#i know it's been ages but some of my muse for beni came back last night and i finally finished fire force today

[sundestruct]

woah i actually remembered my login for this account...

[spacecadetspe]

A snippet from last year..

Jul. 28, 2023

I've been biding my time with the dream spirits.  Morpheus and Njorun have come to check on me a couple times, as have Phantasos and Chara.  Even Dimitrios came up to have a chat.  It's nice that people know that my door is always open to them; I get plenty of visitors.

Njorun wants me to join her at the podcast again, probably another AMA segment.  It's going to be interesting, and probably rowdy, knowing Njorie and her friends.  But she knows I've been sore, tired, and mopey recently.  Maybe something like this will cheer me up... or at least get straight to the heart of the matter.

Morpheus has tried to help get things back to normal.  Processing dreamers (if I'm ready for it, he insists), or even going to find Phobetor.  The thing is, I'm not altogether sure what I'll do or say when I see him again.  I have a couple new fears to deal with now... and I don't like how much that hurts.  Morpheus posed a question to help me mull this over: "What do you think you look like without chains?"  He said it was something Njorun had snapped at him when he was brooding, and it gave him courage to change the things that scared him.

Phantasos has finished his break and wants to take back over the role from Chara.  He seems to be uncomfortable when he's not busy.  Kind of like me, maybe.  He says he's used to the weight, but he knows I still worry about his mental health, as I do most of my friends.

Chara asked offhand what we were going to do with the remainder of the lobster we caught, since there was so much of it.  I offered the suggestion that we could give it away, or make an offering to the Chef of the Ages.  We made conversation about how she had challenged me to create a banquet for the astral guides, and I showed him the menu.  I had to translate it from English to Greek for him, but even once I did, he still looked perplexed.  I'll admit I got a little chuckle out of that.

Orpheus has been surprisingly conservative with his use of prophecy and Mother's power, which has irritated the prophetic faction of oneiroi.  "If you're not going to show us the rainbow fire, why are you here/ what good are you?"  Oof, the entitlement.  He explained that he was in the Dream World at the pleasure of the Lady of Dreams, and even so he had a long way to go towards earning my trust.  I have to admit that even though I started off on the wrong foot with Orpheus, it's really nice that he acknowledges his standing in my domain.  Perhaps that will go a ways toward earning back my trust.

Despite the fact that I have shown others the rainbow fire (and I don't gatekeep it) there's still that reckless abandon that gives me pause.  The last time I gave the prophetic faction access to the rainbow fire, they nearly destroyed the Dream World.  And yet there are still a few that clamor for direct access to Mother.  Sounds like they haven't learned their lesson.

Dimitrios, on the other hand, came to me with a different issue; he'd lost brothers and sisters in the kitchen brigade when Cure had her duel with Alecto, and was taking some of his insecurity out on Benizelos.  He started out pacing to and fro, complaining that he hadn't had Beni's special knives made just so he could then go completely off the rails in his cooking endeavors.  But as we talked, the truth came out a little at a time.  Benizelos has cooked meats that surpass even Pasithea's cooking in skill and flavor, and Dimitrios sees Beni's experimental ventures as something that destabilizes the entire kitchen brigade.  In the last decade or so, Beni's cooking has been a little wilder than usual, and after losing some of their siblings, Dimitrios got triggered.  Dimitrios felt like he was losing another sibling.

I drank wine with him and encouraged him as best I could, and then Dimitrios mused that it might finally be time for a vacation.  Phantasos was clutching his pearls over this, saying he's never known Dimitrios to take a break.

It was that moment when I made the suggestion that Phantasos and Phobetor both find their true Names, since neither of them seem to know what theirs are.  Maybe once Phobetor returns, we can explore.

While I slept, two things happened.  I was processing another dreamer when I felt a spike of adrenaline; the kind of energy I feel when a nightmare enters the room.  I gasped and my spell went haywire, nearly hitting someone nearby.  I felt my solar and sacrum crack again, and I doubled over, only to wake up immediately after.  Phantasos told me that I got hit by a piece of the dreamer's mindscape.  When I pulled it out, it felt like caramelized sugar; hard-crack stage sugar that had melted into my skin and solidified.  Hence, Phantasos asserts that he has the hardest job of all the oneiroi.

When I finally fell back to sleep, I saw that Orpheus gave clear examples of the painful truths the Rainbow Fire had to offer... and the oneiroi who begged him for such wisdom fled in fear.  There were two, but I only clearly remember one; "If you look at Hope and see only the ways you can use her, then you do not see Hope."

The only one left standing in Orpheus' presence after he delivered his wisdom was a single weeping child.