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[never_very_good]

This office is slick and modern; well-appointed but not cluttered. There’s a massive white desk, with a comfortable, large chair behind it, and a smaller seat on the other side. Above it is an unfamiliar logo-- a large white circle with a rectangular piece bitten out. Everything is strangely lit from unlikely angles, the whole room crisscrossed

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[eiremagic]

Eden takes a careful step in - she doesn't like dreams, she inherently doesn't trust them, and the fact that she's asleep next to the person who is having this one makes it only a little better.

"What are we watching?" she asks, sliding in next to him.

[never_very_good]

Frankie sort of squirms a little, not away from her, but clearly uncomfortable having company here. He doesn't tear his eyes from the window, doesn't answer except to shake his head slightly, worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

Below, safely away on the other side of the glass, is a sea of people. An army, in fact; and that's more than a figure of speech. The nightmare swells the ranks so there are hundreds, thousands, wild-eyed with sunken, abraded cheeks, all being drawn by hunger towards a central point.

A small group of people-- humans-- stands in the center of the horde. One of them is, of course, Edward Dalton.

[eiremagic]

Eden takes a quiet moment and finally looks down at the sea of people, all hungry. She recognizes Edward - from the one time he was in the City, and from the fact that he looks like that Todd Anderson kid. Her eyes open a little wider.

"I don' have to see this," she says, but she's not looking away, either.

[never_very_good]

He doesn't answer immediately, but after a moment Frankie pounds on the glass, rage contorting his features briefly. The glass doesn't budge, doesn't so much as crack; and the slow advance beneath plays out in silence. Ed never looks up (and with good reason.)

"I'm supposed to be down there," Frankie finally says quietly, a note of anguish in his tone.

[fatespoken]

Amory isn't sure when he'd manage to wander in, but that's the rule of dreaming, isn't it? Everything's in media res when you dream, always slipping in through blurs and into midpoints with your eyes half-closed. Then everything snaps to clarity. But he knows that even now, with details too lucid to fit a dream, that it is a dream, for dreams with a character too vivid to be called dreams are what he endures week by week back home.

This isn't home, and he recognizes nothing in the immediate scenery. Not the large chair, the white desk, nor the logo hung above the desk. Strangers are commonplace in his dreams; however, there's something he recognizes here. Someone he recognizes.

Amory observes Frankie Dalton, as he leans against the opposing side of the wall within a shadow.

[never_very_good]

Frankie Dalton, unfortunately, isn't much to observe right now. If he notices Amory's presence, he doesn't acknowledge it; just stands, fingers gripping the edge of the windowsill, staring at whatever is below him.

If Amory comes close enough to share the view, he'll see a small room just slightly lower than them. A girl is pacing back and forth, skinny arms folded against her chest, a look of terror warring with rage on her face.

[fatespoken]

He knows, by Frankie's stillness, that this is a dream of memories. It's as if his posture caries his true age in its silence, juxtaposed with the intensity of his expression that Amory imagines, as Frankie stares down below; the tension in his fingers say as much. This is the City and this a curse, and so a dream must be a nightmare, stripping the core out of fear and pain until it's condensed into a caricature--biting, sensational caricatures like cheap, haunted-house tricks. It'd be wise for him to linger in the background, leave the man to his own reflection without the prying eyes of an intruder. Amory wouldn't have to say anything to intrude.

And Amory cares enough, thinks of Frankie as enough of a friend to consider him over his own curiosity. Or at least, he tries. He remains in the shadows for the longest while, watching, keeping his breaths quiet in the still of the room. Amory runs a tongue against dried lips and reaches into his pocket to check if his smokes had made it with him, for later when he exits this dream and

[never_very_good]

"Not here for your entertainment," he says quietly, without looking up, words tinged with a bitterness that has absolutely nothing to do with Amory's presence, and everything to do with Alison Bromley, caged like an animal. Any minute now. He wonders, what will it be like to see himself?-- To watch as an outsider his biggest mistake, the crowning failure among so many?

He shifts his weight to cross his arms.