[X] Play your part and smile. Akin to your father's ability to blend seamlessly into any situation that involves a transaction, you may opt instead to act as part of a crowd, incorporating yourself into the barge's dream and playing along with the story as much as you can, even in the face of an unpredictable situation.
[X] Walk the Silent Path. Few would think your grandfather a master of stealth, but the winter cossack is a man who prefers to trick and fool. You will go through the dream sneaking past the creatures inside, avoiding obstacles and dangers that you do not need to fight as you proceed towards its center.
You agree to a plan with Ariela that will involve a great deal of sneaking and tense sequences of absolute silence, and the two of you make a pact of agreement that if one of you is captured, the other will remember them fondly (I think the agreement was recover them promptly, but aside from astral might I think we've established that selective hearing is one of your superpowers). Then you forget what you were doing and fall asleep, only to be nudged awake by Pariya who is quite unhappy with you for some reason and insists you have to go now. You agree with her, in principle, that you have to go into the dream straight away. In principle. Which is one of the most valuable types of agreement. You'd say it's far more valuable than in practice, because the practical person would agree to surrender their potatoes if it meant not dying, but the principled person would rather die than let their spud be taken away from.
You tell Pariya your logical proof of the importance of principle, and she tells you that you are stalling. Upon which you aim to tell her of just how wrong she is, in several dazzling soliloquys, but she then says again, you're stalling. Upon which you aim-
"GO," Pariya says, "just go."
You huff, and you puff, and you swear you'll boop her nose off, but in the end your empty threats are no match for the stern impassivity of the silent wind (pretty sure I saw an eye twitch when you said "boop" though), and so at last, you are off. You find that Ariela sitting in the below-deck hallway by the spirit quarters, amusing herself by reading a book on the floor while spinning in a circle and making "woo" noises. Upon your entrance she ceases it at once, flustered, and asks where you've been, as if you did not see her just spin and make "woo" noises.
"Napping," you tell her, giving her a wide smile, as if to say, I know all about the "woo" noises, young lady, before walking up to the door of the spirit fragment's quarters and feeling the spiritual energy.
"Ah yes, of course," you say, a mystical tone in your voice, "I can feel the pulsating energy through my senses. It is pungent and bitter, like the autumn dew. There is no doubt in my mind that a powerful spirit dwells within this wooden cave-"
"Starfall," Ariela says, as she leans up against a large door on the other side of the hallway that says SPIRIT QUARTERS, "that's the sailors' privy. It just smells."
"Smells..." you say, voice drifting off in confusion. "Smells. I see. Yes. I know this word, and all other words. Thank you. I was merely testing the privy for dangerous spirits. We did not want to catch ourselves unawares, now would we?" You run a finger across the length of your parasol. "Then it would fall on me to save you, my poor, benighted magician. You would be utterly defenseless."
"Right," Ariela says, loading her revolver and checking the fuses on three separate stringed carrots (dynamite explosives) she stuffs in her jacket (wait this is a stealth mission THOSE ARE BOMBS ARIELA YOU FOOL-)
---
You fall asleep against the spirit quarter's wall, the handle of your parasol gripped by you and Ariela as a gateway into the spirit's dream. You are already awake and glancing around the forest of green pine trees when Ariela wakes up, holding her head and groaning.
"Feels like I've got a fuse lit in my own head," she complains as she stands up, patting down her jacket, and sighs in relief as she retrieves both her revolver and her explosives. You gaze up at the canopy of pillar-like trees and the warm, twilight sun and feel a distant pull, a slight tugging of the wind in a particular direction.
"I know where we need to go," you declare, and start to trudge off with Ariela tagging behind, your boots crunching the pine needles of the forest floor softly, keeping a low profile among the bushes and behind tree trunks to avoid being seen. Now this is something that you can do. You remember the hide and seek games with Grandpa well. Hunting him across fields of snow and empty forests miles wide, watching him plow through mountains in search of you. Good times. Ariela is quiet, more interested in keeping watch behind you than making idle chatter.
