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Of Faeful Things and Stranger Dreams

Scald sat at his planting table in the front window of the still lifeless candy shop, taking in what sunlight filtered through the smog and clouds as he scribbled away in one of his journals.

This particular journal was most assuredly not his usual that everyone saw, bearing his extensive notes on every plant he had come across in his educated lifetime. No, this one was much different. It was bound in black leather and much less worn on the outside, larger than his plant journal in every dimension save thickness and bearing the strangest notes that never would stare back at the eyes of anyone but himself. In it was written little scraps about porridge and stools by fireplaces, of bits of string and bits of hair, of promises and oaths people made that seemed to vibrate with a life of it’s own. Accounts of useless coins and trinkets passed between fingers, bearing more worth than their outward value. Of words uttered to ward off darkness or hissed to invite it in. Of sweet milk and molding bread. But most of all, it carried an account of his dreams he thought may be of some importance.

Today he wrote of one that had woken him early in the morning with a disturbed trembling. He closed his eyes for a moment as he recalled it, standing on the platform by the train station that had only just last night been overcrowded with trolleys run amok. In the chaos, he couldn’t quite make out what was littering the tracks within his dreams. Rubble of an indiscernable sort strewn all about and the train station.. The station itself! Gone! Swallowed up with a fourth of the Pallisades in a great, big, dark, gaping chasm that seemed to have no bottom! He felt a panic welling up inside him and turned to look around again, finding people clearing up some of the mess with great big machines. Jimmy was there. And Mrs. Jed and his father, all doing their part with a few other faces he couldn’t quite make out. All seemed to carry some grim weight about them at the darkness that had seemed to just swallow the area. It was more than smog, a great dark cloud that seemed to engulf a quarter of the Square and nearly as much of the Gut just as the chasm had engulfed so much of the Pallisades!

He felt not himself, even as he opened his eyes from recalling the dream. There had been more, and he surely had not been himself. Not that he was standing outside of himself looking down on his own body in the dream, but as if he was a different thing altogether, watching from above and yet amongst those toiling away in the gloom. His own home was different, not the candy shop at all, but somewhat resembling his very first home of that old lab hidden within a warehouse. It carried with it the same weight, the same.. mess. A great looming factory right across from City Hall with so much junk strewn inside and no semblance of his father’s pursuits. And yet… his father was indeed there.

The boy shook himself off for a moment as he continued to write in his journal. There had been one last detail of the dream that had nagged at him. His older brother. He hadn’t seen him for months even before his father had moved him to their new home in New Babbage. But there he had been in the horror stricken New Babbage within his dream, that kind face worn into a dry emptyness, that wild hair worthy of a stereotyped mad scientist standing out in grey and black in every direction, his lanky form dressed smartly in a blue vest and dark grey suit. Even those bushy caterpillar eyebrows he was fond of teasing to wake him when he slept in too late after a long night up working on some new automaton in his own lab.

Scald’s fond smile for his brother faded. Empty, almost dead.. He had seen him from the vantage point of that darkness that had hovered over the city surrounding the chasm that had swallowed the station. Watched as he headed into the Gut, wandering.. not quite aimlessly, no, more with a dead aim. Like a moth drawn to a flame his feet had carried him to the Bucket, rather, around back of it to the porch of Strife house, staring down at the boards beneath his feet for the longest time before he had wandered with that same strange aim for Dr. Berithos’ place where he just stood outside in the street before.. vanishing.

His quill came to a stop on the page for a long moment before he gasped softly and blotted at the carelessly pooled ink before he blew on the open pages to help the writings dry. He dearly hoped the dream meant nothing but his own fears churned up by the tram disaster the night before, but it was recounted in his journal, just the same, carefully penned, dried and closed away for safe keeping.

 

((A note, this was simply a recounting of a dream the typist actually did have last night. Comments are welcome, as are any story ideas it may spawn, have at! It has no actual real pertinence to any events currently ongoing within the rp to my knowledge. Any resemblance to current happenings is purely awesome coincidence. Feel free to run amok with it. And lastly, I apologize for the lengthyness.))

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