longwillows | ✨ somnia inbox

[ His walk back to the brownstone he shared with Freddie and Sharon ends up mostly uneventful. The moon above still shone an eerie crimson, the odd shuffle-walk of Hosts echoing off the walls of alleys. But, he doesn't catch a single glimpse of his reflection the entire way. There are moments, of course, where he feels the shift of it in the shadows; it doesn't make an appearance and seems quieter in a way it hadn't before.

And while he doesn't think it's over, exactly, he does feel lighter than he has in some time.

So, he had turned down Kalmiya's worried request for him to stick close by–his emotions had already been a jumble and even if he believed she'd be sturdy enough to lean on, he'd needed space to clear his head. To review how everything had gone down and sort through it all. In the quiet of the apartment, it's easy to do just that, the mental exercise of categorizing how he felt back into the boxes they belonged in. At some point, he drops off to sleep, the past few weeks all catching up at once.

What he failed to account for, of course, is that he hasn't had a dose of Somnacin in nearly two months. Plenty of time for his body to flush the aftereffects; natural dreams creep back in, something he hasn't experienced in years.

It means he isn't ready for the distorted memory of the Proclus job to dredge itself up, the embrace of sleep giving way to the image of a hallway, wood stained in a rich, dark color, the lines along the walls imitating the dividers found on shoji screens. Overhead, the lights give off a gold-yellow glow, the glass and metal shaped like traditional Japanese lanterns. All the lighting is turned down low–shadowy, intimate.

He passes a side table with a jade vase containing a single arch of an orchid stem in it and hooks two fingers into the carved handhold on the sliding door to his room. Once he steps in, the lights slowly flare on, stopping at a dim but see-able brightness. Crossing the room, he steps out onto the small balcony, hands tightly curled around the railing as he stares sightlessly into the churning water below, reviewing how the rest of the job would go. Cobb should be rappelling down the side of the building already, where he'll head in through the kitchens to make his way back up to the dining room with the safe.

Behind him, he hears the softest click of a heel on the lacquered floor and before he has a chance to turn, a lotion-soft hand curves over his mouth.

"Dear Arthur, it's such a shame to meet you like this," Mal purrs by his ear, the cold muzzle of her gun nestled at the small of his back. Turning slightly, he can see her out of the corner of his eye; her reddish-brown curls are perfect, the blue of her eyes is empty, malevolent. She gives him a knife thin smile and nudges him forward with the gun. When he looks down, the rail has disappeared, the sharp toes of his dress shoes jutting over the edge of the balcony floor. His pulse spikes when he sees the jagged rocks below that make up the shoreline, the crash of night-blackened waves against them.

"About ten stories, I think," she comments, peeking over the ledge. "Do give Dom my regards, won't you?"

Her query is whispered, pressed to his cheek like a goodbye kiss before she lets him go, his footing giving way and the wind rushing past his face. Momentum has him turning and his last view is Mal, darkly beautiful as he falls and falls and–

–jerks awake, a cold sweat covering every inch of him. Throwing the blankets off, he presses his face into his hands and curls in on himself, the hammer of his pulse making him tremble all over. Without even meaning to, he tugs on the corded familiarity of his tether with Kalmiya, the solid warmth of it keeping him from falling to pieces. ]

[ It is not the first bite she's taken of the evening, nor will it be the last, and just like the others, it sends her mind reeling into memory, dragging Kalmiya with her.

The elevator doors slide open with a soft ding, spilling its dim light into the long hotel hallway. Something about it feels so old to the nine-year-old in her pale winter coat, her long dark hair hanging heavy past her waist. She moves forward, urged on by a stern woman at her side with tight lips that do nothing to hide the vicious words that could slip from them, her thin, bony fingers resting at her waist. One step behind, the girl's mother walks like a ghost, present only in body.

Others fill the corridor as they approach a massive painting on the wall. Everyone wears black, mourning garb. This is a funeral, but the dearly departed still stands among them, her purple school uniform peeking out from beneath her winter coat. The stern woman stops in front of the painting. It depicts a woman bound to a pyre, flames licking at her. She shoves the child forward in a sharp motion, slipping into the faux-sweet falsetto she always uses with her younger sister.

"You may go now, Dahlia. We fight the sin, not the sinner." There is something so awful in that voice, something holy and violent at once, that a sharp panic surges through the child.

The painting swings open, and in that instant, she understands. She turns to her mother, shouts for her, reaches, but Dahlia does nothing as her daughter is dragged away, hands hanging limply at her side.

The chamber beyond is crowded. Everyone wears the same black, but there's a feverishness here that feels like hunger. An excitement. No one even glances at the child with pity. In the center of the room, a brazier glares, far too large for any domestic purpose, its coals a fierce white-red. Countless candles stand in staggered rows, some melted down from repeated use. Chains dangle from the ceiling, suspending a circular metal seal rimmed with two sets of shackles.

A man with wide shoulders lifts the child without ceremony as the woman, their priestess, slips on a purple robe stitched in gold. He pins the girl to the cold seal and snaps the shackles around her wrists and ankles. She shrieks. She sobs. Her small body strains against unyielding metal, back arching.

