Log:Meeting the Shatterman

Meeting the Shatterman
You are not supposed to be here. Wake up.
Participants Dielle, Shatterman/Puzzlebox as ST	9 March, 2017 Dielle properly meets the Shatterman.
Location Dreamscape
It was one of those afternoons. She worked a late shift, had breakfast and hit class. Nap time. She earned it. And when one sleeps they wander and perhaps some days more lucidly than others. Familiar spaces melted into open spaces which melted into strange things which one takes for granted to be similar. What was strange was she seemed maybe the only one in all these trees. The trunks were a dark blue-green; so saturated they were almost black. The canopy was a vivid orchid like a wisteria. Long fronds hung from boughs like running watercolour masquerading the black and white shadows underneath. So far, this seems like a damn good dream to be having. Dielle finds that she's really liking these trees: they're PRETTY. She starts running through the fronds, because let's face it, in her dream, she's not tired. And running through flower-things is somehow very unicornly. Well, rainbow-unicornly. Ok, it's just her. Suburbia fell away and here...well here felt calmer. Perfectly still as if the middle of something. There was the sound of something familiar called to her beyond the curtain and fronds. There was also something behind her? Well maybe she wasn't alone? The voice ahead of her was humming a lazy song. Bethy? That gets Dielle's attention, in much the same way a dog looks when he suddenly sees a squirrel. Bethy? She starts moving forward, forgetting to look behind her in the quest to find that dream-daughter that she lost. It's as if the real life has fallen away again and she's that dream-Lily, the happy one married to Jon that she hasn't been able to be since she encountered the Pale Man. Except this time, she's still DL, too. Idly she may or may not have been Lily. She was a blend of many things. The feelings that lost left her with, either way, still seemed very real. There was a faint breeze through the trees that carried faint words only... the air was dead still. Indiscernibly so. Fingers lightly tugged at her sleeve faintly from behind. Dielle stops suddenly at the tugging, and turns to see who's doing it. She's got this distracted look on her face: she has to get to Bethy! "What is it?" she says as she turns around, entirely unprepared for anything that's happening in this dream, but determined to get to her daughter anyway. He was right fucking there. Lean, lanky, pale. His lithe form made him seem impossibly tall, though in truth, she may have been taller than him. The pale man wore shadows as shrouds hanging off of him like tattered memories stolen. Maybe the fabric of hopes and dreams shredded and reforged. He was staring at her with pale white orbs for eyes that reflected silver back in the light from his thin, gaunt face almost feline like. Dielle would recognize him as no beast she knew. Beasts knew one another. This wasn't beast it was denizen, or her olfactory senses deceived her entirely too much. The tone was neither angry nor amused. It was accusatory in the faith patience of the wind, <<You can't go to her. Can't save her. You're not supposed to be here>> Dielle jumps a bit when she sees him. She wasn't expecting him. "But she's mine," replies Dielle. "She's my daughter. I have to save her." It's like she understands him and doesn't, at the same time. "How can I be here if I'm not supposed to be?" There was a faint, skeleton grin on the figure and he whispered, the sound catching up like an echo "Who do you think you are?" Not audacity. Question? Did this... thing ask her to justify herself? His heat picked up and he said "Don't worry. The crows will come." "I'm pretty sure I'm me," is DL's reply, because she really has no clue how to answer that question. But the comment about the crows has her turning and RUNNING in the direction that she heard Bethy's voice coming from. No damn crow is getting HER daughter. The fingers latched like a shackle around her wrist as she turned to run. The pale man in this space looked like a fleeting thought but he didn't budge. Was the bastard toying with her deliberately? "That girl is in a box. That's not the doll. Whoooo are you? How are you going to fix anything if you don't know that?" Below them another glyph appeared on the ground, like the one in the carpet in that room. Dielle struggles to get her wrist away from that grip, but she can't move. "I'm me. I'm a...I'm a unicorn. I'm Jon's partner. I'm a bartender and...I am who I am, and I'm Bethy's mother and Mattie's mother and Jon's wife and my name is..." She pauses because Lily and Dielle are warring in her head, both trying to come out of her mouth at the same time which is making her tongue tangle. She stares at the pale man, horrified and mute, then down at the glyph and back at him, trying to form words and not being able