text | un: feal

[noblegarnet]

[On the afternoon of the 1st, a disgruntled post goes up on the network.]

Did you know some moths produce silk from their salivary glands? Because I didn't until after I spat out a bunch of string this morning.

[He didn't make that connection immediately, mind you; after the initial utter bafflement, he took the time to go do more research on Fae and the insects they resemble. Nerd.]

Someone let me know if there's a market for organic fae silk. And if you could invent some kind of google or wikipedia while you're at it, that would be appreciated.

[Do you know how LONG it takes to look through PHYSICAL BOOKS]

Comments

[stopfen]

[Bro, bro...Be happy she mentioned the arms and not the mandibles.]

A few. They don't seem to be as strange as me. They don't even have shell

Carapace. Whatever it's called.

[noblegarnet]

[In a meta sense, he is happy about that, yes. And her remark that the others aren't as "strange" helps to balance out his mental shriek at the mention of a carapace.]

Have they been here as long as you have?

[stopfen]

Two have, the others have been here the same amount of time as me.
Ten months now.

[noblegarnet]

[Well, that is a little reassuring. If they've been here just as long without getting... extra-insecty... then maybe there's still hope. He has to cling to something. He's too handsome to transform into a moth.]

That sounds like a long time to be here.

[Not that he has much frame of reference. He has a lot of complicated feelings about being stuck in this different world, though, even without the monster aspect...]

Does it feel that way?

[stopfen]

This is the longest I've ever been in one place since I was a child.

[Yes]

[noblegarnet]

[As much as Ferran has traveled in the past, he's pretty much always had the same home... up until very recently. It's hard for him to imagine the alternative, but...]

It must be strange for you, then. [Even without the changes.] Was it by choice or necessity, before?

[stopfen]

Necessity

[Yep, that's all he was getting here.]

[noblegarnet]

[He's not judging; it's going to be similarly difficult for anyone to pry his backstory out of him. Ferran is more interested in talking about mundane things, anyway.]

How do you like it, staying in one place? This city seems nice enough, but I've only been here a couple of weeks.

[stopfen]

It's peaceful here.
The other city isn't. Or it wasn't.
There was an attack last month.

[noblegarnet]

Was that the one cursed to sleep?

[He's become relatively certain most of what he learned during that nightmare was accurate, to a point. Not a lot of the details stuck with him, though.]

Are they okay now?

[stopfen]

Yeah. We were able to collect enough fragments to wake them up.
The person who did it was killed.

[noblegarnet]

That's good to hear.

[Even if he still thinks being cursed to sleep forever isn't the worst thing that could happen. He doesn't know enough about the situation to judge over the culprit being killed, though.]

Maybe it's not great to say, but I'm kind of grateful it happened. I'm not sure I would have had that dream otherwise, and it prepared me a lot more for this place than just falling through the mirror first would have.

[stopfen]

Most people wake up in a dream before coming through a mirror.
No one knows why.


There's a lot we don't know.

[noblegarnet]

So it's common, huh.

[That's... something. Whether it's good or bad, he couldn't say.]

I'm starting to get that impression. Not that I can blame them, but you'd think a place with magic like this would have ways of finding things out.

[Isn't divination a thing? What's stopping them?]

[stopfen]

The nightmare isn't.
Normally it just happens. We'd go to sleep and be in the dream.

I think there's something. Dreamwalking, but it's hard to do. I don't know enough to try it.

[She could have tried asking, getting the coven to put her under the spell and send her into the dream. But what good would it do with her paltry knowledge of magic and this world?]

[noblegarnet]

[He guesses if she says she doesn't know much about it, any further questions would be lost on her. A shame, but it's given him something to think about.]

It can't be that hard if so many of us randomly managed it without even coming here first. [A bold assumption to make? Maybe.]

At this point I'd be more interested in learning how to avoid it, though.

[stopfen]

They still don't know why we've been coming here.
The dreams are connected. But we don't know how.

[noblegarnet]

It sounds like something to look into.

[If just to figure out how to block himself from dream sharing. He'd like to keep his traumas to himself, thanks!]

Were you already a Fae in the dream before you came here?

[stopfen]

If you can understand it.
No. I kept changes. I was a cat and a rabbit for a bit.

[noblegarnet]

I'm sure I can get the gist.

[He's not a slacker in the academic department. This place's magic can't be that much more complex than physics or calculus, as long as he finds the right kinds of teachers.

In a way, it's weird that she changed so drastically, but it's not that bizarre given... everything else.]

I guess anything can happen in a dream. I had wings, myself, so I guessed I would be a Fae even before anything changed.

[stopfen]

It kept changing. I was a fae for a bit.
Everything was quicker there.

[noblegarnet]

Quicker for features coming in, you mean?

[He doesn't like the word transforming... it gives him the heebie jeebies...]

[stopfen]

Yes. It happened within seconds. There wasn't any pain there either.

[noblegarnet]

[... the implication is pretty clear there, about pain outside the dream. Yet another thing to dread.]

Whatever brought us here must be especially cruel.

[Maybe he should explain where that statement has come from all of a sudden, but he's a little caught up in imagining the worst.]

[stopfen]

That's if it's even a thing at all.