A Time to Rise and a Time to Fall [Open to Multiple]

[andhiswife]

Greta dreams of falling (again, and again).

The path ends abruptly. Maybe there never was a path, only a deceptive stretch of ground, free of any undergrowth, that looked like it could be one. Either way, she's left standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, looking down at the leaf-strewn forest floor far below her. A small rock tumbles down, as if for the sole purpose of illustrating the length of the drop. It seems to take ages to reach the bottom, clattering off exposed roots and finally thudding to the ground.

There's a roaring in her ears like a great wind, but it isn't the wind. The earth shudders beneath her feet. She reaches out wildly for something on which to steady herself, knowing even as she does so that she'll miss; she always misses, it's so stupid. Maybe she deserves whatever comes next.

But she doesn't miss. Her hand closes around something - not a branch. An arm? Whatever it is, she isn't letting go.


[ooc: whoops, Greta's dropped into your dream. Or you've dropped into hers. Whether you want them both to be in her giant-plagued forest or in a setting more familiar to your character is up to you. Poor Greta's just gonna have to roll with it either way.]

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[lottawork]

Rush's eyes snap shut in blink that is no way painful.

Ah.

Some of the tense, wiry frustration drains out of the hunch of his shoulders. He shakes himself, briskly, and exhales out his nose in a sharp, resigned huff.

"Where, specifically, did you last see them?" The question is spoken wearily, almost patiently, a complete departure from the barbed remarks he's been ratcheting out since landing in this seemingly interminable, unbearable dream.

[andhiswife]

Well, that's a bit of a shift. Greta looks back up at him, warily reassessing. Perhaps he's not as completely heartless as he first appeared.

Which makes it all the more unfortunate that she doesn't have a good answer for him. "It's… hard to say, specifically." She gestures to the wild tangle all around them; it's not exactly strewn with helpful landmarks. "We split up so we could cover more ground. I went one way and my husband went the other; we left our child in the middle, with the girl."

And then she got hopelessly turned around, and then the giant appeared, and then this happened, and if it's all a dream she's not sure if any of it even matters. "I think," she ventures, "that if we follow this path, we'll reach them."

She certainly hopes so. Wandering in circles through the trees is the only other option.

[lottawork]

"You split up?" he repeats with a disbelief verging on aghast. In here? In a dense, homogenous forest with no means for navigation and, presumably, what equates to giants roaming wherever the fuck?

The scathing edge to his words returns in untempered force. "What in the fuck for?"

[andhiswife]

And he's back to this. Greta barely suppresses an eyeroll as she turns back down the Path and resumes walking. "Because we felt like it," she replies acidly. Then, with less sarcasm but equal contempt - because honestly, does he think they're stupid? - she clarifies, "We were trying to find a boy before someone else did, because if we didn't find him, first, he would be murdered." There, are those circumstances desperate enough for you?

[lottawork]

"So you left your own child behind?" What sort of skewed logic is this person even operating on? "Well fucking done. Equal exchange, was it? Wasn't enough to have just one pre-adolescent wandering about so you decided to set them all loose?"

Rush needs to manufacture a grip on his own fucking breathing. He wrests it into something less heavy, less wrenching, and pinions the woman with a furious, deeply critical glare.

"All right," he raps out shortly. "What are their names. What do they look like. Contextualize, why don't you."

[andhiswife]

The criticism lands like a punch to the gut, and Greta blanches, then just as quickly turns crimson. Who is he to tell her what they should have done? And how dare he imply that she deliberately endangered the child she worked so hard to have?

"He's safe enough with the girl," she snaps, "because no one's after the two of them. It's Jack everyone wants, the giant included." Said giant might be making a colossal mess, but it's also not deliberately stepping on infants.

With that, she falls into a tight-lipped, furious silence. There's no point in telling him anything more; he can't possibly help her. Bellowing names into the distance might just as easily attract the giant - or the Witch - as the people she's trying to find. And she doesn't want his help. She doesn't want him here at all.

