• Closed • Against Nature

[Sade Sauterne]

What did he mean, it was supposed to hurt more?

Sade wanted to ask him. He wanted to question the shift in this narrative and demand to know why he’d told him that it wouldn’t hurt when the fact that it hadn’t had sent him into this spiral. But he knew, in some way, that the suspicion was not any more logical than his need to lash out at Hunter had been. Hunter hadn’t been trying to spin a lie to deceive him into some agonizing trap within a dream; more likely, he’d only been trying to spare him this same distress.

So the thief didn’t ask his questions. He didn’t let that doubt fester and rot through the only faith he’d ever managed to believe in, fledgling and fragile though it still was. He remained there, shoulders still beneath Hunter’s hands, and tried to exhale the tension that’d sparked off of Hunter and found more fuel in him.

Whatever reason Hunter had for reacting this way, to what he claimed was meant to be a happy moment – for once, Sade didn’t feel like he was the cause of someone’s chaos. Maybe he couldn’t help him, but maybe, for once, he didn’t have to make things worse.

Sade’s hands raised to touch Hunter’s where they held his neck. His fingers laid lightly over them, but didn’t linger. They moved next to Hunter’s chest, where they slowly traced: No sorry.

“You don’t have to fix anything,” scolded the frowning thief, but his words were soft, and the intent behind them only more so. His hands fell from Hunter’s chest, but they didn’t go far. Instead, Sade slipped his arms around the hunter, and stepped forward into another close embrace. Cheek to cheek, at least until he turned his head to press a gentle kiss to that cheek.

“I don’t care how long we stay here. This tunnel isn’t so bad, is it? And it’s just for us. Ours alone. I don’t have anything of my own in the waking world, but now I have this here, with you, my dear Hunter. We can stay right here for as long as you want.”

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The panic kept burning, but as time wore on, Jinyel grew accustomed to it. He remembered what he had been like the last time this happened, and the time before that. The Sweetwine woods. Monya. The Keha. He had been free of chains for so long, and yet time and again his fear made a slave of him anyway. He was past the irrationality now. The panic would last until morning, probably, or at least until they both awakened, and he would have a headache the rest of the day, but he would eventually get over it.

Sade stepped forward. Arms threaded around Jinyel, and it rubbed at something raw inside his chest. Jinyel’s eyes burned, and he hid them in the crook of Sade’s neck. Now came the bitter taste of shame, as it always did after these overreactions. The shame of fighting enemies that didn’t even exist, and losing anyway.

Jinyel pressed his eyes against Sade’s collar. He prayed the thief would not notice how damp the cloth became. He gripped with all his strength, and signed against the man’s back: No sorry. Everything is right. This is right.

“That is my dreamscape.” He spoke very slowly. It was the only way to keep his voice steady. “Your dreamscape is behind us. It might have changed, now that you are a dreamwalker. Or not. Dreamscapes are still made of dreams, and dreams can be nonsensical. That place is the garden of who you are. Your memories. Your hopes. Your fears. You can lose those things, if your dreamscape is damaged. You must be careful with it.”

Neither one of them had been hurt. He knew it even if he didn’t believe it. But he still had to make sure that wouldn’t change, and that Sade knew what was and wasn’t dangerous.

“You might not always control your dreams, but now you can always control how you react to them. You can defy your nightmares, or avoid them entirely. Your nightmares are… well, my nightmares are creatures. Out there. And a few places scattered around. I have learned to avoid them. None of my nightmares have caught me since I became a dreamwalker. You can learn to avoid yours, in whatever form they take. But with this power, there is danger. You can be hurt, and it can be permanent. If I strike you now, your waking body will bruise. If something hurts you here, it will hurt you out there. And the… Emeyans. They shouldn’t trouble you, if you aren’t a mage. But you must know of them.”

He turned his head, turned Sade, so they could both look to the tunnel’s exit.