to. The Pale shrouded haunt let go of her wrist but it was... aww hell that rune that held her in place? Maybe that's why Bethy never ran. He walked but made no sound. Maybe this was one of the shadow people? They steal children right? Her feet, hooves, were heavy and rooted to the earth. The pale creature turned with his head under that shrouded hood and those too luminous eyes. He sorta looked like a young Darth Sideous skulking about. From his fingers? A box... Oh god... this again. The whisper s through the trees came, and for all of its intent she understood as if it were her own language somehow, "You don't even know yourself to know who she is, Unicorn." The skeletal grin twisted the corner of his mouth. He spoke without speaking. "How are you going to get back if you don't know who you are? Did we learn ... nothing?" Dielle struggles to understand what the Pale Man is saying. It's not that she doesn't understand the words, but the questions don't make any sense to her. "It's a dream. Of course I'll know the way back," is what comes out of her mouth, and she's relieved she was able to say anything at all. "I don't understand what I'm supposed to be learning. But she's my daughter, I have to get to her!" Good going, horse. When in doubt, run? But she can't move her hooves, for all that she's trying, and since when does she have hooves? That was a fantastic question. What the hell he meant was anyone's guess. The box, the one she saw him have Bethy stuffed into before, spun on end like a die whirling on edge in his palm. Apparently he wasn't satisfied with the answer. "You didn't the last time They took you did you? Is it that you want to go back so badly? Or have you not left? Remember: You kind don't breed." The singing continued where a bit of a swing could be seen. Mattie's shoes? Dielle flinches, even while not understanding what it is she's supposed to be learning. "Don't matter, she's still my daught..." She pauses. Mattie? Oh, no, he was going to take Mattie, too? "Are you one of Them?" she demands, blood running cold and so scared that her mouth has gone completely dry. Mattie's voice called to her. The child wanted her to go to him. Maybe he felt her panic. "Mama?" The pale man looked towards the kid with a glance to Mattie, then her. "Were I what would you do, Unicorn with no name? You can't save him, you can't save your partner. You can't save anyone until you save yourself. They will come with fingers of shadow and cupcakes too sweet. They will come in light, or the four horseman's feet. Fire and blood, silt and sand, all will lead to Noman's Land." The whispers in the shadows were almost melodic. Serene really. "If you don't want to go back stop willingly trying to go and make up your mind, Unicorn." He walked away from her working on deconstructing the box like a Rubik’s cube. As it turned it got larger... and larger... and separating into thin wires like a small lion's cage. Tesseract labyrinth of sorts? "I'm here, baby," calls out Dielle to Mattie, trying to be reassuring, given that what the Pale Man says is being inscribed onto her brain, in spite of her lack of eidetic memory. She's utterly terrified and doesn't understand what the fuck he's talking about and he's about to either Take her son or her and she's so scared that every fiber in her is screaming to run. But she still can't move. And at this point, she's starting to breathe faster and faster, nearly hyperventilating and the "fight or flight" reflex is kicking in something fierce. And She. Can't. Move. But his voice was behind her and this his hand? No shadows fell over her face like a rag. Very clearly his words picked out in her ear only very VERY clearly to the point of enunciating every syllable, "You don't... belong here. Wake." And that... like laundry through a chute, Dielle slipped off the couch where she was napping and onto her ass. Those last words so clearly floating with her, their sound, the ephemeral quality of his voice still audible though she was in the waking world. Sound like a cobweb sticking and touching the back of her head. Dielle is so scared, she's damn near pissing herself. She tries to get under the couch that she just fell off, but it's not actually that kind of couch, which leaves her trying to figure out where the hell she can hide. The only reason she's not screaming in terror is that she's so scared, she literally cannot remember how to make her vocal cords work. She ends up curled up in the recliner, with a blanket, hiding under it, shaking. And the only reason it's the recliner is because it's close to the couch and is not, in fact, the couch. Recliners are not couches. This was true. Truth number one for the day in the Waking. On to number two shortly. Right now certainty was good. Yeah, might take a while for the rest of that to wear off. Right now, DL's only certainty is that she's on a recliner, under a blanket, and too scared to move.