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

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

Who: Everyone
What: DREAMS
When: A whole 24 hours spanning from September 14th-15th
Warnings: Creepy nightmares? Innuendo? I don't know, the usual.

There had been so much buzz about those stupid lollipops for weeks now. Not only out loud, but in her head - thoughts ranging from what's the deal with those things? to gotta have more to pricy as fuck. Eventually, she confused the cravings of others for her own, and it just so happened that her very own roommate had a box right on her side of the room!

Casey wasn't supposed to touch it, but she didn't see why. Money issues, or something. She didn't get the big deal about money either. She wasn't a Meowth, so there was no reason for her to have any. Therefore, the rules about it didn't apply to her.

That was her logic, anyway.

When Ai was asleep, she opened up the box and put her telekinesis to good use. Five of the candies lifted into the air - two green, three yellow - and the wrappers tore off in perfect synchronization. Too bad nobody was watching. The Abra opened her mouth wide and crammed all of them in at once, because she had no concept of savouring anything.

Shortly after, she fell asleep, the sticks still poking out of her mouth. That had to be bad for her teeth.

Soon the dreaming began...

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Very quickly, Vinnie had to reassure himself that no, Bulba couldn't have found out about Char's garden, that was definitely not what this was about. Wasn't even his birthday yet, and he looked way too sad for some reason. Did something sad happen recently? Well, other than feeling a bit bummed that Red wasn't here, but that wasn't all that recent anymore.

Well, he was already out of ideas, then. The Venusaur squinted back, definitely too bewildered to be hiding anything.

"Remember... what?"

That was definitely not the face of someone that had any idea what he was talking about. This was kind of awkward suddenly. "Er..."

"You were just asleep, right? Things were..." He paused, looking for a way to say it. Fuzzy memories of other dreams shifed through his thoughts as he considered it. How had they put it?

Knowing to take careful precautions this time around, the younger saur reattached himself to the older one while he was still mostly immobile. "I'm sorry. I think dreams were intersecting or something... You invited me into yours."

Vinnie continued looking dubious as he was re-hugged. He didn't exactly have a problem with giving hugs when needed, but a better explanation of the context would've been nice. The words coming out of Bulba's mouth made no sense to him. "You sure you didn't just dream all that on your own?" he suggested skeptically.

Then again, how did Bulba know that he had just been sleeping? The Venusaur furrowed his brows. Hm.

"We started in mine," Bulba said quietly. "I guess you thought it was yours since it was, uh... well it was the Garden. You let me in but I think that's when it became your dream since everything was really snowy and you were leading me up this tall tower."

He shivered briefly at the phantom memory of the cold. Bulba glanced up at him, biting his lip. "You were an Ivysaur most of the time and... and..."

Nope, his face was back in Vinnie's shirt.

Wha-- oh, okay. Vinnie stared down at this Ivysaur that seemed to be trying to fuse with his chest, still confused. Awkwardly, he gave the younger Saur a pat on the back, but it was hard to be comforting when he wasn't sure exactly what he was trying to console.

Snow was a reoccurring theme in his dreams, along with Sprout Tower on the occasion - the fact that Bulba somehow knew this felt a bit too uncanny for the Venusaur to write it off completely as pure imagination. It didn't change the fact that he was clueless to what happened next, though.

"Wait, you have dreams about the Garden?"

No, that wasn't what you were supposed to take away from this, Vinnie.

Edited 2012-09-30 09:17 (UTC)

Ugh. UGH. Vinnie why didn't you remember, it would have saved you both a lot of trouble. Bulba didn't particularly want to talk about his own dreams, but if Vinnie asked questions it seemed only fair at this point to begrudgingly give him answers about them.

There was a small nod against the Venusaur's chest, and Bulba turned his head slightly so that even if he was still looking down his answers wouldn't be lost into the pink walls of Vinnie's shirt.

"... Sometimes. Usually I can't get in it though. There's a big... invisible wall? I guess. Probably cause you're not there. This time you showed up though, and you took me with you but..."

Bulba stop trailing off that's annoying.

Vinnie quietly processed this. He wasn't an expert on symbology or dreams, but the fact that Bulba had an invisible wall in his subconscious was rather telling. In his head, the Garden was somewhere he wasn't allowed to go, at least without Vinnie.

