[DREAMSCAPE] pre-logging threads

[outsidewindows]

Before you is a door built from polished gold and age-softened pearls. It opens as you are drawn towards it, and you are set down in a room lit only by starlight. There are no walls, just distant galaxies like paint splatters all around you

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[dreams_are_mine]

[Rhode stops in front of the mirror. It's not surprise to her, to see in her reflection two faces, the face she wears and a grinning shadowed thing. But she doesn't move left or right down the wall, instead she touches her hand to the glass, stepping forward until she can lean her forehead against the reflection of herself, eyes open.

Watching, listening.

[outsidewindows]

There is the sound of claws on glass, and the mirror shivers against Rhode's forehead. Slowly, the shape of her face is etched into the other side and dimly visible because there is so much light on the other side.

There is the taste of nickel in the air, hesitance, before the claws begin scratching away again.

It begins to carve her eyes into the mirror, to scrape away enough paint that she can peek inside.

This would blind a mortal. The words are whispered. And it would destroy a demon.

It's a warning, of sorts, accompanied by the smell of fresh-cut flowers and warm blood.

[dreams_are_mine]

She stands still, feeling the texture of the glass beneath her fingers, the taste in the air and the emotions that have a physical weight to them, almost. The sensations that are more than real. Too vivid.

"Are you worried for me?" She asks it with a smile, calm and unconcerned. Of course she doesn't fear.

It's him.

She respects and loves and cherishes, and when it's appropriate, yes, she could fear him, but right now she's only curious. There's such a painful light on the other side. It whispers to her deepest heart of divinity and strength.

It's something that would hurt, if turned against her, she knows. Perhaps one of the few things in this world that could truly harm her.

[outsidewindows]

There's a warm ripple to the air, slightly more substantial than a spring breeze. Of course he worries, the laughter--that's what it is, though there is no sound--says. It amuses him because love and anger are the only constants he has, even now. He enjoys being concerned.

He enjoys feeling, anything at all. He relishes it, uses every moment he experiences as reason to keep going. To reach his goal.

Look, if you wish.

[gotbackupagain]

This world, or whatever it might be, pulls on so many senses at once it's almost homey. Something she hadn't felt in over twenty years- however short a time that may be. It was familiar and vague, wrong and right all at the same time.

The mirrored hedge she wasn't expecting, and for a reason she can't quite explain, it's presence makes her ache. Yearn for something, to pass through and join the spectacle that is surely beyond it, even if all the reflection gives is a half used vessel of an empty, human woman.

[outsidewindows]

The presence of another angel seems to make the room brighter, although the mirror only shone her face back at her more clearly. There was clearly something on the other side; if she'd had any second thoughts, the sound of a hand being abruptly pressed against it should have cleared that up.

[gotbackupagain]

The sound is curious, though it pangs her heart all the same, the vial around her neck growing hot, restless. As if reaching outwards as if tired of it's containment. She studies her reflection, head tilting in human instinct, as if to try and see around it, her own hand finding it's way upwards, pressing against the glass in a much gentler touch than the first.]

[outsidewindows]

There's the definite pressure of a hand on the other side. It moves, thuds against hers, the frantic-exhausted gesture of a drowning man.

And then the screams begin; first they're indistinct, and echoed by the rasping laughter of unhosted demons. Then there is Dean Winchester's voice, the scant pleas he offered, and finally the even fewer questions he asked during his training.

The hand doesn't move away from hers.

[immortalservant]

What was this?

A dream? No, he never dreamt...Just remembered. He stared back into his mirror eyes as the smells, tastes and sounds of the past wafted around. This was something else, though his inhuman senses whispered it wasn't real.

Alucard lifted a gloved hand and pressed it against the glass, long fingers splayed.

[outsidewindows]

There's no reaction, audible or otherwise, but Alucard will undoubtedly notice that he's being watched more closely. And sure enough, there's the whisper of wings and the very soft tap of rubber soles on a stone floor, all of it from just behind the mirror.

"Have you been to Hell yet?"

[immortalservant]

He chuckled, sticking his hands in his coat pockets, "I've created Hell more often than any historian can count" he said.

[outsidewindows]

"Then you don't know what Hell is," Lucifer answered, not unkindly. "What is your greatest achievement, vampire?"

[feel_nevermore]

At first, Raven looks fascinated. By that door but even more by the galaxies and infinity of the universe displayed around her. She has always liked travelling into space. She knows this is a dream but so far, she thinks it's hers. And she's had so many sleepless nights over the past week...

But as she walks forward, a wall rises in front of her. She takes a step back, startled. The wall reflects her image now but not the way any normal mirror would. It shows Raven surrounded by all the aspects of her personality in the form of many other Ravens wearing cloaks of different colors. Just like her own hand mirror does. And of course, the four-eyed red one is here too, smiling back at her evilly.

She takes a step forward holding out her hand, palm raised until it's pressed firmly against the mirror. If it's a portal to her mind as she believes it to be, she should be able to go through it just as she normally does.

[outsidewindows]

The mirror remains solid, but there's the sound of something moving behind it. A screech echoes--a finger being dragged across glass--and sounds begin to trickle through the silence.

Most of them are screams; the few words are all guttural Demon languages, or else pleading for it to stop, stop!

[feel_nevermore]

Her hand jerks back at the screech and she curses under her breath.

"What the hell is this?"

She understands Demon languages a little bit but the words are muffled or deformed so she can't catch those. The screams and pleas are very clear though. And this is definitely not her mind.

The worst part of it is that she can sense the utter terror and raw suffering slipping through the mirror. Or more exactly she can feel them. Now she's clutching her head with both hands and before she knows it she's the one yelling.

"Stop... STOP!"

[outsidewindows]

It does at last, after indescribably long minutes.

There's a final, piercing scream and a gurgle, then a flutter of wings and clap of thunder, and Lucifer is standing beside her.

"Oh, Raven," he breathes, his tone one of utter sympathy. "It must be so difficult for you to be here."

[sleightofhearts]

Immediately, Tyki doesn't want to be here.

It isn't because he's aware of whose dream this is; far from that, actually. It's because of what he sees when he looks into the smoked mirror-glass hedge; how perfectly clear his own reflection is, and yet how warped it is at the same time.

That isn't the way it is supposed to be; things are cut and dry, distinct. Things are black, and things are white. There is never a weird in-between, which is what this dream feels like its telling him.

Tyki glances away and immediately fishes for a cigarette the moment the sounds start. Screams and laughter. Holidays. Funerals. The taste of sweets, caviar, hobo-coffee. Scraped knees, sunburned shoulders, callousing hands. The whispers of someone Tyki might remember as his own mother, and the breathy sigh of a brothel woman.

.... the dreamer knows too much. And he hates it.

[outsidewindows]

Things take shape on Tyki's side: a table with an old-fashioned gas lamp, a reading chair, a book and a pen that is tipped with a razor. Slowly a light begins to glow on the other side of the mirror, and a silhouette moves close and begins pacing.

The air becomes filled with the scent of Easter grass and food that could only be pedaled under the phrase Mystery Meat.

[sleightofhearts]

Tyki can pretend to be picky all he wants, there is very little he won't eat. But, even when coming to terms who this dreamer is, he's almost certain he doesn't want to know what's cooking.

The first thing he investigates is the pen. He saunters toward it and pinches it between his gloved thumb and forefinger, examining it carefully.

[outsidewindows]

I know what you want, Tyki.

Lucifer appears behind the glass, muted just enough that seeing him--seeing his real form--won't damage Tyki's body in the waking world.