[PRP] We could use the extra hand (Camila & Temperance)

[Melancholies]

Ordinary day take 2.

It was dark out still, but early. At least, it felt early? But Mila felt absolutely refreshed; weightless even, like nothing was holding her down or constricting her and she could just breathe. The night sky was impossibly pretty, and the silence was absolutely golden.

It occured to her right then that she was in the middle of the road, miles away from her house, and also barefoot.

"Am... am I dead?" She looked down at her hands; she was still in her nightgown, her hair down and fluffy, her nails greeny-blue from the day before. Wait a second... wait a second! "Oh my gosh! I'm lucid dreaming!" She threw her hands up in the air like it was an accomplishment, "I've been trying for years!"

Again, it lapsed into silence. She wasn't waking up.

Okay no, she needed to take advantage of this. She just... you could do anything in dreams right? Like fly and stuff? Well I'm definitely not flying... Maybe she could start with meandering over to the sidewalk before she tried anything. Safety first!... even in dreams...

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

Temperance didn't get much sleep these days. There were too many things to take care of: prepping for the removal of the old charter and subsequent re-iteration, doing something with her assigned space at court, restocking and revitalizing the clinic... She hadn't known there was a clinic space at the court as all, in fact. Georg handled a great bulk of the healing, so it was simply not as often used. Still, Temperance had kind of muscled her way in. It was just so, so conveniently located abut her own space. And Hart had played nurse there, too, which may or may not have explained why Temperance did not fail her last semester of undergrad.

In fact, Hart was with her now. Despite their rocky beginnings, she was trying to be a good noble and have an okay relationship with her fetch. This meant, apparently, fetching unused supplies from various places around town. Right now, they'd jsut finished raiding the urgent care center in town. Someone was walking down the sidewalk towards them.

Temperance wasn't used to seeing people in this weird version of Ashdown, despite the fact that she knew many magically=inclined, and so... she dropped the box she'd been lifting with her mind. It crashed quite spectacularly to the ground. "Lady Temperance..." Hart murmured.

"She's wearing pajamas," Temperance said. "Hello there!"

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Mila suddenly felt like she was a character in a video game, and that she was being called out to by an NPC, because this was a dream and whoever the heck was talking to her wasn't real, right? The second she saw the not-real-but-tall-lady and her zombie compatriot, this thought was all but cemented. Man, lucid dreaming was cool! Oh, but she was still in her pajamas, she couldn't do hypothetical dream quests like this...

She didn't have much time to debate it though.

"Hi!" She said in response, realizing that unlike a video game, there was no popup wheel of options to say. The world was essentially her oyster here. Mila was running to catch up to the duo; unfortunately, dead-companion-maybe-a-thrall? was no easier on the eyes up close... the zombie lady even more corpsey up close, actually. Did that make tall-women a hypothetical necromancer? "S-Sorry I didn't notice you from back there! I don't um, actually have my glasses..." Her vision still sucking in her dreams was the only apparent downside. Her fingers were tapping her face sadly.

"Also I think you dropped something." She was looking at the collection of... stuff on the ground. Was that medical equipment? She had more s**t accumulated here than a textbook math problem, and it was all the more reason to solidify her theory; 'run into the death tomb, find me some rocks'; 'Hello stray traveler, kill the rats in my cellar, have ten bottles of waterbreathing wine'.

'Salutations lost wanderer, help me move my ******** of medical equipment to my magic laboratory'. Wait, didn't stuff like that usually turn out to be stolen? And then the NPC tries to kill you at the end unless you can pass the persuasion checks or whatever mechanic it happens to be? Mila hmm'd....

She seemed to be taking all of this in stride, at least.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

This, she realized abruptly, was exactly like the set up of a video game. Not a fetch quest, but one of those things where you had to help someone... no, no, an escort mission. For a moment, she just stared at Mila. Temperance.... Temperance, in all her years of playing videos games, had just realized that, in this instance, she was the NPC.

"Fine Drarven crafts... straight from Orzammar...." she muttered. Then she blinked. "Um, yes, sorry, I wasn't expecting to see anyone out here. I'm Temperance and that is Hart." Hart wiggled her fingers playfully at Mila.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Mila was still kind of put off by Hart's appearance, and had she been waking she definitely would have, but as it was this was a dream and the lady was named Temperance and with a companion named Hart... there was no way her brain wasn't conjuring up some weird video game cross over concoction thing.

"I'm Camila! My friends back home always called me Mila though, but you can call me whatever you want." She blinked innocently, "You know, I bet the import tax on a place like Orzammer all the way to Ashdown would be pretty ridiculous." Well... "This is still Ashdown, right?" It sure looked like it, but dreams had that ability to warp perceptions and places and people.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Yeah, the tax is terrible. I can cut you a deal, though." Then she laughed a little. Temperance hadn't expected Mila to play along. "You are in Ashdown, sort of. Alternate Ashdown? Kind of like Silent Hill." Hart began to organize the things on the ground into stacks easier to pick up.

"I assume this is your first time here?"