“Do you see the night sky, Sade? Our dreamscapes are not infinite. There is a barrier around it, difficult to find unless it is broken. I can run through my forest all night without stopping, and instead of finding its edge, I will find myself back where I started. But my dreamscape ends. And beyond it is a world completely different from Idalos. It shifts, it bleeds, it mirrors your thoughts if you look upon it. That is Emea, a reality which behaves nothing like our own. Its creatures aren’t flesh and blood, like we are. And many of those creatures will devour you, if they make it into your dreamscape. That’s what would have happened if I used my magic here. An Emeyan beast would cut through the barrier to hunt me for my magic.”

His hands slipped under the loose hem of Sade’s shirt, not to grab or tease, just to feel. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stood and felt someone like this. Perhaps he never had. He felt the line of Sade’s spine, the ridges of his ribs, the rise and fall of his lungs. Safe and whole.

“And you are right.” His next breath was genuinely steady. “This place is an in-between. I don’t think my wolves can come here. I don’t know if your nightmares could do so. Your nightmares aren’t for me to know. But I’m not sure if either of us can wake up, either. You can only wake up when you are inside your own dreamscape. That is why you must always be cautious not to wander too far, and if you must wander, to sleep only in places you know are safe. But this tunnel, the path between our dreamscapes, will always be here for you to find. It has been a part of my dreams for a long time. I suppose we can each retreat to our side, when the time comes to wake. For tonight, at least.”

He cleared his throat, wiped his eyes on Sade’s shoulder, and glanced back to his own end of the tunnel.

“I think I can fortify my side,” he theorized. “Make the cave safer. But that is work for a different dream. We have accomplished enough for one night.”

He untwisted from Sade, but kept hold of his hand. With a tired sigh, Jinyel sat down against the wall of the tunnel, and tugged the thief to come join him.

“I don’t know a great deal about walking beyond my own dreams. I have given you what I know, and if you have more questions, I will do my best to answer. I’d rather you learn all you need while we are safe in this in-between, rather than after you’ve left it.”

[Sade Sauterne]

He’d hardly even glanced at Hunter’s dreamscape before being pulled (pushed, really) away. When he was guided to a turn, Sade peered out through the cave’s entrance to try and see more of it. Beyond the camp, there were trees, and above them, the night sky. Somewhere in all of it, the barrier. The same one that he supposed they must have crossed through to get to the point of not-quite-anywhere that they were in now, in the space between Hunter’s dream and his own.

Sade turned his head away from the glimpse of Hunter’s dreamscape. The howling must have come from the creatures that were his nightmares, then. Avoiding nightmares hardly felt like any power he might have envied – especially when any failure of avoidance meant possibly getting hurt when he awoke.

He didn’t remember all of his dreams, but he knew one thing for certain: he almost always died. He almost always got hurt. And what now of the things that often killed him? The nightmares, if that was what they were, what if he couldn’t avoid them? Was he forced to choose between letting it happen or destroying a part of himself?

An uneasiness licked at his skin like the warmth of a campfire. The thief tried to show as little of it as he could. For the most part, he managed. It was easier while Hunter’s touch was there to distract him, and Sade felt a shiver run the length of his spine at the same time that the hunter’s fingers did. The steady pace of his heart quickened beneath his hand; the expansion of his lungs stuttered through the tracing of his ribs. Hunter looked away from him and back to his end of the tunnel, and Sade did the same, his face dusted silver.

What had he been saying? Something about fortifying. Making the cave safer. Sade nodded and hoped that it was something he was meant to agree with.

The smallest huff of air signalled the thief’s displeasure as Hunter moved away from him, but he did not try to follow. The tugging on his hand brought him so far as to stand in front of the seated hunter, his features turned in such a way that nothing could be read from them but dissatisfaction.

“...Hm,” was all he gave, at first.

Hunter’s explanation made sense, he thought. As much as anything could, when they were talking about a world (or many worlds?) made of dreams and bound to no rules like their own, with barriers and nightmares and Emeyans and who knew what other dangers seemingly attached to every choice.

“Alright.”

