smash_logs | I'll have a cup of tea and tell you of my dreaming

Bulba made a face as he watched the fresh flow of blood drip down over Vinnie's face.

"As if that's not how it's supposed to be," he jabbed back nonplussed. The nude way was the most comfortable way. "You're the only one with clothes here." Sure everyone else wasn't a person at the moment, but they were still technically naked.

"... Are you sure it's okay though?" He was hesitantly reaching up as if he were afraid Vinnie's face was just going to fall into his hands. "Leaving it like that?"

That's because clothes were just handy. You could cover yourself in flowers and flower colours all the time. And they had the bonus function of covering up all the flayed skin across his back, so be thankful for that at least.

"It'll be fine once I'm at the Garden," said Vinnie with complete confidence. Reassured by the logic of his dreaming, he had no reason to doubt this goal that had been burned into his mind. Looking over in the direction of the frolicking Bulbasaur, he added, "I just need t'get there, an' everything'll be al'right."

Edited 2012-09-24 07:46 (UTC)

The brighter Ivysaur looked over with him, a frown showing on his face. The saur that would call out to Bulba every often was looking in the direction of where Bulba had been sitting, but seemed to be accepting that the shiny saur wasn't there anymore. Bulba lowered his eyes for a moment. It wasn't something to get upset over. He couldn't join him anyway.

He looked back over at Vinnie with a sad smile.

"Don't let me keep you then. If anyone gets to go in there, it's probably you."

"Don't be stupid," was the knee jerk response that fell out of Vinnie's mouth.

Who cared if those Bulbasaur had gone back to playing amongst themselves? They were kids, of course their attention span would be shit. There wasn't a single Saur in the world that wasn't welcome in any Garden, he knew. This Ivysaur, at least, looked right at Bulba with his bloodied eyes and extended a hand to him.

"You're already here, y'might as well come with me," he said, waiting for the younger(?) Grass Type's answer.

Bulba's frown deepened at the comment. He wasn't being stupid, he felt. This was just the way things were.

... But maybe they didn't have to be, now that Vinnie was there. Bulba's expression softened again as he stared at the older (?!) saur's outstretched hand. "I don't know if it will work," he admitted uneasily. "I'm never able to get beyond the bushes when I'm here."

He knew it wouldn't be good to get his hopes up, but maybe... Maybe if he was invited again...

Bulba slipped his hand in Vinnie's. At least he was willing to try.

Vinnie rolled his eyes - that was the silliest thing he'd ever heard of. "Of course it'll work," he said, dismissing the possibility of this forest force field altogether. Obviously this was just Bulba worrying too much again.

He grabbed the other's hand and marched forward into the threshold of the trees. No hesitation, and no doubt. This was his dream, after all. ~~It totally wasn't.~~

And just like Bulba thought, Vinnie slipped through the trees without so much as a waver. Even if it actually wasn't his dream, it was still very much his forest. The trees had stopped flickering between one and the other the moment he had arrived.

And also just like Bulba feared, he slammed face first into an unyielding wall of nothing with a bizarrely audible WHACK.

"Ugh."

What was different, however, was the fact that Vinnie was still holding his hand. Somehow that particular appendage had made it through the entrance. Dream logic seemed to be taking place now, as one mingled with the other and pronounced that this bit of tree and bush was in fact some sort of door. Clearly that meant Bulba could go through it. He just hadn't been in the right spot. Now that it was apparently opened, he slowly slid through the negative space (which was really weird let him tell you) to join Vinnie on the other side.

This didn't really look like his dream anymore.

The scenery around them melted away as though it had never been there - in Vinnie's true dream, it had always been winter, and there had always been snow. It was impossible to feel real cold, of course, but the implication was enough to plant the chill in a sleeping mind. A sorry place to wander in undressed, Bulba.

Instead of a forest clearing, there were stairs - an uncountable number, spiralling upward in hypnotic geometric angles. The trees became the columns of an old pagoda, and the two Saurs were already scaling its heights. Not skipping a beat, Vinnie climbed and continued to climb - not as though there were many other options anyway. From inside the tower, all that existed was up, down, and the view of the snow from outside the paneless windows.

A blizzard raged outside, blowing in enough snow to dust each step with a blanket of white. It was hard to see anything past the gale, but it seemed to shake unearthly noises out of the wooden frame of the tower. The creaks and moans of the wood sounded like ghostly voices, muttering some mantra that was lay just at the edge of understanding.

