pokes out. Drive to work. Your eyes are falling out. Stagger towards your boss an hour late. He's a pile of ash and meat on the ground squealing hateful slurs at you. Ignore him. You run someone over on the way home. Don't bother stopping. Freight truck was filled with bodies today.

These things would scare a human, wouldn't they? Do they scare you, Worm Our God, who is so used to seeing blood and death?

No, they don't, do they?

That's why you realize how horrifying it is.

You wake up again in bed as your alarm blares. You lazily slap it and roll out of bed. Somehow, between the first paragraph and now, it's been fifteen years. You stagger to work. You barely feel alive. Your life is a haze of monochrome mundanity and hope forever dangled out of reach. The news talks of change. Worms flying overhead and breathing life back into the oceans. Well isn't that wonderful.

In retaliation, oil companies jack up prices the next day to compete. Can't let that thing interfere with profits. It brings back a new species, almost in retaliation. That's fine; the next day eggs cost twelve dollars everywhere.

Fuck.

Sometimes you think about getting another Pokemon, then you realize you can't afford it, and you watch the PWT again. You see people competing from all over the world; the people who've gotten lucky enough to steal the eyes of the spotlight. That's the lie everyone always says: anyone can be that great, but they're liars, aren't they? You have to know people to be someone.

Are you even real, then, if you could be removed from the world and no one would ever know the difference?

You wake up again. Your alarm is making noise and you turn it off. You go to get ready for work and your front door is gone. All the windows in your apartment are gone. You realize it makes sense. You were never going to survive for very long anyway, not with the world becoming like it is. Not with nobodies like you, of whom there are billion, being overshadowed by the ones that really matter. Taller flowers get the Light you so desperately crave.

You aren't strong enough to thrive in the Dark. To grab a knife and cut their stems down and take their place in the Light.

You sit down in front of the TV and you watch as it all falls apart around you. Black mist seeps around the floor and swirls like a fog machine. You stare at the TV. The man in the corner watches you. There's no point. There never was. Some people are meant to make history and some are meant to fill the numbers of the lives they change. You are a number filler. That's all you'll ever be.

You realize you are not special. You have struggled into this existence and you will now slip silently out of it. This is everyone's experience, Eternatus. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter.

You're everyone. And everyone is you.

You think about going somewhere. Somewhere faraway where the world can't catch up, as the things that supposedly make you unique peel away bit by bit. Your laugh. Your memories. Your personality. All of it crushed away by a mind that doesn't hate you... but you just aren't important enough to be worth consideration.

That's the real rub. You didn't do anything. You just have to suffer the crime of being so missable.

You sit alone in darkness and the world forgets you.

god, what's the point?

I don't think there is one.

i have to help them. when i wake up i have to help them.

I don't think you can.

i'm eternatus. i can do anything.

Then wake up.

I--

Then save them.

...

I ...

... ... I know. It's okay. I know.

[turojo]

" .. Hm. Good thing ghosts aren't real anyways. "

[allthingsglittergold]

You wake with phantom pain in your arm, resting atop the workman's bench in the new craftspersons' shop you were gifted. You must have fallen asleep while working.

Things are good right now, in some ways at least.

The region, largely thanks to you and your friends, has been quiet.

And so, it's peaceful here.

Save that phantom pain.

You look down at your arm, and it's fine, your skin dotted with scars from a young lifetime's worth of training. Your loved ones are asleep, Silver crashed on the couch in the back and partially in shadow, out of the aura of your hanging lamplight.

Things are very good. You think you might have a future with a shelf life. Everything you built?

You start lifting your tools up to put them away. Empty apricorn tops go into a separate set of boxes. Carving tools go into their sleeves and into the correct boxes.

Silver shifts, and you look back to see if he's awake, squinting into the dark.

He doesn't say anything, but you hear a quiet, restrained hiss from him, and it pulls at that age old fight or flight sense you carried since the Slowpoke Well. You move quick, to go to him, and... You can't. You can't take a step past that lamplight. It's like the dark is solid.

Silver hisses again. You see why now, starting to feel the blood in your body run cold.

There are pieces of him being peeled off as if cut away and shredded like fruit. Piece by piece, in violent familiar letters. R. R. R.

The hisses turn into shrieks, and screams, muffled as if underwater. Or under layers and layers of concrete.

