ooc| some random things:
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ic|



There is no Elsewhere quite like the Elsewhere in the minds of the people who live there- or the people who don't- or no people at all, as the case may be, no longer people but reduced to mental sludge- or fossils, or dust.

The esteemed reader knows where the body of Kristopher Hekas is. The body of Kristopher Hekas, as it happens, is slumped over on her mother's kitchen floor, chalk dust on her clothes and blood on her face, candles and and the still-pungent mixture made for someone who can't be contained.

The real Kristopher Hekas- now, where that is, that darkness behind her eyes, that little bit that makes Kristopher 'I'- that's slightly more difficult to locate.

It seems to Kits, though, that it's right where she is- and it seems to Kits that where she is is a. underdressed, and b. sitting atop a brick wall- not much taller than herself, but stretching on endlessly to either side. Before her stretches a desert, perhaps, or at least a lot of sand- and to her back, presumably the same thing. The light is half-hearted, filitered down through a gently egg-yolk fog, cool and twilight and smelling faintly of mud.

And in her dream, Kits Hekas glances to either side of herself, and uncertainly crosses her legs under the thin sand-colored slip.

There's a swirl in the fog, and someone starts coughing. Originating in the same place as the coughing, a fear creeps out, making strange and disturbing shapes take fleeting form in the misty air-- the dreamland equivalent to those really low notes that supposedly cause irrational fear in humans.

"What-- the-- fuck."

Yep. It's Andrei.

Looking slightly haunted, he stumbles away from the nightmare forms his own maagic generates, waving his hand as if to dispel the fog and shadow they're made of. Coughing and turning to look around, he notices Kits.

This isn't exactly sharing a nightmare, as he brought it with him.

In the dreamworld, hi s left eye-- the white one-- seems almost to shine.

Kits can feel a thin, buzzing noise- rattling her morphic field, she supposes, or something equally professional and calm-sounding. The epithet is slightly less calm-sounding, though, as it turns into a keening, unhappy whine and when Kits turns around, it has been replaced by Andrei.

"Oh, hi. You too?"

Kristopher really would like a cigarette round about now.

"Me too what." He glances away, then down at what he's wearing, which appears to be a black robe and a black cloak. He scowls, then looks back up.

"You're dreaming, aren't you."

Kittio nods apologetically.

"Yeah. Sorry. I don't mean to, you know. I mean. I hardly ever, actually. But. Well. Yeah."

Kits pauses, frowns slightly, moves her mouth without saying anything.

"Did you know you've got a rather nasty case of moth there?" And then pauses again, and says slowly, "Er, that is to say, you're also dreaming," as though coherency is coming a bit difficult. Which it is.

Perhaps this is why she's faintly surprised to see that Andrei does indeed have a case of moth- just one moth, but it's rather insistent.

He doesn't notice the moth.

"You remember... how I'm not all human." it's almost easier to admit it, in dreams. "Well, for some reason, sometimes I share the nightmares of others."

He glances around.

"This is a little less nightmaric and a little more, what's the word... 'lucid' than usual."

Something howls, somewhere in dreamland distance. This is the sort of effect his presence generally has.

"Well. Uh. About that."

This sort of thing is difficult to admit even in dreams, and Kristopher grimaces.

"Because uh. I'm not either. All human, I mean. Or possibly any human."

There's a nightmare thing trying to crawl up her leg, if it can be called crawling. And it's cold. Kittio's dreams are strange, but they tend to be fairly straightforward- there are very few Fantasy Adventures, but a lot of highschool dreams and going to work and, every so often, monsters coming in asking for mocha lattes.

And this desert.

But her bad dreams tend to be rather bad, and Kristopher is thankful, in some corner of her mind, that this is not a bad dream. Yet, at least.

"And worse, my mom's a crackpot."

"What, worse than being a freak?"

Grimacing, he bends down and plucks the thing from her leg, tossing it out into the mist. It leaves a black stain on his fingers, indelible.

"Tell me, Andrei, exactly what you define 'freak' as and I'll tell you," she says levelly, turning to him. Her charcoal eyes don't shine as his one white one does- rather, they look flat somehow, as though a painted semblance- true to life but not alive.

"Azrael lets souls leave bodies, so to speak, right?"

"Freak, aka, not normal. Not human. Aka me, and, apparently, you."

He pats the robe down, and finds it woefully without pockets full of cigarettes.

"I dunno. I guess."

"But you don't have to do that, right?" Her tone is urgent, wind rustles through their hair and Andrei's nightmares, stirring the fog and kicking up sand.

It smells familiar- to Kristopher like her mother's room, cigarette smoke and vetiver perfume and almond.

"Um, gone around to dead bodies and like, taking out souls?"

He gives a brief stare.

"No."

"Moira makes souls leave bodies. The hard way. The... messy way."

The girl crosses her arms, tucks her legs up under herself (not noticing the scrape of skin on brick), shivers.

"Me, too."

A sound best not describe vibrates out of the fog, altogether too close for comfort. Andrei shivers.

"What, you mean like... tearing out souls?"

She shakes her head, wrinkling her nose.

"No, nothing quite so mindfuck. More like tearing out vital organs. And. Yeah."

"Oh."

Well, he's in a dream, and even if he weren't, vital organs would grow back.

So ought he really be bothered...?

It sure helps that he isn't.

"Hey. Hey, let's go somewhere else. Like now. This..." Kristopher pauses, trying to put the sense of unease sifting into her through her hands and feet into words.

"This wall doesn't like us. I think."

He frowns.

"It's me. I'm. I only ever share bad dreams."