Stepping closer now, Sade gave in and found a seat for himself with Hunter.

Well. That wasn’t entirely accurate. On Hunter was more accurate; he stepped over and sat down on the hunter’s lap, while his scarlet gaze squinted in the direction that led back to his own dreamscape. He didn’t pull him any closer, didn’t touch him any more beyond the hand that held his own and the legs that he’d made his seat.

“I have questions, yes. Firstly, when I dream – now that I’m a… dreamwalker. How am I meant to navigate my dreams without damaging them? If my nightmares were to come after me, and I could destroy them before they hurt me. Would that still be losing a part of me?”

That seemed to be what Hunter had meant, of course, but Sade did not abhor the idea of destruction. If there were things he hated, things he didn’t understand, things he did not want to think about, and he could damage them in return – what was so wrong with cutting out the rot?

“Secondly,” the thief continued, and his sharp red-eyed stare flicked to the hunter’s face. “I’ve told you of my dreams, at least in part. You must have seen one of them in crossing over. I would like to know what you dream about, Hunter, when you lay your pretty head down to sleep. Will you share that with me?”

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The thief listened with rapt attention. Every now and then the ghost of a frown would downturn his lips, but there seemed to be no immediate terror. At least, Jinyel hoped not. It was hard to tell sometimes, especially when Sade stood in silence while Jinyel sat in monologue. His voice quickened at the end, from an entirely different fear ― the fear that he was boring his companion.

Sade did join him, eventually. On the ground. On Jinyel. The hunter let out a surprised wheeze as he was sandwiched between wall and thief, and his injured back pressed against dirt. But it was easy to fix, and Jinyel turned them around to lean sideways against the wall, where none of the pressure would reach his back. Perhaps Sade was a bit restrained with the physical contact, but Jinyel made up for it. He barely noticed, honestly, and wrapped Sade up in his arms just as he’d done in the waking world. One leg under, one leg over, trapping the thief in his lap. Jinyel’s hands slid once more underneath Sade’s shirt to feel his heartbeat, and he used teeth to pull away the collar and rest his face in the bare crook of Sade’s neck. Now that he knew Sade was safe to touch, only the maximum amount of skin contact would satisfy him.

“Firstly,” Jinyel answered Sade’s neck, “I do not know. I have slain a handful of my nightmares since I became lucid, but there are so many more out there, I cannot tell if it made a difference. For me, the danger seems to be in the ground, and the structures upon it. Trees, buildings, that sort of thing. There used to be a castle in the forest a few miles from here. It must have been important, if it had its own place within me. But I do not know where it was in the waking world, or what sorts of things I did there. Those memories were destroyed when the castle was.”

Sade’s torso was not enough. Jinyel kept one hand there and set the other to run through his hair.

“Secondly… I do not dream of many things. Being hunted, mostly, or hiding from it. Things were more difficult when my wound was fresh, and I could not move as quickly as my nightmares. They were all whole, and I struggled to even walk.”

Despite this, he let out a soft chuckle.

“I remember the night they came closest to catching me. It was a band of slavers, old enemies, and there were so many that I was surrounded after only a short chase. They jeered at me for even trying to run, they shook their chains, they swore up and down that it was my destiny to always be caught, that they would always catch me, and there was nothing in the world I could do about it. I simply looked at them, said ‘Watch this,’ and then woke up. That was an unexpected boon of dreamwalking ― to wake myself up after however long I wish. Time feels different here, and it took some getting used to, but I don’t worry about oversleeping. I can measure how tired I am, if I concentrate, and how much more rest I do or don’t need.”

He brushed a lock of hair away from Sade's ear.

"I am happy to hold you here, dear one. I do not know how to measure a good dream or a bad one, but... you are a better dream than any I've had out there. How often will you come to this side? Will you come tomorrow? I can come to your side, of course, as often as you wish, but I'd rather not build anything inside you. Unless you build first, in which case I will help you. Once my side is fortified, it needn't remain as a camp. There's no need to move it, after all, so I might build a bed. Or find out how a stove works, and make one. I learned to use one not long ago, and it cooks better than an open fire. I've never cooked anything in a dream before -- perhaps we can try it together."

