Home For a Rest

[Brian]

After leaving the terminal room, Bjorn sees a faintly glowing light switch.  That's easily ignored, now, though.  The mine itself is easy to sense, as is the ground -- both stone and dirt.  But some things aren't showing up to this new sense, like the wooden support beams, or electrical cabling.  After a cursory inspection, not even metal objects can be detected unless they're either large, or have been stationary for a long time.

But Bjorn can sense occasional pockets of ... gas?  No way to tell what's inside, really ... throughout the mine.

[Bjorn]

There'll be time to explore later.  For now, Bjorn simply tries to remember Lazarus' map, and makes his way down to New Delphi.

[Brian]

It doesn't take long for Bjorn to get out of the mine, and into view of the town itself.  The majority of the old buildings have been taken down, replaced with very similar looking buildings that everyone is probably using as makeshift barracks in the meantime.

The new buildings are all numbered, and number eight seems to look just like the others.  Very square, two stories high.  It's also got a light on the front, which is how the number on the door is visible.

[Bjorn]

The proper thing to do would be to get in touch with Lazarus and say hello, but at this point Bjorn can't really find it in himself to talk to another person.  

Instead, hoping against common sense, he checks to see if house number eight is unlocked.

[Brian]

The door is unlocked.  The front room is a hall, with a little shoe-rack on the floor next to the entry.  Stairs lead up, and it looks like there's a living room and kitchen to the right.

The walls look like some material that was probably only intended to be used temporarily -- the entire thing has a very hastily assembled feel, and unfinished look ... though it seems to do what it was built for, and no cold air is getting in through walls or windows.

There's pretty much nothing in the way of furnishings visible from the hall.

[Bjorn]

Kicking off his shoes and putting them neatly in the rack, Bjorn ascends to the second floor in silence.

[Brian]

The second floor seems to have a bathroom, and a multitude of unnocupied bedrooms.  The bedrooms each contain a single bed (blankets are in plastic bags at the foot), and a set of drawers in the closet.  There's outlets on the walls, but nothing is using them currently.

[Bjorn]

Picking one of the unoccupied bedrooms at random, Bjorn sprawls out on the bed (not bothering with the blanked), and... stares, wide-eyed, at the ceiling.

His body doesn't really need sleep -- after all, he's been asleep for the past six months.  But the events of the past twenty-four hours have been too much, and so he lies there, trying to find his center again.

[Bjorn]

In time, Bjorn actually manages to fall asleep.  As he has for the past few days, however, he manages to fall not into a normal dream, but instead finds himself within his Waking Dream.  Like the other times he's done this, he finds himself with a physical avatar within the mists, in contrast to somehow being linked to the mists.

He immediately sets about continuing his experiments on the properties of Dreaming.  Keeping the concentration both to maintain this particular lucid dream and to manipulate it helps him to calm himself.

[Brian]

Bjorn's meditations are disturbed some time later by the front door opening downstairs.

[Bjorn]

The transition from dream to awake is smooth, nowhere near as abrupt as simply waking up.  Quietly, Bjorn rolls to his feet.  Grabbing Shinmyouken (good to be back -- Breke's blades weren't my style), he moves quietly out of his bedroom and towards the noise.

As he does so, he tries to reach, in the Dream, to the oddly flickering statue of his dream-self.  As the mists wrap around it, he tries to connect to the awareness of surroundings that Breke taught him.

[Rezantis]

Nathan walks through said front door, dumps his sneakers into the shoe-rack, and goes looking to see if there's anything to eat in the kitchen.

[Dracos]

Dracos follows suit, but instead looks for an unclaimed room, taking in the place for the moment.

Dracos

[Ginrai]

Dropping off his shoes at the rack, Ginrai stretches his arm and yawns. "Night, guys." He looks for an empty room with a bed.

[Bjorn]

Bjorn only gets halfway down the stairs before running into Philip and Pathipan.  "You're back," he greets them.  "That was quick."