2019-08-01 - Where is my Mind?
Lilith is home from the hospital and shuts everyone out in favor of getting drunk. She's hit over and over with a recurring dream she's had since the Hanging Bridge incident, and she's given some sense of clarity in the middle of no clarity at all.
(GM dream sequence pieces are the creative contribution of AlmightyMe.)
IC Date: 2019-08-01
OOC Date: 2019-05-27
Location: Harbor Mist - Loft
Related Scenes: 2019-07-22 - Showdown: The Hanging Bridge 2019-08-04 - Fire and Snapdragons 2020-07-31 - Curses and Blessings
Plot: None
Scene Number: 996
Since the hospital, Lilith's been dreaming. She's back on the bridge, the night where it all went to shit, but she's not there. She's above it all, floating, seeing everything unfold from an unseen perch. She sees herself, real Lilith, just as the ring is ripped off her finger, the splash of blood and splay of flesh, the bounce of violet amethyst as it skips off down the cobblestones. She hears the clatter as it comes to a stop, teetering on the edge of the bridge.
She hears the creak of the ropes that hold her father's body.
Again. Again. Again.
Tick. Tock.
Swinging in the wind.
Lilith is beyond coherent and a terrible form of blotto drunk ever since she shut herself away from everyone else after home arrival. This time when the dream starts and stops and picks up and carries her backwards from the current dizzy dark and snapshot images, she's not in bed, she's on the floor. It's a mess in the loft, a crime of unnatural passion saw to that while she was away. It's too big for her. She just lies in it and lets herself be messy too.
It never turns off, really. Why am I doing this to myself?
She smells Korean food. She hears a British accent, a man that's daring to break her self-imposed boundaries, but she can't really bother focusing on the words. She's elsewhere right now. She's everywhere. She's nowhere at all. Her eyes slit open.
Is he dying from the inside too? His veins look black. He's not real. Make him go away.
Maybe later, though. Right now, he's touching her hair. She lapses. There's no avoiding it. It picks up right where it was when her eyes were closed.
From her place above it all, Lilith sees now what she didn't see before. A tiny tendril of a shadow, a slim tentacle, that unweaves from around herself there on the bridge. Another disentangles itself from Byron. Still another slips out of Magnolia's Converse. They are slippery things, shuffling out of sight, though Lilith-from-above tracks the one that's unwrapped from Lilith-down-below. It slinks across the ground swiftly towards the ring, and seems to ripple with rage when an invisible force pushes the ring off the bridge and down into the pond below.
Things are breaking downstairs in the shop. Items pop like lightbulbs into splinters of wood or plastic or glass like there's a poltergeist phenomenon while things are dark and unoccupied. Lilith can't hear these things.
The man does. He tries again to get her to talk and say something to bring her back around to being Lilith. He tries to keep her from tearing her own shop down unwittingly piece by piece. Is he taunting her? Is he soothing her? She's unsure what he says. She can't fully be roused due to the sheer amount of alcohol in her blood.
Shadows. He still has the shadows in him. He's not free yet. That's why his veins look black. He's coming for her like the others.
There's a lash of heat with sudden roll and disoriented Lilith hisses like a sleeping cat in shift motion before she's cheek to the floor again. There's a lot of cussing from the other side of the room where someone has launched to flail out of his flaming coat with stomp response. But he doesn't quite leave. Not for good. He's afraid of what she can do, sure. But it's not a deterrent right now, for his own reasons that might be mercurial to others. He was a lot like her, once upon a time.
The chaos on the bridge continues, but the shadows that untangled from Byron and Magnolia begin to coalesce. The tiny tentacle that was wrapped around Lilith takes its time though, slinking down the rope that still holds Hank. It caresses down his face, a tender almost loving sort of gesture .. and then goes to join the other shadows, embracing them, winding around them, until three become one.
But there are other shadows, too, smaller slips that come from other directions and curl around the mass. It never becomes very big, just a speck of a swirl in the darkness. As the ambulance lights begin to flash along the bridge, Lilith-in-the-sky finds her eyes drawn to a totally different light.
Light. Every bright light makes shadows, don't you know that? Lilith knows. She's been casting shadows with her very light ever since it all began.
The dream always picks up where it left off and it's been doing it over and again since the hospital.
Interlude.
It's still dark. He's telling her about Melissa. He's telling her why his veins are blackened. She doesn't really comprehend, but she likes the noise now. There's no more fire. When Lilith shifts again she curls around one of his near legs. It smells like Korean food again. Keep talking. She doesn't want to keep re-living this, she doesn't know it's for the better in the long run, it feels like pain and abuse to remember and see things so clearly from overhead.
People don't realize, but this man's words are pretty when they want to be. They sing of other continents, a place far away and that's where she wants to be right now while she's stuck to the floor. He's braiding part of her hair to keep it out of her face. Or because he wants to. Maybe he's sad too. Did he lose too? Lilith can't remember.
Dizzy. Dark. Lights.
Deep down in the pond, she sees the amethyst glow, hazy but there. She knows the gem's down deep, but she knows this with a sort of passive indifference. There's no pull for the gem now, no desire, no want. She can see what happened rationally now, she feels the quiet rage of being manipulated. Used.
The shadows drop from the bridge. They writhe with one another, undulating, until they slip under the water without even a ripple upon the surface. And Lilith-from-above-it-all watches the shadows as they descend upon the amethyst, cradling the gem as though it were a precious object. From under the water, the violet light flares.
Things stop breaking for a while downstairs. The man is relieved. Maybe she's not about to tear the walls down with him left sitting like an idiot in the rubble. She looks so vulnerable, so harmless curled around his near leg, but he knows better. Whatever is tormenting her and replaying in that overwhelmed head of hers has been manifesting for hours. Does she know she can throw things, not just break them? She might not know, but he's seen it happening in the mess of the loft while things pop and shatter in the building.
Somewhere, deep down, Lilith finally realizes, in part why this keeps playing. She and the others are free. They are. But oh, there's ripples. They come unchained, but there's a backlash when all that power comes loose and falls into itself again. She's too drunk to make sense of it. Being sober probably wouldn't help.
Doesn't it feel good to be free?
The dream is over, but it doesn't go gentle into the good night. It ends with a very loud, persisting sound that echoes inside her.
Hank's rope creaks.
The dream ends.
Then it starts over again until she can fully open her eyes once more.
When Lilith opens her eyes again, the man is gone. He's smart enough to know she was starting to rouse, the activity has stopped, she's not dying of alcohol poisoning. The loft is empty because he didn't want to be around to let her know how vulnerable he saw her. She'd probably set him on fire again. Once was enough. For now, anyway.
Was he a dream too?
Lilith showers and drinks and naps again and this time, at least, there's just darkness until the knock sounds on the door.
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