It's Raining Ducks and Bunnies

[Faith Augustin]

83rd Ymiden, 717

"I can see that!" Faith said, her tone sharp and a deep frown on her forehead.
"Alright, love, I waz jus' sayin' it. Famula's knocker's yer snippy when yer knocked up." PB, the small chalk drawn bunny who was the companion to so many of Faith's dreams eyed her critically. He considered it something of an achievement, in truth. Being able to eye someone critically when ones eyes were just dots of chalk was quite an excellent thing to be able to do, but PB, somehow, managed it.
"I can see perfectly well that it appeared to be raining ducks, PB, I am not being snippy and I am most certainly not 'knocked up'." Faith was rather horrified at the term, in honesty.

The small chalk drawing laughed, clutching the empty space where his tummy would be. "Of course yer not snippy, my little trout'n'toolbox. Yer always prone to this kind of behaviour. You, Little Miss Do-Right, should have called you Doris, not Faith, then you'd be Doris Do-Right, wouldn't you?"

Faith was sitting, on the bright blue grass as the multicoloured ducks rained down around her. There were trees either side of the path which trailed towards a very fancy looking castle from quite another dream, but in this one she and PB were sitting together and trying to sort out words. There were a lot of words and they needed to be put into different boxes. There was only one problem, as far as Faith could see.

"PB?" she asked, and the bunny looked at her with a wide eyed expression. "I don't know any of these words, so how can I sort them into good words, bad words and ...." looking at the label on the third box, she quirked an eyebrow, "words which it is ok for PB to use but only cos I loves him?" Faith couldn't suppress the grin at that and she looked at the bunny.

"Aww, you loves me?" PB shot back, quickly, clutching at his heart, "I'm touched, Faithy, I really am."

"No, that's just what it says here. In your handwriting."

"Don't be ridiculous, love, that isn't my 'andwritin. I can prove it too. Look. I'll show you my stud-muffin impression whilst provin' it, cos I am that kind of multi-taskin' fella."

"I wish you wouldn't call him that." Faith looked at PB seriously as she made that point.

"I know you do, but look," PB was playing, although Faith didn't realise it, to the audience which he had spotted, but she had not. He whipped out a pair of spectacles and stood up to his full height (still not high, he was a chalk bunny, after all) and he started to pace up and down a small area, talking in his best 'giving a lecture' voice. "I can prove, hitherto an' wherewithall an' up an' down the stairs that, furthermore, there is no reliable nor science-terrific way that those there words what is written can be written by the innocent, the marvellous and the much-more-'andsome-than-me, PB. Evidence! A scientist must have evidence!" During PB's little demonstration, Faith shook her head and started to try and organise the boxes for the words.

"An' the evidence is simple. PB is a bunny. Bunnies do not 'ave 'ands and therefore! Forsooth! Widdles and wet patches! Verily, but! Lo! PB, without 'ands, can not, logically speakin' an all, 'ave 'andwriting, can he? No. HAH! Science wins!"

PB turned to the young man who was there and added, with a very wicked chalk grin, "He's jus' like that you know. Ole stud muffin. You should hear his pillow-talk, OW!"

The last he said as Faith casually threw a small piece of chalk from her pocket at him, which bounced off his head. "Stop it, PB. Hello Arlo," the young woman gestured to the very large box which was filled with words. "I don't suppose you can read, can you? I seem to have forgotten how."

[Arlo Creede]

People had the funniest dreams. Arlo had them too. Of course there were the rarer few in his experience that he could have said were mundane. Dull, hardly worth calling a dream. People sitting alone by a fire and quietly reading a book. Drinking an ordinary cup of tea. But he'd since decided that maybe those peoples' lives were filled with chaos and more excitement than they ever wanted. So in that sense, a dream was their only escape into a more peaceful existence. No matter which though, this dream was more colorful than most and a departure from the dreary and desperate one he'd just wandered out of.

That one had been cast in black and white and all the shades of gray in between the two extremes. A poor lone fellow that was trying to piece a bleak world around him back together at the seams like torn pieces of paper. But there were too many pieces missing to do it and the remnants were nowhere to be seen. It wasn't just the flashing colors of this dream that had attracted him. He recognized the thrumming vibrations it gave off while he'd drifted by. He recognized the dreamer.

He'd made himself a lone, free standing doorway to enter into her dream and while she engaged in debate with her chalk fashioned friend, the young dreamwalker lounged at the threshold, one shoulder propping the door frame up, arms crossed over his chest, one foot slung over the other and boot toe down. Funny the way the dreaming mind worked. Her imaginary friend appeared to see him, while Faith did not. At least not at first. Lyova had been late arriving though and swirled in past his ear, darted through the air and settled on top of one of Faith's boxes. She'd decided to reveal herself fully, and was there for all eyes to see.

