Stanifly — Roleplayer Guild

CLOVER

with POMNI and ZOOBLE

Zooble doesn’t even wait for Caine to finish speaking to swivel around and walk away. Her response to Kinger’s call is a backwards wave.

That’s about all the breather Clover gets before the world swoops beneath his leaves. The floor stretches to near-infinite proportions. Caine looms overhead, now a beast of a ringmaster.

You’ve got to be kidding me, thinks Clover, as Caine announces the adventure of the day.

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Pomni says, nearby. ‘What are we even supposed to–and he’s gone. Of course.’

Clover looks around. And looks. And looks. If the Circus looked large before, it seems infinite now; a smorgasbord of colour that’s grown into an even bigger eyesore now that they’ve shrunk, apparently. The thought of travelling across the floor at this size is not an appealing one. The fact that Zooble hasn’t disappeared out of sight but isn’t acknowledging Snix’s call isn’t making him feel any better.

‘I don’t think they can hear you,’ says Clover to Snix. ‘Video game logic, huh? We shrunk so our voices shrunk too.’

He doesn’t miss Pomni staring at Jax’s retreating back, mouth twisted into a tense line. The moment is broken by the sound of booming footsteps and distant giggles; she looks around nervously.

‘That doesn’t sound good.’

It’s one of Caine’s adventures, Clover wants to say, It’s never anything good.

But the day’s only just begun and he figures that being snippy when nothing’s happened yet is a little unnecessary.

‘I’m guessing,’ he says instead, ‘that we should probably find a place to hide.’

The Path

Sleep wasn’t coming to her anymore. That wasn’t so bad though, she didn’t want to dream, after all. She didn’t deserve to escape the misery of her own making. It was better this way. Instead, she dwelled in the abyss of waking. 

Why had she done it? Why was she so stupid? All her life people would look at her and say such mean things and she had betrayed the love of those who never had. ‘She’s a daydreamer.’ ‘She doesn’t really get it.’ ‘Don’t say such things, she won’t understand.’ ‘Just a mutt like her siblings.’ Malac’s face flashed briefly in her mind and Teefee saw him struck dead. The spear was thrown with such precision right into his heart. Just a wet thwack, a gurgle, and he was falling. Falling. Falling. Falling.

Or was it a spiral?

A field of primroses, petals plucked and discarded. She lay amidst a sea of blood, pristine and white. 

Teefee’s vision cleared. It was getting worse wasn’t it? She blinked and realized she had been staring at the coals again. Those empty, black, coals. She had begun having delusions about a day ago. She had believed Toffee had come back but when she went to embrace her sister, Toffee had laughed and Teefee realized she was talking to the tent flap. Or maybe that had happened and Toffee had left again? Maybe Tad would show up soon? She could apologize, he would forgive her right? His face flashed, that disappointed look paramount. Grimacing, she stood, stumbled, stood again and saw her breath in the air. 

It was cold but she wasn’t cold. She wasn’t anything. 

The darkness of the wikiup was known to her now and she shuffled over to what was left of their stores. Dried meat. Dried berries. Fat of some sort. The waterskins had frozen. She sighed, blinking heavily. Was she even thirsty? Was she even hungry? No, she wasn’t anything, she reminded herself. 

Or was that too fair?

She was something. She was many things. A fool. An idiot. Stupid. Abuser. Violator. RUINER! Teefee pushed over one of the storage containers, nothing more than sticks and fur tied together. It clattered to the ground with dull thuds that sounded much louder than they actually were. 

Her breath was hot and her chest heaved. Her heart beat like crazy and her head hammered. It wasn’t like her to get angry. What was wrong with her? She slumped down against one of the wikiup’s poles and just… existed. She didn’t really want to but she had run out of tears awhile back. There wasn’t much point in doing anything else.

It was then that she spotted it. Pulsing next to the tent furs where the storage container had been. Hidden and safe. Glistening fresh. Blue and golden, whispering a lullaby. She could see the spores exhaled and blown in her direction. She raised out her hand, not really knowing what she was doing but it felt right. For once. She breathed in, out. In, out. In… Out…

She awoke in the land of dreams. 

“Well,” murmured a quiet voice overhead, “this is a new development.”

The surroundings Teefee found herself in were not of clarity. The air was smoky with billowing fog; visibility was poor, but not so poor that she wouldn’t see the dead, wilted flowers littering the ground. What sparse grass she could feel beneath her was dry and brittle. The constant sound of burbling water neared as Sirna came into view. The fog shied away from their form, as if the dream itself was deferring to them.

