A harvest moon hangs in the sky, slowly rolling upon a float of silvery clouds that acts as a funnel for pure moonlight that flows down from the edge of the clouds and into a large body of water that eats up an entire horizon. The sky is freckled with stars that gleam and shine and occasionally catch the light on something that looks like fibers like spider silk, light rushing along them in fluttering communication. Floating around the strange ruin of a landscape, homes, and buildings reclaimed by mother nature, are shapes that seem to crumble away into particle dust before resolidifying in other areas only to dissipate into dust and smoke once more.
Lulu hangs in the air, at an angle as if she were laying on an incline rather than air while her dark eyes trace the pattern of the light of the skies and she murmurs whispers that seem to be returned by the rush of the flowing moon.
There is nothing more powerful in a Dream than a Changeling in their own dream. If someone is in their own dream, and aware of it, and trained on what to do? There's little that can actually disturb their tranquility.
So unlike those who have no safeguards on their dreams, or who are less practiced than Mina, there is no immediate impingement on her peace. Not directly. The feeling that travels through her dreamscape is more like... something shaking the branches between which a spider's web is woven. Something is outside her dream, or on the fringes. Hanging on. Trying to get in. Or maybe it's just a passing premonition trying to flutter past her subconscious, and not an active incursion. Whatever it is, it sends the water shivering and shimmering, but little more.
The shimmer n the water pauses her eyes tracking the strange patterns of the stars in the sky. The inky blackness narrowing slightly a moment and there's just a slight shiver of hair and the soft fuzz that tops her shoulders to indicate she shifted in her place at all. She is easily distracted and even in her own dreams, she is no different. It draws her curiosity and therefore the little curious Dawn herself. She starts to wander the horizon of her own dream the safe realm she'd created for the visions she was constantly fed. The moth, much the same in her dreams as she is in life, seeking out the curious brush like a moth tot he flame.
-> >> Lulu to Here << <-==============================================
Rolled 4 Successes
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===============================-> >> Wits + Composure No Flags << <-
It's impossible to tell if it's malicious or not, but it seems to be an active entity of some sort. It's not unlike when stray tomcats come wandering in the middle of the summer, yowling for love. The yowling -- metaphorical yowling, but yowling all the same -- shakes the edges of her dream, and something or somethings are moving out there, beyond the borders of her secure little mental fiefdom.
The more aware she becomes of the strange caterwauling outside her fortifications draw her awareness upwards and outwards. Curious, too curious for her own good, and also perhaps a hint too confident in her abilities to wend and wind her way through the dreamscape. She seeks what's without the bulwark perhaps to give it a piece of her mind. Her sleep time is precious and hers.
Outside the bulwark is an empty nothingscape. Darkness has a shape and a form, and here it's black sand and broken thorn hedges rising up from the dunes. There is no moon, but moonlight nevertheless, in its tiny non-presence, somehow gives shape to the nothing beyond Lulu's Bulwark. The sound takes shape, too, once she pushes past the boundaries of her own dreamscape and into what Oneiromancers call the Skein: a low, bleating, begging sound. "MmmMmMMmmma?"
Off in the near distance, maybe ten yards away or ten light years away -- one can never tell in dreams -- some rough bent shape hunches along between the thorns, slouching toward Lulu. Scale is impossible to judge at this distance: it could be the size of a cat or a T-Rex.
Lulu's fluffy brows lift and the two drifting white locks seem to lift and move in time to her movement. She stares out across the desolation of possibility and the thought of Lulu touches her top lip with her tongue and looks around for a moment. She quivers in on the spot but doesn't stray too far at first. The unusual sound of something out in the nothing making her form palpitate listening to the sound.
It's only a few moments of hesitation before Lulu's damnably curious nature gets the better of her and she finds herself slipping free of the familiar awareness of her own fortifications and deeper out into the ether, drawn by the mystery but still semi-aware of her surroundings.
"Mmmmmaaaaa?" Is that a general call, or something calling specifically to Lulu? Possibly the former, maybe the latter, it's tough to tell. But -- it's pulling itself toward her, possibly drawn to the security of the Bulwark. It leaves a trail behind it, a deep furrow in the black sand which fills with something close to slime or blood, and then the trail crystallizes and blows away in an unfelt wind.
As she grows closer, the thing on the sand becomes a more recognizable shape: it's half a person, perhaps, from the hips up, half-made, hot-glued and sewn together out of spare parts. She's far enough away that it can't get hold of her -- yet -- but it pulls itself toward her, and its one great clockwork eye fixes on her in the dark. It bleats once more: "Mmmmaaaa?"
Even in her sleep the moon has effects on her, was this a newer moon she might have danced away like a dream sprite disinterested in the strange unmade woman seeking comfort. But there's a more interested and active moon in the sky and so Lulu after a moment of mental pacing decides to drift closer. Interested in the body language should there be any, mimicking it and foolishly moving closer to observe.
There are those who lean back when approached by horror. Cringe and curl into their seats. But Lulu had been Autumn for a time and so learned instead to lean in. Not too close, she wouldn't want to get snatched, but curling her fingers inward if she might have been tempted to touch the piecemeal beast.
"Mmmmaaaa?" The creature flops over on its back, half-made in the black sand, and bleeding. Whatever it might have been a danger to before, it doesn't appear to be a danger to her now. Appearances are, of course, deceiving in the Hedge, in Dreams. Basically everywhere that lost are.
The unseen moon's light casts silver over the bleeding edges where the metal has been stitched into the sexless creature's cheeks and forehead, where a jaw that doesn't match the face was glued into place. That jaw hangs half-open as it pleads again, staring up at her with that big clockwork eye. Its sunken chest rises and falls, slowly, stuttering. "Mmmmaa... " The breath hitches again. Mismatched fingers clutch the black sand.
Lulu's nose wrinkles and she flutters on the edge of being capricous and cruel and light and caring. There's always the potential for danger, everywhere, even in the world untouched by the Wyrd's influence. Perhaps she's overconfident but something about the creature makes her brows knit and so she descends deeper into the vast landscape of dreams to get a closer look. "Are you broken?" The moth whispers to the thing, "Can you not pull yourself together?"
"Mmmmamma," breathes the thing, its chest rattling, rising and falling with obvious pain, now that Lulu's closer. "Mmmmama. Fix." Whether that's a request or a statement is unclear, and unlikely to become clear, because that pain becomes too much, and the thing slumps back into the ground obsidian-like blackness. Its singular clockwork eye whirrs and whirrs, and then stops.
Silence sometimes becomes so massive that it has a presence all its own. As whatever it is dies in front of her, leaving behind a husk no more animate than a discarded shoe, the silence itself takes on a shape and a form, filling in all of the cracks and crevices around Lulu. A wind kicks up out of nowhere, drifting sand over the half-corpse, tossing it into her face, catching it on her fluffy brows. Whatever that was, now she is alone out here with something dead.
The fix draws a noise, not concerned but warier. "I.." Whatever she was going to say is lost as the last of the light draws from the unusual creature and Lulu quivers for a moment. Curiously enrapt by the final moment and without breath for a moment before her brows draw down sharply, whether from thought or the sudden flash of the wind in her face. The moth shudders with a clatter that almost sounds like invisible wings and shakes her head to clear it. It's not even a breath before looking around started by the too real feeling of oppressive quiet. She flutters back hurriedly towards her own bastion of safety with fussing fingers tugging away grains of sand from her fleecy brows with a huff of breath. "Don't forget. Don't forget." She reminds herself as she flutters towards the relative safety of her own dreams and the waking world beyond.
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