But still Vinnie trudged onward, unperturbed, holding fast onto Bulba's hand. "It's just at the top," he said, somehow speaking above the wind without effort. "I never got to show you this part've the Garden last time."

Blood continued to drip from his face and hands, but they hit the floor in the form of flowers - a long, dotted trail of bright colour against the snow.

Snow. Bulba really couldn't say he was surprised. Well, yes he could, he'd just been in a warm and very green forest a moment ago. Now there was mounting, snowy stairs. He might have stumbled in surprise, had it not been for Vinnie's insistent grip. The Ivysaur could only gasp and hurry along after the other, forced to try and adapt to this sudden change in locales as he went.

It wasn't working out extremely great. A sorry place to wander in undressed indeed. Phantom chills crawled over his skin and he couldn't help but shiver. This was going to be miserable.

"You had a big snowy tower in your garden??" Bulba questioned over the wind. No he didn't. He already knew he didn't. This was just a dream.

He turned his head this way and that as he stumbled up the steps. It was fascinating despite the supposed cold. But as interesting as it was, it was also ominous. The low chanting creaks of the bending would filled him with a certain apprehension. There were words that weren't quite being said... or were there? Was it just the sound of the tower trying desperately to hold itself together in the blizzard? It was hard to tell. Bulba's ears flicked back at the sounds and he did his best to keep up with Vinnie, as if somehow the other Ivysaur could keep something like that from happening.

But that was something else that was worrying: Vinnie's bleeding had not halted a single bit. While he pretended the heat around his hand was just from Vinnie being warm, Bulba had a sinking feeling that it was just all of the deep, fresh red. It still seemed to just slide off his own skin, as if it recognized that wasn't where it belonged.

He might have never noticed the vibrant trail of flowers behind them if he hadn't slipped. Bulba caught himself with his free hand, trying to push himself back to his feet without missing too much of a beat. The blood had dripped in front of him, and he watched in distracted wonder as a flower blossomed right before his eyes. As he continued to scramble up he shot a look behind him. Flowers. The stairs were covered in flowers. He'd seen Vinnie make flowers bloom just by walking by them before, but this was different. Unbeknownst to the younger saur, it stirred a deeply sleeping instinctual knowledge that he just couldn't identify yet.

Bulba shot a look at Vinnie, squeezing his hand. "Why is that happening...??"

Nothing about the structure of this dream stood out as odd to Vinnie, but at this point he was already too deeply drawn in by the pull of his own subconscious. If he thought about Bulba's first question, then no, none of this made sense - he started to say, "No, but..." and trailed off. But it felt right, and that was what mattered.

Feeling fingers tightening around his own, Vinnie slowed to look back at the other Grass Type. That look of worry was still etched into the gold of Bulba's eyes, and for a split moment the wild Saur was struck by a feeling of... pity? The two of them weren't exactly innocent at their core, but it could only be some willful blindness that prevented Bulba from recognizing what was taking place. He had to know. Even if this was only a dream, even if it wasn't his dream. It was in their blood - quite literally - after all.

Vinnie's eyes were stained red as he looked down at the flowers pooling at his feet. Watching their petals unfurl brought a faint sense of unease in the pit of his stomach, an unsettling sense of wrongness - but it only served to fuel the urgency in him to keep moving.

"Cuz it's what we're made of," was all the explanation he had. He tugged Bulba's hand. "We can't stop here. C'mon."

As brief and uninformitive as the answer was, it strangely spoke far more than a lengthier explanation could have. There was a faint spark of realization in Bulba's eyes as the other tugged him along. He followed, casting one last glance at the fallen flowers in the snow.

Bulba did not like this dream and he did not want to see what was at the top of this tower.

He did not want to see this garden.

While he was wishing all the noise would stop and the blood would halt and that Vinnie would realize this was a dream, he followed close behind. It was like Vinnie said. They couldn't stop there. He had to see this through too.

Edited 2012-09-25 23:46 (UTC)

Vinnie forced his eyes forward, trying not to remember the nauseous twist that the flowers evoked in him. They felt like waking, like a sliver of his rational, conscious mind, and it wasn't yet time for that. His subconscious knew better - it accepted everything in the logic of this world, because the world was an extension of itself. He was creating the path he followed. He would climb it to its destination, and discover what he knew would be waiting.

A place grafted together by memory, instinct and emotion wasn't always going to be kind, but it could never lie like the awakened mind could. The Garden was the end to this dream, and an end to many things. It was a beginning. Once he found the ending, everything would be all right.