You can do nothing. There's the smell of blood and you watch the shadows start invading your little circle of light, blood creeping over the floor. You watch a fingernail slip over the ground, and step back quickly, your hand hitting the edge of one of your still-out carving knives.

It pricks you.

And miraculously, you wake, sweating so badly that if feels like you drowned.

Gold wakes, and he isn't in bed.

He's in the kitchen.

Panic grips him. The blood rushes away from his head (why does his hand hurt?) and he feels light-headed. He's sweating, drenched, and the room is spinning. Gold staggers against the counter hard enough that his hip hurts, smacking the wooden door under the sink into the frame.

The Champion clings to it for dear life as his gorge rises and he can't hold it in-

He throws up into the sink. Its violent and harsh. There's a stabbing pain in his forehead like the edge of a headache. The lights come on and he's blinded briefly, a brief strangled sound passing his lips.

Its a panic attack. Its a panic attack. How long has it been? Years. Since before the Lake of Rage.

The world regains sound now. He can hear Homura snarling up a storm in the living room, her nails clacking as she paces laps around the lower floor. She's on high alert - if anyone would have known something was wrong, it would be her. She'd been trained to help with spirits. He can smell the faint poison wafting from her jaws from here.

Mojo is by his side in a second, scaled head pressed against him with a rumble of concern. The Feraligatr helps keep him up as Gold fights to bring his breathing under control. He can feel the tears welling up.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." He half hisses. His throat won't open and he doesn't know who he's saying that to - himself or Mojo.

The Feraligatr isn't inclined to trust him, and Gold is quietly thankful for that. He isn't fine.

He knows what that dream was. No - not a dream. A vision, as much a promise and a threat as anything else. His mind's eye flickers to the imagined ball on Green's bedside table and he can almost hear the gurgling laughter.

Gold finally realizes why his hand stings. He's bleeding.

[chronocorundum]

YOU

[twilighttheater]

You dream that your friends are back with you. You ca

Things have worked out.

And you're not you. You're never going to be the same again. You know this, drifting with your friends in a car through one of the older back roads. Green's laughing, Blue leans over and kisses your cheek. Nothing bad happened. You actually can feel a little fuzz on your face now.

Things worked out.

Green's driving. He looks at you, says something you don't hear. You both don't see the other car coming.

You can't wake up.

He's not usually lucid during dreams, but seeing Green's face clues him in immediately to the fact that this is a dream. A fact he hates is disheartening, but he doesn't try to force himself awake or anything... he supposes there's no harm with indulging in a dream scenario where everything feels fine.

Green's shifting through his bag up front, fruitlessly looking for something while Red tries to look out the window from his spot in the back. He almost doesn't recognize his own reflection, but he still believes that he is himself... it's not like he's dreaming of an alternative version of himself, surely.

He's startled by Blue snapping him out of his thoughts, he only just realized that she's sitting next to him. She's the happiest he's ever seen her, and idly he wonders what could be going through her mind if this was real. Were they together, here? He doesn't dare ask, but she is amused with the fact she managed to surprise him. Saying something about him spacing out while watching the trees pass by.

He smiles, he almost feels comfortable... yet there is still some form of unease to him. Green still hasn't stopped shuffling through his bag, the same repetitive motion and sounds. Almost like audio skipping over the same moment repeatedly, and Red offers to help. To his surprise Green looks at him gratefully giving him the go ahead with a smile.

He reaches to try, but the world falls away in an instant. He barely sees anything at all for a moment. His ears are ringing, his head is pounding, the sound of creaking metal is the only thing that reaches him in his daze. It's a dream. It's a dream. He tries to repeat to himself, but through tired eyes he sees Green sitting in the front eerily still. Blood is leaking from his head-- it's doing so from Red as well, he comes to learn.

He's shuddering as fear courses through him, but he forces himself to look for Blue. Her state isn't any better, the glass to her window has cracked with her head leaning against it. The glass is stained red, he can't tell if she's breathing.

He tries to move his mouth to scream for them both-- but finds his voice is nowhere to be found. It feels like ages that he sits there, in agony, tears running down his face and not a sound to be heard from him. Nobody arrives for them, darkness clouds around him.

Even there it feels like it doesn't end, just sitting in a void and still unable to make a sound or express anything at all. He tries to fight back against this dream-- wake up. Wake up. Please for the love of Mew wake up--

He does, but it's the worst he's ever felt on waking, every part of him aches like he was truly there. He reaches for his pokegear and reflexively he wants to call them-- he's still in tears just like before. He reaches his contacts and almost tries to call Blue.

