Welcome to Gaia! ::

.:RP Log:.

Masks - Galleai takes a trip through Casia's dreams

.:Rp Log:.

See something majestic - Rook and Gal spend Valentine's night on the beach.

.:Mysterious Deaths:.

The sanctuary was unusually crowded. Galleai peered around the cluster of people with a small frown. She'd never seen so many dreamwalkers in one place before. But even more startling was the presence of half a dozen true dreamers. Everyone was pressing close to something in the center of the sparse main room.

"Whats happening?" She asked the nearest dreamwalker, a huge man with a face covered in blue woad tattoos.

"Misery house." The man replied.

Just the words gave Galleai terrible shivers, she felt as if everything got colder very suddenly and dramatically. Misery house. Or Mercy house. Nobody was quite sure how it had started or what it had started as. But everyone in the dream-realm knew what it was. Everyone had struggled against it's malevolent presence. And it was dangerous. The place would devour a dreamwalker if they got too close. Only the true dreamers had a chance at surviving it. Excorsising the demon. Cleansing the house.

Galleai pushed her way to the front of the crowd and then suddenly began to wish she hadn't. Three blackened figures lay huddled on the ground, their hands still desperately clutched together while their mouths were pulled back in rictus-grins of death. She swallowed hard. It was a terrible thing to happen to a true dreamer. A death here didn't mean death in the waking world. It meant the doors of the dreamlands were shut to you forever. These were true-dreamers who would never dream themselves here again. And that loss of power - for true dreamers posessed abilities beyond those of the native dreamwalkers - was a cause for mourning. Misery house in all it's evil glory still stood. These brave dreamers hadn't woken in time to escape. At least they could have, though. Had it been a dreamwalker caught by the house the death would have been a complete one. No more dreaming or waking.

Galleai backed away slowly and swallowed. She'd never witnessed the death of a dreamer before. She was making her way to the back of the room when a hushed conversation caught her attention.

"Not an accident. It was an execution."

"An execution? Thats not possible..."

"Someones closing the doors to the true dreamers. And they're not being gentle about it."

"Why would anyone want to do something like that?" Galleai interrupted, unable to help herself. The two men looked down at her, suprised.

"Well normally when someone gets banished from here the door gets shut real gentle." The shorter of the two answered. "But giving them to misery house... it's beyond cruel."

"But a true dreamer can survive Misery house." Galleai interrupted again. "They say only a true dreamer can banish the demon."

The short man shrugged. "Them not coming back out was no accident. You been to Mabon lately?"

Galleai shook her head. Mabon was the dream city. Just like any city in the waking world but built and populated by dreamers of all kinds.

"You go on to Mabon, kid. Be careful though, dark stuff happening all over. This isn't an isolated incident, you know." The taller man tipped his hat and she caught a swift glimpse of abyssal eyes. "They got all the gossip in Mabon. Go to Maslowe's Orange on Reed street."

"Maslowe's Orange?" She repeated so she'd remember. "On Reed street."

The two men nodded and turned back to their gossip, leaving Galleai to muse over what she'd learned. Conjecture. Misery house took a lot of people - you couldn't use it to execute a true dreamer, could you? Who would want to get rid of true dreamers anyways?

Galleai shook her head a little. She'd spent too much time playing in people's dreams and fretting about the mess with the coven. She hadn't been paying attention to the rest of the dreamlands. Well, she'd planned on going to Mabon anyways. She'd only been there once or twice before and it was the only place she cuold get what she needed for her initiation ritual without having to wait months and months for all the ingredients to be ready for harvest. She might as well visit Maslowe's Orange and find out what she could about what was going on.

.:I'll do what I want:.

Galleai gazed at the flier in bewilderment. It had come in an envelope addressed to her at the coven house. That had never happened before - she'd never seen a letter come through the letter slot. The coven had other methods of communicaiting with the outside world. She'd never gotten mail before either. She could count on one hand the number of outsiders who knew where the coven house was and still have almost all of her fingers leftover. But the envelope with a return address of a place called the Liberty Center had been for her. She could only assume that the flier inside which was advertising a need for volunteers at a craft fair was meant for her as well.

"Daddy," Galleai asked, folding the flier back up and putting it back in the envelope. "Whats a craft-fair?"

"Huh?" Leeward was startled out of the reverie he'd sunk into. Galleai handed him the envelope and he inspected it's contents with a small frown. "Ah. A craft-fair is where people make things by hand and then try to sell them."

"What kind of things?"

"Um..." The vampire had to think for a long time about an answer. What sort of things did children make these days? "Potpurri? Birdhouses? Ragdolls? I'm not completely sure, princess."