Blue grass, ducks raining down like, well like rainfall. The follower of Famula had a very good imagination. Jesine would be pleased too. "Hello," he called out when she noticed him, pushed himself off the frame and walked over to where she was seated on the grass. when he closed the door behind him, the whole thing disappeared. "Can I read? Sure I can," he confirmed, but then frowned a little. "But why boxes? Putting words into boxes is a little like putting ideas in them isn't it? Like putting yourself into one?" he wondered aloud.

[Faith Augustin]

Faith looked at Lyova and she smiled. "Hello! I don't think we've met. My name is Faith and this is PB" PB was staring at the small ball of light and his jaw had more or less hit the floor.

"'ello, darlin. Wow, yer like.. wow. I'm umm... that is, me name's PB. Short fer Plunder Bunny, it is. I umm... 'ello." He shuffled his bunny feet and looked at Arlo. "Is she with you? She's goorgeous....just... wow."

Faith looked at PB and her eyebrow raised. It appeared her small companion was rather taken with the fluttering fairy. Maybe, Faith thought, that would mean he would give her less of a hard time. She smiled at Arlo as he moved from the doorway where he'd been watching and he came over to help. There was a question there, though and Faith looked at him and shrugged. "I don't know. If I knew what the words were, it would be easier. Although," she considered, "I don't think it's like putting ideas in boxes or yourself. Ideas are just... well, how could you put an idea in a box?"

She looked at the box rather quizzically. "I think I have to put the words in there so that we can use them for writing." Faith frowned, grasping at an idea but not quite getting it. "Or maybe we take the words and use them against the cat. But we fought him last time we were here and we won." Clouds of smoke-like memories formed in the trees as she remembered a dream where she'd pushed Padraig and then flounced through a door. "I don't think it's that. I think it's about the words. Or the word." Was it the same word? Maybe.

"Maybe it's about how weird you are?" PB piped up helpfully and beamed at Lyova evidently hoping for approval.

"I don't think I am. Do you?" Faith asked Arlo with quite a serious expression. "Maybe it's the chicken. I enjoyed cooking that with you. I hadn't cooked on a campfire for a long time. Last time it was in Rynmere and I fought zombies with a frypan. I wasn't allowed a weapon, so I used that." She looked around, noticing the blue grass apparently for the first time. "Is this Scalvoris? I didn't know there was blue grass as well as blue sand. I heard the blue sand makes noises and instruments and things." But the boxes and the words. They were just troublesome and she fiddled around with them some more. "These don't fit. Why don't they fit?"

"So, tell me, then, do you come 'ere often?" PB didn't really seem to be involving himself and was, instead, doing his best to get a date with Lyova.

"He's no help, and I think I've got to work out how to put them all in. Oh look!" Emptying one of the boxes of words onto the floor, a brightly coloured jigsaw fell out, pieces scattering. Faith looked at Arlo and beamed. "It's a puzzle!"

[Arlo Creede]

Apparently PB was a womanizer. Or might like to be, Arlo thought to himself, had he not been a dreamed up rabbit fashioned from a chalk drawing. And Lyova? He wouldn't have anticipated it. The little fairy that looked more like an animated, electric blue raindrop than an honest to goodness proper fairy, suddenly developed a set of eyelashes she didn't ordinarily have, just so she could bat them at her besotted admirer. "Charmed, I'm sure, sir Plunder Bunny," she trilled, in a voice that even on the worst of trials sounded like the tinkling of tiny crystal chimes. Arlo made no pretense at rolling his eyes skyward. "She's with me," he uttered. "But not like that. Be my guest."

"Well you can't, or at least you shouldn't," Arlo agreed when Faith talked ideas, rather than just words. "or at least you shouldn't." She must have him confused with someone else, he figured. Cats. Arlo didn't even like cats. Or at least he didn't think he would if he had one. "I don't think you're weird," he decided. "No more than me. No more than anyone else. And I think it's Scalvoris. Seems about right." All the strangeness surrounding them in her dream, he thought. The blue sand, the ducks raining down, the rest of it. Toying with the latter of it, the dreamwalker tweaked those ducks just a little so that as each reached the ground, they came to life, began quacking and began waddling away or milling around with the others.

"Maybe they're too long, some of them?" he asked when she worried that the words wouldn't fit. Pulling a piece of paper from his pocket that was folded accordion style, he stretched it out and grinned. "Like this one," he suggested with a grin. Onomatopoeia. That's what it said in big block letters. "Some ideas," he explained, "are like that don't you think? So big, so grand that they defy any effort to put them in neat piles or contain them in boxes. I think that maybe it's better to recognize that, and not try to make them fit?"

