Noctivagant

[Patricus I]

It’s a dream, he thought, feeling stupid. He couldn’t drown unless he believed he was drowning. “In my defense, I felt like a drowned rat. I didn’t really believe I was a drowning rat. Speaking of,” his gaze narrowed upon the waterfall, which continued to seep the never-landing mist into his bones. After a moment, the water slowed to a trickle and shut itself off altogether like a faucet turned off at the sink. “There,” he looked back at her with mixed part pride in the accomplishment and curiosity over whether she minded the change. 

The cats had been a new appearance in so far as he knew. Although perhaps a cat was the wrong term for the creatures, but they hunted like felines toying with their mice. “Tasty? I am not an actual rat. Why would cats prowl in my dreams? Are they native to this realm?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation for the correct word. If there were predators hunting the dream, what exactly was the prey? Were there other natives lurking out there? 

Nimeda kept her distance, though it was clear she considered plunking herself closeby. It was hard to think of her by any other name. Like this was the real figure and the girl in Tartu was the specter of his imagination. Philip’s return of the sentiment about being missed was an unexpected dismissal, “It’s alright. I’m used to being adored,” he said, but whatever softening of his expression followed was interrupted by the sudden turn in Nimeda’s attention.

[Adrian Kane]

With Mara wriggling within its grasp, the creature’s enormous wings swept one beat downward, and the dream moved around them both. The pulse of its landing rattled the stones and warped the water that remained dry as bones. All life seemed to retreat from the creature, and its aura chased the glow of the dream to far-away dusk.

The two battling wills that nearly ripped a new pocket in its kingdom stood beneath it. Mara’s will attempted to flee even then, but the creature’s claws wrapped the girl’s waist snug, holding her its captive. Holding all of them as its captive.

The creature’s steps shook the ground. Its feet ended in claws that dug imprints into the stone. Its narrow eyes rolled from one inhabitant to the other. Both were mighty in will, but none compared to its mastery over them all. Its mind pierced the veil of each of the three, seeing their intent and rating their skills. What it found was not what it sought, and it's judgment was cast.

Its voice thundered, “You threaten the integrity of my realm. There will be no more battle among you three. Make your peace, little ones. Dream your dreams and be gone.”

The creature dropped Mara at the feet of her combatants and lifted its mighty wings to depart.

The Sandman

[Daiyu]

Try as she might, Mara was snug in the clutches of the dream eater. Her pets scattered at his coming, and even Mara was unable to summon their return. Their frightened shadows slunk to the edge of the the dreamworld, keeping their distance from the confrontation. They were wise to hide. The dream eater could devour her pets in a single bite.

She was dropped a long ways to the ground. Mara dust herself off and found herself nestled at Nimeda’s side.
“I’m sorry,” Mara said, but it was unclear to whom she was repentant.

[Thalia]

Nimeda had watched the water freeze without a word, and did not interfere with his recreation of reality around them. He glanced at her reaction and received an encouraging smile for his efforts. If her eyes were a little sad at what she wondered might have been meant to hurt, it was only what she deserved. He’d been the one to wield rejection like a sword, but she should not have run away.

As the beat of wings darkened the sky, she finally pulled her legs back over the edge to watch as the Watcher finally revealed himself. The grip of the demon’s will kept her in place, but she did not try to fight it. There was little point. Its hideous skin did not repulse, though she was curious at the choice; whether it was subconscious, or took the dreamer’s force. She looked over her shoulder for Noctua’s response, hoping his rediscovered revelation that this was a world of dreaming would protect him now. Else what he would not do something stupid, for the same reason.

Her expression deadened when she realised what was carried in clawed talons above, though.

Mara’s body plummeted from its grip, and Nimeda winced for its impact, though she knew her sister’s mastery would bear no injury. Her posture shifted in time to receive the girl’s trembling body into her arms, and held her protectively close. A kiss pressed against her brow. The Watcher saw and heard all he wished to, but the words spoken next were soft and soothing and for Mara alone.

“You did not know who Noctua was. There shall be no apologies for being who you are, Mara.” Nimeda suspected her friend might be afraid more than she was truly repentant, if she even knew what she had done wrong, but it did not matter much to Nimeda. Of course, Noctua himself might feel differently.

[Patricus I]

Although no sun illuminated the sky, a shadow overtook their vista. He looked to Nimeda for explanation, but her attention was focused upon the descending creature. It was towering and from its grasp tumbled the girl with the cats. Nimeda was a blur, shifting in time to embrace the other girl before she hit the ground. They knew one another? 

