2021-07-05 - A dream or a Dream? The capital D makes a difference.

(TXT to ) Isi : Dude - Ravn. You said something about dreams once right? Like - Dreams with a capital D?

(TXT to Isi) Ravn : Once? More like, every third time I open my mouth. Got to you at last?

(TXT to ) Isi : I don't know. Maybe? Do you know anyone called Kailey, Everett, Joseph, or Jonathan? The Joseph dude, southern ish, calls women 'baby'?

(TXT to Isi) Ravn : Holt, Woods, nope, and Cavanaugh. Holt and Woods have a little baby girl together. Cavanaugh is my neighbour on the marina.

(TXT to ) Isi : ah fuck

(TXT to ) Isi : Can I buy you a drink or something? Talk? I know the storm shit is everywhere but...

(TXT to Isi) Ravn : Come over to the high school shelter if you like, I've found a classroom full of cats and no people. Or tell me what's up on the phone if the weather is too god-awful.

(TXT to ) Isi : Did you offend a cat goddess too so her minions have to watch you or something? Never mind, I'm coming. I had some water to donate anyway.

(TXT to Isi) Ravn : Offend, bribe, matter of perspective...

The weather really IS awful, but not so awful that a determined soul can't get around. Isi doesn't bother trying to drive though. She's got rainboots, a slicker, (no umbrella, the winds SUCK with an umbrella, not useful!), a case of water, a couple beers, and herself. It takes some time but she arrives wet to the high school. The water is taken quickly enough and she's offered a towel.

That's what she's doing when here last text goes out:

TXT: I'm here - what room?

(TXT to Isi) Ravn : Up on first floor, first room on your right. Smells like cat.

(TXT to ) Isi : You make it sound so inviting....

And inviting it is. If you like the idea of sitting in an empty classroom in which one cat is free and eight others sit in small cages. One could get the impression that Ravn makes them take turns having the room. He's also happily left a window open and lit a cigarette and screw you, laws about smoking indoors. He's got a thermos bottle of coffee and a couple of paper cups, and finally, peace and quiet. Downstairs, the kids are watching My Neighbour Totoro and God bless Kailey Holt for making it not be Frozen for the thirtieth time.

It takes a little longer for Isi to make her way up there. It's hard to walk through the shelter without getting stopped at least ONCE. Especially by the guy who considers it his responsibility to make sure that no contraband makes it in, like alcohol. Isi has to take some time to assure him that no, it's just soda pop. No, of course she wouldn't bring alcohol, yes, she knows the rules, come on, she works for city hall!

She makes it though with a bit of grumbling under her breath, ".... in your lane bucko."

"I get this is the only place to stay but also fuck Ravn. " That directed at the Dane as Isi enters and then firmly shuts the door behind her. "It isn't much but if you want to sprawl somewhere not here my apartment is open during the day while I work."

"Eh, technically I'm supposed to be downstairs. Just taking a break to clear my head before I force feed Vicky Barrett half a side of bacon," Ravn says by means of greeting. "This whole thing will blow over soon enough if you'll forgive the god-awful pun. Tell me about your dream. Sounds like you weren't in the worst of company -- Holt is extremely powerful, and Cavanaugh's got the kind of level head you'd expect from someone who literally used to pilot a space shuttle."

"Heh... heh heh." That's laughter that's not quite laughter from Isi at the pun. It's just an acknowledgement that yes, he did try a pun, and yes she got it.

MOVING ON

Isi unpacks the drinks and offers them to Ravn before she begins. Who would have known that Gray Harbor would have made her into a day drinker?

"So, went to sleep like normal, right? But then I wake up." Her emphasis seems to imply that SHE thinks this is weird. "All tied up and in the back of a wagon with someone saying some shit about being in an imperial ambush or whatever. The woman - Kailey? Holt?" A pause to check if she's matched the names correctly, "asks if I'm real, and then decides that I am. But it's a dream right? Why the fuck would a dream ask if I'm real?"