At one point, the snows calmed and gave way to what looked like thick, cold mist, flooding into the tower's spire and obscuring their vision. They were out of the weather's reach now, ascending through the cloud layer itself. The pagoda's groans, however, did not stop - with the fog these voices simply began to speak with greater clarity. It was chanting, not unlike what could be heard by the Channelers of the Pokemon Tower, but deeper, richer. A tenor that shook one's bones.

"I wish you could be happy there," Vinnie thought out loud, a melancholy longing in his voice for his wild home. "I know you can't help going back to a human, same way I won't be able to help leaving them all. Still..."

Edited 2012-09-26 01:16 (UTC)

His ears pricked at the words. The chanting that surrounded them was felt. It shook and it trembled in him, but Bulba did not really hear them. All he heard were the words tumbling from Vinnie's mouth. Bulba was held in rapt attention. This might have been it, he suddenly felt. The detail he was missing, the thing that had been eluding him. Had it been tucked away in those memories of a jungle shop?

It felt so complicatedly simple. He'd understood it once, as a Bulbasaur. Came close to understanding it again when he returned that way. Growing up clouded things that should have just been known.

"I want to be," Bulba said without a lot of thought. His mouth was just moving, filled with all the things he'd never admit in a waking world, and his voice held notes of pleading. "I want to know what it's like to be like you." Everything Bulba did know he had clumsily found out on his own. A connection was missing and he didn't know how to ask for it. He wasn't sure where he was supposed to look for it.

"I don't know how. I don't know what I'm missing. Green is all I know and I don't know what to do."

"But you do," insisted Vinnie. "You know exactly what to do." Every Saur did, after all. They simply had to realize this innate knowledge - their calling - and it would give them the strength of will to fully bloom. It was telling enough that Bulba had grown strong enough to evolve without a ceremony. The only thing really standing in his way of going that final step was his own self-doubt. He needed that moment of clarity. It was, after all, obvious to everyone around him that he was more than ready to become a Venusaur himself.

"Green is to you what my Garden is to me - you're not missin' anything, you just ended up putting it somewhere different." Red, noticeably, was not mentioned in the equation at all. A small sigh left Vinnie as he unconsciously began to squeeze the other Grass Type's hand a little tighter. "If you wanted t'feel what I do, that'd be cuttin' apart too much of yourself. I'm not anyone you should try t'be, Bulba. You'd have to throw too much away."

Like a dissipating illusion, Vinnie's body shifted back (or forward?) into his taller, older form. The transition was barely noticeable - after all, even if his appearance changed, he remained himself - and it could have easily been that he was a Venusaur the entire time.

In a place where nothing made a lot of sense and everything was dictated by someone else's will, things strangely seemed that much clearer. Perhaps it was just because even here, the Bulba that was holding on to Vinnie's hand was simply part of the Ivysaur's subconscious. A dream within a dream. And sometimes it was in dreams that people found the answers they didn't know where to find otherwise.

Maybe things didn't have to be so complicated. Maybe they were as simple as they could have been before. Maybe...

The subtle change in pressure was met with a steady, equal squeeze in turn. He hung behind a step for a bit more, studying the expanse of the Venusaur's back. He could not see the flower there (which was possibly for the best at this point, knowing what the rest of him looked like at the moment), but he could remember the shapes of the blossoms on his back. It felt like all the answers were right there.

Though he had to guess that he was carrying them on his own back as well. Somewhere deep down. Tucked away in a whisper of a seed. It just had to try again.

But something had gone unsaid. The dream within the dream saw it with a remarkable amount of clarity. Though perhaps it was just very obvious. It wasn't like it had never been mentioned before, either here or in the waking world. Worries of where his heart could truly lay. Bulba pressed forward to be at Vinnie's side, keeping his eyes ahead of him on the mist and cloud for the moment.

His fingers looped through the other's and he spoke softly, "Trying to hold a Garden like you do... It'd be the same as you being with Red."

"Then you'll just end up breaking your heart eventually."

The faint scent of a sea breeze was carried through the mist, making it so much more like the fog that blew lightly across the ocean's shore at dawn. Though the two continued to climb, the wooden stairs were melting away into rock and soil, forming a mountain trail for them to follow. Vinnie closed his eyes, even as he walked. The memories were so deeply etched in his heart that it felt like he could find his way home blindfolded.

"It starts as a debt," Vinnie continued, "that turns into somethin' else. You feel like y'owe it to someone... or maybe to yourself, t'find that thing you're missing that'll make you strong."