"I'd like to go." It was posed as a request but Galleai's voice was firm. "I'm good at sewing."

Leeward's frown deepened. "It's during the daylight, honey."

Galleai frowned back and raised her chin defiantly. "I'm not a vampire. The daylight doesn't hurt me. I want to see kids my own age. I want to be with people like me for a little bit."

Leeward sighed. "I know it isn't easy. I know you feel left out and different. Once the initiation is done you'll understand. You wont feel left out anymore. You have the ingredients?"

"I have everything. Don't change the topic, daddy. Can I go? Please?"

Really, Leeward mused, he had no business trying to raise a child. Living by candles and moonlight in the drafty coven house was no way for a little girl to grow up. Initiating her into the coven and the secrets of the blood was not something someone so young should endure. But she was his. He loved her. And so he wouldn't give her up. And since he wouldn't give her up he had to guarantee her loyalty. Which meant she must be initiated and bound. She'd managed alright out on her own so far, with the exception of her ill-fated trip to the docks. And she deserved to have some fun with her own kind before starting the ritual.

"Alright. Yes. You can go the craft fair." The vampire sighed.

Galleai squealed and leapt into Leeward's lap, throwing her arms around his neck. "Thanks, daddy." She mumurred in his ear as he returned the embrace.

.:Keys and the Way Between:.

Galleai frowned and picked the stitches out for the second time. Sewing was one thing - stitching together a pattern, having something sort of appear out of nothing was easy. It just came naturally. But embroidery was another matter altogether. She was trying to decorate the cases she'd made for the rainmakers her group was selling at the arts and craft fair, but the decorating was not going so well.

Heaving a sigh she set her work down, flopping back on her bed. Now that she'd started sewing she'd found a room of her own necessary. It was a small room in the tower - she liked the rounded walls and low ceiling. And the blue-veined marble fireplace. She especially liked that. At the moment the fire was lit and a small iron cauldron bubbled over the flames, emitting scents that were both seductive and maliciously disturbing.

That particular cauldron had been rendering that particular brew for a week now - it would take a long time for the brew to reduce properly before her initiation ceremony took place. The little dreamer was vaguely aware that the contents were highly toxic but she also trusted the coven blindly. At least, she trusted that without the initiation rite she'd find herself homeless and possibly dead. Better to trust them and drink it when the time came.

With another sigh she curled onto her side, staring at the floor that was covered in neatly folded and sorted yards of fabric. Neat by nature, it wasn't in her to throw things around the room in a fit of disorganization. She counted silently to herself, adding up lengths of fabric absently. A red brocade, she thought. Lined with yellow satin. That would make a nice instrument pouch. A worn pair of cowboy boots...

Galleai sait up with a start, dark eyes wide as the owner of the boots looked down at her with a half-raised eyebrow.

"I know you." Galleai said after a pregnant, startled pause. She frowned at him in perplexity. "I saw you at the sanctuary. How did you get here?"

"You don't know?" Orion tilted his head, abyssal eyes as deep as the ocean regarding her in silent question. "Ah, well, you're young yet. You can't know everything. I'd have thought, though..." He trailed off, apparently realizing he was making little sense. "Pockets, girl. Thin spots in the fabric that seperates this world from the other world."

"You mean the dream-world?" Galleai asked, leaning forward with curiosity.

"Not just the dream-world, girl. The spirit world. The otherworld. The world that this isn't. There is so much more there than dreams if you know how to travel it."

Galleai was squinting hard at the place he'd suddenly appeared and her narrowed eyes widened in sudden suprise. She thought maybe she did see it. Like a shimmer or a soap bubble, insubstantial but inexplicably there. "Who are you?" She asked in a faint, distracted voice. Was that music coming from beyond the veil?

"Call me Orion." The man smiled in a way that made the little dreamer wonder if he felt as awkward doing it as she sometimes did. "I came to bring you a gift."

"A gift?" Galleai asked, but he'd already dissapeared back from where he'd come from. She frowned at the empty spot in consternation until she noticed something shining dully on the floor. Leaning over she picked it up. A small and tarnished but beautifully ornate brass key. A gift, Orion had told her. Picking up a dark satin ribbon she threaded it through the key and tied it around her neck. "I wonder what it opens..." The girl mused softly to herself.

.:Strange lust:.

Nicola and Dianne were fighting. Their screaming, screeching voices had driven Leeward from the house for a particularly vicious hunting spree and Apollonaire was sitting in the drawing room casually badgering each woman any time she appeared to be losing steam. They were fighting, unsuprisingly, over Galleai's upcoming initiation rites and which of them deserved to stand at the Oracle's right hand as the Victim.