Here she really will stop because she's kinda hoping at this point that Ravn'll laugh and be all, 'yeah, you met her once and just forgot,regular dream, I had you going didn't I?'

Well. At least she has big hopeful eyes on right now, so it's a logical conclusion if Ravn draws it.

Ravn accepts the can and sips it carefully while listening. And then he disappoints Isi's hopes by saying, "Kailey Holt, yes. She's been through this rodeo a lot -- they all have. A lot more than me, and the Veil hasn't gone gently on me the last couple of months. Holt's the kind of experienced dreamer who will just get a grip, figure out who's real and who's a figment of the story, and deal."

Cue a round of under the breath swearing from Isi as Ravn is NOT very reassuring.

But she didn't come to be reassured, did she? She'd go to Cassidy if she wanted someone to tell her everything was normal.

"Well. I guess she figured I was real. This shark dude - gray skin, weird as fuck smile, showed up and said we were going to do some beta testing of some new technology. In a death match. Six on six or something like that and then we were.... well, like there were weapons and shit. The Holt woman was telling me everything was for real dangerous but that she and the Everett guy had it, then everything changed again. I had this cross-bow like thing on my arm - and can we just stop and say that it's fucked up that even a dream would perpetuate stereotypes? We had guns you know!"

"Anything that happens to you in a dream tends to carry over to the waking world," Ravn confirms. "I've woken up with stab wounds, cuts, weasel bites. I know people who woke up with tattoos -- Holt among them."

He sips his beer and scritches the ear of the American shorthair banging its head against his hand lovingly for attention. "There's always a story. Always a narrative. Have to work through it -- and a lot of the time, that narrative is six ways to make you die messily. Sounds like the sort of thing you'd get -- battle royale and bizarre fantasy worlds. We don't know if it's actually alternate realities, or it gets made up for our benefit." He air quotes 'benefit'.

"I'm leaning towards just fucked up. Someone else can be the hero, I did the only thing a sane person would do." Which implies Isi is pretty sure that everyone else in the "dream" are insane as heck.

"Everyone starts shooting and the big guy - Everett?" Isi doesn't remember what Ravn pinged the man's name as, "Got hit six ways from Sunday, and the Joe guy grabbed me and dragged me behind a rock. I put my head down because fuck. Someone's shooting at you. I shot a gun one or twice as a kid - and a bow and arrow occasionally at school for culture reasons but not like that."

Isi has to stop because her tone has taken on a distinct note of hysteria and she is going to try to force it down with a drink.

"First time something like this happened to me -- it wasn't even a dream. It was a literal shoot-out, a mob hit. At the bloody church. What I did? Dive under a pew and lie fucking still. What am I going to do? I'm not a fighter, I don't have super powers. The best thing I can do in a situation like that is keep myself out of trouble so no one else has to keep me out of trouble. Sounds like Woods got in trouble. And sounds like Cavanaugh reasons the same way I do -- if you don't know what you're doing, and you don't know what to do, at least don't create more work for those who do." Ravn's voice stays calm, modulated. Maybe in an attempt counter Isi's rising pitch. Maybe because he's not very proud of the fact that the only thing he brings into dreams is knowledge.

Well, at least it is comforting to know that someone else just went 'wtf no' and hid like she did. "Yeah - though my logic was less 'don't create trouble' and more 'what the hell I don't want to get fucking shot."

No altruistic motive there.

She shakes herself and then takes an attempted calming breath. "So. They come. They're shooting and shit. Some of them hit but it's hard to tell because we're wearing... armor or something? I hit my face while covering it and everything went weird - like blurry. So I tell Joe and we both fuss with our faces and," here's where her voice is really going to crack. "There were bodies. It wasn't just.... futuristic shit, you know? Like you'd see on TV? There was blood everywhere. The Everett guy had holes through him, and Kailey was missing an ear. They'd shot six people and they were just lying there. Dead."

Yeah, Isi's never seen a dead body that wasn't laid out nicely in a coffin before. Especially not one that died in violence.