[Sade Sauterne]

One leg over, one leg under. Sade mirrored Hunter’s leg-trap as soon as he registered what he was doing, and hooked one of his legs around him. The only difference this time than in the waking world, where they slept, was that Sade turned himself in to face Hunter now.

Firstly, Hunter echoed against his neck, and every word that came after had the disorienting effect of both intriguing him and nearly slipping past his notice. These were the answers to the questions he’d asked, he wanted to hear what was said. And if Hunter was even half as right about the dangers of this place as his earlier reaction suggested him to be, then the information was vital, more important than just falling asleep and waking up here.

It was just incredibly difficult for Sade – a massive feat of strength, really – to make himself focus on anything other than Hunter’s hands, Hunter’s teeth, Hunter’s warm breath across his skin. The line between stop touching me and don’t stop touching me had never felt less visible to him than it did with his dear hunter.

One hand lifted from skin only to find purchase in his hair instead, and Sade wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. Didn’t care. He leaned his head back into it, baring more of his neck to the hunter.

The castle that he spoke of, and the memories that must have at one point presided within it, must have been the why behind those parts of himself that Hunter had told him no longer existed. Or, that perhaps they did, but in a place that he could no longer access as easily as a castle in his dreamscape.

Sade didn’t know what kinds of things within his own might hold what. He could figure that out, he supposed, if he wandered it enough. Perhaps now that he was lucid, he could decipher them, make sense of what was and what wasn’t important to keep safe.

This, he did not tell the hunter. Nothing but a gut feeling prevented him, one that told him it was one of those things that if he said it to someone else, they would only try to dissuade him from it. A form of self-destruction, but one that had its use. One that could change him. The idea burrowed too quickly and selfishly into his head before he could even think to second guess it.

It was only when Hunter spoke of evading the nightmare slavers that a smile cracked through Sade’s mask, and he set his own dark curiosities aside. Of course, if he could not fight his way through or evade them within whatever rules bound their nightmares in this world, his hunter would find other ways to use his power and escape. Sade brought his arms to loosely rest on Hunter’s shoulders, holding him around the neck, mindful not to place too much weight anywhere he thought that it might hurt.

“A stove?” said the thief. A bed, a stove to cook with. Together. Hunter did not wish to build anything within him, perhaps, but in himself… Sade appeared to consider his questions for a moment longer, his eyes shifting through shades of orange, of red, of pink.

A camp was one thing. It was… temporary, at least in terms of what it represented in the waking world. A place to take shelter in, to eat, to rest for as long as that place suited. Easy to put together (harder to do well), easy to pack up and move on.

A bed was solid, comfortable. A stove required far more effort. Things that belonged in a home. Sade tried to swallow and found something impeding him, lodged in his dry throat.

“I would–”

A cough interrupted him. Sade turned his head away, embarrassed. Even now, after all of this, it still felt like pulling his own teeth to be vulnerable, to admit that he wanted anything that could be taken away.

“I would like that,” he tried again. “I will… I will come here as often as you allow me, when I am able to sleep. Perhaps not as often as – as I would like to, unless I can find an answer to my sleeplessness.”

How cruel that would be, if he could be given this power and still lie awake almost every night, unable to use it.

“Maybe I can find an answer there, like you said,” said the thief, gazing into the darkness that led to his own dream. “Maybe not. But when I sleep, however often that may be. I would like to spend my nights with you. On your side, on mine, I don’t care. I’ll learn how to build something there for you too.”

Sade’s eyes still focused elsewhere, anywhere but on Hunter. It took more effort than he wanted to admit just to force them back to him.

“You always say these things – that you will not ask me, not hold me, not keep me, not build anything in me, as if you’d be doing any of it against my will. What if I wanted you to? What if I wanted to be kept by someone that was not merely forced to keep me?”

