Dancing Fox In XII: Dance If You Want To

[Deathkeeper]

Mist raises an eyebrow.
"Good and manipulation don't really seem all that correlated on paper." With a sigh he adds, "I really do hope that this sort of thing is rather uncommon. The idea of raising to another level of existence is scary enough, I don't want to even think about accidentally spawning branch selves." he says, sounding exhausted just thinking about it.

[Recaiden]

Mist raises an eyebrow.
"Good and manipulation don't really seem all that correlated on paper." With a sigh he adds, "I really do hope that this sort of thing is rather uncommon. The idea of raising to another level of existence is scary enough, I don't want to even think about accidentally spawning branch selves." he says, sounding exhausted just thinking about it.

Done now.

Cleo shrugs.
"It's not always straightforward, what works. Hard to capture on paper."

She nods and gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.
"Quite uncommon. Though it can go on quite a bit; there was one case of four levels of fae in one being. But that was once ever. If it happened to you randomly, I could eat my hat. Where it matters is, remember that the Leah you're with isn't the whole of the girl you knew."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist nods.
"Yeah, I still talk to 'full' Leah a lot.
So...uh...how do you actually make a Charity? I have never understood that." he admits.

[Recaiden]

Cleo shrugs.
"Well, you take a thing. An object, something usually simple but important to you."

She takes her little chainsaw knife and sets it on the counter, unclips her necklace and sets it down, and waves her hands over them.
"And then you enchant them. You gotta keep them around you for a long time, explore every detail of their existence and of their meaning, and then you find them in the dream world and make them what they are."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist looks down at the objects.
"What, like my coat? Or my flute?
Wait, there's a dream world now?"
Oh, dear. That sounds complicated. And dangerous.

[Recaiden]

Cleo nods.
"This knife was a gift from my best friend, the one who showed me how to make the transition. I've had it longer than any other thing. And it became a Blade."

"Of course! Did you think your dreams were just your brain randomly rehashing past experiences and thoughts?" Maybe in sad physics-only worlds. "Do you want to see it? Do this? Or just hear about it?"

[Deathkeeper]

Mist looks at Cleo and considers the question for a long, long while.
"Yes, I think that I do. Maybe not all the way? Maybe. But...I want to know what all of this is. I can't understand without experience." he says at last. Even if he can't do so without a gulp beforehand.

[Recaiden]

She waits patiently for a while, eventually shifting to amusement.
Cleo nods once, slowly.
"I'll be back tonight, when you're ready to sleep, then. Think about what's most important to you, what you might want to be. And you'll get the experience you want, I hope."

[Deathkeeper]

"What I might...want to be? I'm not really sure what you mean by that, but I'll be expecting you." he says to her, pondering many things.

[Recaiden]

"About how far you would go in order to understand."
Cleo rises from her seat at the bar, turns, and slinks away.

---

And will come back as advertised and as expected, late in the day, with a small bag over her shoulder.
"So. Of your own possessions, which are most meaningful to you, Mist? You mentioned your coat and your flute."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist looks down from locking up the place as Cleo enters.
"I think those two, yes. My flute is the last thing I have of my family and my old home. It's a bit more than that, but that's what it essentially is. My coat is something I've had since I came here. I'm more familiar with it than almost anything else. I don't really have particular attachment to any of my knives."
He supposes if he counts his possessions, the Inn might count too.

[Recaiden]

"Good. Keep those with you." She heads over to where he is.

"And, who are you? What makes you you, Mist? Keep that in mind. And most practically, you have somewhere more comfortable than behind that bar to fall asleep, right?"

[Deathkeeper]

"'Those' as in the knives or the flute and coat?" he asks. "And yes Cleo, this is an inn. I have a room. One of the biggest rooms, though they're all pretty much the same size. Second floor, three on the left." he says, heading there with Cleo if she doesn't object.
Naku's room is also one of the biggest, but that is and always will be kept for her.

[Recaiden]

"Yes, that's what I mean. Hehe. I guess I could mean anything else. Don't you tell me about the rooms, Mist; I've been here longer than you have. What you do with them, well, that's what I don't know. Maybe you've let them all out."
It'd be pretty weird if everyone knew the best room was kept for Naku.

Cleo heads up there with him. Up the stairs, one, two, three doors.
"I don't expect you have any practice with lucid dreaming or controlling your dreams or anything?"

[Deathkeeper]

"You're the one who seems to know everything; I doubt you've never been here when someone paid for a room in the last year. And no, I haven't."

The room smells of fox, given that one has lived there for two years, but otherwise is largely unimpressive. Tasteful decorations, photos with Leah and Naku and Strahd, a knife sharpening kit and a mirror, and a target on one wall covered in indents. There's mostly a brown theme here, like most of the rooms.