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Oh wow," Mila was sparkly eyed, "I didn't realize dreams could have this much exposition..." She swayed a little as she watched Hart, her eyes squinting a little to get all the details into focus. "I mean, I dream lots, but I guess this is the first time I ever had control over it? I dunno if I'd ever wanna wake up—oh, is that weird to say?" She frowned a tiny bit, "I mean, can you tell dream-people that it's a dream, or does the dream end?"

She held her breath.

"Well, I guess it's not ending." She said as she looked to the sky, almost like she was expecting it to come crashing down on them.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"I," Temperance began. Oh dear. "This isn't a dream, Mila. I mean, you, um, might be dreaming, but you're still here." She remembered dreaming of this place before, too. She held out her hand as Hart hovered impatiently in the background.

"Here, try to touch me." Mila was so cute with her mannerisms, Temperance might be a little sad when she woke up and left her alone with the grouchy Hart.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Mila gave Temperance a weird look. Her hand reached out, then hesitated, then closed the gap; unfortunately for her, the hand seemed to phase right through Temperance's.

She shrieked.

"O-Oh my god! Holy—wowwie, okay. Oh geeze..." She looked down at her fingers, suddenly very aware of how faint they looked, "This isn't a dream! I'm dead, aren't I? Oh my gosh are you like, here to guide my soul? Is this purgatory?" She looked around wildly, "Why the heck is purgatory just Ashdown? I was really expecting more brimstone..."

But then she looked to Hart again. Maybe it was purgatory. Hart was clearly some sort of evil (albeit friendly) corpse demon thing. And then you had Temperance, who was still very clearly human looking, and suddenly it just made sense. He name was Temperance! She was a virtue! "Oh my god you're an angel!!!"

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

Temperance couldn't help it. She knew she was supposed to guide; she knew Mila was pretty much dreaming; she knew these things and yet... All of a sudden, she let out a loud laugh, ears pink with embarrassment even as she did so.

"Wowwie," said Hart without any inflection in her voice. "An angel."

"I... I'm not an angel, I just play one... sometimes." She giggled again. Was that weird to say? It was probably weird to say. "You're dreaming, but you're in an alternate version of Ashdown. I'm real, you're real, Hart is real. Congratulations, you're a magical girl."

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Oh, sorry! You're an angel too, Hart." Mila looked guilty; thankfully she didn't elaborate on why. Biblical angels, especially once you got into higher hierarchies, were a lot less... human looking and a lot more indescribable. Hart had pretty hair though, if anything.

Except at Temperance's next set of words, Camila ended up being the one to laugh. And then as she wiped away a tear—or what felt like a tear—she wheezed, "Magical girl? I'm not magic, that's just silly. Don't'cha know how rare that stuff is? At—wait, play an angel? Like roleplay?" Mila... "Oh, sorry, I guess I'm kinda getting carried away..."

But at least she apparently wasn't dead, was what she wanted to say.

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

One of Hart's hands (covered in a skeleton printed opera glove - how dramatic) pressed against her lips. "I'm an angel. I can be your angle," she muttered. Temperance shook her head. During her time as Temp, Hart had consumed far too many memes and never used them at appropriate times. That is, never.

"You are a magical girl, Mila. Me too. Hart, sort of." Temperance flushed. "R-roleplay? I mean that's hardly here nor there." She coughed awkwardly.

"I meant I play video games... as.. an angel." Wow, that sounded so incredibly lame. "Is I show you something magical, will you believe me?"

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Mila blanched "Y-Y-Y-You're magic?!" She pointed at Temperance like a laywer dramatically accusing their witness, "No—no wait, wait." She folded her arms. "Do a magic thing then!"

The angel talk could be had later.

"So wait, if I'm following this..." She trailed off, "There's a magic Ashdown, and I can go to it in my dreams?" And it had pseudo-angels? And that made her a magical girl? "S-So what happens when I wake up? How do I know you're not—!"

She made a face,

"Deceiving me."

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Yup," she said. "And yep. You're here while you're sleeping. When you wake up, you wake up normally and maybe you'll come here when awake, too." Temperance frowned. Do something magic.... alright. Concentrating, she closed her eyes. Suddenly, Temperance Clark had six arms and each of them held a ball of glowing light (for effect). Also pointedly for effect, she'd made herself a tiny circlet of light, kind of like a halo. There was a one hundred percent chance that Hart was judging her.

She opened her eyes and the light-y bits seemed to fade away almost guiltily. "Give me your phone number. I'll text you when you're awake and we can meet up in regular old Ashdown." Temperance smiled - this was the perfect plan - and waved with two of her six arms.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Mila's face kind of looked like the "0:" emoji, in both look and spirit and emotion.

"Magic angel..." She whispered, suddenly very sure of herself. So she might not be dead, but she was still fairly certain this was purgatory and Temperance was guiding her wayward soul back to the land of the living. It wasn't her time—not yet—and she was thankful for that! She still had to do things with her life. "Do you have something to write it down with? It's..."

As she listed off her phone number, a realization hit her. "W-Wait! Wait oh my gosh, this is actually super great." She bounced a little, "So if you're actually like, super-ultra-real, then you can help me!" Pause, "I mean, if you want, but it's kind of a serious issue..."

She looked around, and then whispered, "IthinkIhaveamagicalstalker???"

The Semblance of Unity