Ravn winces and nods. And makes a mental note to call Kailey because missing an ear, holy hell. "It's real. It's very real, and the hurt is very real. I'd never seen anything like it either. Saw a guy get shanked before. Never had a bloke come at me on a horse, trying to take off my head with a broadsword. Never been turned into a fish before. All the things that happened -- they're all first, and most of them are pretty damn terrifying."

He nods his agreement again. "Staying alive is the point. First, you make sure you're not the problem. Then you try to help others who are in trouble. And somehow, the team gets itself and each other out. Sometimes you know something or can do something that's really useful. Sometimes you're a ball and chain. It's all very random."

But the most important question is now, and Isi's voice is very quiet.

"Did we murder people?"

Never mind that she didn't actually shoot anyone or anything - she was THERE. Accessory to a crime.

"Holt, Woods, Cavanaugh and that other bloke are definitely people." Ravn lights another cigarette with a guilty look. "The other things... Truth is, we don't know. Are they constructs, made for the occasion, or are they people in another reality? It could be either. Both. One on Tuesday, the other on Monday. We don't know. What we do know is that somebody or something makes this happen, and they're the ones you should be raging at. Welcome to HOPE, that's what we do."

"Fuck." Said quietly as Isi puts her head in her hands and stares at the floor. This is a whole other level of fuckery - trying to decide if she's a murderer now or not.

"So - should I like, learn how to use a gun or some shit? Or what? I don't want to kill people. That one dude.... Devlin? He offered to take me hunting and I'm a firm no on that."

"I'm not going hunting either." Ravn shakes his head. Bambi will have to find another guy to murder his mum. "Seth Monaghan and I went into the woods a few times, though. Taught me how to use a small firearm. Which is good, I'm sure, but there's one thing about this -- you don't know when you get pulled in. It's very often while you sleep. And no one sleeps in full riot gear, you know? Even if you did, the dream might decide to pull you in naked. What you really need to learn is how to improvise."

Isi rubs at her face vigorously, as if doing so would some how wipe off any unwelcome memories. Fun fact, it doesn't. Instead it just makes dark sleep-needed lines look more pronounced.

"I don't know what school MacGyver went to, but I doubt there's anything like that here. Unless it's a new class you're offering, 'Ten simple tips to not fucking up when someone decides to screw with your mind Gray Harbor Style'." She says the last like it's a Buzzfeed title for some clickbait.

Another shake of a copper blond head. "I haven't found any one solution. Sometimes, my academic field helps -- like you knowing a thunderbird for what it is, knowing what to expect. A lot of the time? It's pure guesswork. A lot of the time it's fighting or running. Once, it was being locked in a cell in a factory for meat processing -- in a capacity of being the meat. Being able to pick a lock sure as fuck came in useful there."

"Heh, heh heh. I feel like I should write home about that one. Guess what mom! I met a god, it tried to fry me." Isi stops there because her pitch is rising again. Deep breaths. Count to 4. Hold. Out.

Why, yes, she did have someone try to force therapy on her, how did one guess?

"Is there a way to tell a Dream-Dream from like, a just a regular scramble of memory?"

"If there is, it's how vivid and continuous they are. Real dreams tend to be -- fragmented. Although -- " Ravn pauses and thinks, and then nods. "Actually, there is one thing. Didn't think about it before. Ever heard about lucid dreaming? There's a trick they use, to teach you. Most people's mind can't process numbers and letters asleep. If you want to lucid dream, practise reading and counting all the time -- read and count, wherever you are. Also when you dream. In the long run, it becomes so much of a habit that you can tell you're dreaming when you suddenly can't read or count. We might be able to use that -- if we can read and count in a dream, it's probably one of Gray Harbor's very special dreams."

"Numbers!"

Isi says that word WAY too loud and a calico queen gives her a VERY offended look from where its perched. "Sorry," yes, she's apologizing to a cat now, she might have gone over the bend, "I can do numbers. Equations. Shit like I do for work." It's like a lifeline she can grab onto.