The Venusaur's expression may have softened sadly. A dream was just a dream, but it that didn't change the feelings that were seeded in the mind any less real. Even if the Ivysaur didn't sound keen on describing it in depth, this was what Bulba lived with in his mind. This was a thought he held onto tightly enough to live in at night.

Vinnie put his arms around the other's shoulders, letting them rest there in a loose hug. There was an ending to this story, one that Bulba had trouble forcing out of his mouth, and it was only right that the Venusaur listened to it with the weight it deserved.

"Okay. So this was Sprout Tower, right? What happened there?"

"Mm, maybe? Probably. There was a lot of sounds that kind of sounding like chanting. It was hard to tell. You kept leading me up, because you were going to show me part of the Garden you didn't show me last time."

Bulba shut his eyes, taking in the feeling of Vinnie's arms around his shoulders and the sound of his heart beating beneath his ear. This was all the warmth of someone that was very much alive. Bulba chewed up his lip.

"You looked awful, even when we were in my dream. Just... you were a wreck. You didn't really seem to care but you just kept... there was so much blood. You were covering the stairs in flowers. We talked. You wouldn't stop climbing or bleeding."

Now Vinnie had an idea where this might have been going. It was starting to sound vaguely familiar - not enough to conjure back any tangible memories, but if it really was him in that dream, he knew what he would've wanted to do in the same situation. Specifically, if he was bleeding his life out into blossoms. Flowers springing from blood wasn't uncommon imagery, but it was one that Vinnie's core recognized as right.

From here, he ventured a guess. The Venusaur's voice was lowered, as though speaking in secrets that were only for the grass to hear.

"So I went home to die, right?" That would explain why Bulba was so shaken from remembering.

There was another small nod against the Venusaur's chest, and the younger saur's hold tightened around his middle.

"Uh-huh."

The little sniffle may or may not have been a figment of imaginations.

Vinnie's chest moved in a sigh, as quiet as he could manage with the younger Saur pressed up to his midsection. That sniff hadn't escaped his notice, but the best he could do to calm it was hold him a little tighter and smell a lot sweeter.

Despite this being his dream, apparently, Vinnie wasn't the one who walked away from it crying. And he didn't know how to make promises or apologies for a subconscious that was prepared for death. It was going to happen one day, even if he'd prefer it wasn't soon.

But he was making a habit of dying in front of Bulba, it seemed. Frowning, the Venusaur lowered his head to rest his nose against the crown of soft, green-gold hair buried against him.

Bulba took in a deep breath of the sweet scent, relaxing somewhat against Vinnie with a soft exhale. However bothered he might have been with Vinnie's acceptance of the notion, it was harder to be upset when he was so warm and alive against him right now. Unfortunately for Vinnie, even if his legs might have woken up by now, his new Ivysaur attachment didn't seem like it was going to move anytime soon.

The pinpricks left the corners of his eyes. Despite the weight that had seemed to drop on him over the dream and his initial rush of emotions, he almost felt... kind of light. Like there was a sense of clarity there that hadn't been just a short while ago. He didn't entirely understand the feeling, but it seemed to sit right with him.

So did a few other things. Bulba kept his head down under Vinnie's, speaking up again quietly. "You kind of laughed at the end," he murmured. "Because I hadn't said it before." It felt important to say it this time. He hadn't the last time it counted, and it didn't mean much as a foggy memory that had already dissipated.

"But I'd miss you."

Edited 2012-10-01 02:43 (UTC)

Being missed was always something that had been implied with Bulba, been assumed and unsaid. Vinnie had always just been bolder with his words, so he'd simply settled into the idea that while the the feelings were mutual, he just happened to be the one to say so first. But thinking on it, there really had never been a case where the Ivysaur had offered up that kind of emotional confession on his own. Considering how close they were - rather, how much closer they used to be - it was a strange barrier that had just always been in place. It was inherent. Bulba could never go too far or feel too deeply.

Dreams were different, he supposed. And Bulba could be truthful in dreams. Hearing the words again, it rang familiar in his ears - probably because it came so close to the edge of waking. All these shapes in the smoke, these shadows cast against the light of day.

"Well, you said it now," he told him, pressing his cheek against the curve of Bulba's head. "So it counts."

There were the words, but there was something else too... something right at the edge of the visible. The Venusaur couldn't make sense of its form, but he was certain that it was felt. Like a song conveyed through touch.

