I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.

[Strix (DELETED 5285)]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Strix> It had been a relatively long day; from spending time with Paige and the Altaire, to meeting Jesse, to her shift at the club, Phoebe had basically exhausted herself and run herself ragged. Her feet were aching, and she had bruises on her arms and inner thighs from the pole tonight. She always bruised whenever she worked herself too hard and tried too many stunts, and tonight was one of those nights. Though the sun wouldn’t rise for a few hours yet, she headed back to Veil Towers rather than her usual post-work ritual of hunting and hacking, more interested in falling into bed than strengthening and testing her burgeoning powers.

Her keys jangled against the door, disengaging the deadbolt and allowing herself entry. She was always very careful about keeping Axel’s home locked and secure. She didn’t want to be the one who got his stuff stolen or traps placed around his apartment. Dropping her purse on the floor, she toed off the pink-bedazzled Uggs she often wore on her way to and from work (they were usually much more comfortable than the eight-inch heels she danced in for hours every night) and stuck them by the door. She’d moved herself into the apartment relatively easily, most of her possessions having been clothing stuffed in large bags and left in piles around Axel’s home. She carried light, and this was a nice place to crash, with Paige being around all the time and plenty of peace and quiet.

Dropping onto the couch, she propped her aching feet up on the arm of the couch and slung an arm over her eyes. She hadn’t bothered to change out of the fringed bikini top and hot pants she wore; because honestly, it didn’t seem like Axel was awake and she didn’t care what anyone thought of her outfits or her profession anyway. Instead, she found herself dropping into sleep quickly and quietly, her chest rising and falling merely out of habit and comfort and not because she needed to breathe.

<Axel Rosen> Having long since been asleep, as Strix enters, his petrified-like demeanor would show on his face as he is deep in his own dreams. For once, the male had appeared in the mountains to the east of the villages in his dream world. The red-cliffed hills as he looks around and studies to realize that he’s fine. He’s not sure where he is for sure. He’s never gotten out this far without having been cut off or waking up. His blue eyes look up. It appears that his dreams had put him only half way up the side of the mountain and that he should get moving soon.

The three stars in the sky, he can seem them far better now. Something is off about one of them, it doesn’t appear to have the same radiant glow at this elevation. He tries to look closer at it and he tilts his head to the side. There’s something at the center of the glow, but his eyes can’t see it through the blaze of the other stars. The red star is bright and closest to the planet it appears, as it’s the one that is largest in the sky. The blue one is most distant, as it’s almost the size of a dime in the sky. It glows bright though. The moons at night, though he hasn’t seen them in some time, as the planet only gets dark once in a month.

He feels relatively safe up here, so he rests against the stone behind him and continues to watch the sky. There are very little clouds in the sky, the green-tinted blue blanketing the entire space above him. He’s not even sure of this cosmos. Now that he’s aware this is a dream, his dream, he has to ask just how it came into being. How he did it, how he created it. He knows that it’s what he bases most of his writing off of. Perhaps if he investigates his own works of fiction he may be able to find some information on where exactly he first created this place.

<Strix> Strix was wearing hiking boots. This alone was unusual because Strix didn’t own hiking boots, or any sensible footwear of any sort, really. They were cute, though. She could get used to them. The boots crunched against the red dust beneath her feet as she moved, making her way up the mountain… toward what, she didn’t know. Instead, she focused her gaze on the sky around her, green and blue and beautiful, but lacking the smattering of stars she’d grown used to back home in Harper Rock. Instead, there were three stars ahead of her, guiding her movement up the mountain and toward her goal. Being semi-lucid, she had no idea what her goal was, but only that it was very, very important.

Her palms itched. That’s the other thing that she noticed, besides her hiking boots. Her palms itched and were coated in the very same red dust that lined the ground; the very same red dust was covering her knees. She must have fallen, but she doesn’t remember it. As she climbed higher and higher, sometimes grabbing onto rock faces to push herself further, pebbles and stones trickled down the mountain behind her. What was she even hiking for? She liked to run, and dance, but she’d never had much of a relationship with the great outdoors. Thank goodness the air around her was cool and comfortable, and her hair was piled high on her head to prevent tendrils of red curls from sticking to her neck.

She climbed, for what seemed like hours. The whole atmosphere was surreal and disquieting, as if there was an ominous threat at the top of the mountain.

<Axel Rosen> There’s something odd happening beneath him, the sounds of someone climbing, hiking and making his or her way to the top where he is. Moving, he looks over the edge of the cliff that he’s sitting on and looks down. Strix s here. He doesn’t remember pulling anyone into his dream this evening. Then again he could be wrong. He could be very wrong, just because he knows that he has this power to pull people into his dreams, doesn’t mean that he has control over it at the moment. He tilts his head to the side for a moment. He speaks down to her in a hushed tone. “Hey… when you get closer I’ll help you up.” His eyes watch her journey, then he looks behind her path. He makes sure that she hasn’t left a trail. Luckily for the two of them, she hasn’t done that. They should be safe so long as she’s quiet.

His eyes close and then he breathes out a little. As she gets closer to him, his hand extends out to her, ready to pull her over the edge of the cliff. He smirks at her slightly, once she’s at the top of the crimson rocks that stand over the valley. Now that she’s up there they can relax or.. whatever she really wants to do so long as they’re safe. “I apologize…” He starts the conversation off with that. “For pulling you into my dream. I have no idea how I’m doing it just that I can. I didn’t even realize I had done it this time.” Axel had thought that he was gaining control of this power, but it appears to him that he’s lost control of it. Then again, maybe she has the power and has made her way here.

