all through the night

[tryingitall]

Who: Balthazar, Meja
When: Overnight, day 170-171
Where: Dream-sharing
What: Looking for that city, but it may take a while to get there.
Warning: None

Despite Balthazar's compulsive innuendo, there's really no need for him and Meja to snuggle up in the same bed, or even the same room, in order to attempt dream-sharing. In fact, given the place's propensity to dump people back in their own dorms if they stray for too long, it's probably smarter to just settle in and hope they meet in dreams.

Balthazar can't help but feel chilled in the new emptiness of the space he once shared with Gabriel, and wonders if it will even be possible for him to sleep. Still, once he lies down and forces his eyes to close, it doesn't take too long to drift. Kore has that effect, somehow, even on an angel.

Comments

[wolfofmidgard]

Seven hundred years and Meja has lost whatever instinct it takes to know how to fall asleep. All she remembers are curling up and closing her eyes, and even then her mind is going too fast, she imagines, for that to get anywhere. She's used to tracking so many things — the safety of Midgard and all that entails, the politics of the Valkyrie, the political climate of Asgard, Fenrir's location and his safety... Even here, trapped, Meja is keeping track of the plants and trying to recall any useful bit of magic that could lead to a possible escape.

In addition to worries about how things might go back home in the Nine Realms, it's a very busy mind. It requires almost literally throwing a brake into the mix. Meja, as usual, sits in the middle of her floor, cross-legged, and forces herself to meditate.

Before too long, breathing in and out softly, she begins to lose herself. She hears a rustling of trees and follows the noise, deeper and deeper. Large paws on soft soil. High, haunting notes like whale song, noises she's missed, lead her even deeper, until she's as close to dreaming as is possible. Or perhaps it is dreaming. Meja's lost the ability to distinguish between the two states.

She finds herself sitting cross-legged in Andlang's central hall. Where her mind keeps returning to, restlessly. The immense space is almost blindingly white, the ceiling a hundred feet from the ground, smooth and grand and glowing, subtly. Her armor has lost its glamor, and instead gleams on her just as impressively as it normally would if she weren't a bit self-conscious about it. It's sparer than most armor, as it deflects, for the most part, with magic. Her epaulets are wolf's heads, and her bracers are engraved with running wolves and horses. A gift from the Dwarves, after Ragnarök.

Those whale-like, haunting sounds permeate the grand hall, as she slowly opens her eyes.

[tryingitall]

"What's the music?" Balthazar has found her quickly; probably they are the only two people in the place who don't need sleep, but have sought it out regardless. It makes it that much easier to find one another.

Still, they don't appear quite like their waking selves. Balthazar swims into corporeal view slowly, shaped humanlike, in his usual vessel, but there's a mist that hovers bright behind him, in a vague shape not unlike wings. Golden and fawn, blurred around the edges, occasionally the shape of an eye appear, long enough to blink or look around, and then vanish again. "You look nice," he adds mildly, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Rather grand."

[wolfofmidgard]

Meja glances up at Balthazar, taking in his appearance, before taking measure of her own with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I suppose people find generals because of all of the shiny things attached to them," she jokes quietly, getting to her feet. She hasn't been in her position long enough to become fully comfortable with it. Lucky for her, then, that she'll have longer than most to try.

"That's..." She looks up, toward the ceiling which seems to glow more than the rest of the enormous space. "Yggdrasil. The last time she spoke to me. It's a more... metaphorical way of communication."

She can't help but be disappointed that the message isn't a new one. Perhaps Yggdrasil truly cannot reach her, here.

"You didn't have any trouble finding me, I see."

[tryingitall]

"Oh." Whether he believes in such things or not, he can't help but be impressed, and looks up into the luminous space above them, listening in silence for the space of several breaths. He doesn't understand the words, of course.

"It's lovely. I don't know that I've ever heard anything quite like it. You're lucky she speaks to you." There's a brief, resigned frown, but he shakes it off quickly and reclaims his impish grin.

"No. I think we're the only ones asleep. Want to show me around? I'm not sure how to get anywhere in dreams."

[wolfofmidgard]

"I don't know, either. Yggdrasil usually drags me along for the ride, and... I don't really remember having any control over my dreams when I was human," Meja admits. Mostly, she remembers a lot of running in those dreams. A lot of sitting in the hospital and watching her mother waste away from what she knew later as Loki's curse.

She glances around for a moment before nodding, heading in the direction of the balcony. It's the long way to get around Andlang, but it's the most scenic, as well. The balcony itself is about thirty feet wide, built along one side of the white stone fortress. A column of light, tinted almost as an aurora, comes from the sky to rest against and through the fortress itself; the source is so high up that not even the gods know its exact path. The view from the balcony is of the rest of the compound, with smaller buildings of the same stone, and gardens with a running stream beside them, and great dark mountains in the distance. They aren't mountains at all, of course, but roots, for Andlang does not sit in a realm of its own. It sits directly on Yggdrasil herself.

"Welcome to Andlang. A very... empty Andlang. Very unusual," she chuckles. Without the bustle of Valkyrie, it almost seems to be a different place.