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]

"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.