If shes not aware of having the power perhaps this is a new path for her, perhaps he’ll be able to help her to going along the same trail he is. The trail of realization of this power and learning how to use it. He’s not sure how good of a guide he’d be.

<Strix> Why was he whispering? She glanced over her shoulder, trying to see if something was following her. She hadn’t heard anything behind her. Meeting Axel’s gaze, she couldn’t help but to smile. He made her jumbled even in this world. It wasn’t the fade, she was pretty sure of that, but she had no idea where they were or what they were doing here. When he gripped her hand, she grabbed onto it, even though she was more than capable of pulling herself up on her own. After all, she wasn’t going to turn down touching a hot man offering to help her. That’d be stupid. Instead, she brushed her hands off on her shorts and wiped the dust off of her knees, sitting beside him. “Hey, no,” she responded, quietly, because that was the way he’d set the tone. “Don’t apologize. We’re in your dream?”

She thought about it for a moment. That would make sense. This world didn’t look like anything she’d seen in Harper Rock or beyond. She had no idea that she could jump into others’ dreams, and assumed that he pulled her. The thought made her pretty happy, actually. If he pulled her in, it meant he must have wanted her there. She sat next to him and searched his eyes, trying to figure out what they were doing at the cliffs. Was this a spirit quest? Hah! That’d be hilarious. “I remember getting home. I didn’t want to disturb you, you seemed passed out.”

<Axel Rosen> “Yeah this is my dream world, the place never really changes. It does, but very seldomly. It’s always this setting, just different places within it.” Axel states, not looking at her just yet, as he’s already made eye-contact for a little bit. “Trying to figure out how you got here though. I don’t remember having pulled you in.. I may have. Just don’t remember doing it.” A small smile comes over his face as she says that she didn’t want to disturb him. “Oh it’s fine. I was pretty much out, had spent most of the night in front of the forge.” He’s making mention of it, but no one has actually seen him working at it. No one has seen anything he’s made from the stuff he’s worked on. He prefers it that way for the moment, at least until he gets better at it and can make something of substantial value.

Pointing at one of the villages in a clearing beside a temple. “That over there is the last place I was when I was in this place. It’s.. kind of sad. All the people, kids, women, men, all covered in welts, blackened blood, and a mark of their disease…” He frowns a little bit thinking about it. While yes, he loves torturing people, killing them, etc. It’s not, in his mind, okay to kill or make an entire species suffer in one nation. It borders on genocide, slow, but genocide none the less. One victim every now and then, especially those disgusting paladins. He turns his head to her. “Place is rather dark.. probably a retrospective view into my own mind…”

<Strix> “I don’t know. I was thinking about you when I got home, about poking my head in and saying hi and asking if you wanted to run out for a pint with me. But it was really quiet at home. I didn’t want to disturb you.” She repeated the words and paused and chewed her lower lip, looking him up and down. She was strangely comfortable in his dream. “Do you think I could have sent myself here?” It wasn’t the most illogical question. She could easily have similar powers, being a telepath.

She brushed the question off, falling silent to give him time to respond, but looking and reflecting at the village. She, too, felt sorry for a community in pain. She was far from a humanitarian, but when children were involved… well, it struck her in a place that reminded her of her own dreams. “That’s really sad…” she mumbled, twisting her fingers around one another and pulling on the digits until they cracked. “Can we help them?”

<Axel Rosen> “Nah, you could have tried to wake me up if you wanted to, but I don’t think it would have worked. When I got to sleep I become like the dead thing I am…” He nods his head, not lying at all, his body goes stiff when he dies, his eyes under the lids are glassy and almost translucent. His muscles are tight. Most of the time, in the moments before sleep he goes into bouts of twitching, worse than most do when they’re humans. He takes a breath, thinking of her next question. “Perhaps. I mean if I can do it, then you could likely do it, right?” He shrugs his shoulders and then grins at her, kind of happy that she’s here in the dream world. At least he doesn’t have to be alone as he’s being hunted.

Shaking his head in regard to the talk about the other people in this realm, “No.. not really. The only way to help them would be to find the…” he pauses to look around and then turns back to her again, “The new gods and kill them. Especially the god of disease…” He nods his head and then looks back to her again. It’s a sad reality, but they can’t help the people. Not without a ton of hunting, killing through piles of monsters and priests, etc. He doesn’t have the time this evening. He’d have to spend an immense amount of time asleep before he could even start to make a dent.

<Strix> She nodded, sad that there is nothing they could do. Sad that she made no difference and had no power here, either. Instead, she scooted closer to him, trying to be subtle, letting her legs dangle off of the cliff. “Okay. Well, that’s probably gonna take a while. Why do you dream of stuff like this?” It seemed like a relatively logical question to ask. Why were they sent here? Why did his dreams take him here?

“My dreams always take me to the places I want to be the most. Is there something here that calls to you? Someone here that you love?” She placed a hand on his shoulder and turned to him, brows knit and eyes concerned. What if there was someone in the village, diseased and dying, that he really did want to save? Someone he loved? “Maybe I can do it. And maybe that means I can actually help, Axel. That I have some kind of control over this place too.” She licked her lips, unable to keep her eyes from wandering down to ogle his.