But a puzzle. Right, he thought and wandered over to the pieces she'd dumped out of the box. Arlo didn't mind puzzles, and he was curious about all the chaos that seemed to be going on in her dreaming mind. Maybe those pieces were the chaos that needed sorting out. Dropping down on his heels, he picked up one of the pieces to have a look. "Will you start at the corners or sides? That's how most people do it," he suggested. As for him, he liked to start in the middle and work out.

[Faith Augustin]

Faith watched PB as he pulled a top hat (chalk, of course) from... nowhere, and adjusted the bow tie which had not been there but trill before. "Well, then, darlin', 'ow about PB shows you where the umm... would you like to 'ave dinner an' a dance?"

At his awkward and yet, somehow endearing attempt to woo what looked like a small blue puff of light to Faith, she couldn't help but turn a grin to Arlo. The bunny and the blue fairy seemed to be quite content to.... go and have dinner and a dance, and Faith shook her head slightly.

With ducks quacking and waddling around them, Arlo sat and helped her organise the words, and pulled out a concertina-like piece of paper with a word on it. Faith looked at it and grinned. "That's a long word. I don't know it, so I don't think it's medical. I read a lot," she explained, a more serious look on her face as she did, "But only since Ymiden in 716. Before that I wasn't allowed out so didn't know there were libraries. They're wonderful things, libraries. Lots of books." Her concentration was on the very strange sorting of words which seemed to be following no pattern or logic at all. "I was taught to read as a child, so that I could follow lists and write them. But there are still a lot of words I've never read, a lot of things I don't know. Gaps, I suppose. What does that mean, do you know?"

On PB's assessment of her being weird, though, Faith grinned, "He's a chalk bunny dating a fairy and he calls me weird? It's alright." However, it was Arlo's thoughts on ideas and putting them in boxes that caused her to stop her sorting and sit back. "No, I don't think so," she said, considering it. "Karem came to visit us, not so long ago, Padraig and I. He's the one that was with me when we fought the cat, it was him in the smoke just now," Apparently it all made sense if you were her.

"We were talking about just that. I don't think anything is impossible, you just have to work hard. Every idea, even the biggest ones, the ones that seem most impossible? They can be done, I think." Shrugging slightly, Faith picked up a word and looked at it. It was a jumble of letters, meaningless. "Just needs organising, planning, knowledge and faith, that's all. First step is to understand what it is you want to do. In my head, that means breaking it down into small pieces, fitting it in the box." It was true, the sorting of things into boxes, the organising of concepts was very much how she worked.

The puzzle, though, that perplexed her and she looked at it and sighed. Arlo had a piece in his hands, half a white fluffy cloud. Where would she start? "I'm not sure. This is one of those things, isn't it? A gap. I've never done one of these before, so I guess the thing to do would be..." Frowning, she considered it for a moment and then reached out and picked up a piece. Just randomly, the one on the top of the pile.

"Right. So this is what I've got. It's the bit I've been given, so lets start with that and make it what it should be?" Confusion clamored in her mind and the pictures on the individual pieces shifted and changed constantly. Snippets of pictures, images of things swirled around and then seemed to solidify as Faith picked up pieces and started fitting them together. She had a look of extreme concentration on her face as she put together what seemed to be a picture of her, looking at herself in a mirror except the image in the mirror had a green dress and hers was red.

"It's my twin," she explained and looked at her. "I've never met her, only found out about her a few trials ago. I was sold straight away, you see, and they raised her. It's strange, there's someone out there who looks exactly like me, but isn't." Looking back at him she frowned slightly. "Do you have siblings? I wonder what it's like."

[Arlo Creede]

"Dinner and a dance? Lyova responded with fluttering lashes and a fingertip she didn't have, raised to suddenly plump lips as if she was considering whether her prospective suitor was worthy. Arlo frowned curiously as he looked on. Lyova might be his companion and protector, but she was also her own entity, out of his control. It was a fascinating process to watch, her personality coming to life. And it was something of a blow to his ego too, the fact that a creature who others might call his imaginary friend, had found someone to dabble with before him. Even if it was a chalk outline of a bunny, and a figment of someone else's imagination.

