Seaside Moors i want y'all to just get down.

first of all, false, secondly i am the worst lol sorry for the wait and also i'm not doin that mona lisa frank bs again it took my last braincell and makes me cringe sry. fyi marshtail is my made up equivalent of lemongrass since the latter is tropical <3

she'd upskilled herself in dreamcraft enough to moor her unconscious to lucidity and, had found, through frustrating cut and try, grounding techniques that worked and those that didn't. dreamer ministries did not seem to want or like their ātman to be aware of themselves on this sacrosanct rung, but phaedra was nothing if not persistent and strong-willed. to too great a degree, for even the dream realm yielded to her invocations now. but he,

he him him him him h i m 

was it, for true? this one,

was not so practiced, she gleaned. but the ability to master himself was there. it was naturally instilled in him. she was an even younger attā than valravn, though knew nothing of that, and her past lives did not visit her— perhaps her second sights preferred their earthly canvasses to her quondam breaths.

because of this gift, she has caintigern. do not beggar the largesse of past insight too. it would be a great risk to lose one for the other. it was known. she would not beg. she wouldn't even think to ask.

the willowisp blinked black and green and white, then lilted and flit around her head, insisting something of her. before phaedra was even on the cusp of emoting confusion, the nightfire blazed down the path of clover and petal and illumed the boy and his predicament.

phaedra seemed to understand, then, what was required of her.

presently she found his gaze anchored to hers and started back with surprise at that. she hadn't seem him but in shiftings of shadow before now. she wasn't sure what she scried in those pools of his, but the inumbrating clover troubled her. 

she bit her toes into it again deeper deeper deeper, straining to breathe light back into the tainted trefoil, and to the detriment of her waning extrasensories as well. she had to stop. her lungs never hurt, she felt no pain, but natheless a gasp splintered from her throat as her eyes opened and she realized just how far she'd pushed herself without intending to in trying to reach him. 

the wisp had returned to her by now, an undisplaced glow at her cheek, as if watching her or studying her or ... she couldn't grasp its want of her, not here, not intuitively like in her own dreamverse.

before she could ask what now?, the thing revisited val, this time bouncing light off the pythonic vines that coiled around him and pushing against a darkness borne at his end that curled up his legs like wreathes of black smoke. 

she was suddenly needful of muse and thought back to the mouth of her own darkness, in the next moment blurting out: "you— you're only dreaming!" i'm absurd, i'm the dreaming one "you're not stuck! it's only ... marshtail!"

she didn't stir, though desperately she wanted to. before, she thought she knew what to do, but that was only her ego presuming, and now she feared he would only entangle himself even more so, and diminish herself to waking. 

he needed to do it himself. 

"it's marshtail and marshtail is weak. just keep looking at me and remind yourself: it's only marshtail! then pull, you have to snap it. remember: marshtail is weak, and that's all it is." she imparted, nodding in an affirmative and gentling manner.

why am i rescuing my dream people? and why does it feel so important that i do?

why does he feel important too?