<Axel Rosen> “My dreams bring me here because… I don’t know”, he looks at her for a second, knowing that if he figure that out then maybe he’d be able to fix some other stuff. The male looks her over and then gives her a grin. “Someone I love here.. not that I know of. My mother died when I was young and my father is a drunk… So.. not really.” He looks at her when she says that she could help and that she has some control here. “Well technically I’ve only ever seen two people change this place… and I think those were flukes. I can’t even alter major parts I can only alter minor things around me.” He sighs out a little bit. It’s as if his mind is fighting him, “If I change major things, then the hounds come. Like antibodies in my brain. Coming to get me.”

He frowns a little, before his eyes meet hers and he has to grin a bit. Her lips are licked and he shakes his head at her, pushing her shoulder lightly. “I would like to have dreams I enjoy, dreams that are worth having but most of the time it’s death or being hunted. It’s kind of.. not so great.”

<Strix> She shoved at his shoulder, smiling and dipping her head to hide a blush behind a waterfall of crimson curls. He was being playful, at least. That was good. “Well, we need to find out why you’re here. And then, someday, I’m gonna show you what a good dream is like. The kind you don’t want to wake up from.” She promised him, leaning against his shoulder quietly. She looked over the landscape, the sky, the three weird stars hanging there over their heads. She liked his company.

“Hey, so, I won’t try to change things then. I don’t want your brain to get fucked up. We won’t be able to hang out if you’re on a feeding tube or drooling on yourself.” Strix grinned and looped an arm about his shoulders, friendly and comforting. “So, do you know how to control this power of ours? Should I close my eyes, focus on my dreams, see if I can take us there? I mean, what are dreams but desire? If I want it the most, can I make it happen?” She couldn’t help but insinuate the sexual in her questions, eyes glittering with mischief. There always seemed to be tension between them, at least where she was concerned. She felt it. It was palpable, even in dreams.

<Axel Rosen> “Honestly”, he starts to answer and then places his hand on her shoulder, “I have no idea how to control it, just learned I had it the other night.” He states this and then breathes out for a second, unsure of where to start. “I usually feel that I do it when I do it subconsciously, when I pull people. I’ve never moved between dreams but one. That was into Nix’s dream. I only remember a bit of it now though.” He sighs out a little bit, and then looks her over again. She’s being flirty and then grins at her. He’d might as well flirt back it’s not like any harm could come of a dream, right? “Wouldn’t have to close your eyes to get what you want though.” He grins, finally laying down completely. He doesn’t even lean against the cliff.

He closes his own eyes as he relaxes into the stone and then cracks his wrists and fingers. His ankles crack as he goes. He then peeks his eyes open to look at her, to see what she’s doing. She may have more questions, more thoughts about the area they’re in. He looks at the stars again, trying to figure out what is at the heart of the green star.

<Strix> She stretched out beside him and grinned, stretching her arms out over her head. Her shirt raised up over her belly and she giggled, reaching down to tug at the garment and flatten a hand against her stomach. “Guess not. I’m technically asleep. My eyes are already closed.” She chuckled and turned her face toward him, stretched out in the red dust with the three stars directly overhead. “I’ve never been in a dream before. This is kind of cool. It’s not the real world, so there are no repercussions, no weirdness, no rules or responsibilities. That’s the best part about dreams. It’s all subconscious desire, or fear, or whatever emotions are governing you right now. And if you didn’t feel yourself pull me in, I guess… I guess I was thinking of you and I pulled myself. Maybe I was wondering what you thought about when you slept.”

It was a harmless admission. After all, they were dreaming, and it was likely neither would remember their dreams when they awoke. She usually dreamed of her happiest moments, of the person with whom she wanted to be with above all others. Her stomach twinged at the thought that Axel had taken his place. That was unlikely, and untrue. There had to be another reason why she’d dragged herself into his psyche. “So then what do you usually do here? If we can’t help the village?”

<Axel Rosen> “When I sleep I’m not sure what I think about.” He nods his head a little bit and then takes a breath, breathing in the air of the day. The pollen of the violet leaved trees in the distance. The brisk cool air. The people of his dreams call these the mountains of Oor. Not that the name of them really matters, but he thinks he’s written a story about these mountains somewhere in his works of fiction. He hasn’t written in so long that he thinks he’s lost the ability to do so. Lost the ability to really care about writing. Notebooks where he used to have sprawled notes of monsters, all existing here so far, are put away, in boxes and packed under his bed.

“I usually run from the Keepers and priests of the New Gods.” He answers her question pretty quickly because those are two things to keep in mind. The keepers were sort of like the Nazgul in a way. They didn’t right drake, weren’t ghostly, but they did feel mental actions and run toward them to snuff it out. The priests in and of themselves are worse than those. Priests lead packs of another sort of beast into villages to kill non-believers.

<Strix> “Keepers? Priests? Gods?” Strix’s head was starting to spin a little bit. She didn’t understand this realm at all. She’d never been introduced to anything like this. “Is this place dangerous? I need you to be honest with me, Axel.” She sat up, grabbing his hand and tugging him upright as well, narrowing her eyes at him out of concern not for herself, but his own safety. “Do you get dragged here and chased and hurt? All day, every day? That’s not okay. That’s not how dreams are supposed to be.” She actually looked legitimately worried for him, and sad, as if she was trying to figure out what in his past had fucked him up to the point of dreaming of hell each day. That’s what she viewed this place as. Hell. It was beautiful, and the red cliffs and violet-leaved trees were lovely. The air around them was cool and crisp and clean. But the death, despair, and destruction around them never went away. It didn’t blow with the wind; it sat there, a blight and obstacle blocking the air from reaching all corners of his world, big and black and daunting. “Have you ever had a good dream?”