Whichever the case, the little fairy had whipped up an elegant eatery and dance floor in the far corner of the dream, and had offered an arm to PB before flouncing off with him. Arlo simply shook his head, scratched beneath his hat and frowned. "It's an uncountable noun," the young dreamwalker uttered then, referring to the impossibly long word he'd pulled out of his pocket. "Whatever that means. I learned it in school, way back and remembered the word if I didn't entirely grasp what it meant." He'd liked how it sounded, was all. "You were taught to read but not allowed to?" What a strange thing slavery was. Arlo couldn't say that he'd spent a lot of time thinking about it, but he definitely didn't approve.

And she'd never done a puzzle either, apparently. Not that Arlo had done many himself, at least not this type. The sorts of puzzles he preferred to unravel didn't exactly have pieces cut of wood or paper. Then again, maybe the one in this dream, hers was simply a representation of what needed sorting out in her waking mind. Things that didn't unfold or come together in ordinary or expected ways. And things that kept changing so quickly that she was loathe to keep up. But if that was the case, it wasn't for Arlo to solve it. But to be a sounding board instead. So he sat down beside her as she showed him one piece after another.

"You have a twin?" And one she'd never met, apparently. It was a rotten set of parents that could sell a child at all, much less sell one and keep the other. No wonder she had boxes full of mismatched pieces. "No siblings," he told her. "Not that I know of anyway. My mother was very young when I was born, and my father was a traveler who was gone before I was born. I've never met him," he added, "and maybe he never knew about me either." But he had a step-father, he told her, who'd been and was as much a father as his own might have been.

[Faith Augustin]

"Why would you count nouns? Nouns are names, I believe. Padraig and I were looking at the stars and he said that he should name one for me. I said it would make more sense to number them. Much more logical. Practical." Logical and practical probably hadn't been what Padraig had been going for, she knew. "So counting names seems very silly to me." A word for counting names seemed more than a little odd and Faith determined that she would have a look, next time she was near a book which might tell her.

"Well, it was like everything we were taught," Faith replied, of learning to read. "We were taught it so that we could use the skill in service to the people who owned us. It's how being a slave works, really." There was no accusation or unhappiness in her tone, no consideration that it was horrific. "I read only what my owner wished me to, wrote only what I was instructed to. But the last man who owned me, he didn't want me to be stupid and he knew that I was desperate to learn. So, he let me learn and even got me a tutor." Which he probably regretted as a decision, she considered. But still, she was glad he had.

Faith looked down at the puzzle and frowned slightly, her dreaming mind telling more of herself than she would ever consider in the waking world. Except, of course, to very few. Still, she lifted her gaze and looked at her companion.
"I met my father. His ghost, anyhow. It's strange, you know, I thought that I'd care about him. But I saw his grave and called him to me." She shrugged slightly and smiled at Arlo, genuinely unconcerned. "They couldn't choose which of us to sell, so they chose me. I was the one on the left."

She was looking at the young dreamwalker as she spoke, not realising that the picture on the puzzle shifted and changed, depicting the very scenes she was talking about, the two of them newborn in a cot and her, apparently, the one on the left. Then a grave with a name on it and two names underneath it. "A twin and a sister, apparently. I've never met them, though." He'd never met his father, it seemed and Faith tilted her head slightly as she looked at him. "Does it bother you?" she asked, of having not met his father. It seemed like an important question and, in truth, it was, in an entirely selfish way.

[Arlo Creede]

"I thought they were things," Arlo had responded with a puzzled frown, while they pondered the scattered pieces of Faith's puzzle together. "Like those stars, you and your husband. You can give them a name, or assign them a number, but it's still a star, right?" She was a woman with a name, him a man with a name, but they were still woman and man. Then again, this was verging on a scholarly debate and Arlo was no scholar.

It was foolish though, Arlo insisted when she spoke of slavery and learning. What was learned. In effect, the value of it being limited to what was useful to those who owned them. But then he didn't think much of slavery either. It was the strong preying on the weak more or less. Which first required convincing them they were weaker and then keeping them that way. Having supposed that allowed, the young man frowned. "I guess that's the reason then, for stopping them learning? The worry that they might discover they're not...less than, after all?" Somebody really ought to do something about that, he thought.

So she was the one on the left, and that was the difference that determined her value in the world. What a strange place it was, Arlo thought. He liked solving puzzles. But the tangled mess that was the mortal mind was beyond him. "A twin, that must be interesting," he said with a grin, but then it faded as he remembered that she'd never have met or had the opportunity to know that sibling. Because she'd been the one on the left.

"Not really," he said when she asked about not knowing his father. He rocked back off his heels until he was seated on the ground, and one of the rubber ducks waddled by. Arlo frowned then. "Well, maybe it did. Or does. It's complicated," he admitted. And that was unusual for Arlo. Not much in his life was complicated. He'd designed it that way. "It's different for me. I never had to wonder why he didn't care, because he didn't know. At least that's what my mother tells me."