But logic catches up to him, it was a nightmare... just... a really awful nightmare. He wasn't going to wake her over that of all things, and... it wouldn't matter if he did try to call Green.

He gives an unsteady sigh, feeling as though his mind had been played with somehow. But if it had been, he was unaware of how, and simply grateful it hadn't been real.

[chounaifu]

Kiss................................ meme

Kisses: BONUS ROUND

He is fast asleep when he feels the brush of fingers across his lips; Proton’s eyes flutter open to see somebody standing over his bed in the dark. His mind, not processing anything yet while sleep still held it hostage, does not register any facial features. What he does sense, is a forgotten memory, a nostalgic smell that reminds him of days long past in the Saffron streets: Kenzo brand perfume.

A woman he once knew, she’d been secretive about her life, and he had been the same. Neither of them revealed their names to each other, but that did not change the dynamic of their casual relationship, meeting in smoky bars and dingy clubs to relieve each other of tension and give in to carnal frustrations.

Their ending hadn’t been a pleasant one, it was full of explosive behavior. But if she didn’t know how to control a man with a kiss—

It takes only three seconds for him to act on an impulse, sleepily leaning in to greet those lips.

Instead of a kiss, a hand wraps around his throat and violently pushes him back down to his bet, and he’s gasping for air, eyes wide open. Proton cannot move, he is paralyzed on the spot, frozen as the presumed woman leans in closer— he was unable to notice facial features, because she lacked all of them, until a mouth ripped itself open from thin, papery flesh to reveal bleeding, black gums, prepare to swallow Proton whole—

Until he wakes up, sitting up in bed, sweating and jarred.

He’s wiping his mouth rather aggressively with his blanket.

[cursedmystic]

The dreams it has invented have been hell, and yet still this dream stands out, burying you in the wall of a laboratory meant to contain just this. The lights never run out of bulbs here, they're constantly changed, reinforced, and they're augmented by normally invisible laser trips.

The room is gargantuan and empty, and inside of the central piece of it lies the ugly twisting shape of that hundred and more-foot long metal sarcophagus. Contained in front of it, the blackened pride and joy of Team Rocket, the Master Ball, sits in front of you under the countless motion sensors and disruptors.

You are the witness to what happens next. You've seen things hatch before, their shells splitting.

It's like that. A split appears on the purple top. It rocks once, and another crack appears across the button sealing it firmly together.

Twice, and the band starts bubbling.

Three times.

Nothing else happens, but the coldest dread and deepest fear settles in your gut while you watch hundreds of small red dots begin hitting something invisible rising like smoke out of it.

Rest comes hard once he's home, his brows furrowed even in his sleep. Dream Eater does nothing to help, only poisoning the Pokemon who use it -- even those immune to toxins. So, he's trying to rest now.

The dream isn't the barren landscape of the Bell Tower or the darkness of his bedroom. It's blinding light that reminds him of the hospital, though far more intense than anything they had.

The sight of the sarcophagus makes his stomach drop, makes his body hurt from how hard every nerve in his body prickles. The Master Ball is so corroded, it looks like it was dragged out of the sea after a millennia.

The first split appears and his heart thunders in his ears. The second split and he's holding his breath for so long his lungs feel fit to burst. The third fills him with a nauseous dread so strong it overwhelms any other senses.

He can feel the distinct feeling of an eye on him, looking at him with such accusing humor, and the rising smoke of it fades into the black of night as the dream is wrenched away.

He's grabbing blindly for his phone, even when nausea turns his stomach to heaving. It's by virtue of Rotom's help that he gets her number right at all.

(If he sounds like he's crying from fright, it's because he just might be for once.)

"Sabrina."

[missingstarter]

@dreameat

You dream. And in those dreams you're a kid. You are very little. You wake up in a house that you've never really had, in a family you've never really had. When someone shows up at your door to ask you to play with them you're unsurprised to see Gold, smiling at you. It's a sunny, beautiful day. You don't know how you're here but Gold asks you to help him build a treehouse. You remember the day, cover to cover. Every single detail of the day was honey sweet, and teased a childhood you never had. Maybe you wanted it. Maybe you didn't. But you can still feel that summer night you spend with him in a treehouse. You had a heavy lighter with a bright red R on it. It wasn't yours, you show it to him and he marvels at it. He doesn't know what that means yet. You don't know why you do this in the dream. Maybe it's the perfect day. Maybe you're losing control of your life. You hold the lighter to the wood of the treehouse while you and Gold sit inside of it. He looks at you, seriously. And he says he forgives you. And then he burns.