You follow your gut as you walk through the forest, as it's usually quite reliable [except when you eat potatoes, you nerd]. As Parentheses would say. But she's not here right now...for some reason. You've never quite understood why Parentheses just doesn't talk to you when you're in a dream or when you're talking to Death. Really quite odd, but you're sure it doesn't have any plot significance or relevance whatsoever, and is just a funny quirk that will not be referenced later when the story has shed parts of its comedic ethos and replaced it with very serious drama inter-spliced with corny potato jokes, as if to beg the audience to understand its true artistic significance but also maintain a modicum of what got people reading it in the first place.
You stop your inner monologue behind a pine tree. Not too far away, a figure about twice as large as you, looking like a bulbous gourd with round head and body, stands unmoving. Ariela rushes behind you, peeking over your shoulder with narrowed eyes at the creature. "What is that...? Oh. Oh no."
"What?" You ask as you follow the creature's slow, bobbing movement as it walks towards a tree.
"Giant...giant n-nesting doll," Ariela says in a hushed whisper. "And it doesn't look like it has a master, which means...where did it go?" She asks, and you look back, and indeed, the creature has disappeared. You rub your eyes and look again, but it's still gone.
Then Ariela goes stiff, and you feel a presence behind you.
Looming over you and Ariela, a painted nesting doll of a mustachioed peasant man stands. The paint is slightly chipped in places, such as the eye, but the doll is otherwise entirely intact. The midsection has a line running through the waist indicating where the doll is opened to reveal a smaller doll underneath. Ariela takes a step away, then two. The doll's paint does not seem animated- the undamaged eye remains staring ahead, the mouth fixed in a toothy grin.
"Starfall, you s-should- probably run away." Ariela begins to say as she takes more steps backwards. You shake your head and turn back to her, knocking on the doll's exterior with your parasol in the meantime.
"I don't know why I'd do that, this thing seems perfectly-" You start to say before being interrupted as the whole doll shakes, and the enormous central hinge opens wide, revealing not a smaller nesting doll but a red-muscled mouth and tongue, rimmed by sharp white teeth.
"...fine." You finish as you stare at the matroyshka monster and its enormous drooling maw. "Well hello there, mister monster," you begin most diplomatically, parasol still pointing towards its mouth, "happy to meet your nightmarish acquaintance!"
"What are you doing?!" Ariela yells from behind a tree a few meters away. You don't know why she's so scared, honestly. The countess' daughter ought to give a better comportment of herself when facing nightmarish spirit monsters that want to consume you.
"Shhh," you say, "I'm negotiating. You see, you magicians might think that monstrous beings are just dangerous and stupid, but I elected when I prepared to become a familiar to have an open mind-"
Chomp.
There is a crunching sound as the nesting doll bites down on your parasol, locking everything below the handle with a vice grip. You develop the slightest of frowns as you tug on the handle to get it out, but the doll seems to be holding onto the parasol very tight. When you pull harder, digging your heels into the ground, the doll growls and nestles its body into the earth, entering you into a tug of war.
"STARFALL! Just open your parasol!" Ariela yells, a few meters away.
"This isn't- ngh- a situation that needs to be solved with- violence!" You shout back, ever the reasonable one, as the nesting doll tries to shift its jaws so it can swallow more of the parasol and even your arms without losing its grip.
"Every situation can be solved with violence if you have enough bullets!" Ariela counters, still behind the tree.
"Well, I don't see you rushing in to help save me!" you shout as you lower your body and lean back further, but you can feel your feet slipping against the ground. You're losing to the monster doll.
"This is a stealth mission," Ariela yells with a courageous sense of focus on her mission as she cowers behind a tree instead of fighting the giant evil monster doll, "I'm just being stealthy and keeping out of danger!"
"You told me you had an owl's eye! That you'd see every situation before it came-aieeeeeee!" You say and then yelp as the doll starts to spin back and forth in an attempt to make you let go of the parasol, turning you into a helpless ragdoll desperately holding onto your unfortunate umbrella friend.