[lottawork]

"Does it really fucking matter if no one's after them, specifically?" It is a fucking impressive mastery of self-control that Rush is able to keep his outrage limited to a venomous hiss. "Particularly when one takes into account that there is, according to your word, an alleged giant doing fuck knows what and stepping fuck knows where."

This cannot be Rush's life right now. He is not arguing about the management of children, whom he cannot tolerate and cannot stand and cannot reasonably be expected to interact with on any basis whatsoever, with a woman who is intent on avoiding a fucking giant. He doesn't want to know the specifics of her universe. He doesn't fucking care.

He's extremely positive he doesn't.

"Since when do children ever stay right where the fuck they are?"

[andhiswife]

Heaven help her, she is going to smack him if he doesn't shut his mouth. The girl is sensible, and she's armed - which makes her safe enough in a pinch, which is what this whole bloody situation was. Is? Whichever.

"Oh, as if you know anything about any of this," she shoots back, starting in a vicious undertone that climbs into something strident enough to carry. "You think you can just drop into my head and--"

"Greta?" a third, achingly familiar voice interrupts, and she pulls up short, suddenly breathless. Her husband appears from around a nearby tree, sees her, and slumps in visible relief. "There you are," he scolds, hurrying down the path towards her. "We were wondering what was keeping y--oh," he concludes abruptly as Greta flings her arms around his neck in a far more frantic embrace than the situation warrants. But she can't help herself. He feels so real. He puts his arms around her after a moment's hesitation, and she hears him offer the other man a bemused but friendly, "Hullo," from over her shoulder.

[lottawork]

"You think I wanted to fucking drop -" he begins to override her hotly, but the new voice, saturated in exhausted relief, cuts cleanly across them both. And there they both are, it's a bloody tearful reunion and it's all very heartwarming, and Rush folds his arms across his thin chest and looks out at the darkened patches between trees and tries to force the sensation of waking upon his mind.

Still nothing. There ought to be a seminar.

"You realize he isn't real?" he asks dully, lifting one finger from his hand's entirely-too-insecure grip around the opposite elbow. "It's important to me that you realize this."

[andhiswife]

Greta releases a breath and leans her forehead against her husband's shoulder. It never ends with this one. Maybe she should just take the scarf and gag him with it. She can feel the Baker working on a baffled 'what,' but she beats him to the punch with a somewhat muffled but still perfectly audible, "Would you shut you mouth for one bloody minute?" Then, patting his chest, she adds, "Him, dear, not you."

Because yes, she knows this isn't real, and she doesn't need an incredibly unhelpful reminder of that unfortunate fact just now. Heaven forbid she have a single moment with her husband - even if it's only a memory - without some beetle-spirited stranger doing something to ruin it. Ugh. Forget him. She pulls back, takes her Baker's face in her hands, feels the rough stubble against her palms. Not real. Real enough.

"Our son?" she asks softly, dropping her hands to his shoulders.

"Still with the girl," he says, looking as if he doesn't know quite what to do with her in this state. Well, she'd always been better at keeping it together, out of the two of them. He settles on a concerned frown, one hand rubbing at her back. "They're fine. But what happened to you?" He throws a pointed look back at her tagalong.

She wishes this was real. It's a question she desperately wants to answer for him, lest they think she just fell afoul of the giant and is lying in the bottom of a footprint somewhere. "I'm all right," she lies.

[lottawork]

His arms unfurl to bring the bases of both palms fiercely against his forehead, some fucking anticipatory measure against the splitting headache he knows he'll be waking with. How long has he been out? Fuck fuck fuck.

He is not going to survive this fucking forest in all its audacious, deciduous nonreality nor the things that fucking walk it. He isn't going to fucking panic over nothing but if he does not get out of here -

He won't waste in his own mind. It's a dream, and one normally wakes up from dreams. Even those of the atypically vivid variety.

Rush is leaning against a tree in what he is asserting as a thoroughly unconcerned manner, arms re-crossed and expression re-arranging itself into something that is, decidedly, bored.

"One down, then," he says evenly.