The demon’s flesh crackled like a barren desert and within the splits leaked a hellish glow. The others were diminutive and deferent to the demon’s authority, but Philip knew from where authority arose. He was unafraid of the demon’s power and stepped forward to confront it.

While Nimeda soothed the other girl, Mara, he thought her name to be declared, Philip spoke, “Who are you to command us, demon? This is not your realm,” he said, hands folded gently at the waist. He may have been wearing only the cashmere track suit, but he spoke with the confidence of a truer authority.

[Adrian Kane]

The Sandman was on the verge of departing when he was taunted to return. His gaze rolled from figure to figure, landing eventually upon the one all in white. Unlike most, the Sandman was able to peer into the depths of the fibers that made up their presence here. All were figments of the elemental. The sandman himself was so named for the porous qualities of sand. Sand was the beginning and the end of dominion. Gripped tight, and sand broke free. Held loosely and the sand remained as it was, but when disturbed by forces of power and energy, sand transformed into a substance that cut sharper than diamonds. The sandman himself embodied these elements. He was the line that rimmed the edges of all that existed. He kept everything bound to its place lest it wash away by the tides of time.

Like the Sandman, each of them embodied their elements. The lady of nightmares and the spirit of water were already known to him. The little one in white was unfamiliar, and the Sandman flowed closer to peer into the insides of his being. He saw sunlight threaded within, but it was cloaked brightness like a star that burned from across the universe. There wasn’t danger, but there was a distant power. Despite starlight’s accusation, he was fully wrong. The world of dreams was his realm. It had no greater master than him.

In that moment, their surroundings turned to flakes like a layer of old paint brushed away to reveal the truth beneath. That truth that was revealed was a horrendous, hellish scene. It was ash and smoke that plunged like a crater opened beneath them. The land flowed and morphed in the same cracks and breaks as did the Sandman’s skin. If the tartaric hellscape wasn’t enough of a point, even than fell away into darkness until each of them were the essence of their own elements amid a void of blackness.

It lasted moments, but like breath caught in the lungs, the release followed and all returned to what it was. His will exerted proved him the master of the domain.

“I am the Sandman,” he said in response. “You are in my realm by my permission. Do not take that for granted, little star.”

Then he departed, returning to the seat of his realm.

The Sandman

[Thalia]

She weathered it because there was little point in fighting. The Watcher meant no lasting harm, and if his mastery pleased him, who was Nimeda to argue? When her being was returned, her arms floated back around Mara’s frail body. She would not be offended if the poor girl popped like a bubble, for she knew the trembling fear was genuine. Those were the ties of very old things though. Then, as now, Nimeda comforted. As she always would.

Should she remain, Nimeda nestled her chin on the other girl’s head. Her wild, flower bedecked curls framed them both. Now the gruesome moment was past, she found light laughter in her chest. “Little Star,” she repeated, amused. “There is nothing little about you, Noctua. This is Mara, though I believe you already met.”

[Patricus I]

Noctua

Philip held his ground while the demon loomed near. Then the ground transformed and eventually fell away to nothingness. In that moment, Philip peered around himself, but he wasn’t even sure he had eyes. It was the most dream-like he’d ever experienced. What should have been sight felt more like pointed awareness, and around him there were entities. Nimeda was an essence of flowing, cold water. The girl was something of squatty shadow. Then there was the being at their center - the self-named Sandman, who in the briefest of moments was a figure of flowing sand.

Philip felt himself reform, and before he could usher defense or conjure thought at all, the being that wielded such power was gone on the echoes of warning. Philip’s frown dug lines deep into the folds of his face. He tried to follow, but his will was blocked by the Sandman’s resistance.

His gaze - his real gaze - settled briefly on Mara, a girl huddled shy and quaint in Nimeda’s arms. Two sides of the same person, she was hardly a foe now.

Philip’s anger wasn’t pointed at her, though Mara and Nimeda would feel the waves of its heat. Nor was it directed at the moniker. It was the defiance, the overt threat. But before he could act, the creature was gone.

This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the aggressor. Nor was he a defender. He was the body alone.

Philip was contained tranquility when he turned back to them. Any semblance of conflict was smoothed aside.

“Mara?” he repeated her name thoughtfully. He first thought of the mother-in-law of a famous Biblical woman. She was a defiant and commanding woman of the Old Testament who declared she be called the name, Mara, which meant bitterness in the old Greek. He wondered if the forlorn girl in Nimeda’s arms was likewise bitter.

