[html] Hoping for an at least somewhat laid back thread. :]
!@#$%Optime. In some ways, a gift generously bestowed upon them all by chance alone... in others, a nuisance more than anything. Born with the werewolf's tainted blood running through his veins, Anselm learned to transform and manipulate his bipedal form early on in life. Regularly he practised the metamorphosis he could not comprehend, seeking to make it as effortless and second-nature as possible. With this practise came speed and endurance--with experience, he had discovered it was most convenient to remain half-way shifted. Regardless of what situation arose, he would be in the best form suited to deal with it in moments.
!@#$%Having a variety of forms at his disposal meant he had to train in all of them. He had quickly noticed that his bipedal form used muscles differently than his more natural quadruped state. He could not afford to be weak in any areas. Presently, he was engaged in just one part of his daily regimen specifically designed for fine-tuning his shifted body: swimming. Doggy paddling had nothing on the strokes and dives he could perform whilst shifted. From atop the cliffs of drifter bay, he would leap over the edge and plummet into the dark, deep waters waiting below. He practised moving underwater and holding his breath. He would surface and do breast strokes across the choppy waters. Occasionally, when he was certain nobody was looking, he would float along on his back to temporarily replenish some of his lost energy. As he did so, he gazed upon the stars and full moon above. Things were relatively calm. This training was generally reserved for the cover of night alone.
!@#$%The hybrid's training for the night was complete, and he made his way directly to the shore. Once he reached the shallows, he stood. The water rolled off his golden coat back into the sea, and he shook his head slightly to dislodge the droplets that were on his face. The sand was uncomfortable for him, so he kept walking. Before long, sleepy wild flowers were peering at him curiously as he took a seat in their midst, then fell back to the earth and rested his head on his arms. Again, his gaze was turned towards the sky.
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hayyyy.
Like a body floating up from the depths of the sea, Bleach slowly drifted towards consciousness. Grumbling, she rolled over onto her side in hopes of sinking back into her dream.
It started out as a pleasant one, very reminiscent of her childhood in Magadan, with snow and ice everywhere. The sky was impossibly clear and blue, but the air was crisp. She was running along the frozen shore, on four legs, with two dark wolves whose faces she couldn't make out, though she knew them to be her father and brother. She was confused about the latter, even though she knew she was dreaming; her brother had left just before he completed his first year of life, but this wolf in her dream was an adult. In her dream, Bleach tried to approach and speak with him, but he ran away from her and closer to her father every time. As she began to grow frustrated, the dream changed.
She was no longer running with her dark relatives, but a pair of pallid women she could only take to be her mother and the witch. This startled her, for she hadn't seen her mother since she was a child and could barely recall her face when she was conscious, yet every detail of it was clear to her. Shocking blue eyes gazed out of a narrow face which closely resembled Bleach's own. The pair, instead of running ahead, fell back and ran on either side of her. As her mother opened her mouth to speak, the dream faded into darkness.
Now, as the sunflowers loomed over her in the still night, it was clear that sleep would not return to her and the dream would fade until it was eventually forgotten. Sighing, the pale woman stood and shook herself off. With the darkness, the multitude of birdsong had given way to the faint roar of waves upon the shore of Drifter Bay. Bleach wandered toward the familiar sound, hands brushing against the tall flowers surrounding her. With her mind still half asleep and straining to remember her strange dream, the new Shadowed Sun member barely realized the golden figure lying in the flowers before her. When her bright eyes fell upon his form she halted abruptly and swayed dangerously over him, then regained herself and drifted to his side. She observed him haughtily for a moment before speaking. "A person could trip over you, you know," she mumbled, not unkindly.
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!@#$%His dreams were often convoluted and nonsensical. Anselm seemed to dream often and vividly, and he could usually recall the details at least shortly after waking up. For the longest time he was haunted by nightmarish visions he learned to ignore--over time, this pattern gave way to a new one. Eventually, he had learned to control the dreams himself. One might think, then, that they had become more normal since--but in reality, the opposite was true. Dreams (and drugs) were a way to escape the nonsense of every day life. Why would he want them to be "normal" experiences?
!@#$%His eyes may have gotten heavy while he lay there, but now one shot open as he heard footsteps approaching. By the sound of it, the other was shifted.. by scent, it was a female wolf from Shadowed Sun. Memories of his brief meeting with Lubomir jumped to the forefront of his mind, and he recalled that they were the pack of learners. Something so innocent, yet profound struck a chord within him--he still wondered how things might be if the past had been slightly different.
