[PRP] Technicolor (Jamie & Shiloh) [FIN]

[saedusk]

How long was I asleep?

Jamie's mind seemed to ask itself that question, over and over in a loop, but he didn't open his eyes. The world was hazy for what felt like it could've been forever or a span of only seconds, but the answer never truly came to light. It wasn't something that mattered, at least.

"Shiloh...?" The voice was far away, but it was definitely his own. Finally his eyes opened and he saw white, a world full of nothing but himself and the warm, sleeping (???) form of Shiloh on top of him. At the corners of his eyes was color, vibrant and indescribable, just like the garden, but whenever he turned his head, it escaped him. Like chasing fuzzy floaters in your vision, he was never quite able to catch it.

Where are we?

"Hey," he said again without feeling his mouth move even though it did. "Shiloh, wa-" Wake up? He stopped, wondering why the words tasted strange on his tongue. Instead, Jamie tried a gentle shake of his shoulder.

Melancholiessss

 

[Melancholies]

It was strange because Shiloh did experiences dreams on occasion. Most he didn't remember; those he did were typically bad ones, because they stuck out a lot more to him in the end, but even those came to fade with time. It wasn't unnatural for him to sleep and experience waves and waves of darkness and then— eight in the morning and Jamie's waking him up (or at least giving his best effort to).

For a moment it felt like he was hearing the voice in his head (and maybe he was, he wouldn't bat an eye) but as he came more and more into focus he realized the sound was coming beneath him. His eyes opened wearily but his tongue felt like cement and he couldn't say anything in return.

He was silent.

And then he pushed himself up very slowly, marveling at how his body felt completely weightless—though he didn't think on it too much, merely accepted it as fact; ah yes, I do in fact weight as much as a pillow. Eventually the vastness of the colorful void came into perception.

"...are we dead?" His voice didn't sound like his own despite being such.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

Oh, Shiloh was... here. Awake still didn't sound right and Jamie couldn't figure out why, but it felt better to have his attention. "I don't think so," he answered, "It feels like we're still in the garden."

The ground beneath him held no color nor any indication of a particular surface, not even Jamie's shadow was visible where it should've been, but there was a touch of what felt like grass tickling the back of his neck. As if to placate himself, to reassure himself he wasn't imagining things, he reached down to thread his fingers with the earth. What he felt instead was something firm, smooth, and definitely not grass. There remained no color to speak of and the tickle at the back of his neck was now entirely gone.

"I, um... well, maybe we're not." He looked genuinely confused.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Maybe... we're not..." He squinted, looking around the vastness of space. With a push he... went completely up to his feet? No wobbling, no anything, just a slow fluid motion until he was upright. He tilted his head when he realized he was standing on nothing.

"Shouldn't there be grass...?" There should have been, but it never registered as weird in the way that it should have. Except as soon as the words left his mouth, a small patch manifested underneath them.

He blinked.

It wasn't the same as with his powers. It felt like ground—real ground, dirt, rocks, matter—substance. "Oh. Never mind." His head felt so foggy, but he offered a hand down to Jamie anyway.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

Pushing himself to a sit, held in place by his palms against the ground, Jamie nodded his agreement with Shiloh. "There should be grass," he said, but just like that there was. He could feel it poking between his fingers.

"Huh?" With a gentle tug, he pulled up a small handful of very real, very there grass. It was just like grass should be. At least he had the wherewithal to dump the blades back on the ground before taking the hand he was offered.

"This place is stranger than the garden... Everything's gone." One hand still held Shiloh's while the other motioned, "Even the tree. It was huge, there should be something left." In that instant, just like the grass, a plant did manifest. It wasn't the wild, elder tree they'd been under before. Instead it was a sapling where the tree should've been. It was something.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"When did that get there...?" He squinted down at the sapling. Nothing made sense. "I mean, I feel like we're still in the garden, but... but it's not the garden. I don't know what this is. Where are we?" His head felt so foggy. All he could do was repeat the same s**t aloud over and over the second it came to the front of his thoughts.

"I mean, we were just there. Like..." He looked at Jamie's hand. It felt real. "...like I remember we were talking, and you kissed me, and then we were on the floor, and then I fell asleep..."

He was silent. After a beat he started to grope at his own face with his free hand, realization dawning on him.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

"You fell asleep and I fell asleep, too." All it took was Shiloh's pause for Jamie to come to the same realization. That's why his thoughts had been so weird before, why they'd felt wrong to think. Even if they hadn't been dreaming when they arrived in Other Ashdown, it still began to feel like a dream within a dream.

"We aren't really awake now, are we?" he asked, but it was more of a statement. "We fell asleep under the tree and we're still sleeping."

He scratched at the fine hairs just in front of his ear. "So, is this supposed to be some sort of Other-Otherworld?"