The initiation Galleai was to undergo was not one any of the coven had experienced personally. Their own intitiations had involved their vampirism or their birth into darkness. But Galleai was not going to be turned and so Leeward had sought out a ritual aimed at mortals. This traditionally involved the intitiate sacrificing a loved one, but all of Galleai's loved ones were immortal. (Or children, and even the coven realized there would be trouble if they made her kill one of her friends.) So the initiation would involve a symbolic sacrifice. This symbolism didn't sit well with the coven in general because pretending to shed the blood of someone you loved and actually killing them involved two highly different levels of committment. And it was the question of her committment and loyalty to the coven which was making the ceremony necessary to begin with.

Despite their misgivings the oracle approved of the altered ceremony and hers was the final word. So now the question was which lady of the night got to pretend to die at Galleai's hand? They both wanted the honor and they both felt they deserved it more. Apollonaire's amusement at their bickering led him to prod them to new heights of name-calling and profanity.

As Leeward wouldn't take her hunting with him despite her insistence that the bloody feasts didn't bother her, Galleai had slipped out to the old cemetary where Nicola's family lay buried. The weather had been warming and while the nights were still chilly enough to bite, it wasn't cold enough for her to borrow either cloak or shoes.

Sitting under the shadows of praying angels the dreamer stared seemingly blankly into the air. There! She thought she saw it... That same elusive soap-bubble shimmer she'd seen in her room the day Orion had brought the key. On hands and knees she crawled towards it as cautiously as a deer who thinks a predator may be nearby. Close-up the shimmer was barely visible.

Reaching out a careful hand, she touched it. There was no noise or flash of light, only the distinctly odd sensation of looking at your hand and only seeing half of it there. With a little half-smile of triumph Galleai plunged the rest of the way down her own personal rabbit hole.

----------

Wherever it was, it seemed obscured by a chilly mist that hung low and made it hard to breathe, let alone see. "Hello?" Galleai called softly before realizing that calling out might not be the best idea. She didn't know where she was and there were terrible things happening in the dreamlands that were being assisted by someone in the waking world. She certainly did not want to stumble into whoever or whatever was executing dreamers on the roadside. Stepping forward blindly, her toe sank into something wet with a slight give. Flaring her nostrils Galleai could smell salt water and when she closed her eyes she could hear it, too, lapping against the beach she had stepped onto.

Taking another step forward, the dreamer bumped into something solid. Peering through the gloom she could just make out the shape of a small rowboat. "This is too weird." She muttered to herself, more for the sake of hearing a voice than because she actually thought it was weird. Other kids might, but when you were used to wandering around in dreams, getting into a rowboat and pushing off into water you couldn't see just to find out where it would take you was pretty standard behavior.

She was just beginning to wonder where the boat was taking her when the mist cleared to reveal the moon reflecting off of water so clear and still that she might as well be floating through the sky itself. Peering ahead, Galleai could make out a small island that was rapidly growing bigger. It wasn't long before she could see that the island was more like a tall hill surrounded by grassy beach. There were stairs carved into the hill and at the top what appeared to be some sort of white columned structure. It reminded her, vaguely, of a small Roman temple. Though how she made that connection she wasn't entirely sure. It didn't matter anyways, the boat was bumping softly against the shore and Galleai was feeling an unfamiliar tugging in her chest. It felt like an anxiety attack, except that she'd never really had one before. But the pulling pressure was enough to make her want to cry and it urged her upwards.

There appeared to be little option but to follow the pulling sensation. Step by step, Galleai ascended the white staircase cut into the hillside. With each step she took the pulling seemed to get worse. More insistent. Halfway up she gave up her modest ascent and began to run, half-sobbing with a frustration she didn't know how to recognize until finally, panting, she came to the crest of the hill. The temple rose high above her.

All it was, really, were four open walls comprised of several tall columns. Each wall was topped with a triangular slab of marble that was carved ornately but there was no real roof to speak of. The whole thing was open to the sky. She stepped between two of the massive columns and stared at the only thing there was to stare at. Just as there was no ceiling, there wasn't a floor either. Instead there was a carpet of grass littered with little blue flowers and variegated leaves. In the very center there was a tree. As soon as her eyes locked on it the pulling gave way to a wave of unfamiliar yearning.

The tree itself was short, it's branches twisted together so tightly that it was near impossible to make out where one limb began and another ended. The bark was dark and multicolored, saturated with dark greens and purples as if someone had taken a watercolor brush to an already wet and dark piece of paper. In contrast the leaves were a pale silvery green that seemed to glisten as if wet and catch the moonlight. But the fruit... whatever it was, it was shaped like a plum but golden and green and blue, shimmering with different colors depending on what angle Galleai looked at it.