Thinking out loud, he repeated the words, "At the end..." before pausing to pull his head away to look down at Bulba. "There was a light... one that wasn't mine. That was you, wasn't it?"

So Vinnie was recalling a little bit of something. Maybe. Bulba wasn't sure what he was talking about. He looked up at him curiously, one ear giving a brief flick.

"A light...? Um.... Maybe? I don't really remember one being there. Though I guess if it was me..." Let him just put his thinking cap on there. He kind of had a feeling he should know what this was, but what he remembered most vividly about the end was the sea of red flowers around him. But no, there was something he had wanted to remember about this, he realized. What was it? Was it important? His brow furrowed slightly, looking every bit the part of someone that was trying to recall where he had misplaced something.

Bulba actually pulled away from the hug to sit up on his knees. "We were kind of like this," he mused out load. Sitting kind of like that, and he had... Bulba's hands slid over Vinnie's shoulders lightly and he nodded to himself. "I was trying to keep you from falling, and flowers were coming up under my hands."

Then he was cupping his hands against Vinnie's cheeks and a dawning of realization seemed to strike him. "Right! I was trying to remember what you looked like so that when you... um.. well. Anyway. I think I wanted to say something to your flower but it was a bunch of little flowers so..."

So.

Bulba blinked. "Ohhhh."

Vinnie blinked too, but without any of the clarity. He couldn't say that sitting like this felt familiar - but then again, at that point his senses were already numb and flowing out into his surroundings. It seemed like trying to figure out this one little detail was something of importance to Bulba though, so he made no motion to remove the hands framing his face.

"What? What'd you say?"

"I didn't get a chance to say anything so I just did what felt right at the time."

As soon as he said it, Bulba knew that this could only go so many ways. Vinnie was going to continue to be the captain of the S.S. Oblivious Curiosity as long as the Ivysaur didn't say what had happened. That left two courses of action that did not end up in vague huffs of frustration.

Somehow leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to his lips seemed less embarrassing than trying to say he had kissed him.

Oh. It was a touch after all. Brief and soft, but made up for it in depth. Outside the world of dreams, a kiss was just a kiss - not a glow, not a lit path in the dark, no symbolism to be divined. They were just two lips in contact. But he could feel Bulba's warmth on his skin, their breath mingling, and the scent of another's perfume against his palate. Proof of life - as close as most could manage when their souls couldn't speak through flowers.

Vinnie breathed out as the Ivysaur pulled away, stunned into a surprised stillness. That one small mystery was, at least, solved - a kiss for the dying - though he wasn't sure whose benefit the answer was for. Whatever deeper meaning it had, the feelings Bulba wanted to convey in a dream's kiss, that moment was still lost in a dissolved world.

For now, the Venusaur blinked again and stared back. "Oh. ...Thanks."

Bulba stared back for a moment, and then he gave a little laugh. It seemed like a funny thing to be thanked for. "You're welcome?"

The moment had been found, but Bulba didn't pull back just yet. He touched his forehead tto Vinnie's instead. "I wanted you to be happy," he admitted in hushed, secretive tones. "You were smiling." His thumbs brushed across some of the rough onsets of stubble on the older saur's face and he suddenly seemed to realize he was holding him so closely. Bulba drew back, taking his hands with him and holding them loosely over his knees.

"Don't wait until then, ok?"

It wasn't so strange a thing to thank. No different from a thank you for caring, for letting someone in. Wishing someone well. Allowing a person to share a brief second in that fragile, honest corner of the heart that normally was so guarded. It wasn't nothing, and that was worth something. Vinnie let a small grin tug at the edge of his mouth, seemingly unbothered by such close proximity. That, however, was most likely attributed to being completely unaware of how their current state of intimacy looked. Astonishingly unaware. Maddeningly.

"I wouldn't come back just t'stay miserable," he promised, with some confidence behind his words. "And I don't plan on dying. That's not what the dream was about - least, I don't see it that way."

The Venusaur's complete and utter inability to think anything of the situation was partially why similar ones ended up so flustering sometimes. The Ivysaur had to suppose that at least it meant things wouldn't be entirely awkward between them. Any awkwardness was bound to be completely unnoticed anyway.

So even if his face had gone rosy, he managed to smile over the promise. "Well that's good to hear. I don't think that's what it was really about either." From what Vinnie had been talking about, Bulba thought he had a very vague idea. The very vaguest of ideas. Maybe he didn't actually. How confusing.

