[prp] suddenly, weed dreams (julian + shiloh)

[cibarium]

It was snowing lightly and Julian was outside, having no recollection of how or why. The last he could remember was getting ready for bed: he still had his pajamas on and everything. They were pastel green and yellow and decorated with little doodles of lime slices. His feet were bare on the ground, but the cold wasn't bothering him the way it should, and if he squinted a bit while looking down he could see through his toes.

He blearily drifted through the otherneighborhood until finding what looked enough like another person that he figured approaching them would be his best shot at discovering the plot of this frankly underwhelming dream he was having.

"Hey. Hey," he crankily said. "Is this the regular kind of magic s**t or the kind where I died?"

melancolies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh had no idea how he got here.

No, really. Usually he was very aware of when he was and wasn't in Otherworld, because that just made sense. Both had ample differences and it was easy enough to tell when you crossed the boundary—except—Shiloh was way too busy sitting on the front step to someone's house with an impassive sort of expression on his face. Flowers wiggled underneath his shoes, poked themselves upward, curved in... really strange ways that flowers shouldn't be curving in. It was like they were drunk.

The voice of a stranger was what inevitably broke him out of his stupor, and he looked up at Julian and squinted.

"Well ********." He started off very eloquently, eyeing this man up and down, "You're like, probably going to die if you don't put shoes on." He became very fixated with his feet suddenly. Shiloh belatedly realized that he also wasn't all that effected by the snow. "But you're not dead. Yet. I think."

Because really there wasn't a lot of filters in his head right now helping him distinguish between other humans and othercreatures. Maybe this guy was a ghost. Maybe he was a ghost. Hard to say.

cibarium

420

 

[cibarium]

Well, Julian was getting pretty confident this wasn't a dream. For one, he didn't have lucid dreams, ever, and for second... the dreams he had that he could recall were always ******** boring. They didn't have Alice in Wonderland fairy princes he wouldn't have recognized in real life hanging out at his aunts' front porch acting clueless.

Julian sat down next to the plant prince, seeming every bit as clueless and unconcerned as his new acquaintance. "Can't feel the cold," he replied. "There's one for the 'I'm dead' theory. You look pretty ********' opposite of the Grim Reaper, though. Is... this that other Ashdown thing I'm dealing with? With all the..."

He trailed off. Pointing out Shiloh had plants growing out of his body felt like it might be offensive.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Oh," He said this like Julian had just spoke the greatest revelation of the century, "Other Ashdown, yeah, that's a thing."

He sniffed, snorted a little. When he looked down at his feet he laughed like it was the most hilarious thing he'd seen all day.

"Oh <********>. That's not supposed to happen." He said it like it was a regular occurrence, and well, it was in all honesty. "Alright, so maybe you're dead. I'm just Shiloh." Shiloh was Shiloh. This was fact. "And I'm alive. And this is definitely Otherworld."

Pause.

"So maybe you're not dead?" The plants were climbing up his legs in erratic, nonsensical patterns. "I've met ghosts before so it's hard to say."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Julian raised a hopeful eyebrow at Shiloh's casual allusion to having met some ghosts: "Any way to tell I'm not one, then?"

He couldn't keep his curious eyes away from the odd, creeping flowers for longer than a moment at a time.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh held up one finger. And then he held up a second finger, both hands suspended in their air with their index fingers outstretched. "One moment."

And he thought for quite some time.

"Okay, so. The ghost I met was like, real ghostly. She was see through and said a lot of weird s**t and like? You're not even being slightly philosophical." This was a good point, "And in most movies I've seen, ghosts are not really boring normal dudes. You got sick pajamas though, so there's that."

Not philosophical, but cool pajamas. It made sense. "So we've about broken even. It's still a fifty-fifty shot of you being dead or alive." Pause, "Or you could be double dead, I bet that's a thing." He wiggled the two fingers, eyes almost going crossed as he tried to look at both simultaneously.

"But, since you are in pajamas, then you could just be dreaming. That's a thing. I'm like really-here-super-here, but at first I wasn't." He was waving his hands through the air in grand motions like he was painting some sort of a scene, "It always starts with the dreams..."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Julian nodded attentively at Shiloh's explanation, offering a small thanks for the compliment about his pajamas. They were awesome pajamas, and comfortable as ********. If he were dead for real -- a possibility that seemed increasingly distant thanks to the new information -- he wouldn't have had any regrets about the clothes he'd have elected to die in.