Ravn grins slightly. He wanted to come up with a solution, and he did. Good boy. "You should learn to use a firearm. And some self defence. And knots. And first aid. And any other useful skill you can pick up, really. But the real kicker is teamwork. Don't leave anyone behind, don't do something stupid, just get in there, do the job together, get everyone back out. And keep in mind who's to blame -- it's the pain eaters on the other side of the Veil who do this. They farm us like a crop of misery, and most dreams will be god-awful."

"The girl scouts were never something I was particularly interested in." Isi bemoans, rubbing a finger between her eyebrows. There is a 100% chance she's now fighting back a headache. Alright. Alright." The last two words are her trying to process and only just managing to catch the end of it.

"At least I don't have holes. Should I try to... check on them? I don't have their phone numbers or whatever. To see if they are alright? The others?"

"I always do," Ravn admits. "Whenever possible. Just a text, something. I have most of the numbers if you want them -- though obviously not for the guy I don't know."

"Could you just text them? Give them my number maybe? It's awkward to go, "Hey! I met you in my dream! Are you still alive and real?""

Because seriously, awwwkkwaarrrddd.

"Then if they don't want anything to do with me I'll just assume they never texted you back."

(TXT to Isi Everett Kailey Joseph) Ravn : Yo. Isi Cameron tells me you had an Adventure. Some other guy named Jonathan whom I don't know, too. You guys all OK? Ping her back, maybe, and tell her, this was her first rodeo. And, well, don't not tell me either.

Ravn taps his cell phone and grins. "There. Now you have their numbers too. It's a little rude, I know, but in this town? We really do need to look out for the rest of the team. Need to be able to trust that we're not on our own with this mess."

"Or that, that works." Hello group text! Isi hasn't been on one of those in... forever. "I feel like...." Isi trails off at that phrase then shakes her head, checking her phone to make the notification go away. Yes, she is one of those people. If it's red and wants her attention she clicks it to make it GO AWAY. When she continues it's with, "fuck, I d on't even know what I feel."

"Confused, scared, also terrified, and let's not leave out oh my god, I can fucking die from this, what the hell was I thinking?" Ravn cants his head. "With a small, sneaky side order of but it's really wild and exciting too?"

"Yeah. All of that. Let's go with ALL of that." Isi shakes her head again and then stands. She brought more drinks than they've had, but she doesn't gather them up again. "I should go get back to work. They're wanting me to run a model to try to predict the possible tax deficit from the storm depending on how long it continues." The look on Isi's face hints that she ALMOST would rather be back in the Dream.

Almost.

Not quite though.

Ravn gets up, much to the dismay of the shorthair. "Hey."

A cant of a head and a searching look. "It's okay to be fucking terrified, right? I was when I got here and I still am. Don't go alone with it. You need to come scream into a pillow next to somebody, you know where I live. I'm not kidding when I talk about having each other's backs."

Isi cocks a look around the room. "No offense - but where you live right now sucks. Hey," as the thought occurs to you, "Is your boat even going to be there when this is done?"

"Yeah. I had her drydocked. Putting her back in the water when the storm clears." Ravn grins slightly. "I'm from an archipelago country. We know what storms do to small boats. You going to be okay walking to city hall?"

"Good." Because storms and small boats man. Hopefully everyone was as lucky as Ravn to have a place to put their boat. "Yeah," on walking to city hall. "What's the worst that could happen?" As soon as the words come out she raises a hand, "Don't answer that. That was a stupid question."

"... Yeah. Let's leave that one." Ravn laughs and reaches for his paper coffee cup and the shorthair cat. "I'll see you around, all right? And when the storm clears, let's go have a beer on the marina. You know -- in a total 'we are in this shit together and one of us is a lesbian and the other isn't' kind of way."

"Hey, I swing for both sides." Isi protests, but laughs at the end of it. "You're safe though. You know too much." Ravn is TAINED.

Ravn laughs. "Fair, fair. I'll bring a baseball bat in case you get handsy."