!@#$%There was little time to worry about it. Ever so subtly he adjusted his position as the (apparently clumsy) female teetered above him--if she started to fall or come after him, he would scoot to the side and spring to his feet in an instant. He had always had some of the fastest reflexes, and he was usually very aware of his surroundings. Her remark aroused little interest within him--it wasn't his fault that she wasn't paying attention.
!@#$%"Distracted by something else?" he asked instead. Perhaps he would have usually had some sort of snippy retort (and if she was from Dahlia de Mai, a bite to go with it), but he felt strangely relaxed after all of the exercise. It helped to drain off some of the excess energy he had, and for all he knew, with her packs' philosophy, she might come up with something very interesting indeed. Go on; impress me.
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forgive the utter sloppiness of this post.
Her dreams were few and far between, and often quite important, which was why she was so affected by her most recent one. Her head swam with the fading details, and suddenly she longed for the person she least wished to see. The Old Witch had been an expert in dream interpretation, and often calmed disturbed sailors late in the night when they leapt from their cots like children from their nightmares. Bleach had laughed and teased them in the mornings until it was her turn to run to the witch's cabin, pounding on the door with a fervor that nearly woke the entire ship. It was then that the witch had made the fateful prediction, and shortly after, Bleach found herself wandering the scorched fields of the place she was supposedly destined to be. A nervous chill ran down her spine, and she suppressed a shudder.
Involuntarily yawning wide, Bleach's bright eyes caught sight of the coyote's garnet pair. With surprise, she snapped her jaws shut, making an audible clicking sound. The gypsy-wolf had only seen one other red pair of eyes in her lifetime, and from another coyote who had lived among these people when he was quite young. She wondered briefly at the coincidence of the matter, then determined it was due to some genetic malfunction lingering in the bloodlines of the wretches living there, and shrugged the thought off for the time being.
Full consciousness and dexterity was slowly coming back to her, yet it still took a moment to process the stranger's question. When she finally did, Bleach stared at him for a few moments more before drifting a few paces away and folding herself into the grass and flowers. Should she tell him what was actually going through her mind, or make up something silly as she usually did? The wolf was in an uncharacteristically mellow mood. Perhaps opening up to a complete, potentially dangerous stranger wouldn't harm anything.
"Ya," she eventually replied, turning her wide, bright eyes to the reclined male. "Dreams are strange things, are they not? They're quite entertaining, certainly. But do they mean anything? As in, do they show us our hidden desires, as some believe? Or, do they predict what is to come in abstract ways, as others believe?" The wolf paused, speaking more to herself than to the golden creature before her. After a few moments of silent musing, she remembered him. "What do you believe?" She was unaware of his silent challenge. Otherwise she would have tried to say something more impressive.
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!@#$%Why didn't everybody talk about something good? Not occasionally he would spend the hours musing to himself about this or that, his mind ever racing as he thought about and tried to understand the way life worked. Once you had that down, you could predict what was coming next, or at least not be surprised by it (an obvious advantage). It struck him as odd that nobody else seemed to have thoughts so deep, for all too often conversations involved trivial talk of the weather or the status quo. It was easy to state who you knew and where they were and what had happened recently--it was something else to delve into the secrets of how nature worked, how their brains ticked, or maybe the idea of having a purpose. He embraced her words and considered them carefully, all while strangely experiencing some weird emotion. The dissolution of alienation, perhaps?
!@#$%Regardless, it was an interesting topic to consider. He thought about it for a long while, starting with her ideas and forming a few of his own. "I think dreams are insight into our subconscious past and present, and little else. I think that any dream can be convoluted to reflect elements of reality. People will see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. How many dreams never come even remotely true? Probably most, yet some are so ready to cling to those few that they hazily recall, supposing that they saw the future when in reality they took the idea and ran with it, making it self-fulfilling, or at least imagined enough parallels to think them significant." He trailed off here, frowning. This reflected his cynicism perfectly, but whether she realised it or not, it also reflected a thoughtful side of Anselm that few ever witnessed.
!@#$%"The point is, if you dream enough and remember them enough, sooner or later you're going to have a dream that you can connect to events in the future." And that was what he honestly believed. Much like everything else, things were painstakingly logical and wanting them to be anything fantastic or great was simply that--a mere fantasy. "That doesn't mean we oughtn't pay attention to them, though," he added. "Sometimes a dream will give me a kick in the right direction, as far as consciously discovering my own wants." He thought that a lot of them had things that they secretly wanted but scarce admitted, even to themselves. How many subordinates were fully content with their position and didn't desire more power? Their biological need to procreate was enough to give them this want, for their offspring's chance of survival inevitably went up the higher they were in the hierarchy, with more allies and resources behind them.