It didn't really occur to her at this point that she shouldn't run around eating strange things from strange places. Nor did it occur to her that she might not be alone. Driven by desire, she reached dizzily up towards the nearest fruit. Her greedy hand had almost closed around it when something hard hit the back of her head and everything went dark.

.:The Preparation Begins:.

Galleai stared at the cauldron that had been bubbling over the fire in her room for what seemed like ages. It had thickened and reduced until now there was only a small amount - perhaps a cupful - sitting at the bottom. She felt the muscles in her throat contract and her stomach clench with unexpected nerves. It was too soon! Half of her screamed. It was time! The other half exulted. Trembling, she took the silver spoon that had been provided to her and carefully scooped the mixture into a small glas vial. It glimmered faintly in the dim light of her bedroom, shards of crimson and blue shining somewhere in the black depths of the concoction. Swallowing convulsively, Galleai capped the vial and walked slowly down to the sitting room.

Leeward was reclining with a book, though he wasn't turning the pages and it was questionable wether or not he was actually reading it. By now Galleai knew that he had been here so long that he knew every book in the massive library by heart. Nothing was new to him. Nothing but, apparently, her. Was that why he had taken her in the first place? For something new? A change of scenery? She liked to think that he loved her, because she loved him and didn't want to be the only one. But the coven was, while passionate, not particularly warm and cuddly with expressing their emotions.

"Daddy?" She asked quietly, her voice small and quiet with nerves.

"Yes?" Leeward set the book down and turned to face his daughter, his expression expectant. "What is it, princess?"

Galleai couldn't quite bring herself to answer, instead she took a few steps closer and set the vial down on the end table at his elbow. The vampire's eyes widened very slightly, glinting palely as he reached an elegant hand out to pick it up. Unstopping it, he sniffed the contents as if they were a fine wine.

"Very well done, Galleai." He said, and his voice was gentle. "Come here, sit with me."

The girl climbed onto his lap, burrowing her face in the cold flesh where his neck met his shoulder. For her, cold was comfort. "I'm scared." She admitted in a whisper.

"It's alright to be afraid, Galleai. You don't really know whats going to happen, do you?"

"Nicola says... she says that all things will be made clear. I know a little, from when I fed from her but..." She hesitated before taking a deep breath and continuing. "When Nicola did it, she was meant to die and then wake up again. But that isn't whats happening to me."

"No, princess. You aren't going to die and wake up again. Not like we did."

"Am I just going to die?" Came the fearful whisper.

Leeward's hands tightened their grip on his daughter. "No, love, you're not going to die. You're going to sleep, thats all. You're going to sleep for awhile and it will symbolize death, you see?"

Galleai breathed a great sigh of relief. Sleep was her domain. Dreams were where she felt safest and most secure, even with all the trouble that was going on in the dreamworld. There was no fear in sleeping for awhile. "And then I'll wake up again?"

"Yes, darling. Then you will wake up again. And you'll be a part of the coven and everyone will be happy. And there will be a party, too."

"A party?" This startled the young girl, nobody had mentioned a part before.

"Oh, yes! I should have thought Nicola would have told you. But perhaps it was meant to be a suprise." The vampire chuckled faintly. "I suppose if it was meant to be a suprise I've ruined it now. You see, we are the head coven in the order. Pilgrims come to us to pledge loyalty to the Oracle and we house the handmaiden of the oracle. You know all this, right?"

Galleai's mind drifted back to the two pilgrims she had seen inducted. They were still entombed down in the catacombs. "Yes." She agreed quietly.

"Well, as the head coven our members are chosen very carefully and very, very rarely. It has been hundreds of years since we have allowed a new member to join our ranks. Tradition dictates that when a new member is inducted all the members of the lesser covens come to meet them and pay their respects. The new coven member is presented to the order as a guardian. Do you understand that after the ceremony is over, you will be a guardian to the Oracle and the handmaiden?"

Galleai shook her head. This, too, was something nobody had bothered to tell her.

"Well, nevermind. You'll understand it all later. All things are made clear in the ceremony." Leeward said. He smiled at his daughter and brushed a strand of hair from her face. "Don't be frightened, princess. Everything will be alright. Now that the brew has finished, you must fast for three days. That means you can't eat and you can drink nothing but water and wine." He frowned. "You're a little young for wine, so I think you'd better stick with water. After you've fasted there is a small cleansing ritual and then the ceremony will begin. Do you understand?"

The two parts of Galleai - the one that was frightened and the one that was excited - warred within her. But she nodded obediently. "Only water." She repeated softly. Leeward nodded and stroked her hair as she curled around him more tightly, her mind wrapped in thought. What would this ceremony bring? Acceptance or exile? She could only hope she didn't mess up.