"Well- you know, that's true, and maybe I did want to sound cooler, but first of all I don't want to give off our location by shooting it and second of all- how are you not terrified right now?!"
"Why would I be terrified?" You ask as you struggle against an apparition of teeth and hunger, its drooling maw chomping down on your parasol, reaching towards your arms, ready to consume your entire being and leave nothing, an impossible monster hidden in a quaint giant nesting doll, its true nature unveiled only at the moment of its prey's end. You honestly don't have much of an idea of why you'd be terrified by that. Now, snakes, they're terrifying. You don't understand why they don't have any arms. Where have they hidden them? As you open your parasol and grab the thing's jaw, opening it from end to end and snapping the doll into two gory pieces that rain down a shower of blood before the whole nesting doll disappears in a puff of dreamlike smoke, you involuntarily shudder at the idea that perhaps snakes are hiding their arms in a safety deposit box in a vile bank somewhere, gathering arm interest, until they have so many arms they can fit them on every part of their body.
Now that's horror.
Ariela is still cowering behind a tree with a sickly expression, clutching her stomach. You realize she's probably flustered about the fact that your gloves are still slick with blood. Absolutely unacceptable! It's ruining your outfit. What a fashion disaster! No wonder she's so sickened. You take them off and shake the blood off. Now, that's much better.
"Come along then," you say to your pale-faced magician, "if that's what stealth is like, I'd like to try some more stealth!"
Ariela swallows once gives you a grudging nod of resigned acceptance, the nausea in her face disappearing. Much better. A good magician should never let something as minor as a shower of blood distract them from the mission at hand.
---
You encounter a few more of these broken or "wrong" toys as you pass through the woods. Nutcrackers without jaws, headless porcelain dolls, stuffed animals with too many limbs or none at all. True to your first encounter, you stealth right through all of them, destroying them instantly as Ariela desperately tries to suggest to you that "that's not how stealth works". You ignore her lack of vision and in the end she surrenders. During the quieter moments in which you are not very stealthily exploding enemies, she even explains to you what these things you are stealthing to death actually are.
"They're spirit constructs- like Erasmo, but they came out wrong," she mutters as you use the cover of a bush to stealthily jump a toy soldier with a hole in its chest and punch it into the ground, "whether that was because they were bound poorly or built poorly. Sometimes they get destroyed then and there, but sometimes they escape and just wander. They have a taste for human flesh but otherwise they're just empty. Sometimes they get joined by the constructs of dead magicians, people who've gone crazy. Either way, usually, you just have to blow em' up."
"Even paintings?" You ask, suddenly concerned about the countess. You wouldn't want her to go crazy and start eating people, even if it would be terribly exciting. "What if a painting lost its master and just...sat there?"
"That depends on the painting," Ariela says quickly, "but not that one. It wouldn't. It was built with resolve and something to preoccupy itself. Usually constructs that are like this are just..." she watches a clockwork mouse toy with exposed gears drive in a circle in a forest clearing. "Just driven mad with boredom." You punch the mouse into the sky.
"...Am I mad?" You blurt out as you wipe blood off your hands. Ariela stops then, crossing her arms and leaning from side to side, looking you over. She opens her mouth, stops, puts a finger on her chin, and then makes a "hmm" sound, the signs of genuine contemplation clear on her face.
"Do you feel mad?" She asks as you keep walking, skipping over a fallen log.
"I have been known to be called mad on occasion," you admit. "Though usually Mum was just really angry." You remember the prank you and Grandpa pulled involving a makeshift extinguishing device and a barrel of whipped cream and smile.
Ariela rolls her eyes. "If Mums calling their kids crazy was how madness worked we'd all be put in asylums. No, you're not mad. Probably just a spirit. If...a casually violent one," she says, finishing off with a shiver at something or other. You do suppose you have cleaned blood off your hands on more than one occasion, but to be quite fair, it's usually dream blood. That's at least...a fourth as problematic as actual real blood, and you could probably swing a fifth as problematic if you had a particularly good defense counsel.