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"I... I have no idea?" He looked around. "We're still asleep. We have to be asleep still. We—" He pinched himself and felt no pain.

"Holy ********!" He was absolutely amazed by this sudden start realization. "So like, can this be whatever we want it to be? Is it like magic? Do we just gotta believe?"

He closed his eyes, opened them again. "Jamie. Jamie. We should make the ocean."

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

They spoke the grass and the sapling into existence, so why couldn't it be something else? Why couldn't it be anything? Jamie was vaguely jealous, somewhere in the very, very back of his mind, that he hadn't been the one to think of the ocean idea. The bay was one of his favorite places, after all. Occasionally he closed his eyes as he stood with his toes in the sand and imagined the bluest waters so clear and crystalline that you could see the fish as they swam right up around your ankles.

"Let's do it!" he said as he was the one to squee his eyes shut this time. Was this how it worked? In his mind was a vast beach of sand, pale and sparkling in the sun. It was smooth, fine, wonderfully warm. "I wanna dig my toes into the sand..." And when he opened his eyes, a wave of particles spread from his feet out in front of them. It blanketed the void into the distance, only sand and nothing else, but impressive nonetheless.

"I-It... it works!"

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"I only brought it up 'cause of you." His eyes were wide and wondrous as the sand materialized underneath them. "You gotta do most of the hard work though, I've never seen the beach."

Well, he'd seen the stony rock shores of Massachusetts, just not the picturesque backdrops of the Bahama's or whatever. He did think up a palm tree. And then another one. And then three more. Work well done.

"Though, if this is a dream..." He started walking, his shoes magically disintegrating into his bare feet, "How are we both dreaming it? Like, in the same dream? Unless you're a dream to me... or am I a dream to you? This is confusing." He rubbed at his head as he tried to parse his thoughts. "Either way, this is mad cool."

He turned back around to Jamie, "Try and make the water."

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

"I've only been once when I was small," Jamie admitted, but he didn't sound daunted by the fact, "It was a family trip to Florida." All he had to do was watch Shiloh's bare feet hit the sand and his own shoes were gone. The sand was soft and warm, even without the sun. "I remember it, though, at least a little. And I mean, I've watched a lot of videos." More than enough, to be honest.

"Whoa, palm trees!" His mind was all over the place already, distracted by these things he loved. His hands were all over the bark and he laughed like there was an inside joke to be had when there wasn't. "Y'know, I... I dunno. Maybe it, um, an Other Ashdown thing? Honestly, I've never fallen asleep here. The idea seems kinda dangerous."

And yet, there was no way he'd turn down this chance to step foot in the ocean.

"Okay, okay, lemme think..." Jamie closed his eyes fingers gripped to the trunk of the palm tree, and remembered. He recalled the ocean and how it felt, how it smelled, how it looked. Before he even opened his eyes again, a cool, foamy wave washed up over their toes.

"T-Too close to the trees!" he called suddenly, eyes shooting open. He ran forward and the water receded a good distance until the trees were safe.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Hey! Don't chase it away!" He ran off after the water too, except he ended up running backwards when the wave sloshed forward again, like a cat with aversion to water. As if that wasn't enough, a tiny red crab appeared from the foam to completely wreck him.

Shiloh retreated behind Jamie, eyes wide as he pointed wildly at the tiny thing.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

"Wait, what, huh-?" The water washed up around his feet again, capturing his ankles before sloshing back. For whatever reason—a reason he hadn't yet noticed—he was playing a human shield, taking a step away from the ocean as if that's what had scared Shiloh straight out of his mind. Come to find out as he followed the finger point in confusion, it was a crab.

A tiny, tiny crab.

"Um... Shiloh?" The crab was cute to Jamie. He'd be half tempted to scoop the little guy up if Shiloh wasn't so horrified. "Are you okay?"

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Look at that thing." He whispered to Jamie, eyes wide and one-hundred percent hostile. "It's—I swear to god it's threatening me!"

The crab sat there rather plainly, actually, like crabs typically did. After a moment it raised one of its pincers, and then set it back down again.

"Look at it! He hissed again, "I've never seen one so—so alive." Which was to say, not on his dinner plate.

saedusk

 

[saedusk]

It dawned on Jamie pretty damn quick that this wasn't a joke. Of course he wouldn't mock Shiloh for his fears, that would be unnecessarily cruel. "I don't think he can hurt you..." he said quietly, reaching around to take Shiloh's hand. "I mean pinch a little maybe, but I don't think that would be too bad."

Jamie tried to take another step back, to push Shiloh back with him and away from the crab menace. He could be a peacekeeper, right? He could totally defuse this situation.

"Let's just, um, go further down the beach, okay?"

Melancholies