#rox thinks

Of course he didn't tell anyone about that, that was stupid. It was just a dream anyway and he wasn't going to lie, some of his dreams were definitely pretty bananas. But the next morning when he came down for breakfast as usual, Jane looked maybe a little ruffled as she stood in the kitchen, no doubt visiting from next door for pancakes. Her brow had been creased and uncertain.

It'd taken them nearly an hour of quiet to realize they'd both forgotten to start of their usual pranking marathon. In all thirteen years of his life, that was the first birthday he hadn't taken a cake to the face upon waking and something about that had always sat with him as wrong.

Neither of them brought it up.

The next three years trickled by as normal as could be for a teen like him growing up in some weird converged troll/human society. Just you know, suffering from the occasional weird dreams peppering his subconscious instead of just the strain of more puberty related things (because really those were stressful enough). They were almost like an inconsistent series of stories of a constant underlying adventure, of strange lands and of friends he'd only seen pictures of and those he'd yet to meet, aliens (aliens!!) and flying. Of course they were fleeting, forgotten after a few weeks time despite the strange impression they left him with, the restlessness under his skin that refused to ebb until they were left forgotten.

And of course there would come mornings that those same strange trickling memories would lie just out of reach, an after image of splintered thoughts with whispers of nightmares that had him breaking out in a cold sweat. Often enough his eyes would sting with the threat of tears for reasons he just couldn't name for the life of him and so would be left throughout the day with the most unsettling pressure on his heart. At one point he'd considered bringing it up to his more.. enlightened friends but no the last thing he wanted was a psyche evaluation. Hell, he'd prodded at Dave just a tad about maybe weird dreams and the dude had locked down so tight that John immediately backpedaled. Forget bringing it up with Dirk or Jake then. And Jade would get too excited about details. Instead, John murmured his thoughts into the dark the nights his own cousin couldn't seem to sleep and she'd perched, knees drawn up on the end of his bed looking just as bewildered. It was a sibling thing maybe, they surmised or perhaps just cursed with the gift of vividly surreal dreams that more often than not left a strange aftertaste.

When he turned sixteen, the world shattered. 

Waking from his sleep this time wasn't waking so much as it was being shot in the chest and forcefully ejected to consciousness with how quickly he'd shot up from his bed and stumbled from the comfort of his blankets in a daze. But there it was, all there right behind his eyelids and clear as can be and none of it had been a dream it couldn't have been. His chest heaved and every forceful breath shook his many posters and trembled through every loose paper he could see and wow. Wow. He laughed and the windows rattled and the trees outside rustled and they'd done it, they'd won. This new universe was theirs.

The noted and dear chime of pesterchum rang out to alert him and as he shook his mouse and stirred his monitor from sleep, he grinned bright and clear as day at the memo that sprung up and the sudden screen name additions to the list that went on forever.

And of course, first things first before addressing everyone for the first time in forever, there was something he had to do.