Her heart hurt for him. This world, this conundrum and puzzle that he could never solve without hours and hours of sleep, of pain, of fear. That’s how she perceived this dream. She didn’t want to leave him here. She wanted her power to be strong enough to take him somewhere else. “If it’s not safe to sit here, we need to get moving. Now.”

<Axel Rosen> He nods through her first sentence, or rather first three one-worded questions to him. His nod, he feels is answer enough to those questions. He doesn’t understand this realm either, just wants to figure out what is going on in his world. Her next several questions are what really catch him off guard, he’s never had anyone really question the dreams he has, even when he told people in person about them. “I get dragged here yes. Never hurt, chased yes. I make sure they don’t me. I’m afraid if I get caught they’ll kill me and I’ll turn to ash out of here.” He can see her worry and it makes him feel cared about. Her next question comes as a surprise to him.. He sits up and then glances over to her and sighs. “I don’t remember.” He’s honest with her.

“Well usually when I’m here, I’m always moving, but I’ve never heard of Keepers up here in the cliffs. Something about a monster even older than them.. larger… Not sure.” He shrugs and then stands, offering her his hand. “Where we gonna go?” He doesn’t want to take her to the village. Last people he took there died in his dream. Horribly, bloody.

<Strix> “I don’t know,” she responded, grabbing his hand and hoisting herself up, brushing off the back of her shorts. “Am I all dirty?” She turned on her heel and deliberately pointed her *** at him, flirtatiousness creeping into her voice. “No bugs?” She giggled, then, and glanced up the mountain, to the jagged cliffs hands above them. “I see a cave up there,” she pointed, ignoring whatever responses he had to her pointed question. It didn’t matter. She just wanted him to check out her *** a little bit, anyway.

“Let’s explore. And if any old, large monsters come our way, then we’ll probably get eaten and die. But it’ll be fun. Okay?” This was Strix. Reckless, foolish, too willing to explore and adventure despite the risks, and dragging unsuspecting men along with her. She flashed him a wide smile, with even, white teeth, completely eager and innocent in her youthful exuberance to adventure with him. “I’ll start thinking about my dreams. My happy places. Maybe I can take you there, okay? Maybe I’ll show you what it’s like to have a good dream. Will you come with me?” She squeezed his fingers, having forgotten to drop his hand, and beamed up at him. Ever charming, even when she wasn’t half naked on a pole. She was a good girl. She really was.

<Axel Rosen> “Uh, no bugs but”, he takes his hand and brushes off her ***, “had some dust back there.” He grins a little bit and then looks up where she’s pointing to. His eyes look into the cave and he kind of hopes that the thing about the beast that keepers fear doesn’t actually exist. “Sure we can go up into that cave.” So far he’s found that caves are the most safe to be in this place. “I’d like to see what makes the elusive Strix so happy she keeps going back.” He smirks at her being more than honest. He wants to see this for two reasons so that he may get some more information on her than what she just likes in bed. “Lets get moving then”, he squeezes her hand back.

As they climb up of the mountain, he has to let her hand go, begrudgingly. As he lets her go he starts to climb the near-sheer face of the mountain. He makes it up to the cave first, and looks inside. There’s nothing inside, that he can see but it appears to him that the cave goes on far deeper than he originally had thought. He waits for her before taking anymore steps inside.

<Strix> She stumbled a little at his comment. Was she prepared to share some of her most private dreams with him? Adopting the same mentality as he’d had before, it was a dream, no harm done, and he would not have to know that the little boy with dark hair and light eyes was her real son rather than a figment of her subconscious. Tjaden actually kind of looked like Axel, come to think of it. That was a little weird. “Fine. I’ll show you. But what happens in our dreams, stays in them, okay?”

She fought back a mewl of regret as he dropped her hand, but slid into place behind him and began to climb. She was a few feet behind him, being some inches shorter than him, but she crawled into the cave behind him and stood up, brushing her shorts off again. This place was dusty. It clung to her clothes and skin, like a veil. She brushed past him, ready to explore the cave, her eyes adjusting to the darkness without a moment’s notice. It was so cool, the way her eyes adjusted, probably because the cave was being constructed by her own psyche. As she walked through the cave, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her dreams, the part of her life she missed beyond all things and the one person she loved more than life itself… and regretted her behavior towards insurmountably. The rock walls of the cave began to shift and crack, and the world around them shuddered. She crouched, covering her head with an arm in case the cave collapsed around them and killed them both.

Instead, the walls crumbled into rocks, and fell away, revealing the interior of an apartment. It was small, decorated with cheap furniture, sparse and without much style or skill. They were no longer in his world or his dream, instead the cool air within the cave gave way to the cold blast of air conditioning, the sun shining through the windows-- the only sun she’d been blessed to feel on her skin since her turning two months ago. It was warm despite the A/C, and immediately all tension slid out of her body. She turned to Axel and beckoned him closer, to join her in the apartment and inside of her dream. “Come here. Come see,” she whispered, as if she spoke too loudly she might catch the attention of a predator.

<Axel Rosen> Axel is not far behind her as she brushes past him. Literally his hips almost close to her as he is off to her left and just a step behind her. He walks nearly in rhythm with her as she starts to make her way deeper into the cave. He looks around, watching the walls crumble and falter at their very seams of his dream world. He’s noticed this happen before, he thinks when he had entered Nix’s dream. He looks to Strix for a moment, not really too worried about it and they come into an apartment. He’s not sure where they are but he can only assume that they are in one of her dreams. Somewhere she wants to be and feels loved and safe.