But as ever, strong was subjective. There was a time when the then-Ivysaur only yearned for physical prowess, and then times when he ached to be emotionally invulnerable. Whatever it was he wanted to be, something had always been missing. Something he craved and strove for.

But it was always that desperate need that emptied him. For too long, Vinnie was so busy trying to fix each weakness, he couldn't see himself as a whole.

Acceptance of himself. Acceptance of the world. In the end, they were the hardest things to do.

The rhythmic chanting, it turned out, had only been the roar of the waves. A rustle of leaves, the perfume of rhododendrons against cedar. In the darkness, the Venusaur could still make shape of everything around him - he shaped it, in fact, filling in the gaps of the fog with his mind.

Once his feet felt the touch of grass, he stopped. He opened his eyes. All the pieces were back in place.

His Garden. The very heart of the place, teeming with vibrant green even in the depths of winter. A sprinkling of frost shimmered in the light like a diamond sheen, but held no real threat - there was a radiant glow here that emanated out from beneath the ground, a verdant energy that chased away the cold.

Yet somehow, the comforting warmth of his home didn't restore Vinnie at all. If anything, he sounded more weary. Drained.

Drip, drip, drip...

"It's the wrong idea. You end up chasing a dream, an' all dreams have t'end."

The memories of cold had been chased away, leaving only a blanket memory of warmth around him. It was lovely up there. The depths of the green seemed almost unreal. It was teeming with life and it seemed even more so after such a long and chilly climb. This was the place Vinnie wanted to show him. The place that he hadn't been able to show Bulba before. Bulba took in a deep breath, tasting the sweetness of the air on the tip of his tongue.

This was the place where they should have been able to be happier. He could feel the pulse beneath his feet and the warm glow of light on his face, but nothing was shaking that cold that was churning in his gut as Vinnie spoke.

He did not want to be here.

Bulba glance down at their hands at first. Flowers were springing up all around the Venusaur's feet. Red dripped down off their petals, delaying the sprouting of some and just making others all the more radiant. It made a small lurch of dread in Bulba's stomach. He moved a step closer, looking back up at the Venusaur's face.

All dreams have t'end.

"...Vinnie..?"

There was a very tired smile on the Venusaur's face as he exhaled right then. That rush of air was the sound of the world being lifted off his shoulders finally, and a visible shudder seemed to accompany it. An unburdening... peace, at last. But there was an unmistakable finality in it as well. His eyelids drooped, too heavy and clotted with blood to hold themselves aloft, and it was clear that his eyes had become too clouded with red to see Bulba any longer.

All of a sudden, he collapsed forward and fell too his knees, with his legs literally crumbling beneath him. The flowers, apparently too impatient to wait for his body to bleed out, had begun to violently sprout from beneath the skin. From what was visible beneath his clothes, tendrils and sprouts were breaking through the Venusaur's flesh, blooming as easily as they would have in soil. Each wound began to team with flora, so much so that it looked as though he had simply been bleeding petals instead of fluid.

The pool of overgrowth at his feet exploded in new vigour as he hit the ground, with blossoms of bright crimson erupting out all around him, each one out-doing the next. Cascades of colour swept across the Garden in celebration of beauty.

The earth was welcoming him back, both body and soul. That was what made the flora here so alive - the energy of life itself, departed from its mortal coil.

Vinnie was dying, and he was smiling as he did so. Weakly, he began to teeter forward in what felt like slow motion, succumbing to the overgrowth completely.

"There... I told you I'd be al'right."

It was mortifyingly lovely. He felt ten shades of horrified and yet it was beautiful and he couldn't take his eyes away. Bulba sank with the Venusaur, completely captivated. A scream was building in his chest, full of denials and pleads. This wasn't all right. This was far from all right. It wasn't that he didn't understand it. He didn't want to understand it.

Because he knew. There was an inherent knowledge that was speaking softly from inside, steadying his shouts with a calm refrain. This was how life continued. This was how things were supposed to be.

But knowing wouldn't stop his heart from aching.

He reached out to Vinnie's shoulders to keep him still. The Grass Type could feel the soft, red flowers blossoming between his fingers and he thought he could hear their sudden bursts of song. Each one filled the ache and he wished he could cry.

His eyes were dry as he carefully lifted his hands. That calm hum kept the trembling from his fingers as he moved them tenderly over the contours of Vinnie's face. It was one he wanted to remember. One without the blood, with everything where it should have been.

"Please," he found himself whispering, his hands falling to hold what was left of him. He didn't know how to finish the plea. There were too many things he wanted to ask of the dying Venusaur. Please don't go. Wait. Tell him what to do. He didn't want to be the only one again. He didn't want him to go.

