Somnambulance

A miracle. Isn't that what one would call it? Just a few hours ago, hadn't he closed his eyes and went to sleep? Not by choice of course, but the body knows when it is time to get some rest. This young man now stood in a circle with seven others. Before he had been sitting at his computer--surely his face would be either on the keyboard or his desk right now because he had to be dreaming at the moment, and in order to be dreaming, he would have had to have fallen asleep. Through his glasses, his stormy gray eyes gazed upon the others. Who the hell were they? They didn't seem very familiar. In his research of dreams, something he took pleasure in performing, he learned that the people who appeared in dreams were usually people that dreamer has seen in the waking world, whether they be strangers or people that are close to them like friends and family members. Did that mean he had seen these people before? That's when it occurred to him that he was thinking an awful lot for this to be a dream. Wasn't he supposed to be in his subconscious? What need was there for thought? Things were just supposed to transpire and then he'd wake up. But this...this was definitely different. This wasteland...it was somewhat unsettling.

Do you recognize the world around you? Or is everything...a mystery?

Now that was an interesting question. Why would any of this be recognizable? There was nothing here. The voice itself seemed so gentle and sweet--it was a welcome relief to the silence which was something the young man typically valued. Regardless, this place was definitely a mystery, along with whatever circumstance that had brought him to it. His eyes widened and he gasped audibly as things were brought to life, the very dust from the ground lifted and conforming into some sort of room in which he now stood. The others didn't move; they all remained in that circle as the voice explained to them that this place was the Innovatory or something. What all does this have to do with anything? This is making absolutely no sense, the man thought drolly, gazing around the rather vacant room. A beautiful table. A couple of nightstands. And no ceiling. All of it was way too odd. The voice directed them to look above, and in that abysmal sky, the man was able to see the frightening construction of some sort of web. The voice didn't even have to explain what it was for it to strike a bit of fear into him. The Dreamcatcher. Such an ominous name... The Reaver...the being who constructed it. Why would he make such a thing and what was its purpose? The voice mentioned that there were no victims, so does that mean it was meant to kill or harm people?

Adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, the young man felt a headache coming on. He scratched at his light green hair for a second in more thought. The voice didn't want to reveal its identity because apparently it wasn't important. Similarly, everything was just supposed to be natural for them. They were chosen, but the real question was what exactly were they chosen for? Climbing to the top of the Innovatory? What did that even imply? The man felt frustration mounting within him. Time being of the essence. Waiting for some Eccentric One. It was all vague bullshit and he was just about done. When the voice ended its tirade, the man was the first to break the circle, pacing over to the table and pulling out one of the chairs tentatively as if it would bite him or something, but as soon as he had deemed it safe, he took a seat and rested his elbows on the table so he could effectively clutch his head, his fingers massaging his temples which slightly disrupted the frames of his glasses. This was ridiculous. Trust the others. Who even were they? People that would restrict his freedom. People that would judge him. People that would probably stab him in the back without a single regard. People were selfish. Oppressive. And he didn't have any need of them. None at all.

 

She woke with a sudden jerk, painfully aware of what was her supposed consciousness spurring to life, and a scream that was dying in her throat. Platinum hair fell in tendrils across her shoulders, down her back, clutching at her skin, as though they were hands reassuring her that things were okay - she was okay. Reassuring her that she was alive. But as she sat up - slowly, so as not to smash her head off of the bunk that she had thought would greet her - she realized that she could not be on her lower bunk, snugly in her home.

Shit... am I dead?

She genuinely could not tell. Was this what the afterlife was? A small circle - some sort of shitty post-life support group, maybe consisting of seven other figures? Less? She couldn't tell what was body and what was the bleak nothingness. Though Cæl had never really expected much of the world after she died, she thought she would at least get the gratification of knowing how it happened... The girl tried to speak; to get some sound out of her lungs... but it wouldn't come, no matter how hard she tried. A tear started to well up in her eye, though she was much too brave to let herself sob out. Instead, she buried her face in her forearm, wiping away the beginnings of a would-be storm of crying. Her clothes remained the same ones she had fallen asleep in. The same orange shirt... the same blue jeans. Was she really dead...?

For now, it is nothing. This area is special, though.

Special HOW?! Cæl thought, angrily in her head. She did not dare open her mouth for fear of letting the ashlike specks floating around into her mouth. The girl had too many close encounters with fire in her dreams... she had been so destructive... and speaking of dreams, she became finally cognizant that she was being spoken to. The area around her shifted. Gone was the bleak greyness that she had thought of as her own death, surrounded by figures she could still not identify. Were they supposed to be identified? Was she supposed to understand anything about this place...?

Cælium lifted herself off of the ground. This all felt real, but the voice assured her that this was something called 'The Innovatory.' Whatever the hell that meant. All the same, she had been told finally that she was dreaming. Wait... so I'm not dead? Her heart skipped at least three beats immediately: she wasn't dead. Oh, praise... err, whatever you are! she mentally called out to the voice, lifting her hands high in the air and shutting her eyes, inhaling deeply the world around her as it formed. As something of an agnostic, she wasn't certain whether the detached voice was something to be deified quite yet. Regardless, the young girl with the platinum hair now stood in a room. And within its confines, three others who were awake, and figures that yet remained hazy, and seemingly asleep. But then again... who is really awake if we're in a Dream World?