[Recaiden]

"But that doesn't mean I know what you know. I just know what the world knows you know."
Cleo ducks into the bathroom (they have those, right?) and emerges changed into a set of pyjamas.

"You might want to keep the knives with you too. The dream world is pretty safe for normal dreamers, but less so for fae, and I dunno what it might make of you."

[Deathkeeper]

"You...what?" he asks, baffled.
"I-nevermind. Sure. Tough to sleep with my pants full of iron, but whatever."
The coat hangs on a hook beside his bed, the flute in its pocket.
"I hope you don't think we're sharing a bed." he says flatly.

[Recaiden]

"Keep them near you, anyway. Close as that coat should do."
Cleo gives Mist a deadpan look, but then shrugs.

"Been accustomed to much less restful places than floors here." Not recently, actually, but she'll manage.

"Ask yourself, are you dreaming now? You probably are. But not on the level you're looking for."

[Deathkeeper]

"Sorry, but I don't have any interest in sleeping with my girlfriend's parent." he says, aware of the innuendo.
No, that's the other Leah's partner. Mist changes out of his current clothes into some silk pajama pants (boxers, if Cleo really wanted to know) and sets the knives down beside the bed. Five in total: two tiny darts, two thin throwing knives, and one long stiletto that had been on his belt.
He lays down on the bed, tail hanging down the side and his hands under his head.
"I'm pretty sure that I'm awake right now. Or do you know something I don't?" he asks, staring at the familiar ceiling.

[Recaiden]

"Yes, we wouldn't want any awkwardness."
She sits down against a wall and sets her bag down in front of her.

"I do know something you don't about it. But we're not here to wake up. You want to fall into a deeper sleep." She slides herself a long a bit and lies down on the floor.

[Deathkeeper]

"Yeah yeah, Wake Up and all that. The cat already gave me that routine."
He says, turning on to his side. He'll be asleep in exactly three minutes and forty seven seconds.

[Recaiden]

"No, this-nevermind."
Cleo could give a whole new routine that just happens to have some of the same words, but it would just confuse him.

Does it always take him precisely that long to fall asleep?
Yes or no, it will take Cleo rather longer to drift off, being in an unfamiliar place and expecting things to happen. Mist will have a while asleep before she catches up, though he might not have started dreaming anything yet.

There will just be, all of a sudden, Cleo's dragon-shape-self there. It's a dream, these things happen.

[Deathkeeper]

Cleo should find Mist there, a bright orange fox sitting curled up on the bed. Or maybe it's a tree. Dreams are so hard to tell.
"So how'd you end up a dragon anyway? Leah and Oliver still looked pretty human. You just decided one day you'd do better longer and with floating paws?" he asks, curious.

[Recaiden]

Cleo climbs a little ways up the tree.
"Basically."
It's longer story than that of course, but maybe-

"Come along. The person who taught me what I could be had a dragon shape, though pretty different from this one. And I've always liked them. So when I realized I didn't have to stick with the shape I was born with, which isn't so bad, you know, but it's hardly me, it was an obvious choice."

There's a yellow brick road out in front of them. Well, it's got a color, anyway.

[Deathkeeper]

"That makes sense. You talked about working out new bodies taking a really long time. Does modifying an existing one take less? I'd think that getting your paws to not be attached like that would be tough." says the fox, hopping down onto the road, though he'll let Cleo lead.
"So, we just follow the road and my stuff will be sitting there somewhere?" he asks.

[Recaiden]

Cleo takes a few steps, starting down the road at a leisurely pace.
"Usually, yes, modifying is easier than initially making them. The more drastic changes being more difficult, of course. And it did take me a really long time."
She moves a paw as if it were shrugging.

"It's your dream. I expect it won't be that simple, though. Then we find the gates to the dreamworld proper."

[Deathkeeper]

Trees surround the place. And sometimes walls. And sometimes snow. It's all blended together in a very jarringly seamless way.
"My dreams are usually pretty boring. I don't remember that many crazy things." he says.
The gates shouldn't be too far, should they? The forest seems pretty quiet for now...

[Recaiden]

"That's a shame. Dreams can be a venue for a lot of interesting things that would never happen in real life."
Again, a shrug.

There's something hanging down from the snow. A huge fishhook, with Mist's coat hanging there as bait.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist looks at the coat and then back to Cleo.
"That looks...hilariously suspicious. Aren't we not supposed to get the stuff until we get to the Lands?" he asks her with narrowed eyes.

[Recaiden]

Cleo nods.
"It probably does something unpleasant. I'd pass it by. After all, it's easy to look like a dream of a coat."

"Ah, here we go."
There's a door in one of the tree, just off the path. Cleo reaches out and pulls it right off the tree, revealing an opening behind it.
"If you just stay on the path of the dream, you won't end up anywhere but awake."