SHARED DREAM: 1 [OPEN TO ALL]
His dream began on a ship, as most of his dreams did. Every inch of the ship was familiar and comforting, from the sun-warmed ram’s head carved delicately into the prow to the top of the crow’s nest. The sun was warmer than the sun in Edensphere ever was, the sky bluer, the water deeper. This was everything he had ever wished for. The sun, the sky, the boat, the sea. And yet…
Yes, there was always a yet. And this yet was a rather large one. He was completely and utterly alone. A ship without a crew was an eerie thing, for unless the man was truly extraordinary, a man without a crew was dead. The boards of the ship creaked underneath Sniper’s feet, and he nodded his head in determination. He would go find his crew.
What he didn’t count on was the fact that manning a ship by yourself, even a dream ship, was difficult. What he didn’t count on was a storm. The sea turned an inky black as the sun was obscured by dark storm clouds and the waves smashed into the hull of the ship again and again as Sniper ran frantically across the deck, adjusting sails and desperately trying to tell which direction the wind was coming from.
“Damn it!” He shouted, somehow unsurprised at how quickly the weather shifted. “Come on, come on…”
Every part of him wanted nothing more than to simply hold onto the mast and squeeze his eyes tight until the storm passed, but there was no one here but him to carry the ship to safety.
“It’s all right,” he chanted under his breath, trying to ignore how the ship’s wood screamed under the pressure, how it was beginning to rend itself apart. Nothing could scream quite like wood did, and it echoed inside of Sniper’s mind, loud and clear. He was no navigator.
From the depths, a sea king rose. Sniper would have called it unimaginably huge in a story, but this was not the case. He could certainly imagine how huge it was. This was not a reassuring thought. The teeth escaped its maw, as large as Sniper was tall and criss-crossing against each other, gnashing with a terrible sound. In the background, the wind howled. The sea king eyed him, ferocity clear in its beady-gaze.
If Sniper was telling a story, this was the point where he stood valiantly in front of the sea king to save his precious ship. This was the point where he leaped fearlessly on top of the sea king, battering it and bashing it and being generally heroic. Because Sniper was inside a dream and not inside a story, he shrieked, dove for cover and then immediately wished he hadn’t.
He wished as much because all of a sudden, there was no sea king because all of a sudden, there was no ship. The modest caravel had been crushed in its mouth, and was reduced to driftwood, rolling about in the endless sea. Sniper gasped for breath and clambered onto the ram’s head. A tremendous sense of self loathing seized upon his heart, but he was unable to concentrate on such thoughts when the cold water and the rain pelting down upon him had chilled him to his bone.
He squeezed his eyes shut and drifted until he was quickly stopped by a pane of glass. He coughed up saltwater and spread his hands on the glass and stared up.
He was in a globe filled with water, he realized. He was in Edensphere.
“What?! Damn it.”
Sniper coughed, spluttered and managed to balance on top of the figure head to give his freezing legs some reprieve. He squinted through the glass and saw only familiarity.
A boy in a strawhat, his face covered in shadow. The girl from his dream, orange hair aflame and face somber (he could not remember any other way; he tried to draw her smiling but all he could see was her face in his memory, stricken with fear and anger and something in between). The tall silhouette of the skeleton he had been turned into. The faceless green mop of hair he knew to be Honour, the man he had never met.
Chivalry.
Bobbing along the water outside of the accursed glass was the boat in Chivalry’s dream, a proud, mighty thing that would not be torn apart by any wave with a lion’s head upon the prow. Sniper banged on the glass as loudly as he could, drummed his fists against it, slammed his elbows against it until they ached in a desperate attempt to get out.
“Hey! Listen to me! Can you hear me?!”
He howled as loud as he could, trying to attract their attention, but they remained silent.
“Wait! Take me with you! I want to go with you! Don’t leave me here!”
Silence.
“Chivalry! Prince! Whatever you’re going by this time, do you-“
Chivalry met his eyes with his own blue one. A cigarette hung loosely from his mouth. Sniper exhaled with relief. “Thank goodness, you can hear me. I’m going to-I want to come sail with you!”
Chivalry grinned at him, dropped his cigarette on the dirt and ground his heel into it. “That depends, long-nose,” he said. “Can you catch up?”
They walked away.