irregular: (say what?)
[personal profile] irregular
Dream Effects: A slight feeling of disconnection. Confusion, lots of it, and the dawning awareness that you're having a (rather weird) dream.
Warnings: Rampant symbolism. Forgive me.


It's a bright, hot day and your arms are bare, but you can't seem to make yourself feel it.

Presume there's a field stretching away in every direction, wide and boundaryless and entirely empty; presume the grass is long and wild and tumbled by the breeze, and brushes against your sides as you walk. There's a hill - well, more of an incline, 'hill' seems a bit ambitious for what this is doing - and a small white building at the crest of it, a Greek temple of some sort with pillars and a triangular roof. Presume (and there's nothing else to see and nowhere else for you to go; you really might as well) that it's vitally important you get there.

Not that there seems to be any reason for it. When you get there the door's ajar and the building, too, feels quite empty.

But you're here now, and you figure you might as well go inside. You push open the heavy wooden door just wide enough to let yourself in, walk down a shallow flight of stairs. The door swings silently shut behind you and melts back into the wall.

Somehow, this simply feels logical.

(It's a dream. You're dreaming. It's kind of how stuff like this works--)

Presume you're standing in a long, narrow white room, at the bottom of the stairs. Black and white tiled floor, patterned like a chessboard; white-painted walls with high, white-framed sash windows on either side; the sunlight streaming in from both sides, casting pools of light across the tiles. The windows are closed, and yet the thin white drapes that frame them are billowing in a breeze you can't seem to make yourself feel. It's quiet here, and elegant, and utterly empty; you can't help feeling uncomfortable. It's a little bit like being in church, and you feel like you should lower your voice. You wonder if you're breathing too loud. You wonder where the Hell everyone's gone.

At the far end of the room, two heavy wooden doors and a large bowl of white flowers on a stupid, spindly little occasional table. Behind the doors-- something. People.

Pick one. Just try it.

Two doors, two rooms - you're hesitating.

You know (and you don't know how you do; you just know it's how things work, in dreams) you can only go through one. You should only want to go through one and yet the other one looks fine too, and... well, how on earth are you supposed to choose, when you can't see how there's even anything to choose between?

There's a person behind you, tall and dressed in some kind of vestments; there are arms about your neck. You know you must be dreaming, because you never heard them coming. Because you're not trying to fight--

"You see," they say quietly, "you can't decide, after all."


[Ken wakes up with the lingering feeling that he's missed something; he's not entirely surprised to realize that the stupid Dreamberry didn't miss a thing. Well, he probably was overdue for it. Could have been worse, he guesses. At least this time it wasn't stupidly embarrassi--

[Wait. What the Hell date is that supposed to be?]


... damn, how long was I asleep?
Depth: 1

Date: 2011-06-15 03:36 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (charmed by thoughts of you)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
Most of it was boring. I have to say, when I no longer was forced to take Divination or Arithmancy, I was much happier.
Depth: 2

Date: 2011-06-15 08:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
Divination'd be the dream stuff, right? Like... fortune-telling?
Depth: 3

Date: 2011-06-16 01:57 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (thoughtful and caught)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
That's right. Our professor may as well have been a glorified gypsy.
Depth: 4

Date: 2011-06-16 12:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
Wow. Why'd they even hire her? If she wasn't even very good at fortune telling what was she meant to be teaching you?
Depth: 5

Date: 2011-06-16 02:58 pm (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (haemoglobin is the key)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
Merlin only knows. I heard some rumour about her being the one to have made the Prophecy, but I've seen no proof of that being possible. Particularly not in the rare Double Divination classes we had.
Depth: 6

Date: 2011-06-16 03:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
[Prophecy? He's lost. And what's Merlin got to do with it?]

... someday you're gonna have to explain this stuff to me 'cause that really doesn't seem like a good reason to let someone teach people when they don't know what they're doing.
Depth: 7

Date: 2011-06-16 04:30 pm (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (abandon all hopes)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
[all you have to do is ask, and he'll go on a rambly spiel about it.]

Dumbledore seems - seemed - to believe she did know what she was doing.
Depth: 8

Date: 2011-06-17 12:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
Dumbledore?

[What kind of a name is that I cannot believe I pronounced it right.]
Depth: 9

Date: 2011-06-17 02:36 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (unable to follow through)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
Our Headmaster.

[you question Dumbledore, but Draco Malfoy is normal?]
Depth: 10

Date: 2011-06-17 01:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
[It's all a question of what you're used to. Draco is at least familiar now.]

Mine was called Father Something and I never saw him except at entrance ceremony. Your school sounds really interesting, I'm kinda jealous.
Depth: 11

Date: 2011-06-17 02:15 pm (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (haemoglobin is the key)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
[and pretentious. He's named after a constellation.]

It's a school of magic, what do you expect? We had ghosts roaming the halls, and a poltergeist that liked to pitch things at the first years.
Depth: 12

Date: 2011-06-19 02:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
[Honestly? Language lessons. Ken thought that was just what happened at school: they tried to teach you English.

[Still. Eyebrow raise at that. It still sounds interesting to Ken.]


Really? Wasn't that a bit dangerous?

[And, feeling he should offer something back:]

... We had nuns. They're not as bad as everyone says they are.
Depth: 13

Date: 2011-06-19 05:40 pm (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (curious beyond caring)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
[Latin, more like.]

Of course it was. No more dangerous than Weasley's brothers wreaking havoc in the halls in fifth year, though. Honestly, it was a tragedy Professor Umbridge hadn't caught them.

Nuns?
Depth: 14

Date: 2011-06-21 01:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
... you never heard of nuns?

[Does not compute.]
Depth: 15

Date: 2011-06-21 02:31 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (worries unshown)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
Why would I have head of nuns?
Depth: 16

Date: 2011-06-21 02:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
Uh. I figured everyone did...

[Figured they just happened. Like... Ken can't think what it's like. Just like he can't think how to explain what nuns are like, either.]

They're like - they're nuns, seriously, you never heard of them?
Depth: 17

Date: 2011-06-21 03:41 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (curious beyond caring)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
No. I have absolutely no reason to have ever interacted with a nun, whatever it is.
Depth: 18

Date: 2011-06-26 03:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] insorrow.livejournal.com
They're like religious women. They take vows and things and... and some of them teach, and stuff like that. Nursing.

My family's Catholic.
Edited Date: 2011-06-26 03:25 am (UTC)
Depth: 19

Date: 2011-06-26 05:32 am (UTC)
alphaophiuchi: (worries unshown)
From: [personal profile] alphaophiuchi
My apologies, then. [he raises one brow, still not following the conversation. But that sounds like a disease. No offence.]