Welcome to Gaia! ::

She opened her mouth to spout a witticism, about how it wasn't the size...but how you used it...but the triteness of it stuck in her throat. Appraising herself, cooling cocoa in one hand, she summoned a grin, or tried to.

"I didn't realize there was a dress code here. My dreams are getting quite demanding these days. Do you have a name? Or is that a secret subconscious thing?"

Her fingers tingled where he touched her, quickly and somewhat surreptitiously she shook out her fingers.

"ooohhhh" she said in the tone of a child learning their lesson. "That's what you are! My subconscious. How Jungian!"

Laughing, she sat down in the seat, and grinned. "I never realized I had an inner...person...like you inside. Let me guess, you're here to help with a self dialogue about how I hate my life and wish I could jump into one of my books and join a crusade of some sort?"

She laughed "where do I start? Everything is ... dull. Meaningless. It has all the impact of an ant scurrying about...although at least the ant has a purpose. I don't feel as if I have had one for a very long time. I wake up each morning hoping Im somewhere...or someone else. I go to sleep each night hoping that I can be someone or somewhere else. What kind of life is that?"

She blinked. That...didn't sound like any aspect of her self speaking.

"What do you mean? Reborn?" her tone was puzzled. "You mean like...converting or something? You aren't my former religious zealotry rearing its head, are you?"

As Alice down her rabbit hole. Curiouser and curiouser.

Of course, she knew what curiousity did to the feline.

Taking his hand, she felt the clothing spill around her , spread out and elegant. "Should one ask the destination when the journey is not yet started?"

Screaming would have definitely been prudent. Had there been time. In the space of the blink they had moved, heat rushing over and through her and she didn't just grab on to the other, she strangled his arms with her fingers.

"oh, my god." she said. Or thought she did. Closing her eyes, she waited for her skin to start peeling off, or some other horrendous and painful thing to happen.

"Difference, yes." she laughed shakily then. "But freedom? What dream is there that you don't eventually wake up from?"

She was distracted from that thought though, peering ahead of her. "What's in the light?"

Blinking, she felt her hands released, and turned about slightly, head tilted in a fashion fit for inquiry. Taking a few steps forward, she heard the chime-like tapping that almost as a stone on the pond seemed to reverberate about her.

It was almost like a lake of glass.

Waking is a dream? Was that akin to the old saying "are we a butterfly dreaming it is man? Or a man dreaming it is a butterfly?". To sleep, and never waken, save in a dream. . .

Some claimed that is what death is.

Maybe she was with Death. Not cowled and bearing a sickle, but rather a colorful angelic being. No sickle apparent.

Kneeling beside the marred black marks, she looked up slightly. "What happened here?"

She started when she realized she was alone. Startled...and then she awoke.