Everything he'd ever imagined about who his father was, and what he'd been like, had been based on what little his mother had been willing to tell him, Arlo said then. He was a traveler, and his mother had told him that from the start, he'd been very much like him. "I got to imagine a father who, if he knew he had a son, would be pleased. I even imagine he might be like Cassion himself. Or even," Arlo added with a grin, "that he might be, and naturally he was too important and busy to concern himself with things like that."

Of course it was silly, and he'd gotten older instead of not. But nonetheless, believing it had been appealing for a young boy with a big imagination. "That puzzle though," he said and gestured towards the box of shifting pieces. "It occur to you that it's your life?" Which would explain, he implied, why the images kept changing. It was a life in motion, unfinished, still in progress. Fixed puzzles, in this instance, were of lives already lived and finished. Or at the least, for predictable ones.

[Faith Augustin]

"Are they?" Nouns, things not names? Faith frowned and considered carefully. "You know, I don't know what the difference is. Things have labels. Those labels are the words we use to understand what the thing is. It's name, but what it is." Faith frowned and then shook her head. "I told Padraig, they're silly, transitory things. It would be much more unique and efficient, lets all have numbers."Certainly not a romantic by nature. "A number serves two purposes. It is a name and it denotes the number it is. Both of them are just labels and a star is always still a star. Just, one is a better label. More efficient. And he isn't my husband yet. Except in my heart, where he is." There was no requirement to make sense, which was good. "We're getting married in Vhalar. It'll be snowing, I hope. Not ducks though."

His thoughts on slavery, though, caused her to focus more. Faith considered and nodded. "I think so. It's how it was for me, anyhow. I realised that I could change, grow, learn. Love." The young woman considered it and then shrugged slightly. "Although, I wouldn't have tried to escape. My owner set me free. But my aim is to try and abolish slavery on Scalvoris," like you do. If it was a big aim, she didn't seem to notice such. "I'm going to try, anyhow. We'll see."

Arlo's grin faded at the thought of her twin as he realised Faith had never known her, but Faith's grin remained. "It is, isn't it? I mean, she looks just like me. And, obviously, we have had very different upbringings, so it will be really interesting to find out what similarities there are between us." Faith shrugged, thinking about it. She didn't seem put out by the fact that she'd never met her twin. It wasn't something which she had any control over and the young woman was very used to simply accepting those circumstances.

As he was, it seemed, just in a specific way. Faith listened to Arlo talk about how he'd imagined his father as a child and she smiled as she listened. Her attention was on him and she could picture the little boy and then young man that he had been. It must be nice, she thought, to be able to dream about your parents. "If you ever meet him, I bet you'll recognise him." She'd have said more, but he pointed to the puzzle and said something which really grabbed her attention. "My life? Oh... it is, isn't it?" Looking down at it, Faith reached out a hand to touch it. Her movement was reverent, cautious as she did so.

Then, she folded it in half and put the pieces back in to the box. "There'd be no fun in seeing that!" Faith couldn't think of anything worse and she smiled at Arlo, cheerily. "That explains why it doesn't make sense then. It's wonderfully impossible, my life. I should go, though. I have to .." she frowned and then smiled. "I don't know what I have to do, but it's time to go and do it. Thank you for helping me, Arlo." Turning around, Faith tried to find that damned bunny.

[Pash Raj'oriq]

Thread Rewards

Faith

Skill Knowledge:
N/A

Other Knowledge:
➳ Arlo: Doesn't know who his father is.
➳ Arlo: Has a big imagination
➳ Arlo: His little blue fairy-thing and PB are now, horrifyingly, dating.

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Fame: N/A
Devotion: N/A

Points: 15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

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Arlo

[/align]

Skill Knowledge:
➳ Etiquette: Conditions of slavery
➳ Persuasion: Some ideas are too big to fit in a box?
➳ Rhetoric: Nouns
➳ Rhetoric: Onomatopoeia: an uncountable noun
➳ Storytelling: The story of your birth
➳ Storytelling: The people your father could be

Other Knowledge:
N/A

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Fame: N/A
Devotion: Jesine: +12 (Collab dream thread (+5) Play a game of imagination (+3) Sharing dreams with others (+2) Humour another's imagination (+2))

Points: 15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

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Comments:
Faith, your box code is dizzyingly awesome. PB and the fairy are what? I can’t. Dreams are weird, but this was a fun read. I enjoyed seeing bits and pieces of both your histories in here, too. Thank you for being awesome writers.

If you see anything I’ve missed or have a question, please feel free to drop me a PM!

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