He kciks at the desert dust under his feet, sending a spray into the air. It hangs there, frozen.

Kristopher gives him an odd look, eyebrows slightly furrowed. She gets to her feet unsteadily, pulling the skirt of her slip back down over her thighs where it's ridden up and hopping down from the wall (something she'd never do in waking life without chemical assistance, considering the height of the wall).

"Well. Ah. You know how I said I haven't been sleeping at all?"

"You did?"

Because obviously he remembers stuff like this.

He prods at the frozen grains of sand with a tentative finger.

"Yeah, I did."

The sand recoils from Andrei's finger- the sensation is something similar to driving in the rain and finding yourself aquaplaning- but not from their feet.

"Well, uh. I talked to your dad, sort of. And this is Azrael-induced sleep." She grimaces, looks sheepish. In waking life she'd be worried he'd flip out; here it merely feels like admitting to an embarassing but fairly common bad habit, like biting one's nails or never ever cleaning one's room.

"Azrael induced... you mean like, death?"

He looks faintly worried, though this might also be because of the sand. He wipes his finger off.

"Not unless I'm really unlucky. I asked for sleep and he was like, Okay. I dunno. I don't think I'm dead, at least, sometimes I can feel bits of me... somewhere else. But I don't particularly think I got out of this thing spotless, quite."

She stretches, sighs, glances at Andrei. "But regardless, this doesn't look like a bad dream. I dream this desert a lot. They're not bad, just... weird."

"But it's changing."

He can feel it. He's surprised she can't. He can feel the nightmare looking in the distance like a stormcloud-- feel himself be a lightning rod.

This is not good.

"Oh."

Kristopher feels it like thunderstorms far away, feel every individual grain of sand shiver under her feet. The fog even takes on that soft unreal green light.

However the air, to Kits, does not smell damp-mud and electric- but dry, papery and older than anything.

Andrei shivers, unable to help himself. His form blurs, in the dream, then stabilizes.

"Let's go. Maybe we can... prevent it from happening."

Kristopher draws back, wrinkling her nose distastefully.

"Yes, let's. Can you... try not doing that? It makes me feel... not... real?"

Because that made a lot of sense.

"I don't..." he rubs his arms.

"Know. I mean, it's just a dream."

A really strangely lucid one, but a dream nonetheless.

"Yes, but the God of goddamn Death and Dreaming put me into it and he's your dad and you should see why that worries me."

The hair on the nape of her neck prickles, and Kristopher realises exactly how cold it is- the fog is growing thicker over them and around them boil Andrei's nightmares.

Cigarette. Cigarette. Cigarette.

"I... yeah..." his voice is distracted, because he can feel the dream working around him, cloaking around him. Feel the mist as it blows right through him, like he were an illusion made of light cast on the particles of fog.

He blurs again and, suddenly unable to stand, drops down to his knees.

"Don't do that!" Kristopher clutches her head, recoiling. There's a knot of fear in her throat and she doesn't mean to shout so accusingly- it's not his fault- but she doesn't feel all there when she's feeling normal, let alone dreaming.

When she lowers her hand there's a lit cigarette in it, and is much dismayed to find she's too distracted to remember what exactly one does with a lit cigarette.

Andrei pulls himself to his feet. Somehow, this action alone is menacing.

And that's not even considering the way the mist is suddenly dark and full of chittering things.

Kits, to her supreme chagrin, whimpers. -And- drops the cigarette. When she looks behind her the wall is gone- only cold sand forever and ever, the horizons hidden by fog and crawling things.

"Andrei... no, come on. Come on. Come on." She doesn't even know what she's saying.

he lifts his head, and his eyes--

are blank. As though he's not even there anyomre. Which, in a sense, he might not be.

Fluttery, chittery, scrabbling things come whooshing out of the darkness, gathering behind his back in the shape of dark, fluid wings.

he steps forwards.

"No. Andrei. No, come on. Wake up, you asshole. Wake up. Come on. Oh man. Oh man." The words fall out like strings of pearls, unimpeded by sensibility.

Kristopher backs up. And backs up some more, finding nothing to flatten against, no corner to crumble up into. There is nowhere to go, and the sand is cowering under their feet.

The nightmare-constructed wings flap, whipping the sand into the air, and wide, as if to corner her. He moves forward, slowly. The single white eye blastes as the light strikes it, turning into a source of cold fire and light.

His mouth pulls itself into a slow, wide smile. Things whisper.

"Wake up, you fucking shithead! Andrei, no. Please. Oh god. You fucking asshole."

Nowhere to go.

And Kristopher runs, blindly, eyes shut against the fog and flurrying sand.

"Kristopher." And in the dream, he speaks with his father's voice-- an ability he has, but doesn't acknowledge. The voice chases her, as alive as the nightmares which swarm over the form of Andrei Petrov.

That must be what trips her. That has to be it- there's literally nothing to trip over here but sand and her own two feet, and she's never really been clumsy in dreamland.

Kristopher trips, and falls, curling up on the sand whimpering. No. No no no.

"Andrei. Andrei. Oh god." Kits is horrified to hear her voice choked with tears and terror, a state of histerics when under more normal conditions she doesn't let people see her even tear up.

Fear. It's all about fear. Somewhere, taken by the dream, acting and unable to stop, Andrei is enjoying this.

Enjoying it.

A nightmare brushes her skin, and then his fingers, which are much the same thing. His mouth is pulled into a grin like his father's-- like it were taken right off his father's face.

His bony hand-- is it bone? Is it really a hand?-- pushes against her throat, pushing her into the sand...