#vember

Daily Writing Challenge 2021 Day 11: Moonlight/Watch

"C'mon, Toffee, I know you're hungry. You're always hungry. Look, I even took out the cores already, see?"

The moose, as he'd been doing for the last two days, didn't respond to the boy's whining. Lucien had been briefly hopeful when he saw Toffee's ear flick, but he figured out pretty quick that that was just because a fly had landed on it.

Okay, what would Terry do? ...Probably not have any trouble, since Toffee was only doing this because Terry wasn't here. That isn't the most helpful answer in the world, though, so... if I were Terry...

"Um. Hey," the skinny, barely-into-his-teens boy did his best impression of a 6-foot-tall brick wall of a man in his late 30s, which of course was terrible and he knew it. "Big...man? Big lad?"

Finally, Toffee moved, but only to turn his head so slowly that Lucien could swear his neck bones creaked like the door to a haunted house, and stare at him. Never in his life had Lucien seen an expression of pure, raw disdain like this before, certainly not on Terry's funny-looking ton-and-a-half puppy. It was like being laughed at, but worse, because the one laughing was about as smart as the apples Lucien had been trying to feed him.

"Speaking with you is memory "Both missed and a most joyous journey "Catching up with one another beneath ghostly lamplight "Sharing gossip and swapping tales on foggy nights "A childhood neither of us really knew "A familial bond neither expected grew "Idiot adventures "Simple, heartfelt gestures "Nothing less than family true "Including the occasional noogie, too."

“Oooh, tha’s a tricky one... I think if I were gonna pick fast, I’d ‘ave t’ say...phoo, this’un takes some explainin’. An’ it’s a li’l racy, but. Well. Trust me.

“Me an’ Kaewynn’d called it quits a while ago, because she didn’t see a way t’ make love work, an’ since then I’d started gettin’ closer t’ Pin after tha’. Lit’rally th’ day after Pin told me she wanted t’see ‘ow we worked in a more official sorta way, Kaewynn came ‘round in th’ evenin’ an’ asked me if we could give thin’s a try. Which by itself was already pretty fuckin’ funny, but...

“Well. Me an’ Kaewynn were gettin’ a bit...busy...celebratin’, y’know? An’ we were in my kitchen, so I ‘ad ‘er sittin’ on a counter an’ I was just about t’ave m’self a snack--’ead’s right there an’ ev’rythin’--an’ then Vember poked ‘er ‘ead in, cuz she wanted t’ stop by an’ ‘ave a chat about ‘er day an’ maybe an actual snack b’fore she went ‘ome fer th’ night.

“She was startled, I was startled, Kaewynn was startled. An’ then Vember, prim ‘n’ proper so much o’ th’ time, says ‘Throw in a li’l rejuvenation to keep thin’s int’restin’ on ‘er way outta th’ kitchen.

“I managed t’old it t’gether until I’d gotten th’ door locked, an’ then me ‘n’ Kaewynn both cracked up laughin’ an’ went t’ bed.”

"And what did you dream?" Vember prodded.

"... it was so pretty... Never saw a night sky so bright as tha', not even dead o' winter back 'ome. Not once. An' great trees, bigger'n Teldrassil, maybe. At least as big, but... not th' same, either. But there were other thin's, too, an' my mouth tasted like th' inside of an old wound dressin', y'know what I mean. Nightmare air taste. Like lightnin' smells, awful, greasy. Wrong.” Leon picked up his cider mug, but more to have something to do with his hands than out of any real desire to drink it. “It didn't feel like mem'ries do, but it felt... familiar?"

"There's still much damage to the Dream, after the Nightmare's encroachment. But at the same time...It almost seems like there's something else, a scent on the wind I can't quite pick out,” Vember replied, her own gaze a bit distant.

"I din't know wha' t'make of it. I still don't. It felt like..." His fingers curled and uncurled a few times, grasping for words he couldn't find. "It was like bein' in th' same city but th' wrong street, it was th' same an' completely dif'rent.”

Vember nodded, understanding, hands wrapped around her cup. "That's not terribly unusual for the Dream in general, in my experience; it's...the same, yet different--more somehow, than the world we walk awake in. But...there is something...like a storm coming."

Drumming his fingers on his own cup, Leon stared across the table at her. "I've never gone t' th' Dream on my own b'fore, Vember. I din't think I ever would. Certainly not blitzed outta my mind. An' then when I got there it looked like tha' an' th' squidgey feelin' was gone, th' outta-place feelin'... It was a wrong place but it wasn't th' wrong place fer me t'be." Realizing how that last bit sounded, he ducked his head a little and added, "I think."

