Dreaming Bigger
13th of August 2006 A.D.
Hiding the inward sigh you very much want to make aloud and very much hiding the urge to stare down Jared as the annoying impediment he is you plaster the most helpful look you can manage on your features and hold out the small bag of books. "I know she isn't feeling well, but I have some books she asked me for. I always like to curl up with a book when I'm feeling down." Back when you and Rosie romped around the backyard and Mrs Wilson was a lot more friendly she used to compliment your reading habits, though rather too much of it came in the shape of backhanded complaints at Rosie's expense for your liking.
"I... alright," she says, shaking her head as if you being here is an imposition on
her schedule.
"Maybe she
could use someone to talk to," Jared allows, though he seemingly cannot help himself from adding: "God knows she won't talk to her mother or me."
Maybe if you would ever listen to what she tells you she would be inclined to talk, you think behind the smiling facade.
With that you make your escape up the long exceedingly white stairway that is probably a nightmare to clean especially with... you dodge an overexcited twelve year old waving an ice cream cone around as he rushes into the kitchen to talk to his parents. The smile you offer him is a little more genuine than the one you had downstairs, but it's gone as soon as you reach the door of Rosie's bedroom.
Time to teach that which I don't know enough to practice yourself about magic that can get someone killed or soul-lost for eternity. No pressure.
Rosie herself looks wan as she opens the door and you do not like the look of those shadows under her eyes, but she sounds stronger than at the hospital. "Glad mom let you through OK, thought I'd have to argue with her about it but before I could get down there my new house guest decided she had other ideas."
"House guest?" Happy as you are to hear her joke about her pregnancy you know her too well to miss the fact that the shadows behind her eyes are even worse than the ones under them.
"I have no idea what to call her so that will have to do for now..." She sighs and looks away for a moment. "They they didn't even want me to go to Ken's funeral you know. Said it would just make the nightmares worse. Like they
care about my nightmares."
"Maybe they... maybe your mom does. Sometimes parents are bad about how they show it."
"Oh yeah like how?" You do not like seeing her like this, slumping down on the bed like it it not even worth the effort to stand or even sit. The bed itself looks like it has not been made in a couple of days at least, not to mention... Maybe it's unfair of you but you eye all the pill boxes on the nightstand with suspicion.
"When I first got these... powers mom wanted to figure out a way to exorcise them even though they were the same thing I had just used to escape from the fetches. I still don't think she's comfortable with them, maybe she never will be."
"What would your mom had done if you had gotten yourself pregnant?" Rosie asks bluntly.
The silence stretches taunt, as you try to avoid the answer both of you know to be true, mom would have been angry as hell if you had been that irresponsible, but in the end she would have been supportive and so of course would dad, like family is supposed to. The other side of it that you really don't like thinking of is that you would never have been irresponsible enough to get pregnant not with all the ways to have sex without
any risk of it.
"She would have done the best she could, same as most of us do. Sometimes our best isn't that good though, everyone makes mistakes..." At this point you are not sure if you are talking about Mrs Wilson or yourself.
Rosie does not sound very convinced, but she does nod. "So you said something about teaching me spooky stuff, is that what," she motions to the books, "those are about?"
"Yeah, I got some pointers from a friend..."
"Friend Harry?" She raises a suggestive eyebrow, but you do not rise to be bait.
"A friend of his actually, he's an old French scholar of the occult and I'm afraid to say that is what you need to learn before we can get to the lucid dreaming stuff, otherwise it would be like trying to learn architecture without knowing any algebra."
And with that you are off to the most important tutoring you have ever offered. Thankfully Rosie proves a quick and intuitive study, catching on to the metaphors you are using and not needing nearly as much doubling back as Bob told you you might need. You show up every day, sometimes with candy, sometimes with snacks, always with some news of the world, always with the books and the notepad that only grows more and more full of your own spidery script and also soon of her own much nicer writing.
***
19th of August 2006 A.D.
"Imagine you have a hamster in a maze, it can only go in two dimensions, but if you pick up the hamster and move it through a third dimension to set it down somewhere else to its hamster brain that is teleporting. That is the roughest definition of the spirit world, a plane perpendicular on a spirit-ward direction upon all axis of space and also the axis of time. That is why you get the stories about people falling into another world for three days and then coming out a hundred years later, but it is also why spirits can see the future because they are not bound to the contours of the maze which in Hindu tradition is called maya the veil of illusion. It is not that our world is not real in any sense, but rather that it is a much narrower subset of reality than we like to imagine. So those who transcend it appear more 'magical' than mortals, but ever forget the hamster has legs too and if it gets lucky or works hard enough it can jump the walls all on its own."
"So I'm a hamster now?" Rose jokes. "With the way my face is starting to look I can believe it." But you can see the fascination in her eyes, and even more importantly the need to understand, to get back some control of at least this part of her life.
"The wizards of the White Council," you continue. "Call spirits that as if they had a monopoly on that particular realm of existence, but really we are all a creatures of spirit as much as of flesh, like a diamond hidden behind a leaf. That is why everyone can do some magic, like make a Circle to bind others in or out. But it is when we dream that the wind blows and the leaf flutters letting the diamond shine through. We are all of us kings and queens of our ephemeral dreaming domains, that crumble when we wake. That is as far as it goes for most, they turn their eyes away from the borders of their dream, looking not into the wider spirit realm which those same magicians call the Nevernever. Can you guess why that is?"
"Because of Peter Pan?"
"Other way around, J. M. Barrie was a wizard with a weird sense of humor," you answer. Another random tidbit from Bob's seemingly endless stash. "It's because there is never a never there, all things are possible, though not all of them are just as likely, it is the realm of endless permutations of form and symbols. What you did was like making a window in a sand castle and looking out onto the vastness of the ocean, the place unstuck from time."
"So I have to figure out how to make a stronger castle...?" Rosie asks leaning in closer.
"No." You shake your head ruefully. "First you have to figure out how to close the window and pull the blinds."
This is the bit you are afraid of, the step you cannot chop up into pieces and serve one at a time, the leap into darkness which intellect alone cannot bridge and only upon wings of one's own will can you fly.
Turns out you needn't have worried, Rosie's a natural.
She wakes up with a smile gingerly taking off the goofy purple earmuffs you had gotten her to help block out the noise of the world around her. "That easy huh?"
You hug her. "Nah Rosie, you are just that great."
Results
- Rosie Gains Occult 1
- Rosie Gains 3/10 Progress towards Oneiromancy 1
- Rosie Gains 1 Permanent Willpower from the renewed self-confidence of extraordinary success -> Now at 3 Willpower
"Can I..." Even though she is practically whispering in your ear she stops, not daring to finish the question. "Can I come out with you some night me meet wizard-type people. I want to... I feel like I am
good at this."
You want nothing more than to say yet, but at the same time the obvious question presents itself. "What's your mom going to think about that."
"She is going to think that if I take one step out of the house unsupervised I'm going to get drugs, but she and Jared have this charity thing tonight I can sneak out easy.
Please. "
What do you reply?
[] Agree, it will be good for Rosie to meet new people, you can take her around to meet Harry and Mouse or even go looking for Rose of Autumn in real life
[] Refuse, you do not want to risk her getting into trouble with her mother because of something you did. Their relationship feels like it si fragile enough as it is
[] Write in
OOC: Well that worked about as well as it could have. 