As she whispers to him he moves the one or two steps he is away from her and then looks around the apartment. He wonders if this is her place, the one she had before Nix had turned her and made her into a vampire. If this is the place she currently or used to lure men into her web and trap them between her legs. Now, those men she traps, get fed from and he’s sure most of them die after their act of sating her. He eyes around the small room, poking things. People who say if you’re dreaming pinch yourself to make sure, should be smacked. Everything in this world feels real enough to him.

[Axel Rosen]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Strix> She glanced over her shoulder and grinned at him, her clothing having changed from the shorts and hiking boots she usually wore to a slouchy sweater that hung off her shoulders and obscured whatever shorts she wore beneath. Her hair had tumbled from its ponytail and cascaded over her back, and she looked happy, healthy, comfortable. Safe. Almost normal… not like the young stripper and slut that she often was but a woman who had everything in the world to her. The dream was always the same, always the same clothing, always the same dream, present company excluded.

When her eyes met his, small, pattering footsteps echoed down the hall. They were unmistakably children’s feet. The tiny human came blaring down the hall and launched itself into Strix’s arms, his dark hair cut short on one side and long on the other. He was a very fashionable child, with stark blue eyes that stared up at Strix with joy and adoration. He patted her cheeks, kissed her sloppily all over her face, and she laughed. Her own green eyes were sparkling. The child couldn’t have been more than two and a half years old. She bundled him up in her arms and flung him in the air, and his laughter was a melody to her ears. The happiest sound she could have ever imagined. “Mama!” the child squealed, and she caught him in her arms and returned him to the safety of being hugged to her chest, red-lipstick kisses being smeared all over his cheeks.

When the reunion was over, and the child was sufficiently covered in lipstick and squeezed tight, she turned back to Axel. Her eyes were so happy, but somewhere, behind the brilliant green and joy, there was a sadness, a pain of loss and of never having this joy in life. “Hey, baby boy. I want you to meet my friend. He’s a very nice man.” She balanced the child on her hip as if it came naturally to her, as if she had been doing it daily for years… which, in her dreams, she had. “Axel, this is Tjaden. My son.” She pursed her lips, daring him to say something about it. To question her, or to threaten the livelihood of her child.

<Axel Rosen> His ears pick up the sound of something coming in close to them and he can hear it getting closer and closer. The steps are too small to be a man, too small to be another woman. He turns his head to face the creature, unsure of what it could be without seeing it. As the child seemingly attacks Strix, Axel just stands there with his jaw gone ajar. With what little he knows of her life, he can only assume that this is actually a memory of hers. A sudden sadness fills him for her. A question he refuses to ask, is what happened to the kid, why isn’t he with her in Harpers Rock. He hasn’t seen a kid in his apartment so he worries that something so drastic has happened in her life. Things start to make more sense to him though. The way she sleeps around is now so obviously a cry for help. He says nothing, even as the little boy calls her ‘mama’. Needless to say that Axel is stunned into silence, not in a bad way. Just shocked.

As Strix introduces her son to him. The name is nice, he’s read it somewhere. It’s from a book, but all names have been somewhere in some book. He’s sure of that much. He takes a step forward to the kid and places his finger out to be grabbed unto and shook or slobbered on or whatever. He can see that pain in Strix’s eyes and he feels even worse. Somewhere inside this dream, this happiness, there is a nightmare all it’s own. There is no such thing as a truly perfect reverie. He knows this from his own dreams, hers however is more insidious in that it gives her exactly what she wants but reminds her of what she can’t have. “Hey there, Tjaden.” He grins, forced, but he tries his best not to feel the sorrow he knows that Strix feels all the time.

<Strix> Phoebe grinned as Axel reached out to offer his finger to her son. In this world, she was only Phoebe, not Strix, because Strix was an alter ego constructed to remove herself from her past. She did feel sorrow, deep inside, but it was trumped by the obvious and overwhelming joy that came from spending time with her son. This is where she came, day after day that she spent asleep in Axel’s apartment, she was here. With Tjaden. She reached out to swipe at her lipstick smears with the arm of her sweater, obviously enamoured by the child and the life she’d created. “Tjaden here is the only man I ever thought I’d love,” she claimed, proud of her son and his growth, his intelligence. Like any mother, her child was the most brilliant, kind, and talented creature on the planet and no one would convince her otherwise.

She turned to her child, jiggling him in her arms, like a pro. He was nearing three years old, and his language was coming along well enough that she spoke to him as if he was a little adult, rather than infantilizing him with goo goos and ga gas and dumbing things down. “I’m sorry I had to go away for the night time, Yay, but I’m home now.” She used his nickname, and the child preened as if it was thrilled to hear her say his special name. “You know how it is. Mama leaves every night, but every day she comes home to play with you.” There was no father in the apartment, no babysitter or nanny. Just her and Tjaden… and now Axel. But the way she looked at him, with all the pride and love in the world, made it very apparent. If Axel destroyed this dream, she would ruin him, slowly, mercilessly, piece by piece. Phoebe and Strix shared one very common trait-- both were vicious when their joy was threatened. “Do you want to come play blocks with Mama and Axel?” she asked, and the little boy kicked its legs and offered Axel a wide beam, the smile sporadic with teeth but heavy on the delight. “Yeah, Mama, Ack, let’s blocks,” Tjaden said, and her heart melted right there for him. He refused to release Axel’s finger as she set him down, and the toddler instead chose to squeeze the digit and drag Axel toward the playroom. She offered her dreaming companion a wry, almost apologetic smile, but if he pulled away from the kid and broke his heart, there would be hell to pay.