"Trust that instinct," she said. "Yours are better than you realize."

"Th' dream, though? Me?"

"You are a druid, Leon, believe it or not. I've seen you."

---

So the Dream, now. We’re going to the Dream? Is that what we’re doing, man?

Leon stared into the bathroom mirror as he wiped the dregs of shaving cream and stubble from his cheeks. He’d had to admit to himself that he’d let it grow more than he usually did; it wasn’t really stubble anymore so much as a full beard, and he hated the way he looked with a full beard. Kaewynn wasn’t a fan of it, either. He’d be dead in the ground before he cut away the bit at his chin, though; that was the good bit, and he liked it, and so did his wives.

Guess that’s what we’re doing then. At least back to the grove. For some peace, if not answers. So tired of questions, questions, questions... Who knows, maybe someone else saw what we did.

Leave-in conditioner for such a small amount of hair felt silly, but Leon prided himself--as much as he could handle being proud of anything of his, anyway--on his hair being soft and plush, and that included the hair on his face. Once he’d dealt with that, he washed his hands, and headed downstairs and outside to the outbuilding where he kept his leatherworking equipment, and his armor.

And what then? If someone saw it? We learn to dream on purpose? Walk it? To what end? We’ve traversed the Nightmare before. This will be no different. Even if the Nightmare was horrible... who knows. There was something in there, though. It wasn’t all Nightmare. Need to know what that was. It wants me there. Why does it want me there? What wants me there?

His fingers trailed slowly across the boiled, purple leather with its barklike details and dozens of little repaired nicks and cuts all about it.

So we go to the grove to dream, I guess. They’re going to be worried. ... They’ll understand, though. If we explain it right. And we are telling them. Not just... running off. That’d be daft. And callous. Can’t do that to them.

Biting his lip, his hand stilled over a much more significant repair, low on the right side of the abdomen, where a spear had bitten deep. It’d taken him weeks to fully recover, even with extensive healing done within hours.

Trust those instincts, yeah? Something’s wrong. Not just here, but there, wherever there is. There’s danger of some sort where we’re trying to go. So what do we do?

Muttering under his breath, Leon drew one of the simple, heavy daggers from the sheath on the belt and tested its edge. It had been sharpened only a few weeks ago, the last time he’d been prompted by his own bad feelings to check, and it remained sharp enough to give his thumb a mild slice for his slip of the mind. Satisfied, he took the entire kit off the dummy, and began to get dressed.

“'Ope we’re wrong, but prepare t’be right.”

“Just what are you smiling about?”

“Of th’ cells I’ve shared with you thus far, I think this’un’s th’ comfiest. Look, there’s cushions on this bunk we’re sittin’ on.”

“You do recall this is a jail cell, yes? That we’re in prison?”

“We’re in a drunk tank, luv. Cuz we’re drunk. Far cry from prison.”

“Maybe you’re drunk. I’m quite sober.”

“Yer listin’, luv.”

“I most certainly am n–” Vember eyeballed the wall that was much closer to her face than she recalled it being a few minutes ago, and righted herself while giving Leon a look that dared him to say something. He raised both hands palms-out and laughed softly, leaning back against the wall.

Silence filled the cell for a little while. His was dozy and tired, hers was surly and offended.

As tended to be the case, Leon was the first one to break it.

“I am sorry about the eggs. I din’t know they were off.”

“So you’ve said.”

Leon sighed. She was still being short with him, and that meant she was still mad, no matter how polite and civil her tone was (any Gilnean with a functioning brain knew the more polite and civil your tone was, the more angry you actually were, anyway). Knowing better than to keep trying to apologize, but still tipsy enough that he didn’t have a better idea, he turned on the bunk and reached out to pick some dried yolk from her hair.

She flinched like she’d been electrified and looked at him like he was a little green man from space. He only shrugged one shoulder and said, “Did y’want it left there, then?”

The silence returned, shifting eventually from surly to grudging comprehension, and Vember turned her back to him to let him clean her up as best he could without a hairbrush.

After a few minutes of picking foul-smelling goo from her hair, Leon smiled to himself. “Y’kin work on mine after I’m done. Pretty sure there was molasses in yer last ‘andful.”

“Don’t push it, Leon.” She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t have to; he could hear her smiling.

“Love you too, sister mine.”

Another pause, then Vember chuckled softly.

“We really must stop drinking in kitchens.”

“If nothin’ else, we should prolly make sure th’ kitchen is actually mine first.”

“I imagine that would definitely have helped.”