Please be happy.

Not knowing how else to express it, the younger saur leaned in and gently claimed him in a kiss. One act of intimacy to make up for the lack of another. He would have liked to have spoken to the heart of him one more time. He wasn't sure if Vinnie's flower would have heard him if he tried. Bulba was fairly certain it was its voice he thought he heard in the chorus erupting across the glade.

It sounded so nice.

"I'll miss you."

There was too much blood in his mouth for Vinnie to taste anything other than bitter sap, but he could still feel the soft touch of lips against his own as his consciousness trickled away. If they had been awake, it would've simply been a kiss - but like this, as two unfettered psyches, he could feel the whisper of Bulba's light through a tender touch. It lit the darkness of the path he travelled, out of his body and into the earth.

No breath left him their faces parted, and his head drooped forward limply, devoid of life. The sounds that came out of him was no longer that of a person, more like the soft creaking of an old tree being overtaken by vines. What was left of his skin hardened, crumbling, until what was left could no longer be considered a person's form - nature had taken him back completely.

The Garden shuddered. The edges of reality peeled away slowly, with the small details fading first into forgetfulness. Everything not at the forefront of Bulba's attention was a soft blur, a memory waiting to be lost.

Vinnie - the real Vinnie - was waking up.

As the world dissolved, a voice murmured out from the glow of the earth - a mixture of the Venusaur's conscious mind returning to him, and the soul of his flower's honest, bright song.

Ha, that's the first time you've actually said so.

And the dream was over.

Bulba tumbled with the fading Garden into the void. Left with the memory of flowers and no way back to his own dreaming, there was only one place for him to go.

The Ivysaur lurched up from the grass with a gasp. His site was blurred and he spent a moment trying to orient himself. The school garden slowly came to recognition as he blinked, rubbing his lips. He was remembering a weird taste, bitter and metallic, and the blurriness just wasn't fading. He reached up and wiped his eyes. Tears covered his hands, and Bulba stared down at them in dazed confusion.

For a moment he couldn't recall why he was crying. He was sure his eyes had been dry the whole time Vinnie had...

Vinnie.

The Ivysaur was on his feet without another thought, the clarity of things remembered sending him chasing after scents in the air.

Meanwhile

Vinnie didn't remember shit.

He lumbered back into the waking world with a small headache and an already fading sensation of... something he couldn't quite place. The images in his mind might have well have been sculpted out of smoke. Whatever it was, it was gone now, and the Venusaur was feeling no real loss from forgetting.

But shit, his legs were still sound asleep. They were well and truly stuck in that cross legged position he was sitting in, and wow, they stung. Everything from the knees down was tingly and numb. Now that he didn't have any kimono-clad girls poking him every time he started dozing off, trying to meditate was a lot harder.

Actually, being poked while trying to meditate didn't make things easier either. How anyone managed this without either getting distracted or falling asleep was beyond him. He had thought that picking out this specific spot in the woods would make things easier - maybe awaken something significant - but apparently the soft grass only contributed to an unplanned nap.

With a grunt, Vinnie had to manually pull his legs apart and place his feet on the ground - but even that made him wince. Trying to stand was not going to be fun. He'd just wait for a bit while his circulation returned, maybe. What a pain.

Edited 2012-09-30 07:25 (UTC)

It was terribly unfortunate that Vinnie wasn't the complete master of his motor controls. It kind of made him a sitting duck in the event of people bursting out of the bushes to tackle him. Gosh it sure would suck if that kind of thing was something that happened very often.

. . . It might not have happened often, but it was definitely happening now.

One moment Vinnie had been recovering on his own on the soft grass. The next was a confusing rush of motion that somehow ended with one (1) Bulba attached to Vinnie's middle in a fierce hug.

Good morning, Vinnie. You were apparently a saur magnet.

It would, in fact, suck heartily. Bulba nearly knocked him over - not that he needed to go that far to cause severe discomfort. Oh god the slightest movement to his legs was awful tingly pain, no no no.

"Hyghaurghhfuck--!" he said, eloquently and definitely not kind of yelping a bit.

That was more not-yelling than there should have been.

Bulba immediately sat back on his knees between Vinnie's legs for the moment, his ears completely flat against his head as he stared at Vinnie in alarm. Oh god now what.

"Sorry! I'm sorry. Are you okay? I'm sorry!"

And yet it looked like he was about to start hugging him again any second now.

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[ Vinnie's dream ] home for a rest

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