As you crest the forested hill you finally come upon a village. At first it seems as though the constructs have managed to build houses despite whatever deficiencies Ariela described, but as you kneel down and watch it from above, you see that the houses themselves are moving, dioramas with teeth that open across their length on a hinge, moving from place to place. There are other constructs, wooden horses, nutcrackers, nesting dolls, all circling it as well. They rotate around a single totem, a giant petrified half-humanoid that smiles down on them. Its arms are outstretched upwards, its beard ragged bark, antlers sprouting from its green head. Its lower body is fixed in place by the creeping spread of stone wood reaching up to its chest.
It turns its eyes ever so slightly, and Ariela freezes because she knows just as well as you do that it's gazing right through you. You realize in the moment that this is the source of the dream- and also the source of the barge. A spirit of the forest, a leshy, probably shattered and reduced to towing grain and barley. No wonder it's depressed.
It tells you its story through its acorn eyes. Grown old and weary, it settled in one place, dying slowly, petrifying until it can no longer move. In its last days, it fosters a community of the broken who flee civilization, coming to its radiant light, pulled as you were. And there they worship. Their purposeless spinning and turning is given new form by its presence, transformed to nothing less than ritual. It brings a grin to the leshy's face, a trickster spirit now pulling the greatest trick of all: to convince others that it is a god. Its contentment, however is cut short by-
You jolt yourself from the memory as a shadow disturbs the congregation, darkness falling over the entire forest clearing. The leshy stops grinning, then closes its eyes, knowing what is coming, accepting it without fear on its weared face. When the shadow lands, it is over witohut struggle. In every direction, the parishioners flee before the gale of terrible wind. You are forced to the ground, your mouth rubbing against the grass, as giant wings blow away the tiny ants that gather around its prey. At last, it lands, a great and terrible beast: A two-headed black eagle of gigantic size.
If you had to describe the two-headed eagle as a potato, it'd probably ask if it could be described as two potatoes. Other birds content themselves with one head, but that's not enough for the eagle, so it has two. Most birds have no crowns, but the two-headed eagle has three, two on each head and one floating above it like some kind of hovering angel, shining in the light, as if to say, I am not one king, or even two king, but three king. Many birds have black feathers, but such a color would be far too plain for the great two-headed eagle. Oh no. Instead, it has eclipse black, black so dark that they had to append an extra barely related word to it in order to describe it, just so you could understand how black it is. Most birds have talons, but aha, you see, the two-headed eagle has feet of many wicked swords, because its talons are so big, that if you were to ask them, it'd say, my talons are like swords, don't call them talons, what am I, a pigeon? When it lifts up these talons and brings down on the leshy, it is over in an instant. And you see now- that the fragment powering the barge is a piece of the leshy destroyed by this most imperial of eagles.
"Wow. Good thing that wasn't us, eh Ariela?" You ask, turning to Ariela, only to see she's practically spellbound by the eagle. "Ariela...?"
"...When was this leshy destroyed, Starfall?" She asks quickly.
"Um, I wouldn't be able to-"
"WHEN?!"
"About one-hundred fifty years ago, I think, it's hard to keep up a conversation with it when it's being eaten."
"One hundred fifty-" Ariela repeats it to herself and puts her hands up to her mouth. "One hundred fifty. But that's- Starfall. Starfall, I know how I can...I can fix everything."
"What do you mean?" You whisper as you watch the eagle guzzle down the leshy's body with a cringe, leaving behind only a single antler.
"That is the Imperial eagle," Ariela says with the airs of obviousness, as if you ought to have studied well ahead of time and known all about random birds. But unfortunately, you don't, so when she spots your blank stare she rolls her eyes and takes a minute to try and explain it to you, lesser creature who does not know anything about the giant two-headed eagle. "Most people thought it was a legend. The source of the old dynasty's power...it disappeared when Emperor Azriel overthrew them two hundred years ago and ended the Tsardom! How do you not know any of this?! Weren't you meant to be the empress' familiar?