He reached out and lightly tapped Vinnie on the forehead. "I hope it's less confusing in there for you, at least."

Vinnie huffed a little at the forehead poking, even if it had been good natured on Bulba's part. He pushed the other's hand away lightly, gesturing at the grass around them instead. What answer he had was indirect: "I've been trying t'take up something like meditation, but it's not workin' out so great if I fell asleep, is it."

With a bit more of a serious glint in his eyes, he continued with a question: "D'you know what this spot is?" He was genuinely curious if the Ivysaur could tell - whether from pure memory itself, or simply by feeling the energy of the place. How it differed from the rest of the forest, even if it was only by the tiniest glow.

There was another curious flick of his ear. He hadn't given their location very much attention, having been so intent on finding the other saur. If he had given his surroundings more mind, he might have had more hesitance about it.

As it was, it took him a moment. It looked fairly different with falling leaves encroaching the area rather than small piles of snow that were receding. There was a small buzz of life here, similar to Vinnie's Garden, but it was notably.... Somber? A bit sad? There was a reason the grass here was as soft and lush as it was even now. It was never so nice when he saw it in his dreams.

Bulba had visibly tensed where he sat in the moment he took to reflect on their surroundings. He took a deep breath, slowly exhaling to force himself to ease back into relaxation. If Vinnie could attempt to meditate there, Bulba could at least sit there without freaking out.

"Yes."

Vinnie mustered up a forced smile in an attempt to assuage the younger Saur from the visible guilt that struck him. When it came to the events of the that twisted week, he had gone to great lengths to come to terms with death. With the lonely, painful release of dying. The memory had accompanied him during the process of soul-searching and provided a unique insight for the spiritual understanding he sought in recovery - in the end, it was a wound he could turn into a strength.

Bulba, on the other hand, could never undo the act, and could never find forgiveness from the already-dead - the only real balm was to find peace with himself. The only further thing the Venusaur could offer for him now was understanding.

"When we die, the energy we hold in our bodies goes back into the earth," he explained, taking on a reverent tone as he placed his palms against the grass. "That's the real secret of the Gardens. It's not just where we're born, it's where we return t'the forest.

"I thought if I could connect to this place, I'd be able to find... a part've myself here?" It sounded a bit strange to hear himself say it. But it was still the closest he could figure for a link to his own Garden.

"Mm, that makes sense," Bulba said in quiet assurance. It hadn't sounded that strange to him at all. If that was the secret to the cycle, than it made sense to seek it out if he knew where to look. In this case it literally was a part that could have been Vinnie that was making the bridge.

Briefly, the younger saur wondered if maybe he should try to offer his apologies to the grass and life around them. He'd been hesitant about coming back into the forest for a long time. Maybe the time that he could have done it had already past. The Ivysaur hadn't gone off on a spiritual journey of his own, but he'd still been making steps. They had been slow, small ones, but steps none the less. Being able to meet that other version of Green had released a large amount of the tension strapped to his conscience, but he hadn't been so lucky with the saur's circumstances.

His tentativeness was evident as he brushed his fingers against the grass. It didn't feel as inherently wrong as it would have before. There had been progress. Now there were other things accompanying those thoughts. If a Garden was where you went to return... where would he go? Wanting to be with his trainer made sense, but was that really the same thing? Maybe that wasn't important right now.

Bulba glanced back up at him. "Have you been able to?"

"I dunno," he admitted. There was definitely a different sort of light that had been soaked into the grass, but no distinct voice he could pinpoint within its glow. Either that soul had been fully integrated into the earth, rejoined his living half, or left this place altogether - but considering how 'he' had died, Vinnie would have waged the latter.

That meant the two of them were separate souls now, didn't it? Despite being the same person, their paths had diverged too greatly to possibly be integrated. Then again, there was always the chance that a part of Vinnie was simply missing now - though he couldn't say what was for sure and what it meant.

"There's no one here anymore - no soul, anyway. Who knows if he just stopped existin', or if he's somewhere else now." With a shrug, Vinnie added, "It's no real Garden. But makin' peace with the Cycle itself, that's more important."

Nature had its cycle, and so did souls. He could only hope that whatever aspect of himself that had died could somehow find its way back on its own.

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

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