“You summoned me.” 

Wonder tinged Sirna’s words. They had been summoned before, of course, by numerous shamans and dream fanatics, but those had been rooted in human ritual and equated to a brief tug on Sirna’s awareness. This had been stronger, intimate, and with the mere requirement of a lullaby mushroom and Teefeen’s own strength of subconscious will. Perhaps the qualities of a Dreamwalker held more depth than Sirna had initially thought. 

It was a musing that Sirna would have to ponder on another time. The feline sapient mortal seemed in remarkably worse shape than the last time they had met. Not in form, for Sirna had been occupied with other matters as of late and was uncertain of the Dreamwalker’s current state in the material realm, but in dream. A subconscious bringing a dead and brumous landscape to being in the Dreamscape was not an indicator of a mortal who fared well.

I see. A trickle of resignation settled over Sirna. Another request, then.

Sirna was a god who wielded a loose leash with the creations they considered their own, but the fact remained that those creations were theirs and therefore under Sirna’s care. They had not created Teefeen. They had, however, taken her heart and made her their Dreamwalker. For all intents and purposes, that made Teefeen their responsibility.

Their waterfall splashed into the ground, its slope curving into an impossible angle as Sirna lowered their moon closer to where Teefeen lay. The dead grass and wilted flowers that were soaked by their waterfall remained dead; it was not Sirna’s business to change a mortal’s personal Dreamscape.

“Your mind is troubled,” they continued. “Are you here to speak your pain clean?”

Teefee looked up. And where once she would have been smiling, with crinkling eyes ready for laughter there was not. Now her gaze held little more than  anguish and something else. Something that had been seen time and time again and would be until the stars faded and the land of dreams was but dust- resentment. 

Her once blissful face turned darker. Accusatory. Her posture went rigid and she slowly stood, never removing her gaze from them, her heart’s keeper. There was more silence as she crossed her arms. The Dreamscape slowly began to change. The withering flowers grew erect but their color was still faded. The fog cleared and revealed a beach of white sand whose still waters were pitch and held no reflection. For what loomed behind Teefee was the eclipse, now more akin to an all consuming maw. A striking resemblance to oblivion was undeniable. 

Teefee at last opened her mouth and she spoke in a tone that brooked no joy, “You lied.” Those two words, harsh and quick to the wick. Her hands shifted and she was now hovering her left over her chest, whilst her right balled into a first at her side. “I gave you my heart and you lied.” she said, quiet and forlorn. She stepped forward and her demeanor changed. There was fury now on her face and her eyes had grown into slits, something she would not have been capable of doing in the waking world. ”You said I wouldn’t lose them!” She yelled, “You lied, Sirna!”

The accusation put a pause in the idle rotation of Sirna’s moon.

Mortals were usually simple. Dispense a few cryptic words and they marvelled. Linger in the background of dreams and they marvelled. Do absolutely nothing and they marvelled. The sight of a being that resembled nature in unnatural ways seemed enough to bow the humans over with blind awe. Even when Sirna had cast that foolish shaman and his followers out of the Dreamscape a time ago, the human had only responded with fear despite the frustration stirring in his heart.

This anger was unprecedented.

Still, Sirna could not respond without knowing all of which that they were meant to address, so they took hold of Teefeen’s heart within their waterfall and they witnessed all that had happened since their last meeting. The illness that claimed Teefeen. Jiva. Sirele. Saries. What Teefeen had found necessary to do and the aftermath.

Receiving all this information happened in less than the blink of a mortal eye. Sirna’s moon glowed a faded blue as they reached out across the Dreamscape. Yes, there was that mortal... and that other one... and…

Hmm. Unprecedented indeed.

“To lie would mean that I intended to deceive you in my proposal,” they said. The blue intensified to a dim shade. A few stripes of gold bled across it. “I had no such intention. I do not understand. You have not lost your kin. Why do you choose not to seek them out?”

“Because they hate me!” Teefee yelled. “You told me I’d be able to keep us close. You said-” she took a quick breath because her anger was fierce, “You said I wouldn’t lose them!” She began to pace back and forth, her arms a flurry of motion. “I can’t even find my mother! She vanished and I know she isn’t dead! And then- and then Toffee and Tad! I was so stupid!” She broke down then. Tears came unbidden and the dream world shifted. The great eclipsed moon behind her burst into a tidal wave of water, not unlike the waterfall of Sirna’s form. The landscape became a hue of depressing blue.