The now-robed woman gestures, and the man guides the seal toward the brazier, the metal groaning as the heat touches it. The child's cries warp as the heat begins to lick at her, from thin and watery to wild, raw, and worn—already threatening to die on her. No one blinks. Over the burning and sobbing, the woman in robes speaks, shouting above the child's screams as the acrid scent of burning wool and hair fills the room.

"Weep not for the demon, once again locked in mortal battle!" Joy lights her face as she sweeps her arms wide, a priestess in her element, guiding her flock the way she believes God intended. "Praise God for our clarity!" she cries, and the flock repeats her in a choir that cannot drown out the child's ragged screams. "Praise the innocent for their sacrifice!"

The fire consumes more than just her clothing, her hair, and her flesh. It eats away at every good thought, every bad thought. Every desperate wish. Burns every word away except one: why.

When the pain shifts, when the agony turns to something distant, something inside her gives way. The feeling is like a cracking, like the brittle snap of bone. It is as if every thing she had been, every tenderness and every fear, splinters and pours out through the seams of her skull. The metal chain that holds the seal creaks as if in response, and then it snaps with a violent, metallic scream.

The seal swings. The brazier tilts. And the room erupts with chaos.

Finally, they scream.

It's not the first time this memory has replayed tonight, yet still she sits rigid, spine straight, her skin pale as spilled milk. The hand clutching her fork trembles until she sets it down with a soft clink. Her wide, bright-blue eyes lift to meet Kalmiya's. The tether between them thrums almost violently, carrying echoes of the memory—of fear, pain, and a terrible, simmering rage that always lingers just beneath her surface. ]

[It's vague and hard to make out but with some effort a voice can heard whispering across tethered connection between Kalmiya and Ash. It's a low gravely voice that certainly isn't something Ash could mimic.]

I am shadow cast and the light beyond. Your very breath and the choices you make are my gifts...

Edited 2025-10-01 20:45 (UTC)

[It comes within the day of waking from the dream (at least, to those who have not already found some communication with her one way or another.) Not immediately, though. She needs time to collect herself before she can search the Murmur for the threads of those she recognizes, a task much more difficult when all she has to work with is snapped ends and searing loneliness where her tethers used to be.

It's not exactly a text message, but it's quite different from how Kalmiya usually conducts conversation over the Murmur. It's a more distant permutation of her voice—the way one might imagine it as they read a letter or note she wrote, not wrong, but a few steps removed from pure reality.]

hey
are you guys all right?
sorry if you felt any of that
if you didn't feel much then there's no need to worry. i just

made Sleep a little mad at me! but i'm not dead so it could be a lot worse

[The distance afforded to this message also means it's kept far away from any of the emotions associated with it.]

[ Their first week back in the shell of Manhattan has been–interesting. Arthur's no stranger to coming home after weeks and months of being away, which is the precise feeling he's been getting over the past few days. While Sleep's dream had been one night, seemingly, it had felt longer than that. A disorienting thing for him to experience without the influence of Somnacin running through his veins. So much of Sleep's dream had felt like being plugged into the PASIV and running a job, down to the escalating hostility of her ghost-like projections as he made more and more changes.

Except unlike dreamshare, things that happened in the dream could follow someone into the waking world. Like it did to Kalmiya, after her altercation with Sleep. If he focuses, he can still feel the sear of pain running rampant along his nerves, vibrating uncomfortably along his bones. She had been the first person he and Sharon had checked on, unsettled by the happenings in the dream alongside the gaping emptiness they'd both found upon waking.

Thankfully, she had been in one piece, physically. And seemed to be mostly herself, otherwise. The blend of dreaming and waking had unsettled him, though, especially since she hadn't been able to give an affirmative that would assuage his worries that she wasn't still dreaming.

Reflecting on all of that has brought him here, to Kalmiya's odd little apartment full of near-alien plants.

Currently, he's settled on the floor amidst a small pile of cushions, watching her daub paint onto a canvas board. She's sitting cross-legged on another set of cushions, a fold-up easel propped up in front of her, the wood end of a second paintbrush pressed between her lips like a cigarette holder. The way she works is unlike the last painter he'd observed–Eames, in his more permanent studio located in Florence. But, he supposes their reasons are different. Kalmiya is clearly driven by emotion, working it out on the blank white and filling in bold strokes, harsh texture, as raw as a fresh wound. Eames had been methodical, fine brushwork and glazes in layers, sometimes looking like he'd barely done anything at all. Hours later, he'd sweep a wash over the whole thing and the image would begin clicking together; a magician making a coin appear, optical magic made out of light and color.

Either way, it's fascinating to see what paints she chooses and where they get placed. Enough that he hasn't disturbed her all that much, content to watch as she translates her thoughts to the end of a brush. Eventually, she gets to the end of whatever she wanted to put on the canvas for now, leaning her weight back with an analytical kind of look. ]

Finally get that blue to cooperate?

post-mirrorselves | cracks a bottle over your inbox

dream memory share w/a side of trauma & a glass of tl;dr

Sometime through October after their Tether is reestablished

for (former) Tethers

somewhere in the first week of oct event idk