>>5571008>>5571012The realm of fortunes and fables which is the ‘dreamscape’ solidifies into something recognizable to your mind’s unsleeping eye. Specifically, you recognize a face—human at a glance, but with subtle tells which indicate that it is something other. There are details of the jaw structure, the cheekbones, and especially the eyes which give her away as something other despite her smooth, brownish skin—kept smooth by careful and meticulous oiling, one assumes, as with other Degenerates like Oluwadamilare, or the late Paeris.
Your mother. She is facing you, but her expression is blank and unrecognizing, or perhaps just occupied. She is leaned over a desk, long hair thrown back over her shoulder, and is applying some sort of blackish material to her eye-lashes. The activity seems to absorb her completely.
You have only seen this female hybrid once before, but it was a vivid memory. She was the first one to ever say those words which have become curiously and yet undeniably central to your existence, to your very purpose: ‘I love you.’ You heard them in a vision, not unlike this one, and so without thinking you reach out to her again…
But your hand passes right through her.
You look down at your hand—still human, foreign and strange, with nubs of trimmed nails in lieu of the vicious and powerful claws which are natural to you. You feel unarmed like this, especially when you gripe around your waist and find no sword nor sheath there. In fact, you seem to be in your dancing attire, from Wevenore: a black-and-gold jacket, long like a cloak, with pinkish pants made from coveted surface-fabrics. But then… What do you have to fear here? You are aware, even as you feel the anxiety rise, that you are not in the waking world.
The anxiety passes.
“…Infiltrator?” you speak. “Mother?”
Your mother does not respond to you, but another, unfamiliar voice does—or seems to, at first.
“Babe? Uhh, whatcha’ doing?”
You blink in confusion. The voice is female, and speaks the true Speech fluently, but with a strange inflection and accent you are unfamiliar with. You are about to call out to it, to state your purpose here, but the female you recognize to be your mother beats you to it. She sighs, rolls her eyes, and sets down the feather-like implement with which she was applying her cosmetics.
“I should think it obvious,” she replies to the disembodied voice. “I am getting ready for my luncheon with Edwin of Engel, and… Paula.”
Who? You don’t recognize these names at all.
“Uh, duh. I MEAN why are you doing it all… DUMB, and slow, and without just having ME do it for ya’?”