--when Silver wakes up, he still feels himself warm. He does it suddenly, violently - as if he felt the flames digging through his skin, the smell of burnt wood and meat still stuck in his nose.

He didn't scream ( he doesn't think he did, anyway ), yet his throat burns with each quick, yet heavy breath he takes, eyes wide open as they slowly get readjusted to the darkness of the bedroom. A hand instinctively goes to look for Gold, finding his side of the bed empty, yet still warm; he clings onto it as if his life depends on it, barely registering the sounds coming from the living room and the kitchen.

They seem distant, unreal. They could help him relax, return to reality, understand that was just a terrible dream and that there's nothing to worry about. The idea of standing up doesn't even cross his mind, as if he feared that whatever was staring at him from the shadows ( because something is staring, right? Or is it just his imagination? ) would make that nightmare come true, somehow.

Silver doesn't even realizes he started sobbing, at first, quiet yet heavy tears trailing down his cheeks. Slowly, mechanically, his hands find Gold's pillow. He pulls it closer, gasps through the tears, and hides his face in it.

It's hard to breathe. He can still smell the smoke. The smoke of the fire he started years ago, when he dared to lower his walls. The fire that eventually will kill everyone around him.

[oukido]

You are the only one who doesn't dream.

And you don't know if Red has these nightmares because he has had nightmares and sleep issues since he was a child. If they are worse lately, you can't tell because nothing has changed.

But you do notice that you don't dream at all. You were prone to a lot of cerebral garbage at night, or brief haunts about driving, but nothing exceptional.

Which is why when this one comes to you, it stays.

You are sixteen, your feet sinking into the sand, and that smooth sensation of Cinnabar Beach swallowing your ankles as you look to the sky is real.

You remember the eruption in 2011. It was two years after you'd taken Viridian and made it yours. Cinnabar exploded, and you saw it from Daisy's porch. You and her were drinking tea. She was talking about the new person she was dating and you were making your typical somewhat protective assessments, but you couldn't find anything wrong with him.

And you remembered the ground groaning, and the rumble under your feet. Daisy spilled hot tea on her arm.

And you both turned to see the jet of black smoke and flame explode into the air.

You watch the same jet from the other side, the shores of Cinnabar, as the island is covered in ash.

The rolling black wave of smoke barrels towards you.

You watch the shapes of people as they are pulled under it, running, screaming, and it washes over you plunging you in darkness again.

And you feel cold, like the entire world has been ripped from you in one fell swoop. You've felt it before, holding on to that thing's claw.

You feel wet shapes rush past your ankles, and look down to see the distorted shapes of dead, boiling fish popping from the heat as they roll over your knees.

You feel yourself knocked over by the force of the blast this time.

Somehow... this is your fault.

Somehow... you know this is your fault.

You feel the dead start washing over you as you start clawing and trying to swim.

But you're being pulled under and something is smiling behind your face.

And you can wake up, because it lets you.

The memory is still fresh in his mind. It's one of those things he won't ever forget. Because how could he ever forget?

The sky dark, choked with ash and smoke. The way the ground shook, how the water flooded in from the shore. The buildings of Cinnabar were always visible on the horizon when you looked out across the ocean from Pallet, and its volcano towered even higher. And how it was all gone in an instant. Nature is terrifying like that, isn't it?

Green can almost, almost think this is just a regular nightmare. It wouldn't be his first time having a nightmare about that day. It wouldn't be the last, either.

But the chill that grips his bones tells him it isn't.

He hasn't been sleeping all that well. There's this persistent itch under his skin, a throbbing in the back of his skull, a burning behind his eyes. Red worried, because of course he did, and Green, in all his pride, tried to take on more than he could handle. Oh, did he try his damnedest but there were some things that were far beyond his ken. So vicious and brutal, and he knows vicious and brutal, but not like this. The things he handled were never evil. This was.

In this dream he tastes smoke, ash, chokes on filthy water and blood and rot, but it's nothing compared to that crushing, suffocating sense of guilt, the agony that buries itself in the marrow of his bones and just won't leave. He's drowning and he can't stop.