<Axel Rosen> The man is pretty taken by the moment she’s having. She says the only man she thought she’d love, but he doesn’t ask what she means by that. He doesn’t want to press anything with her son, dream or not, watching them and listening. Some conversations should be private. Her smile makes him smile and his face stays plastered with it so long as hers is bright on her face. This is a pleasant change from his usual dreams and he’d never try and convince her that her son isn’t anything but perfect. He’s adorable as far as Axel is concerned. The finger wraps around Axel’s finger and he looks down at the smaller hand. Playing with blocks doesn’t sound like something he would usually do, as Strix asks, but he’s not gonna tell her no. Now with how happy she looks and it’s not going to kill him.

The little one starts pulling on Axel’s finger as Strix pulls him down and Axel doesn't hesitate to follow after him. His other hand does swing back to grab hers because if he’s going, she’s going too. He’s not being forced, he wants to go for the better of him and her and this setting. He’s not sure how far away the playroom is but he’s following behind the whole time. Axel says nothing to the little one while he walks, curious as to what the three of them would build. The mix of colors, the height of a tower, a village?

<Strix> “Tjaden lives with his father, in Toronto. Where I used to live,” she explained as they wandered down the hallway to the playroom, which was littered with blocks and toys of varying shapes and sizes. The kid had everything, from stuffed toys, to race cars, to blocks and little woobly-woos that made noises and had lights and sang songs. He even had a sonic screwdriver, somewhere, because Phoebe had no intention of raising a loser. Unfortunately, as children often do, Tjaden decided to contribute to the conversation with an explanation of his own. “Mama did something bad,” he said, having plopped down in front of a colorful bucket full of blocks. “So she had to give me to my daddy until they said she could see me again. But now she can’t. Because she lives there with you.” He said so matter-of-factly, as if he didn’t blame his mother for her failings. He obviously had a decent life there with his father, though he could hardly be considered privileged or upper class. That wasn’t Phoebe, or the crowds she ran in.

Phoebe stared at her son as he hummed to himself and stacked blocks upon one another, building something that looked nothing like a building or a tower. It was just a stack of blocks. She knew where that was going, as well, but she chose to let Axel be surprised when the little boy slammed his arm through the stack of blocks with a roar that sounded a little bit like Godzilla having sex with a pterodactyl. The blocks went everywhere, and hit her in the chest, the arms, and flew mercifully short of her face. The kid was precocious, and a little bit violent. It would probably charm the pants off of Axel.

Sighing softly, she brushed her hair behind her ear and lowered her voice while Tjaden continued his reign of terror over the block tower he built and demolished over and over again, the same two blocks in her own hands being spun between her fingers. “Yeah. He’s basically right. I wasn’t a very responsible parent and when he was about nine months old, I got pulled over. With him in the car. I was still drunk from the night before.” She made no excuses for herself, but she was pale with guilt and grief. “It’s not something I’m proud of. I had no idea who his father was at the time. It could have been… a few people. I don’t really remember his conception. When the court asked me who could take custody of him pending a child services investigation, I said it was Wes. They look alike, and that’s who I put on the birth certificate. He had no idea he had a son. So Yay lives here now, with Wes.” That was all the story she was going to offer, and she did so blandly, factually, and without emotion. She did it, it was done, that’s the story, this is how life is now. Now she’s a vampire and she only sees her son in her dreams.

Tjaden started tugging at Axel’s sleeve and smacking his shoulder, obviously impatient to get the attention of the two adults through their hushed conversation. “Ack, smash it,” he demanded, pointing at the largest tower yet.

<Axel Rosen> The child in the room starts to go about how he talks about Strix had done something bad and now he has to live with his dad. As the little boy talks about it, Axel’s eyes move to the woman’s unsure of if she wants to talk about it or if it means more to just keep it inside. Axel merely takes a little toy car and runs it along the outside of the tower on the ground. He makes light car noises for the benefit of the child. Inside this dream he can be childish in his own right, playing with toys, because who is going to judge him here? Strix? Tjaden? He doesn’t think either of them would do that, even though the boy does seem to be a little outspoken. It doesn’t bother him though. Outspoken is a good sign of maturing at a decent rate, and reasoning. All that jazz.

The woman to the other side of him starts to explain herself, not making excuses and he feels bad for her. She made a mistake, one that she shouldn’t have made, but it’s one that has been made none-the-less. The very fact that it’s been made; however, doesn’t make him think any less of her as a person now. The past, as she said a few days ago to him, is the past. He agrees with that. “You didn’t know who the father was but still put his name on it?” He asks, not really sure if he agrees with that sort of lack of certainty on something so serious. He looks over to her and sighs out. “I used to live in Toronto. For a long time, really.” He tries to offer her a smile, not angry with her. The kid obviously isn’t suffering. As a tug comes at his arm he grins, and pays attention to Tjaden.

As the little one hit the tower, blocks went everywhere, he tries to shield Strix from the assault, but misses some of them. He grabs the ones that he did catch and places them at the base of the tower. The screech the little kid makes is hilarious and Axel does the same thing. Axel’s sound is more guttural, deeper and resonating from the stomach as he makes it. As he moves his arm, swinging away from Strix and Tjaden, and smacks the blocks toward a toy box. The little kid kind of reminds him of himself in mannerisms and the way he plays. Axel was always a quiet kid, playing by himself and enjoying time with his parents.

