Deep Dreams Are Made of These - Open

[tempredmental]

Who: Keith, Huntress crew, Shiro, open text message
Broadcast: Text
Action: Huntress
When: The night of and morning after the visions/nightmares

[Darkness. Stars. It’s nighttime and the ground trembles. A deep underlying sense of panic permeates everything, tangible in the way your limbs shake and the expressions on people’s faces, though specific features seem to melt away. The darkness turns to red, and the red turns to fire… fire everywhere, uncontrollable and hungry. It burns at your limbs and for a brief second, you see a world-- a planet-- engulfed in a wave of red-orange death.

The background noise is a strange alien wailing, neither male nor female, but it is deep and you find you can almost understand the words. They are strong enough to be word-feelings, which makes them a little hard to concentrate on with the chaos otherwise found in the vision.

<Fire.> <Run.> <Help.>]

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on the huntress

[Keith jumped up in bed with a yell, breathing hard. He didn't have nightmares often, but that sure was one. He rubbed his face. Was that... tears? He looked at his hands for a moment, noticing that they were trembling. Keith hesitated, but then eventually reached for the communicator.

After speaking with Shiro, he made his way out to the common area for a bit. He needed to get out of his room. After the common area, he went to the shuttle bay to beat up the punching bag for a bit.]

=====

private to Shiro

hey

are you awake

=====

next morning, after seeing a few posts on the network

so a few people had these nightmare vision things

i think we should compare what we saw

Comments

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor blinks - he's not familiar, with Keith, but what he's seen of him so far has been a fairly easy going young man. ]

What's been happening?

[ he frowns worriedly ]

[tempredmental]

I'm being stalked by a stupid plastic horn!

[Keith's voice cracked a little as he said it, the words tumbling out pretty fast. He was definitely unhappy about it, and was starting to not care if it sounded ridiculous.]

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor's lips twitch ]

I see it's found a new victim. I'm sorry Keith - normally it only bothers me!

[tempredmental]

Where did it come from?

[bythewaves]

It was in those gift baskets we got recently.

[tempredmental]

So this was from those new hosts?

[Keith frowned.]

They seem a little suspicious, don't you think?

[bythewaves]

Aye - well, I assume so? [ He nods ]

The whole setup is suspicious from the start, eh? We know too little of what is really going on.

[tempredmental]

Well, yeah.

[Keith sighed. He glanced back into the kitchen. The cursed horn in question had somehow made it out of the garbage was sitting on the counter, completely unharmed. Keith glared at it.]

You're welcome to take that thing back, by the way.

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor follows his gaze and shakes his head, walking over to pick it up ]

I will put it back in my room. Hopefully it will leave you in peace for a while, now! Oddly, I don't think it bothers Mikleo except when he's around me - perhaps it cannot see the Seraphim, either.

[tempredmental]

Maybe. They're lucky, if that's the case.

[Evil thing... Keith was already on edge, and that just made it worse.]

[bythewaves]

Why don't you come and have a cup of tea, Keith? I'll put it in my room - it seems to stay there for a while, normally.

[tempredmental]

Alright...

[Another cup of tea couldn't hurt. He knew the one Mikleo gave him was pretty relaxing, but the way he had described it indicated that they shouldn't be using it a lot. Something else would do fine for now to maybe enhance it and get it working again after his encounters with the "Horn of Evil".]

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor leads them both down to the kitchen, keeping a hand on the vuvuzela. From experience he knows that so long as he doesn't put it down, it won't pull the movement trick, at least. ]

Fortunately, I stocked up on various teas at our last stop, so we have decent approximations rather than the... er... efforts that come out of the machine.

[tempredmental]

Yeah... that stuff is a bit... off. [For the lack of a better description.

Keith followed Maglor into the kitchen.]

Did you get a lot of different ones?

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor makes an agreeing face ]

I am glad that they are not letting us starve, but what they serve barely qualifies as food at all!

[ He nods ] Aye - they're not teas I know, so I simply got a wide selection, after discussion and sampling! This one is my favourite.

[ He takes a tin down and shows Keith ]

It's a black tea of some sort. [ If Keith is familiar with teas, it smells like a generic breakfast tea ]

[tempredmental]

Letting us starve would likely be bad for ratings.

[Keith sounded slightly bitter as he said it, but yeah...

He leaned in to sniff when Maglor offered the tin for that purpose. Okay. It smelled familiar, at least. Keith wasn't a tea expert by any means, but it smelled like tea, so he'd take it.]

That works.

[bythewaves]

In the long term, I imagine so. Although in honesty, I am not sure they are not saving an 'emergency' situation like that for something dramatic at some point in time.

[ Maglor sighs ]

Good enough then! [ He says cheerfully and spoons a couple of teaspoons into the teapot he fetches down ]

[tempredmental]

[Keith settled down as Maglor took it upon himself to make the tea.]

That's a pretty morbid thought.

[bythewaves]

I suppose it is, but I am old enough to be allowed to be pessimistic, I think!

[ He is very precise with the steep time, bringing it both over to them in mugs ]

I'm sure they wouldn't let us starve, but hunger? I would not put it past them.

[tempredmental]

[Keith raised an eyebrow at the age comment, but he really should know better than to judge age by appearance at this point. Maglor wasn't a human, he was an elf, so there was a high chance he'd look different in relation to his age than Keith would.]

I guess.

[The statement about letting them go hungry for a while without actually starving them, though... that was worrying, and it showed on the Paladin's face.]

At that point, it's more like torture than anything else.

[bythewaves]

We had best hope none of our viewers are fond of torture as entertainment then!

[ He shakes his head and says apologetically ]

But there, I shouldn't bring up such evil thoughts.

[tempredmental]

[That was okay, Keith was having enough of those on his own right now.]

It's fine. [He shook his head.] Don't worry about it.

[bythewaves]

I still should strive to be more cheerful, I think. [ Maglor smiles apologetically ] It is a bad habit of mine to be overly melancholy I have been told.

[tempredmental]

I've been told the same thing.

[Well, not exactly in those words, but close enough.]

[bythewaves]

[ Maglor chuffs, wrapping hands around the cup ]

We are a right pair aren't we? Well. We can try to be more cheerful together.