Passive Dream Recording | The Box

[notachickenhawk]

Sender: Tobias
To: Everyone
Subject: Passive dream recording
Warnings: Torture, PTSD, hunting


You fly on auburn wings high above the field, looking down at it. It's far below you, and yet you can clearly see the rats scurrying in the grasses, the rabbits hopping into their burrows as your shadow passes, and you know you could swoop down and kill them in an instant. All of them, if you really wanted - the mother and her babies. You can almost taste the meat and blood and fur - but no. You're not hungry right now, and better to let them grow so you can hunt them later.

You turn, wheeling up towards the sky. There's a forest nearby, and you have a destination. You tilt your wings downwards until -

Wham! You slam into what feels like a glass window. Shrieking, you try to go around it, to find where the edge is and - and you hear a teenage girl's voice.

"You are obviously not a leader. You are not even second-in-command. You are a nobody." The voice makes you panic more than the words, and you kick off of the 'glass' to try to dive towards the field and -

Wham! There's another 'wall' - floor? - beneath you. You push off again and panic, trying to find the exit -

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! Four more walls, making a cube. You're trapped. You're trapped and you know it's closing in and you can hear the girl laughing. It's a dark chuckle, and you know what that means. You're in the box again. You're in the box again and you know what that means, you know that she could pull you back to reality once again and cause you pain and you're panicking. You flutter around the box, trying to find something, some exit - but you know it's useless.

"Demorph!"

<No!> You shout it wordlessly, struggling against the inevitable. You reach up a wing in front of your face and see - a hand? But it's also a wing? It doesn't make sense, and you hear a gruff man's voice - older, raspy, cold.

"What good is it?"

What good is it anyway? You're going to die here, you're going to die and no one is going to help you and all you can see is your wing/hand and the blue sky and you tense your body, ready for the pain and -

Blackness.

Comments

[notachickenhawk]

<I try not to lie where I don't have to. ... But some days I wish I could cry. Sometimes seeing some of the stuff we do... it hurts a lot. It's frustrating and upsetting and... yeah. But hawks don't cry. Flying helps sometimes, but that's... about it.>

[holdshisown]

It is a good habit to have. Sometimes you have to tell untruths, of course, but it is generaly a bad idea to get to comfortable with the notion. It must be hard for you not to have that emotional release available to you... war is... it is hell, to put it lightly. It would worry me more if it did not upset you. It's good flying helps, if only a little bit.

[notachickenhawk]

<It is. But I just... don't have other options. I can't go back to how things were. If I tried, I wouldn't be able to fight anymore. And I don't think I could step away from the fight, knowing my friends were fighting and I couldn't keep them safe. ... Emotional release isn't... something I concern myself with a lot.>

[He was always so sensitive... he's not anymore. And it's not like his aunt and uncle miss him.]

[holdshisown]

No. Going back is rarely an option we are given. Sometimes all we can do is learn to live with what we have, instead of mourning those things we have lost.

[Absentmindedly he rubs the stump of his right arm.]

No. All we can do is move forwards as best we can.

[notachickenhawk]

<I'm just... I feel tired a lot. I wish I could rest. I just want to sleep without these stupid dreams. It's not just... it gets worse than what showed up.>

[holdshisown]

Hopefully you'll get something of a respite here. I... I am not an expert by any means, and I'm not even sure if you'd trust me enough to try, but I could try a Song of Power to calm your mind and coax more gentle dreams from it sometime? It's not a guarantee, of course, but my brother used to do it for me from time to time... when things got bad enough.

[notachickenhawk]

<No offense, but I'm not sure I'd trust anything mind-altering. I... magic's still kind of a new thing for me? So it's taking me a while to trust it.>

[He's trying. He just... he's been suspicious of everything for a really long time.]

[holdshisown]

No offense taken. I was fairly certain you would turn down the offer... which is understandable. I'm not too fond of it myself, I tolerated it from my brother but I wouldn't have accepted such aid from anyone else. I just felt I should mention it just in case.

[Hey, he get's it. He's spent quite a few centuries being a paranoid wreck himself. It takes time to let yourself belive everything isn't out to get you anymore.]

[notachickenhawk]

<The offer is appreciated. I've just kind of... learned to live with it. It's like an itchy wound - it's still there if you ignore it, but it just becomes a background annoyance after a while.>

[holdshisown]

It is astonishing what one can learn to live with, no? In any case, I don't sleep much to begin with so if you ever find yourself with difficulty to do so yourself I can at least offer you company in sleeplessness.