It felt like saying too much. It felt like saying nothing at all, and still baring his neck to be torn open, still wearing wounds that had long turned into scars.

“You don’t have to, if that’s what you mean. I don’t need that from you.” I don’t need it from anyone. “But you speak as if I couldn’t want it, either.”

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jinyel gazed out into his dreamscape, though he kept his head firmly on Sade’s shoulder as he did it. He surveyed the trees across the water, and wondered what would become of him if he cut their branches down. What would happen if he felled a tree? He wouldn’t, of course ― he didn’t have the skill to actually use a whole tree ― but with a wall of sturdy poles around the cave mouth, mud could be packed into the gaps to create something like a building. Probably. Jinyel had never done anything like that before, but inexperience had never stopped him from anything else.

The stove was the more complicated item. A stove needed metal, and Jinyel’s dreamscape was all forest and grassland. There were slaver camps throughout, and there were pots and pans in them. Could he steal items from his nightmares? Would those items persist until the next night?

What about… the castle? He had avoided that place since its destruction, except the few times the Hollow Prince had emerged there. Castles usually had metal inside them. If Jinyel sifted through the rubble, would he find pieces for a stove? The thought of approaching the wolf skeleton made him shiver, but if that was the only way to make a stove, then it was the only way to make a stove.

So lost was he in the specifics, it took a moment for Jinyel to realize Sade had spoken. He Hmmed, then grinned when he realized the thief was happy to come as often as he liked. Or, as often as he was able. The insomnia was still a problem, but if that was a medical ailment, Jinyel would find a cure. However long it took.

But the next question ― there was hesitation in it. Jinyel hesitated to answer. How could he explain, without first explaining who he was and where he had come from and all the times he had been kept, taken, and sculpted along the way? His past was a dead weight that only grew heavier each time he looked at it. He certainly didn’t want any of that weight to fall upon Sade’s shoulders.

Jinyel didn’t want to do anything to Sade which had been done to him.

I… He repeated the sign a few times across Sade’s back. I want you here. You know that. “I want to always have a path to you.” Selfish of me, I know. But it is what it is. “I must leave Almund. I don’t know when it will be safe to return. And for the… my… Woe, I move around a great deal. But even if the waking world steers our paths apart, it cannot part us here. No matter if we are on opposite ends of the world, and you are only a short walk away. I suppose it’s a sort of ‘keeping you.’ Keeping you close. Perhaps closer, if we find ways to become mixed. I do wonder what would happen if I planted one of my trees on your side, or you on mine. But I will not keep you by force. It will not hold you by force.”

He squeezed, and buried his face back into the crook of Sade’s neck.

“I will not be careless with you.” Never. Finality. “I will keep you if you ask. Build within you if you ask. Do anything, I suppose ― if you ask. But not unless you ask. I will not deny your freedom even by accident. And I’d… I’d rather not guess what you would or would not want. I’m not good at guessing. You are difficult to read, and I want to know for certain. Ask me for what you want. I want to give it to you.” Please.

[Sade Sauterne]

Right. Of course. That was – Sade didn’t know what he had been expecting, when he didn’t even know what he’d been asking Hunter for to begin with. Not to stick close to his side forever, always, in the waking world – he had listened to him speak of leaving far too often to even try to ask for that, and he knew that he was useless in the problems Hunter faced. So what? What was it that he wanted? What right did he have to ask for something that he didn’t understand and hadn’t ever known how to offer in return? Did he always have to ask for more?

Hunter had already given him this. A bridge to connect them, when they were apart. A path to always guide them to each other, when they wished. Hunter had given him more than anyone, and he’d done so willingly, without even being asked.

Sade knew where the dark, twisting feeling came from when it nestled in that space below his heart. He knew what it was, and the only way he’d ever known to respond to it was through hostility, through pushing away what made him feel it before he could be laughed at for it. And he knew, just as well, that he didn’t want to do that with Hunter.