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Bleach nodded, her eyes drifting from his face to the ground. She had believed all that at one point, scoffing at anyone who supposed to the contrary. But, then again... what had made her stop? A nightmare and a superstitious old hag! A wave of anger and shame washed over her; she had run away, and she felt like a coward. Why had she let that hag chase her away from the sea? Her mind spun angrily, cursing the witch and all she would ever do, snarls threatening to escape her throat.
And then a face appeared in her thoughts. It was the same one which appeared in her nightmare, and the same one in her dream just a few minutes ago. The anger vanished, but shame still gripped her. That was her reason for running. She sacrificed everything so that—if the dream was really a premonition, if the witch was right—she would never have to see the expression on her mother's face as it was in her nightmare. Bleach suppressed the image, shuddering visibly and grabbing a fistful of weeds and wildflowers. The wolf inspected the bouquet for a few moments, then separated three little flowers, pink, light purple, and yellow, from the rest. She needed to keep her hands busy.
Turning back to the red-eyed stranger, she smiled. "It's best not to dwell on such things. We can't change when or what we dream, so why try?" Nevermind that what she said was contradictory. She needed to get off the subject of dreams. She regretted ever bringing them up. Extracting a free strand from her haphazardly adorned hair, the silver wolf began braiding the little flowers into it. Keeping her eyes on the male, she observed him for a few moments in silence, then decided to fire up conversation once again. "What about you? Are you usually this pensive?"
[html] Mwaha. -Knows controlling dreams is possible because she does it all the time.- >>'
!@#$%"You can't change your dreams?" he murmured innocently, and mostly to himself. He offered a soft "hmn" sound and then shrugged. He had learned to control his dreams some time ago already--it started with learning how to tell if he was sleeping or not. From there, he'd slowly begun to bend them, to transform them. If he willed it, he could make something random appear. Also, he'd learned to overcome the "pull" he felt in dreams, so even if the dream willed him to go to the left, he could choose to go to the right instead. Unfortunately, he occasionally woke himself up practising these shenanigans. It was like a sudden jolt to his subconscious, especially if he tried to change something that was more than subtle. Still, coupled with the lucidity of his dreams, it was more or less free entertainment. It hadn't ever occurred to him that not everyone could do this, but he supposed it didn't matter. It wasn't much more than a personal parlour trick, and he couldn't even prove it if he had to. Then again, he could always tell himself it was because of his own heightened consciousness and self-awareness. Sure, that sounds good.
!@#$%Something about the topic was making her uncomfortable, for she then switched subjects. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed her fiddling with things--restless hands and feet normally signalled some amount of unrest. He had to admit he'd been hoping for more feedback than that, but there was no way he was about to pry into the emotions of a stranger. She'd brought it up, and she could take it away. He only was persistent and stubborn when he was trying to glean information from somebody, and this didn't count. As for her question, he again found himself wondering You aren't? Instead, he simply offered a neutral nod of his head, then elaborated: "By understanding things we learn to control them. You can't understand something if you don't take the time to think about it." And Anselm always wished to be in control of himself and the situations he was in.
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lucid dreaming is just awesome. poor, ignorant bleach. :p and, sorry for the wait!
She found herself nonplussed by the question he more or less asked himself. Bleach had heard of people controlling their dreams, but they were always the kind of people she couldn't take seriously—daft people. Yet, this seemingly reasonable fellow implied that he could. Was he that reasonable, then? Maintaining a neutral expression, she studied him suspiciously, finishing the last of her braids. She let her hands fall, and her eyes followed suit.
The wolf had never had the opportunity or initiative to control her adventitious dreams, so she had never put the theory to the test. Now she was curious, but felt ridiculous being so. She had been so steadfast in her skepticism until this individual made her doubt herself in the course of a few minutes. How annoying. Her yellow eyes returned to his face, trying to figure him out. He certainly didn't seem off his rocker. But then again, things weren't always as they appeared. Insanity was often hidden well by the insane. Or maybe she was just biased and paranoid.
Bleach nodded, seeing sense in and even relating to his reply. She chose to be silent for a few moments, mulling over what to say next. Absently she traced the crescent-moon scar on her knee. "So, you don't believe in fate?" she asked eventually, for clarification. He didn't seem like the kind of creature who did, but Bleach's assumptions had been wrong before.