<Strix> Watching them, she couldn’t help but smile and laugh. Phoebe loved her son. She had made a mistake and had jeopardized his life and his wellness, but she loved him and she would have done anything for him. She had very few people in the world, her parents were not a part of her life, and her son had never met his grandparents. He never would. Wes didn’t believe that Phoebe’s family had a right to see their progeny, and honestly she agreed. Her mother’s mental health issues and her father’s death were not something she wanted her son to be exposed to. Every move that she made, every mannerism of her face and the way that she looked at the two playing together, it radiated love for the child. And hope that her son was growing to understand and to forgive her for not being there for him as often as she desired.

“I didn’t know who his father was,” she said, still hushed. Tjaden didn’t really need to know the details of his conception, or lack thereof. “I was at a party, downtown, and I… had about seven shots too many. There were a few guys I was interested in at the party, and I’m pretty sure a few of them got a whack at me before the night was over. There was also some… drug use involved.” She hated admitting that she’d experimented with drugs. She was a stripper who’d lost her son in a drunk driving case to the government. Drugs just made her look even worse. “I still don’t. As he gets older, the less he looks like Wes. Some things don’t line up. I have green eyes, Wes has brown eyes, Yay got blue. I have red hair, Wes is blonde, Yay has dark hair. Their facial features used to look a little bit alike, but even now, I don’t know what kind of genes he’s got. I thought maybe Yay had dark hair because Wes’s dad did, but I have my doubts now. But Wes treats him really, really good. And those other guys could be losers or druggies or dead. Wes has a stable job and he cares about him.” She frowned, unable to help the ‘but...’ that was crawling up from her stomach.

“But he’s my son. And I wish I could have him back.” She reached out to flick the newest tower being built, sending the blocks crumbling to the ground once more, much to the delighted squeals of her child.

<Axel Rosen> Each and every word she says to him, makes the whole seem more understandable to him. He had been in Toronto, done some heavy drugs as a writer, tried them. He doesn’t tell many people that. Acid, though was the only drug that could get him to come out of his shell at a party, get him moving, talking, not in the corner sitting around like a loser. His friends knew this, brought it with them and he took it. Now he kind of regrets it all, but he can understand where her lack of knowledge comes from when she had conceived the boy. He nods his head and then listens to her talk about the differences in this ‘Wes’ and her boy. As she speaks he looks Tjaden and listens to every word. Yeah. If Wes looks the way she says, they don’t look anything alike… He looks back to her as she flicks the blocks.

“I can understand that… the sorrow is in your eyes. It’s palpable in the air.. I’m sorry.” He scoots over to her to wrap his arm around her shoulder. He takes some of the blocks and builds little smaller buildings for the kid to destroy at a later time. He grins at him, as if it’s a challenge for Tjaden to take the blocks, and toss them around. Destruction in and of itself can be creation in it’s own right. Matter is never destroyed but rather converted into something else.

<Strix> The moment Axel’s arm touches her shoulder and Tjaden notices him grinning at him, the toddler hollered at the top of his lungs, “That’s MY mama! You can’t have her!” and launched himself at Axel. It was an assault of epic proportions… except not really. He just jumped into Axel’s lap (through the smaller buildings that had been constructed, knocking them all down) and started trying to wedge his way between them, asserting his dominion over his mama and trying to shove Axel’s arm off of her shoulder. She laughed, too charmed by her son, and helped bundle the boy between them rather than run the risk of Axel getting a little fist in the eye. He was a firecracker, through and through. Just like his mother.

“Yay…” she admonished, touching a finger to his nose. The boy immediately sobered, and stared up at his mother with big, pleading blue eyes. “No spankings, mama, you promised..” he said, and she leaned down to touch her nose to his.

“No spankings. But Axel is a very nice man and he was not going to steal me from you. He was comforting me, because I was feeling sad.” She glanced up at Axel, with a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry, he’s very possessive--” Phoebe didn’t have a chance to finish. Instead, Tjaden had again wiggled between them, his half-shaven head popping up between the two adults to obscure her smile.

Directly in contrast with his earlier actions, Tjaden was hugging Axel’s neck and slobbering on his cheek, his grip probably enough to strangle a normal person. “Thank you for making my mama less sad, Ack,” the little boy shouted, right in his ear. What a… cute, albeit loud, kid.

<Axel Rosen> The charge, he’d seen it time and time before, but from far larger combatants when it comes to fighting. Axel doesn’t even blink, he just allows the little man to charge after him, and rightfully so. You don’t let someone make moves on your mother, the buildings in his wake are smashed, blocks falling behind him and he lands in Axel’s lap. As Strix lifts him up and places him between them, Axel looks with a big smirk on his face. The little one has a lot of energy and that’s great. Someone to make Strix, even in her dreams, keep up with him. He rolls his shoulders as Tjaden is put between him and her and he looks down at him.

The woman and boy have a talk and Axel grins at her, rather impressed with her mommy skills. He doesn’t quite understand why should run around and sleep with everything that walks in Harpers Rock while she could just stay home and sleep, enjoy this dream forever. While the sex may be a way to drown her sorrow, if Axel had to pick he’d be in a dream like this rather than in Harpers Rock at times. He grins a little then looks at the kid as his arms coil around his neck. “Not a problem, Tjaden, I’d do it again.” The grin doesn’t leave Axel’s face even through the slobber. His eyes look back over the Strix, sparkling blue. The sun would be going down soon and the pull of hunger would come over him. The need for blood. He’d have to go out and hunt.