“They hate me.” She whispered,  rubbing her eyes.

The sight of a crying mortal was not an uncommon thing. How many times had Sirna seen them overwhelmed in nightmares and dreams? Sirna had watched many of those times with dispassion. Intervention, when it was called for, was rare and detached. The mortals who knew Sirna were few and those who knew to summon them fewer.

Sirna’s waterfall returned to a normal angle. In a gentle swish of movement, Sirna drifted to settle next to Teefeen. Water rippled into something denser, softer. Sirna’s moon no longer sat atop a waterfall, but a mound of woven wool, folded haphazardly into itself.

“Perhaps,” they said. “And it is true that your actions have sent your kin away. But you have not lost them, Teefeen. No mortal is truly lost until they cross the threshold of my godkin’s realm.”

Blue irises bloomed from the ground as Teefeen wept, wilted and drooping. From beneath the folds of cotton, Sirna raised a lanky arm, skin dark and glimmering like midnight sky, and reached out bladed fingers. They cut an iris by its stem, cradling it in their hand with care.

This felt different. This was different. Sirna felt glad, not because they found a mortal’s suffering amusing, or because they found a mortal’s grief interesting, but because this mortal had found a space comfortable enough here to grieve to Sirna. This flavour of neediness, of dependency – it struck Sirna in a way that did not bore them, far and away from how Śramaṇa Adi had thought to do nothing more than pander to Sirna.

The question now was how long such a feeling would last. Mortals had such fleeting personalities, sometimes.

“Your future is what you make of it,” said Sirna, when it seemed that Teefeen’s tears had lessened to a trickle. “You could stay here and allow your body to rot. You could return to the world of the waking and move on. Or...”

They held out the wilted iris.

“You could seek out your kin,” said Sirna, quietly. “Make amends. They may forgive you, or they may not, but if you love them enough to make the effort, then perhaps something can be salvaged in the end.”

Her trembling hands gingerly cradled the iris as she sniffled. She remained silent for a time, letting the moment stretch in quiet reflection. “I could…” she whispered eventually. “But I think the problem lies with me, Sirna. You know my heart best. I was jealous, wasn’t I? Jealous of the twins but I… They will live for so long. How would that be fair for my siblings?” she sighed. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. I messed up. I made them miserable and it broke my heart, as I broke theirs.. So no. I don’t think… I don’t think I should go and find them. Not yet.”

“I know your heart,” agreed Sirna, “but you are the one who moves it, not I.”

The watery landscape calmed into something more still. The damp ground hardened into something smooth and alien. Teefeen’s reflection shone faintly on its filmy white surface. Sirna’s did not.

“What will you do then?” they said. “Will you search for your mother?”

“You don’t know where she is?” Teefee asked, looking at them with large misty eyes.

“Hmm.” Their moon rolled idly on their mound of cotton. “I have an inkling.”

Again, the dreamscape shifted. The surface of the glass lake shimmered with shades of gold, soft and blurred. The faint sounds of excited chatter and laughter drifted around them. There were other sounds too. Cups clacking. The repetitive clatter of wood against wood. Incessant hissing, the kind that freshly roasted meat would bubble and spit out over a well stoked flame. 

Teefee’s ears rotated as she took in the sounds. Her eyes began to narrow but she did not say anything and let Sirna go on.

“Mortals have had a tendency to disappear as of late. Without rhyme, without reason. Return is rare, if it happens at all. The few who make it back to the waking world only have these few, fleeting dreams to show for their absence.”

Along with the usual lingering aura of glitter and gold, of course. If not for the jovial nature wafting off it, Sirna might have thought it a product of the one named Sarhush. He seemed the type to push currency into mortal hands, innovator that he was. But this was too merry, and that did not fit the sour-faced bipedal god Sirna remembered of their kin.

“But why?” she asked.

“It would seem that one of my godkin has taken a liking to taking mortals.” Sirna’s moon was a dim blue, as it had been for a while. “If you choose to pursue your mother, Teefeen, it may well mean a path of no return to the world you know.”

The iris tumbled from her grip and slowly drifted to the earth below. She seemed to slump and shudder all at the same time. 

“My mother would do anything she could to find me and my siblings if we were lost, even if it meant there wasn’t a chance of returning. Why would I not do the same?” she said as a look of steely determination and purpose filled her face, bringing back a semblance of life. 