"Oh, right, Dreamers. My aunts have talked about that." He screwed his brow and frowned for a moment. "I didn't think the dreaming thing was going to be so literal, though." he continued. The tone of his voice suggested this realization was something worth complaining about. "With the Spirit Sciencey astral projection into the next dimension, and all."

His gaze turned dramatically toward his flickering knees and toes before returning them to Shiloh. "This is bullshit. I'm Julian. Please say I don't have to buy a crystal to make the dreams stop."

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

The plants had reached his knees now, vines curling and curling and curling into delicate little spirals. It seemed they were confused as to what they actually were, because one budded off into a delicate looking lily while another became a line of snowdrops and so on and so forth. His legs were a dilapidated forest of plants that really shouldn't be coexisting with one another.

He nodded along with Julian's words with a certain sort of dead serious that you'd think he was like, telling Shiloh the codes for launching the nuclear warheads back up in DC. Except once he got to the last bit Shiloh lost his s**t again and howled.

"Oh <********> man." He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, "That's good. The dreams don't stop."

He wobbled a little bit where he sat—more like a sway, actually. "I mean, I guess they do kind of? You'll start coming here physically I mean. Once it starts it never stops." He wiggled his fingers mysteriously, "Even if you tried to avoid it, it just—okay, okay—roots in you."

He bit his lip, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughs.

"Sorry, sorry." He was a little sorry because he could tell in the back of his head that he had little-to-no control over himself right now, but that was besides the point. "But like, I mean it. You're in for the long haul. You're—" He paused dramatically, "—magic."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"I already knew I was magic," Julian huffed.

"You're just waiting for me to ask you about all the plant s**t," he squinted after a moment. Then he stepped closer, to really look Shiloh over. "Are you high? Are you trying to set me up for a weed joke. I'm not letting you make a weed joke."

Julian would in reality not put up much of a fight against any incoming weed jokes.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh's smile turned into an opened mouth one—like he was about to say something—but he didn't at first. Instead he just made finger guns (and he shot them at Julian with invisible pew-pews), when finally a sloppy "Youuuu got me!" Came out.

He laughed again, settled down into little snickers. "Nah, I don't got any funny jokes, I can't think that much. The plants are doing this by themselves 'cause I ain't stoppin' them." He watched them grow more and more and more up his limbs. "See? They're getting me..."

"..But they're pretty cool huh? Like, typically I can do whatever I want with them." He waggled his eyebrows, "I can grow whatever I want with them."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Shiloh could do whatever he wanted with those plants and Julian wondered if Shiloh knew about some of the kinds of porn that existed on the Internet. He elected not to ask, instead crossing his arms with mostly-feigned disinterest over the younger man's implied ability to grow marijuana plants out of his body.

"Yeah, yeah... I get it. So you just, what, generally sit around here and grow drugs on yourself all night?"

Julian wouldn't be able to say he disapproved.

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh waved his hand dismissively, "Oh no, no." He said like it was ludicrous, "Usually I don't come here at all. I only recently started the drug thing." He nodded affirmatively.

"Like, I got a boyfriend and stuff back home so I gotta go do that sort've stuff. And I got a turtle? And lots of fish, like, that takes a lot of time." He tapped his chin, "And I draw a lot, that's cool. Uh—" He squinted, "—Usually if I'm around Otherworld it's 'cause of Court stuff. But today I think I came here by total accident."

He shrugged, "Oops. But I guess this is your first time here, huh?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Yeah," he answered with a shrug. "Court stuff, though. You're magic royalty?"

melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"Yeeaaahhhh something like that." He waved his hand vaguely, "Like, I didn't choose to become a noble, nobility chose me." He gestured to himself with his thumb. "It really blows man."

He rubbed his nose.

"I mean, you get lots of cool s**t I guess?" He motioned to the flowers, "I can control plants and stuff and my blood tastes like maple syrup. But I also gotta do like, you know—courtly things." Which was to say he hadn't really done anything "courtly" at all. "We're supposed to be like? Otherworld ambassadors or something. Keep the peace, do the thing—but not keep all the peace, that's for the moonwalkers and the wargs—but you know. Normal royal stuff."

"There's also this spell thing too that like, when you use it on a Noble it compels them to obey you." He made eye contact with Julian, "No matter what. The guy who taught it to me made me tap dance on his living room table. But like, he also could've had me murder someone instead, so that was alright."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"Why's the Otherworld need ambassadors?" Julian asked, simply, after several minutes of thought.

melancholies

SHRUG EMOJI