[open] a friend in need's a friend indeed

[nedofpies]

Who: Ned and OPEN
What: Random encounters & fallout from dream-walking tomfoolery
Where: House 20, the garden, anywhere around town
When: Day 89

It's been a long week. A long, mostly-sleepless, weird week during which Ned has seen far more of his friends' and neighbors' subconsciouses than he would have liked to. Plus, a creepy city made of crystals that everyone seems to have seen, but no one will claim as their own. Shady stuff. Today, he is determined to wear himself out. Perhaps if he's tired enough, whatever mojo the men behind the curtain have put on him won't be strong enough to stir him out of a deep and dreamless sleep.

It's probably a futile tactic, but he can't just do nothing.

So he is a bustle of activity - cleaning the house, walking around town, checking on the crops to see if they are holding up well (carefully, with an eye for any enterprising tigers roaming too close to the edge of the forest), keeping an eye out for new faces and an ear out for rumors of missing ones.

Comments

[rulebreaks]

"Settling?" she asks, uneasily. But then she smiles. Also uneasily. "No complaints here... tall guy."

A beat.

"I mean pie guy. I mean... Ned guy."

[nedofpies]

"You can call me tall guy, if you want. Or pie guy. Or Ned guy. Or Ned. Or just guy," he says, easily, wondering what's got her so on edge. She says she's fine, but...

"No complaints?" He's surprised by that. Perhaps she's just trying to be polite, but it seems to him that there's plenty to complain about. If it's not the food shortage, there's the strange business with the nightmares that has been happening recently. Does she know that has been happening to everyone else? There has been chatter about it on the network, but perhaps she has been avoiding it and doesn't know it isn't just her.

"Not even about all this dream business?"

[rulebreaks]

"It's nice to know you're... flexible." Welp. Buffy tended to just go by 'Buffy' but maybe that was just her. "...Uhm. What dream business, in particular?"

[nedofpies]

Ned's head tilts to the side in curiosity. The problem had been pretty ubiquitous thus far, but perhaps Buffy has remained unaffected. If so, he wonders how, if there is something different about her. Or perhaps she had been walking in other peoples' dreams without realizing it? Or, of course, she could always be lying, be trying to cover up what she didn't understand.

"People have been kind of showing up in one another's dreams these last few nights? And not in the regular, Wizard of Oz, I had a dream and you and you and you were there kind of way. I mean really actually in one another's minds."

[rulebreaks]

"I... uh." Hoo boy. This was awkward. "I think I would remember something like that." Her eyes went a little wide from the lie, but nothing else gave her away even as he dug her nails into her palms.

Buffy had creepy slayer dreams, you see, as part of her creepy slayer...ness. Since she was currently still keeping this from the rest of the class. Well. She had assumed the recent event was in fact, just her usual routine.

"...What do you mean by 'in each other's minds?'"

[nedofpies]

Ned doesn't pick up on the fact that Buffy is bluffing, continuing to look perplexed as he wonders why she, alone, it would seem, was unaffected by the experiment. Even Daneel had fallen asleep, and by all rights that was physically impossible for him. Perhaps she had merely not noticed. Perhaps whoever had trespassed on her dreams had managed to be discreet.

Crap, how better to describe it than that? "Sort of... participating in one anothers' dreams. Well, sometimes participating, sometimes just watching. Like a vision, except with information from two brains instead of just one." Wow he is really not doing a good job of making this any less complicated.

[rulebreaks]

Suddenly, she gets a little serious. She's trying to stay nonchalant but this is decidedly NOT O.K. with her but she's helpless here and she hates that more than words can say.

"...How long has this been happening?"

[nedofpies]

Ned runs a hand through his hair, counting back, "About five nights. For me, anyway. I don't think anyone I've talked to was going through it before that."

And who knows how long it will keep going on. It's so hard to tell in this place, what changes will be permanent and which are temporary.

[rulebreaks]

Buffy nods, taking that in to absorb as best she can.

"Has anyone ever told you you have an... interesting cadence when you speak? It's not bad. It's just."

Hmm. "Candency. Almost soothing." She shrugs. She was totally listening. Maybe.