The caress of his hands was light as they trailed across the hunter’s back, his shoulders, his arms, his neck. A delicate reversal of Hunter’s inspection of him. And when his touch reached the back of Hunter’s head, he combed his fingers through his hair.

“I want this. This is enough,” Sade murmured, turning his head just enough to kiss the hunter’s temple. “And I want you to be careful, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing – at least careful enough to return here. You can’t build a bridge and collapse your side of it. That's all I'll ask you for.”

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There came a bloom of disappointment at the thief’s answer. It took a moment of thought and another moment of roaming hands for Jinyel to sort through what he had expected, what he had wanted Sade to say.

This is enough, Sade said, when it felt like Jinyel had taken so much and given nothing at all.

The hunter made a dissatisfied huff against the thief’s neck. I can give you more, he wanted to say. Ask me to give you more. If this was all Sade wanted, then it was all Jinyel was entitled to give, but his hands itched. He was bursting at the seams with… something, the urge to give more, make more things happen, and Sade gave him nowhere to direct it.

So he fit gentle teeth around the tendon between jaw and shoulder. Not a bite, just a press, so he could lick for any the salt of any dream-sweat that might have manifested there. And so he could taste the pulse against his tongue, to be assured it still beat.

You can ask for more, he signed against Sade’s back. “This can only be the beginning, if you wish it so. I will remain one more day in this city to gather supplies. Will you think of something else to ask me for, before any miles come between us? Something to give you here, or when we wake. And then something else for the night after that. And the next night. And so on.”

A churr came from somewhere in his throat, either a symptom of his mutated tongue or some change of his second magic. He was coming to understand Monya better, particularly why she put her teeth on things she wished to keep. When he found no salt on Sade’s neck, he went down to the shoulder, then up to the jaw. It felt like keeping him.

“I want more tomorrow,” Jinyel gnawed out. I want you to want more. “But for this moment, for this night, this is everything I wanted. Tonight, this is a good dream.”

[Jinyel]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: Spooky dreamwalking initiation. Stunted emotions.

Thread: Against Nature
City/Area: Dreamscapes & The Veil

Renown: None
Do you want this to be considered for Mark Progression? No
If any PC in this thread is in a faction, please list them: None
Faction Points: N/A
Wealth Points: None
Collaboration: Yes
Local Language Thread? Yes, Common Sign

!	Message from: Pig Boy
	Done!

[Pig Boy]

Sade Sauterne

Feedback

Wooo, Sade is a very intriguing dreamer. His non-lucid state was very tricksy, in that I was convinced that the small fox was actually the dreamer ,the way it all seemed to shape around his pov. But no, it was the yellow-eyed huntress that was Sade all along. Very interesting.

The moment when an arrow struck the small fox was pretty tense! And I enjoyed the symbolism that Jinyel engaged with the small fox about making of him a small acorn in the snow. Perhaps he'll grow into a tree later? And that'll become a bridge between their dreamscapes? Or not! That;s part of the beauty of Dreamwalking, you get to figure what's important in the dreamscape and waht's less so.

Great writing!

Rewards

• XP: 15

Knowledges

• Dreamwalking: x11
• Detection: x5
• Caregiving: x3

Jinyel

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Jinyel is very deliberate and careful in his approach to visiting a dreamscape. It's fitting really, given his general disposition and his own experience in the initiation he underwent.

The dream between you both was very well textured with character development, and themes of brotherhood and affection. Or so it seemed to me. I love the approach you both took here, and of course shearing Jinyel's detailed thoughts on his conception of Dreamscapes was fascinating and probably correct too.

Great dream.

Unfortunately, you claimed way too many knowledges for the amount of posting you did. You're entitled to 19 total knowledges, so that was what I selected. If you'd rather have them in different skills, let me know. I took off Athletics, detection, and meditation.

Rewards

• XP: 15

Knowledges

• Navigation: x6
• Athletics: x6
• Dreamwalking: x7
• Detection: x4
• Strength: x6
• Meditation: x4