"I'm sorry I didn't get the setting exposition beforehand," you retort with a certain level of frustration. No one tells you anything beforehand. You could almost swear that your parents didn't tell you any of this on purpose. But then why would they do-
"I want to talk to it," Ariela blurts out.
"What."
"If I can talk to it- maybe I can find out where it is. And I can bring it back. Don't you see, Starfall? If the empress receives the Imperial Eagle itself as a familiar, then she won't care about you!"
You frown, deeply offended. "I'm much better than some stupid feather-duster."
"T-that's not the point!" Ariela practically hisses, clearly a bit miffed you don't seem be getting whatever plan she's concocted. "I'm saying that if we can find out from this dream where the Imperial Eagle is, then we can convince it to come back to the empire. As far as we know it just got lost, or something. Who's to say it won't be happy to come back? And then we'll be hailed as heroes, and we won't have to be on the run, and-and-" she has to stop herself because she's hyperventilating. "You know."
"And how do you expect to do that? It's just a freaking dream apparition. This is a memory. Sure, maybe the leshy's memory of the eagle is complete enough to give us some clues, but we can't just walk up to the eagle and ask it where it's from-"
Ariela walks up to the eagle and asks it where it's from. Specifically, she gives you some side-eye as if to say that she's a strong magician who doesn't need her familiar telling her what she can or cannot be killed by, slides down the ridge, almost slips and ruins the confidence she's been working up to attempt this, then gets her footing, gives you a thumbs up, and then walks up to the eagle and asks it where it's from.
You try to call out to her but she doesn't appear to hear you and she's trying to get the eagle's attention within the dream and why is she being so impulsive, you would never impulsively do anything and oh no it's glaring at her, it's going to eat her if you don't do something quick, and sure she'll just get jolted out of the dream but you promised to do this together and-
You stop your train of thought at the station and surround it with soldiers, looking for the culprit with the good idea. The soldiers take him out of the train, put him in an interrogation room, and ask him a few questions. When he's done answering them, the soldiers are terrified, because they know that they have no choice. They tell their commanding officer and he leans up against the desk he's standing at, a look of shock on his face. He signs the order with a quaking hand, and a courier delivers it to the empress. The empress gives her royal seal, and with that, your decision is made. You have to save her.
---
Article:
Your stealthy path through the dream has yielded new skill in stalking silently through the woods, but now you face an unexpected enemy: The former Imperial Eagle of the humans or whatever. You don't really care about that, but if you don't do something fast it's going to eat Ariela, who's decided that when confronted with a leviathan avian predator she should engage it in friendly conversation. It is up to you to save your crazy magician from her insanity. Oh yeah, and there was something about a leshy that you needed to help save from its depression or something.
How should you approach dealing with the great two-headed imperial eagle?
[] Insult the Eagle. Throwing a well-aimed insult against the foul feathered fowl is a fine way to protect your pride and increase your confidence, allowing for the discovery of one dormant power hidden within you.
Unfortunately, after you insulted the eagle, it attempted to swallow you whole and chased you through the dream. The eagle's distraction, however, allowed Ariela to calm the leshy and discover that the fragment learned of the eagle from a rumor carried by a white raven spreading the news far and wide. With Ariela's tough love making clear some basic realities of what would happen to it if the fragment was determined no longer of use and how wonderful it would be if only the leshy would cheer up, the dream ends, saving you from the ornery eagle.
[] Make the Eagle Smile. Your Parasol has many wondrous abilities, and you really ought to try the new dream it taught you. You will gain an opportunity of insight into how your new dream works.
To your misfortune, as soon as the wave of happiness washed over it the eagle became nostalgic for the good old days and tried to eat Ariela. Although she was barely able to escape, the eagle thanked you for the opportunity, and when you, embarrassed by almost causing your magician to get eaten, asked it to at least grant a clue, the eagle tells you of an old witch in the woods that it went to after the end of its reign over the empire. The leshy is swayed by the display and maybe some residual dream beam, and the dream ends with it content once more with its place as a great spirit barge.
[] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
Your friendship becomes too close, however, as both of the heads of the eagle interpret your attempt at friendly conversation as flirting, but only with that specific head, and begins to fight itself as both argue about who you were flirting with. In the process of this traumatic experience, you discover that they were building a nest on a mountain in the north. The leshy, seeing the drama of romance and infighting, concludes that perhaps it is better off being a barge after all.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
the two of you make a pact of agreement that if one of you is captured, the other will remember them fondly (I think the agreement was recover them promptly, but aside from astral might I think we've established that selective hearing is one of your superpowers).
You follow your gut as you walk through the forest, as it's usually quite reliable [except when you eat potatoes, you nerd]. As Parentheses would say. But she's not here right now...for some reason. You've never quite understood why Parentheses just doesn't talk to you when you're in a dream or when you're talking to Death. Really quite odd, but you're sure it doesn't have any plot significance or relevance whatsoever, and is just a funny quirk that will not be referenced later when the story has shed parts of its comedic ethos and replaced it with very serious drama inter-spliced with corny potato jokes, as if to beg the audience to understand its true artistic significance but also maintain a modicum of what got people reading it in the first place.
As you open your parasol and grab the thing's jaw, opening it from end to end and snapping the doll into two gory pieces that rain down a shower of blood before the whole nesting doll disappears in a puff of dreamlike smoke,
Nutcrackers without jaws, headless porcelain dolls, stuffed animals with too many limbs or none at all. True to your first encounter, you stealth right through all of them
For some reason, the description of the Imperial Eagle really made me smile. Which in no way factored into this vote...
[x] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
To be honest, I just want to continue the trend of Starfall's messy relationships with those of the avian persuasion.
[x] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
Starfall tends to be more confident in dreams because she's had a lot of weird dreams and doesn't feel much fear in them. That being said, spirit constructs that are born with such defects tend to decay over time without sustenance, making them weaker.
[X] Make the Eagle Smile. Your Parasol has many wondrous abilities, and you really ought to try the new dream it taught you. You will gain an opportunity of insight into how your new dream works.
yeah come on doppeladler its time 4 joking hey did you hear this one there was this peasant once [hi im parantheses and im so clever starfall you dont know what a peasant even is i say attempting to be oh so clever and not at all jealous of your superior knowledge, skill and power oh so beautiful princess starfall] who had a potato, not just one but actually...
ten!
no, twenty!
thirty!
he had a lot of potatoes ok and then one day he met another peasant who had a lot of potatoes too and then the other peasant asked him if he would share and the first peasant said that he wouldnt because he had way more potatoes but actually the other one had most
[genius] parantheses would have said [its a perfect joke, im laughing at it]
Really quite odd, but you're sure it doesn't have any plot significance or relevance whatsoever, and is just a funny quirk that will not be referenced later when the story has shed parts of its comedic ethos and replaced it with very serious drama inter-spliced with corny potato jokes, as if to beg the audience to understand its true artistic significance but also maintain a modicum of what got people reading it in the first place.
[x] Make the Eagle Smile. Your Parasol has many wondrous abilities, and you really ought to try the new dream it taught you. You will gain an opportunity of insight into how your new dream works.
It had me at the 'old witch in the woods'. Your sacrifice for the cause will be remembered fondly, Ariela.
[X] Insult the Eagle. Throwing a well-aimed insult against the foul feathered fowl is a fine way to protect your pride and increase your confidence, allowing for the discovery of one dormant power hidden within you.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[x] Make the Eagle Smile. Your Parasol has many wondrous abilities, and you really ought to try the new dream it taught you. You will gain an opportunity of insight into how your new dream works.
Yes. I'll put the magician friend in temporary danger and become embarrassed. I really want to get the clue and give the spirit some peace instead of like threatening it into working or make it go "well F this"
[X] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela.
[x] Befriend the Eagle. It is possible that you could alter dreams even when you are within them. Manipulate the dreamtime to give yourself wings and try and convince the eagle, bird to bird, that it shouldn't eat Ariela