You know, he's never been a very good swimmer.

Maggot-infested eyes stare back at him beneath the depths. It's time to wake up.

Green jolts awake, sweaty and shaking, coughing on water that isn't there— probably just his own spit. He feels around wildly, blindly, his eyes still bleary from sleep, and his hand knocks against the familiar body next to him. Eevee is scampering up from the end of the bed to burrow into his neck.

He gasps a few times, letting his eyes adjust.

"Fuck."

[draconscious]

EXPERIENCING TROUBLE SLEEPING?

The red neon of the sign flickers behind your eyes as green after image. You don't understand the problems of the "outside" until you realize, resting your head on a plush hotel pillow, that you are dreaming with your eyes open.

The starburst layers of plaster on the ceiling are there to hide building angle imperfections, and you see them clearly from your paralyzed state.

You can't move. The digital clock's numbers reflect off the television screen backwards: 2:00 AM witching hours.

You look around, because you know you are dreaming, and you strain your body to try and throw yourself awake.

A dry cracking sound from above you stops the fruitless attempts, plaster dust raining down on your skin.

The shapes in the plaster move.

They move.

You take a moment to focus your eyes, wide and unblinking to re-align your perceptions and make sure, but you watch one of the bursts move like bones under skin. You watch the lumps in the plaster slowly begin to squirm. It's a slow undulation that gets more and more reactive as the minutes tick on.

And you think of eggs hatching when one of the shapes cracks open.

You watch something heavy spill out of it, and hear a wet sound on your mattress, a thump that partially hits your paralyzed arm.

You strain to move your eyes, your heart racing.

The body on your arm is long, and thin. A dratini whose skin is slick with yellow filth, and whose scales move with worms creeping between their crevices'. You look back up, and you see more cracks in the ceiling.

Your dratini companion seizes, and you feel it still on you.

You hear more thumps, and you feel wet, infected shapes hit your body.

They pile high, the parasites slipping away from them, and onto you.

And the last thought you have before your alarm blares is that they have crawled into you too.

Clair is fast asleep, until she isn't.

Azure eyes fly open, but the tamer isn't really awake, and she knows it. Perhaps that's the worst part about this whole ordeal: her full and complete awareness that she is trapped here, caught up in a dreamscape that oscillates between the real and the imagined, until everything blends together. How nauseating.

Still, Clair has always been a fighter--often solving her issues with an overpowering use of force--and this predicament is no exception. She bucks, thrashes against the plush bedspread, fingers clawing into the sheets, but an invisible weight seems to pin her down with ease, crushing her chest and stifling her snarled shouts. (No one is out there, anyways.)

When the popcorn ceiling undulates, pulses, the proud tamer stares straight upwards, stubbornly refusing to bow towards whoever is running this twisted, tortuous game.

And then the plaster void seems to split open overhead, like a ghoulish portal, and the first diseased Dratini falls free, striking Clair in the face. The wheezing, shuddering dragon flops across her chest like a displaced fish, soulful eyes wild with pain and desperation.

It's mercifully undersized, but there are more. More and more and more.

The mutated, illness-racked Dratini almost seem to drip from their nightmarish source, their languid, serpentine shapes falling blindly onto their restrained savior. Clair groans, beginning to gasp as the living weight piles up, painfully pressing down onto her ribcage. She moves to push the little dragons away, but her shoulders stay stubbornly locked into place. A lashing tail finds feral purchase around her throat, and she chokes. This is hell.

Clair closes her eyes, shuts them tight, and that's how she avoids seeing the horde of approaching parasites that gleefully free themselves from the Dratini upon landing. She can feel them, though, skittering across her pale features, finding new sanctuaries everywhere as they voraciously examine their fresh host. (Better me than the Dratini.)

It's all too much, too much even for her. The relentless madness of this situation drains the remaining fight from Clair's resilient bones, and the proud tamer can only curl herself up miserably as the falling tangle of parasite-ridden Dratini continue to bury her alive. It's getting so hard to breathe. Enough. Please.

EXPERIENCING TROUBLE SLEEPING?

Back in the real, a slumbering Clair twitches within her cocoon of sweat-soaked sheets, her alarm ringing uselessly on the nightstand. Just outside the hotel window, the first vestiges of a merciful sunrise prompt a nearby neon billboard to power down for the day.

It would all be over soon.

Right?