#multiple scenes

Short play written by me. Unedited. Grandma’s prompt: poison ivy in the pot of a rose in a greenhouse.

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Con O'neil and Matthew Gray Gubler were trying to find ways to believably join the cast of Euphoria (a show i have not seen) as a high powered yet stressed business man (understandable) and a sexy demon (???????) respectively... the planning sessions were involved.

earlier: someone was trying to convince me that the floopy 90's white boy hairstyle was called Henry Curtains. i think it was a friend of mine, because he was considering the hair style himself (E. O.)

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a dream about Khala's family in Australia, helping write down a schedule for the kids schooling, while Paul was being an angry bear? then we were all on a city bus.

later, i was planting organic strawberries in a war-torn country, while someone in the background was on a breakup call with their boyfriend. then the person who was hosting the strawberry group showed me an important trick about how to sanitize clothing using a very strong ultraviolet light coming from a screen. it could not have been good for her eyes, but denim fabric she showed me was incredibly soft, like flannel. a handful of the Kardashians were in flak jackets and were being escorted around while they were trying to get on some sort of military bus out of the war-torn city.

The first one: I wasn’t a character in this part, it was just third person. There had been a massive shipwreck, and when I say massive, I mean the ship was probably at least 100 stories, and they weren’t all the regular size either. Some were like 10 times the size of a regular floor. But this ship had been left in the ocean for a while, but now it had been found was was being explored/excavated by a young king. Things were going well, nobody had died, it was slow going but they had managed to get the first couple of floors out of the water, and they had found some interesting things. The king was underwater on the 14th floor at this point, and on that floor was the reason he had decided to unwater the ship in the first place. The device there was in surprisingly good condition and he couldn’t wait to get it out of the water and into his castle. He did have to lift the entire floor out of the water, though, he couldn’t just pull it out of the room. They were still a number of hours from getting that floor above the water, they couldn’t go too fast or the ship might crack in half again. Of course that was when trouble started.

Remember when I said that some of the other floors were absolutely gigantic? Well, an equally massive sea creature had discovered that fact and had turned that level into his home. And he wasn’t happy about it being moved. Somehow there were no deaths, but it was a close thing. The king managed to get his attention before he could do much, and they started negotiating. (This was just considered fairly common knowledge in my dream, so I never got an explanation or description of this, but some people can project feelings, and actual words if they’re particularly strong, to other people and animals. Not all animals are intelligent enough to receive this, but some of them are and and can project right back at the humans. The king was one of these people.) These are some of the details I don’t remember, but the king managed to calm the beast down and make a deal. They would be given enough time to lift the ship out of the water just enough to get what they came for, and then they would let it go and stop disturbing the isolated giant. Otherwise they would destroy him AND his ship. He growled at that but couldn’t argue. Threatening them if they took longer or went back on their word, he turned and flicked his tail dismissively as he left. The king turned to his people and gave a quick pep talk, urging them to speed up, but stay careful, and not be too afraid. And that’s the end of that scene.

The second scene takes place a while later, they had retrieved what they needed from the ship, let the ship back down, and retreated peacefully. Stuff happened, but they made it back to the castle, where a little bit more stuff happened. Which is where the next scene picks up. I’m an actual character in this part, I’m definitely not royalty but can’t remember my origin story, but the king had decided I would be his ally. I was mute, I couldn’t speak or make any noise at all, but I had the same ability as the king, to project things. I was pretty strong with this, could project full on sentences, but at some point in my life I had learned that it was not smart to let people know about that. The king had found out about this somehow and together we had decided that in order to accomplish his plan, it would be best for me to continue keeping this a secret. But he was also keeping the fact that I was now an important part of that plan a secret, that meant that most people assumed he was courting me and didn’t like that.

One person, his mother figure? didn’t like that so much that she decided she had to do something about it. So one day she managed things and made it so I was alone in an isolated, rarely used part of the castle before ambushing me. I wasn’t expecting that so she overpowered me and started hissing at me, at how I wasn’t worthy and would ruin his life and wouldn’t make a good wife and everybody knew that he was going to marry this other girl. I was struggling but she had me by my hair and in an awkward position and wasn’t all that strong in the first place so she dragged me over to the wall and pinned me in place. I couldn’t even tell her to stop, that it wasn’t what she was expecting, that it wasn’t like that at all, my eyes wide in panic. My mindset went back to my previous life when it was safest to be unnoticed, so I stayed quiet mentally, not even trying to project at her to get her to understand. So she branded my forearm. Another thing that was common knowledge in this world, so it wasn’t explained. But I’m pretty sure it was something about slaves, that anyone with a specific brand in the right place was a slave and there was almost no way to get your freedom back. And how on earth could a former slave be worthy of becoming queen? She was going to get me out of the castle one way or another. And that scene ended. Again, stuff happened, I was somehow saved, and we move on to the last scene.

In this one, I’m another actual character, not the same one from before, but a sarcastic, unimpressed, and intelligent girl (think Jessica Jones). No projecting powers. This me is definitely not a contender for the hand of the king, thankfully, but I am his ally somehow. Another girl, someone the people think the king should marry, is actually a traitor but nobody knows that yet. I decide that we need to catch her red handed. The device that was retrieved from the ocean has a signature sound, and a lot of people want to get their hands on it, but the king has it hidden away until he needs it and very few people know where it is. Even fewer know what it actually looks like and does. So I rig something else up quickly, some kind of machine out of spare parts that ends up sort of looking like a radiator with tubes coming out of it. The important thing, though, is that it makes a sound that is similar to what the device would make when it was in use. That’s slightly more well known, but it’s still not a lot of people. I’d timed it so that she was in the castle and only a floor or so away from the room I was in, so I hide behind the door and settle down to wait. It doesn’t take long, she rushes into the room, hair flying, and stares at the machine I’ve created in awe. Then she sees me behind her and turns around. She doesn’t say anything, not yet, just stares at me suspiciously. I raise my eyebrow at her. My alarm in real life goes off, waking me up and stopping me from knowing what happens next.