“Yes, we were introduced when she wanted to see me drown in water that doesn’t exist,” he said with a flick of the gaze at Nimeda to quiet her correction before she even started it. Yes, of course he couldn’t drown unless he believed he was drowning was what it said.

“You are acquainted with that … Sandman?”

[Thalia]

Noctua churned for a moment like storm-tossed waves before a familiar calm returned to his person. His gaze investigated Mara but any concern Nimeda had harboured for conflict already fled when his manner eased, so she only sat and watched his scrutiny. To her surprise and delight he did not immediately force himself awake just to escape their company. She was afraid he still might, but perhaps curiosity was a great enough lure. She could hope.

“This is how Noctua does forgiveness,” she assured the girl in her arms, amused. Though she really wasn’t sure what his forgiveness might actually feel like. It was just that she understood the sharp weapons he wielded for words were not always meant to wound. They were simply the severe defence to something softer within – something he did not even like Nimeda to see. Her fingers smoothed the inky tresses at Mara’s temple, and she kissed the top of her head, but she could not tell if she was really listening. Probably not, for the air around her did not shimmer with the enactment of her will. No poisonous spiders marched upon Nimeda’s thigh. Stinking rot did not ooze from the flowers wound at her crown. Even Mara herself did not feel like a dead thing, or a bony thing, or a squelchy thing. She just felt like a blood and breath girl, warm and scared.

“It exists,” she laughed, despite the sharp edge of Noctua’s gaze commanding her to silence. Nimeda might not wish to test his prickly nature and risk hastening his disappearance, but that fear did not appear to dampen her normal manner. He might as well call any of them imaginary. “When you escaped the vision that chased you from your home, you did not fear drowning. It was to the river you escaped,” she added. Of course she knew what had changed, but she did not know if he did. He blamed Mara for her proclivities, but they were not random cruelties. Her eyes were wide above the girl’s buried head, as guileless as they had ever been, and she was glad for Mara’s presence then. If Noctua’s patience snapped. If she probed too deep. Well, at least she would not be left entirely alone. The comfort worked both ways.

She was not sure if the question was for her or the girl in her arms, but Mara was still trembling and unlikely to answer. Even the Vanagandyr chased Mara’s creatures with his lip curled when first he beheld them, but that was something of nature and tooth-and-claw instinct. The Watcher sought to control, to chain, to enact will. Nimeda was as solicitous as water slipped through cupped palms, tricky to capture, and she was not offended by the hubris of those who claimed ownership of the unclaimable. But in the past she had always had protections Mara lacked, for few would risk her grandmother’s ancient eye – not even Mara’s father. And the Watcher was a jailor at his behest. Or had been, once. For a moment confusion pressed upon Nimeda’s brow. It lasted but a second before she set it aside.

“I’ve felt his Watching before, but I do not think I have seen this form. Even at my loneliest he has never appeared to me.” She shrugged a little, not sure how deep she wanted to wade in memories that seemed more eager to pop to the surface these days. “I think he has not changed through all the ages though.” She rolled her eyes a little, and laughed, searching the sky for a moment, but she did not think he was still listening. It did not matter if he was. “Pompous.”

[Daiyu]

Mara disliked the dream eater. When he appeared, her pets fled. Nimeda’s calm gave Mara comfort, but her pets remained far afield. They may have came had Mara summoned them, but she could sense their unease. They would wait for the storm to pass and the dream eater to turn his attention elsewhere before they began to prowl once more.

When they were flung to the distant beyond, the freedom tempted Mara to let herself drift. There was a weightlessness of the beyond that beckoned whispered her to join the pillowy release. She remembered spending so much of the eons just floating, she knew she would return there eventually. Before she let herself fall into the blackness of pimpled starlight, she was pulled back into her own body. The dream eater’s mysticism faded, and Mara traded release for the comfort of Nimeda’s arms once more.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the dream eater departed. It was like a shadow lifted from the world of dreams, and Mara relaxed from Nimeda’s grasp. The funny man in white called her name, and Mara’s attention turned toward him. She nodded, agreeing that he used her name properly.
“Lady of Nightmares,” she added with a sly twist to her mouth. She doubted anyone heard the addendum.

She giggled when Nimeda called the dream eater his names. Watcher felt like an appropriate title, although when one of her pets went missing, she knew who it was that devoured them.

“The dream eater is not to be trifled with,” she added afterward. Then, she sat cross-legged and pat her knee, wooing one of her pets to her lap, but they remained out of sight.

She sighed and looked to the funny man in white for answers.
“Noctua, I am sorry if my pets frightened you. Sometimes they are incorrigible,” she said.