“Could you help me?” she asked Sirna, and the Teefeen he had met those many moons ago had seemingly returned. With a sly smile on her lips and a mischievous glint in her eye. But they knew her heart and what lay hidden within and behind.

It took Sirna a moment to answer, long enough that a sliver of doubt could have found its way through Teefeen’s confident façade but her heart remained true.

They could push her towards the right direction, of course. She would traverse a land that belonged to Sirna’s godkin, a place that they did not have access to from the Dreamscape or the waking world, and Sirna would be able to witness all that she saw through the very heart they had taken from her. They would both gain much from this. 

Yet hesitance stayed Sirna’s voice. Engaging with a creation of their godkin was risky, especially if they were striving to undo something that has been done. If Teefeen was lost to the same thing that had taken her mother... 

She is still only a mortal.

“You are my Dreamwalker,” said Sirna. “I would not let you pursue this alone.”

Tracing the last dreams of the mortal Ina took no effort on Sirna’s part, but it gave them no more clues onto Ina’s last whereabouts than reviewing Teefeen’s memories had. So Sirna cast their gaze wider, backwards in time, and:

Their Dreamscape reflected a moment in the distant past.

Ina leaving their wikiup to tread a well-worn path, waterskin in hand. 

The path changing before her eyes.

Her vanishing into shimmering, thin air. 

The knowledge would sit in Teefeen’s mind now, a guide to where Ina had disappeared. A concentrated breeze blew past her, ruffling her ears, circling her form, before converging into her hand, pressing into the centre of her palm. She opened her hand and she could see a diamond-shaped jewel embedded into her skin. It didn’t hurt, nor did it cause discomfort. It simply was, as though it had always been there. It wasn’t clear what colour it was – every time Teefeen looked, it was something different.

“This will allow you passage through the boundary between the Dreamscape and the waking world,” explained Sirna. “It requires only your intent to activate it and other mortals may accompany you, so long as they maintain physical contact with you.” Their moon glowed an intense violet. “Once you are within the boundaries of the space that has taken your mother, I would advise you not to use this more than once, and to enter the Dreamscape with haste once you do. Any blessing of mine is bound to attract the attention of my godkin. As resourceful as you are, Teefeen, confronting another god would be... best avoided.”

“I…I understand. I think. Thank you, Sirna.” Teefee said as she studied the jewel some more. Her stance became uncertain however, as her eyes wavered back to Sirna’s form. “I’m scared.” She said in a soft voice. “What if I still can’t find her? What if I’m found? What if I never see my siblings again…”

The Dreamscape flickered. Colours, murky and dark, swirled beneath the glass they sat on.

“All possible scenarios,” murmured Sirna. “The thought of what could be, what could have been, is the very foundation that the Dreamscape lies upon.”

They should leave it at that. Sirna was not in the habit of pushing mortals towards the decisions they made. Even so, Teefeen had made it clear that she would be going after her mother; this was a seek for comfort, not counsel.

(That Teefeen was rapidly becoming an exception to most of what Sirna was in the habit of was unrelated, of course.)

“So leave the what-ifs in the Dreamscape, Teefeen,” continued Sirna. “And shape what will be with your own hands.”

The wind picked up. The chill of the waking world would begin seeping into Teefeen’s skin once again. Sirna said nothing more as they watched Teefeen wander back to wakefulness.

Groggily she awoke feeling refreshed for once but Teefee was anything but content. With frantic abandon she gathered what little she could and opened the flaps of the wikiup for perhaps the last time. With bated breath she set out and down the path of her mother…

After her siblings left, Teefee rapidly deteriorates in mind and in health alone in her family's wikiup. She falls asleep a la lullaby shrooms and has a chat with Sirna, who scries for her mother's location and points her towards the direction of where she may have disappeared to (Alechior's Carnival). While they're at it, they bless her with something that allows for a swift exit to the Dreamscape if Teefee should so need to skedaddle. Teefee then wakes up and begins looking for her mother.

• Hazy (Out-of-Domain): Sirna scries for Ina’s last location.

• Hazy (In-Domain): Sirna blesses Teefee with a pass that allows her to traverse through the boundary between the waking world and the Dreamscape. This manifests as a diamond-shaped jewel of indeterminate colour in the centre of her palm.

	• When inactive, the jewel does not manifest in the waking world. Teefeen’s hand will look as per usual unless she calls on it.

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