When she finally opted to open her eyes, the voice reassured her that her eyes were not deceiving her. The room had no ceiling. Instead, it had a sickeningly-striking pattern. Immaculate, like a spider's web. The voice called it a Dreamcatcher, and said that it was to be feared. But it remained elusive as to her purpose here - in fact, it never seemed to address her directly. Just climb?! What the hell kind of instructions are those? Of course, like any good deity, the detached voice had to be confusing as all hell. Cæl faintly wondered if there was some sort of deity-council that came up with rules surrounding their inherent vagueness. Could things not be simple? Or was it some consequence of human stupidity? Whatever it was, Cæl didn't like it. Who gets off on giving these deliberately-awful instructions... And on top of that, she couldn't trust these other figures in the room as far as she could trust her own eyes. Rooms without ceilings? Celestial spider webs? Nightmares giving way to death giving way to lucidity? Hah, some dream this was.

She faintly heard a feminine voice uttering out a harsh cuss, as though she had done this before. Removing her gaze finally from the display above them, Cæl tried to let her eyes adjust to the room again. Finally, the silhouetted figures became more apparent, and the source of the voice posed a simple, almost obvious, methodical question - "Okay. Are either of you two real?" The question was not, apparently, inclusive of her. The urge overcame her to at least make her presence known. After all, it didn't seem like the dude with the green hair and the glasses was about to respond, nor the other girl, absently staring off into the floor, beneath a hood.

But wait.

Could she... was she allowed to talk yet? She opened her mouth, inhaled deeply, and...

"Well, I don't know about these two, but I'm real. At least... I thought I was." she shuffled in place, confidence to speak finally wavering. "You seem... knowledgeable. D'you know what's up here?"

 

"Ugh, of course I'm real," the young man with the glasses was quick to interject. This girl "didn't know about them two" supposedly. Would they be some figments thrust into the room? No, of course not. Everyone in this immediate vicinity was real; the man was sure of it. And they were brought here for a reason, no matter how unbelievably nonsensical. Finally releasing his temples from their constant massage, the man stood up from the table and turned to face the platinum-haired girl--she was quite pretty. Adjusting his glasses, he bowed his head. "The name's Aaron Cadence. Call me Era though. I have a real name. And a real existence. Just the same as I believe that the rest of us here are real...or as close to real as you can get in a realm like this," he explained, his voice dropping in both harshness and volume as he neared the end of his statement. Would they eventually fade into nothingness? Become mingled and mangled with the elements of the imaginary? Another patch on the quilt of the Dreamscape... It was here that he realized he had NO freedom, and it gave his heart the feeling as though it were being squeezed. He would have to follow whatever instructions he was given to escape. He would have to follow, for he was positive that venturing off on his own would lead to his inevitable demise. Even if the others rebelled and went with him, chances are that would just mean more casualties. They were at the mercy of whatever force brought them here. It may not have been very threatening, but should it wish to quash an uprising, he had every belief that it could do so and quite easily at that.

Era's eyes focused on the girl who had originally asked the question of whether or not the people were real. What a gaudy scarf. For whatever reason, Platinum over here had some sort of sneaking suspicion that this chick knew something, but Era greatly doubted that. Why would she even? She couldn't even distinguish what was real and what was not! Granted he wasn't in any better position, but at least he didn't go around claiming that he could. Even still, if she could make sense of what was told to them, that was a different story--another thing that Era really couldn't do. The headache was still causing him a bit of annoying anguish. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, his stoic gaze never turning from Gaudy Scarf.

"I believe she means more specifically, do you have any idea about what to make of our instructions? A simple climb it would seem at first sound, but is it really that simple?" Era inquired on his own. There were still the others who were lingering about, but the sooner they could distinguish what needed to be done, the better. They would be that much closer to returning to the waking world, assuming they were indeed inside the world of dreams, something he would have never even imagined before now. Not to mention they were pretty much given a time limit. "Finish before the Dreamcatcher is completed..." he muttered inaudibly to himself while waiting for Gaudy Scarf's answer, trying to mull that fact over in his mind. Would something cataclysmic happened if they failed their mission? Oh, wouldn't that be just delightful...

 

He awaken, blinking the reminants of sleep from his eyes. He had fallen asleep, what hadn't felt too long ago, curled under the sheets of his bed. Now, he pondered why his glasses had returned to his face and why he was in this bleak room with complete strangers. His thoughts turned to the atmosphere and environment that surronded him, and that is when he first recognized a voice speaking to him. Them? It seemed to be addressing the entire group. His thoughts seemingly answered.

"Creativity?" he thought. Shaking the thought, he closed his eyes, attempting to remember anything that might have happened that caused him to be here. Unable to conjure up a logical reason, he returned his attention to the room, his eyes opening to take it in. He noticed the white room and took in the other bodies around him. His mind drifted back to his home life. "Wait, have I been abducted? Mom... dad... where are you?" he thought. Closing his eyes tightly, he took a deep breath inwards. He wanted to control his emotions now, the strangers might want to kill him. As the voice faded away, mentioning for them all to wait for someone and learn their allies... "Allies!?" the boy thought as he found himself able to move again.

Pushing himself from his position on the ground, he adjusted his glasses and pushed them up the bridge of his nose. He scratched the back of his head, glancing around at the other people sitting and laying around him. Other four of the other seven seemed to have awaken, and the boy caught himself staring at each one. The one key fact he noticed of each, they were all considerably, to him, older than himself. He already felt pushed out, just on the sheer age difference. He shuddered slightly, this almost confirmed his believe that they might want to kill him, no matter what the voice had said. Pulling his legs in, he pushed himself slightly away from the group and moved his legs into a cross-legged position. He heard a question flutter out about being real, and he found himself nodding and thinking, "I'm about as real as you must be." He scratched his neck, just watching the other four mumble and shuffle. He sighed, a single tear on his cheek. "I've got to get home. Mom... dad... I need them, and they need me," he thought, wiping the tear. His thoughts turned to determination. He didn't know who to trust, but the voice seemed to imply he needed to trust these other people, but he wasn't quite sure if he could just yet.