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!@#$%Anselm was one of those particularly dangerous fellows (that seemed mighty common in Inferni), for he possessed the crazed paranoia of a madman but he was still very clever and in control. Fortunately or unfortunately, his paranoia had saved him on a number of occasions--a reward, obviously, that encouraged the behaviour all the more. Perhaps stranger and more obvious forms of insanity existed--he wasn't delirious, he wasn't dissociated from reality, and his thoughts were not disorganised--and it wouldn't be fair to say he had an outright mental disease. Perhaps a sampling of personality disorders was more accurate, but he was smart enough to work with them (and hide them, if need be).
!@#$%In some ways, he considered himself more grounded than the others that were allegedly "normal." The fate issue she brought up was but one--to him, it was silly that anybody could think that they didn't have choices. "Pah, what of it? It's just an excuse for others to choose to be miserable, and a way of denying self responsibility." Oh, it was fate that my children died, not my fault that I wasn't watching them carefully enough. This also held true for the good things... he refused to believe that whatever nice happened to him was because of somebody/thing else and not his own hard work. If others wanted to be satiated with that lie, more power to them (not really), but he preferred his own way of doing things.
!@#$%"Certainly some things are beyond our control," he decided to elaborate. "But that doesn't make them the working of some supernatural power or thing like fate. There's no proof for that. Everything in nature seems to follow a certain pattern. Those patterns tend to be logical enough if you know how to look at them right." The sun rising every day was not an act of god, for instance--it was merely a convenient result of rotational and gravitational physics. And he found a strange amount of comfort in this, just as others might in their religion or other hocus pocus beliefs (which was one thing he failed to understand).
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blahh sorry for the wait.
He was a very in-control fellow, she realized. Or at least he wished he was. Either way, he made sense, though Bleach still wasn't sure if she agreed with any of it. Her world was upside-down and she didn't like it one bit. Another yawn disrupted her composed features, though she didn't feel like sleeping anymore. She would probably remain awake for the rest of the night, thinking. Wonderful.
The silver woman stood, arching her back and reaching toward the sky, stretching. The stars winked at her from their high seats, taunting her, showing off their beauty. They didn't know she could see them better from the sea, when the nights were as calm as this one and the water was as smooth as glass. She smirked at them. Some people place their lives in the hands of the stars, seeing their fate aligned in them. The ancient Greeks did such things, and made offerings to dozens of fickle gods who, in turn, toyed with them for their amusement. But they were humans, after all. They didn't know anything anyway.
Bleach looked back at the stranger. "Some people fancy themselves a part of something more than... whatever we have here on Earth. They like the idea that they have their lives planned out for them, and everything is the way it's supposed to be. They think they're predestined to have an eternity of peace, purity and prosperity!" As she spoke, the volume of her voice increased until she was practically shouting, like the Evangelists she had come across on her travels. At the end of her small rant, however, her grin grew derisive and she snickered. "I'd rather make my own destiny," she said, though she felt like a hypocrite.
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!@#$%Although he remained reclined on his back, his eyes followed her as she stood and stretched. Already lithe and feminine, she appeared even taller as she did this. While she seemed distracted, he allowed himself to gaze freely at the curves of her body, the way that her fur glistened in the moonlight, and how her muscles moved beneath her coat. Once he was satisfied, his red eyes turned ever so subtly back to the stars above. Admittedly, he did enjoy looking at the ladies (especially pretty ones), but he rarely made this obvious. He didn't want them to think they had any control over him, because they didn't. Sex was just something nice that he wouldn't ever refuse if it was tossed his way.
!@#$%His ears flicked softly as she began speaking again. He found himself nodding in agreement frequently (which was somewhat surprising), as her words closely echoed thoughts he had had in the past. He understood that others looked for that something extra to make everything significant and meaningful, but he'd have none of it. As her voice rose towards the end of it he became somewhat alarmed, although other than slightly widening his eyes he did nothing. In fact, he remained perfectly still. It was unusual for someone to do that in conversation, and he wasn't sure exactly what it meant. Her facial expression and snicker gave it away, though, and her voice returned to normal. As it did, his tail began to idly flick once more and he quirked a brow.
!@#$%"I suppose in my case, I'd just rather see things as they are, even if they're not so pleasant." In short, he didn't want to live with his head up his own ass. Maybe falling into the comfort of a beautiful delusion would make him happier overall, but he couldn't deny his own logic. It was impossible to ignore. If anything, he had his drugs to help him escape reality once in awhile--that would need to be enough. That and a few other simple, cheap pleasures. In some ways, this conversation was shaping up to be rather delightful--and he wasn't afraid to run with it. It was somewhat remarkable to hear anybody else iterate his own beliefs and theories. "I'm Anselm," he said, as in one fluid motion he stood up so that they could be on the same level for introductions. Perhaps she wanted to go for a walk?
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