<Strix> She watched Tjaden kiss over Axel’s cheek and she chuckled, shaking her head. The kid ran at a mile a minute, going from possessive anger to appreciation of the older male. She never knew what to expect from him, and sometimes she actively sought to embody his rambunctious nature. Once Tjaden had stopped slobbering on Axel, and had rested his cheek against his new friend’s, his eyes, icy and deep, went slack, and glazed over. “Bye, Mama…” he mumbled, just before his body fell back, slipping through the arms that tried to catch him, and he disappeared in a wisp of smoke on the floor, among scattered blocks and toy cars.

The dream always ended this way, with her son falling backwards and disappearing. She never knew when it would happen, but it was often before she woke up, right around the time her son would have been awakened from his nap to enjoy his meal with Wes. She froze, staring at the space where her child’s small body had landed, and she tucked her hands into the oversized sleeves of her sweater. Her face had hardened, and though Harper Rock never had sunlight, its movement outside the window toward descent highlighted the worried lines next to her eyes. She was young, but she was pained.

The pain remained obvious for some seconds before she shook it off and crawled up from her knees, dutifully cleaning her son’s playroom as any mother would. She dumped the blocks into the bucket and returned it to the bookshelf on the other end of the room. She picked up the cars, the stuffed animals. This was a dream world, and it was likely that his room at home was not in such a state. But every day, every time the dream ended, the playroom was a mess. Cleaning it gave her a sense of purpose and peace in the moments after Tjaden disappeared.

She said nothing as she cleaned, and her disposition was closed… even if Axel did ask any questions, she wouldn’t answer. She was in her zone, cleaning her son’s room, putting away his belongings so that they could play tomorrow. Finally, she stopped, and spoke. “Hey, so. Don’t tell anyone at home about this, okay?” She met his eyes, and just as a moment ago she appeared much older than her years, it was at this second that she seemed very small. She felt very small.

<Axel Rosen> Like any illusion or dream, it has to come to an end and he is right as the boy hits the ground and vanishes into dust and wisps of smoke. The male sighs before looking over to the person at his side. Her face, it’s so broken, so sad. Nothing leaves his lips, not even one single sound. He doesn’t dare speak at this moment before he runs his fingers down his legs, his own little nervous habit. As she moves to clean things up, Axel doesn’t hesitate and he starts to clean up with her. As she moves in one direction to take one flank, like a good teammate, he moves to the otherside. Toy-by-toy he picks up each and everything on his side of the room. Slowly he moves toward her side, cleaning in her direction.

“You got it. This is between us. Alright?” He frowns at her, his hand moves to her shoulder. The room is clean. He feels the pull of hunger at his gut. The sun has come up, it has likely been up for an hour or so. He can feel it and he tries to ignore it. “If you ever need to talk about it or something. You can talk to me.” He eyes her, turning his head to look into her green eyes with his own crystal blue ones.

<Strix> “Thanks. Really. He’s… so special. I wish I had done right by him. Especially now that I know Wes isn’t his real dad.” She sagged against him, her own hunger rippling through her stomach with a loud, and somewhat embarrassing growl. She’d need to head out for a blood pack, her body in Harper Rock was protesting her failure to eat after expending so many calories at the club. “Was this okay? This dream, I mean. It was happy, right?” She pushed away from him to brush off her clothes, though they were perfectly clean now that the pair weren’t hiking through red canyons.

Instead, she started to wander back up the hallway toward the front door of the apartment, back where the cave used to be located. In her dreams, she always came and went through the front door, and the minute the lock clicked, she’d awakened. Would it be the same with Axel in tow? “Better than being chased through hell, at least, right?” She flashed him a glance over her shoulder, the sleeve of her sweater dipping off of her shoulder and baring a long expanse of flesh.

<Axel Rosen> She pushes away from him and he almost gets sad but he just lets it go. He just wants to make sure that she’s alright. He follows after her, his eyes watching her walk as they talk. “It’s better for me… but seems sad for you. It’s happy in the moments that you’re here, but then you get upset.” He frowns, hands slipping into his pockets, as they enter the living room. “Better than the hell that I run through though.” He agrees with her. The sleeve of her sweater dips down and he moves to places his hand over her bare shoulder. “I’m waking up…”

After several moments, leaving through her door, as he feels he should do because it’s the only portal out, he wakes. His bed is messy and his sheets are bunched up with the pillows on the ground around the floor of the bed. He rolls out of bed and messes his hair up. The dream had been rather real to him, but he’s not sure if Strix actually has the power. There would really only be one way to tell. The moment they saw one another, really, their faces would tell the truth even if they never spoke it aloud for sometime.

<Strix> She sighed, and followed him out the door, coming to on the couch with a jolt. These dreams never had the peaceful, calm awakening that others did. The awareness that followed those dreams always had her alert and on edge, and she jumped up from the couch. Unlike other dreams, she remembered this vividly, as she always did when she visited Tjaden. She thought it was because she loved her son so ferociously, but now… what if Axel was right and she did have the power? Could she be visiting her son during his naptime, or his sleep at night? She blazed through Axel’s apartment toward his bedroom, defying her earlier need not to disturb him, and pounded at the door. Hell, you know what, she just walked right in, shoving the door open with no regard for nudity or sleep. Axel was standing there, his hair mussed, looking perfect and adorable and… kind of like Yay did when he woke up from his nap. It melted her heart and she bit her lip, wrapping her arms around her own belly. “Hey, Ack…” she said, hushed and quiet, looking up at him. She was hopeful he’d remember.