Open Journey of the Wandering Mind

Bizarre dreams of a confused man

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Herein lies the realm of dreams, where dreamers who are scattered all over the world in the physical can come together in the mysterious world of dreams. Remember, unless one is a Dreamwalker, there is no control over dreams. Ever. Anything can happen, and by threading a dream, you are subject to whomever can walk dreams and the whims of Storytellers.

Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Wikus on December 12th, 2015, 4:27 pm

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6th-Winter-515



“It smells delicious!” said Wikus once he entered the pavilion. A hot and spicy smell flooded the large refuge; all the walls rolled up to only enhance the feeling of flow and unity present in the family he peaked. Eager to taste the dinner made for the Ankal by the grateful subordinates, he’d bow down to remove the boots, which came off surprisingly easy and allowed his now bare feet to feel the warm and furry texture of the rugs that covered the floor. Aware of the pressure his family was applying on him, he’d shake his head and laugh in order to excuse himself for the delay – as without the Ankal, dinner could not begin. The details of the pavilion were unknown to him, the colors of the rugs or the textile walls were none unless his eyes stubbornly insisted on capturing the details, and even then he’d find they were similar and somewhat assumed by him. It was the same pavilion he had walked every day of his life, having been born and raised between those frail walls he could recognize by mere touch. As of now there wasn’t a single reason for him to control his surrounding, instead being driven by the hunger his stomach begged for him to satisfy. Without delay, he proceeded towards the large square table that hosted his family.

Everything was in its place. The clay bowls were full, the wooden utensils were resting to their sides, and the complimenting meals waited in pairs in the center of the table for those whom found attraction in their aromatic steam to claim a part in their respective plates. The same meal as the day before, as the season before since the day he was born. The same meal he had eaten all his life was once again served for him, which was well welcome by his part. Why eat something else when you’ve already tasted perfection itself? Drums and flutes played from somewhere, perhaps outside the pavilion’s walls and into the void he just escaped moments ago, giving a jolly soundtrack to the family gathering just as every evening. “It smells delicious!” he said once again, unaware that his statement was repeating itself in tone and wording alike. He walked past the guests towards the other end of the table, his hand would gently caress the fur of the family in hopes of proving their meaning to him and somewhat compensate them for the waiting. And finally he reached his spot, where he sat and once again repeated his line. “It smells delicious!”

The hyenas’ droll was already hanging from their snouts, bubbling as they too were starving and had stared desperately at their meals, almost unable to bear the usual delay from the Ankal. And so, the moment the Ankal’s rear rested on the wooden chair, every single one of them attacked their meals. Wikus showed no moderation in his devouring neither, the cup before him being instantly invaded by his bare hand, grabbing the aromatic and hot grass and shoving it in his mouth until his jaw could barely chew the bitter paste. He ate and ate, and no matter how much of the grass he ate the food never seemed to wane. Eventually he found himself thirsty, and so he drank of the brown water that rested in a wide plate with the help of a spoon, which helped him process the grass and somewhat waned his hunger. Meanwhile, the hyenas were literally ravaging the bowls, having taken hold of them between their teeth as their waved them through the air as if tearing a hunted corpse. They sure were hungry today he though as he inspected each one of them, easily recognizing whom was whom by the location of the dark spots of their fur.

To complement the grass, his hand ran deep in the plate of mud, which was hot and moist just as he liked it. The handful traveled towards his mouth, some amount slipping through his fingers and falling on the cup of grass, which instantly ignited the hyenas’ laughter and by consequence, his own. They were always teasing him like that, every night laughing at how he was unable to avoid the mud from splashing on his grass. The two meals weren’t supposed to be mixed! The only ones whom did so were madmen or freaks, and this family wasn’t a refuge for those kinds of beings. After swallowing the extremely sweet mud and removing the fallen remains from his grass, he kept on filling his stomach. His breathing had change with each bite, now being forceful and insufficient as his body struggled to upkeep calm under such large amounts of feed, the tent itself heaving in synch with his lungs, walls and roof expanding and contracting to almost smother the family within. The soundtrack in the background kept on escalating on volume as the feast continued, eventually smothering the rabid sounds of the hyenas that were now ravaging the walls and beams, hanging from walls and ceiling by maintaining their teeth clenched around whatever they sought to devour next. The temperature was increasing as well, Wikus damped in sweat as he carried on with his infinite eating, the fire of the kitchen area roaring angrily and slowly starting to lose control behind him and igniting the tent. The chaos and confusion were, however, not in Wikus’ mind. His objective was to fill the hunger that didn’t quite seem to wane. He felt the bowl from which he ate was about to be finished, and so, as the fire roared just a feet away behind him and consumed everything in its path, as his ears bled from the loudness of the drumming and his brain was pieced due to the frenetic flute, as the hyenas ripped through beams and cloths to expose a dark void that laid past the borders and safety of the tent, he finally raised the bowl to end the feast with a last mouthful of grass.



And so it came to an end. Everything faded once his empty bowl slammed back in the empty table. The soundtrack was gone, the unknown drummer and flutist having gone on somewhere else. The fire was completely extinguished, no longer giving warmth and instead leaving the pavilion as cold as the outdoors. The pavilion no longer fell in pieces, nor showed signs of the terrifying darkness it revealed outside, no longer heaving but calmly swaying with the breeze. The hyenas were full and satisfied, having retired to their own bedrooms and, in consequence, having rolled down the walls. The lanterns he assumed were there to give light were extinguished too, now leaving the entire pavilion in the darkness, with only enough light to see that he was once again alone in the nothingness.

Finding himself alone at the table immediately submerged him in sadness, to the point that he had to bring his palms to his hand to suffocate the wails he produced as he wept. How he longed to be appreciated by his family, yet every night he couldn’t completely satisfy them. If only he had eaten faster, if only he had arrived sooner..! Perhaps if he was a better man he could manage to escape the lonely darkness that was now the table, trapped between rolled down walls that didn’t show pity for such goof as himself. He had to leave the table with the others, he had to get in his bed before the light waned and the cold descended, yet he simply couldn’t make it on time. There was no place for him here once again, the same situation repeating itself day after day since the day he was born, yet never remembering how horrible it felt to be left out the day previous, never recalling the haste he must take in order to make it on time just once.

Everything was still, everyone was silent. He was out of place there, and there was no way to fix it. Standing up, he made his way towards the end of the pavilion, towards the exit he had to cross in order to not disturb his family. He had to fix this, he thought, as he stood before the exit. He was horribly sad, but he was scared even further. There wasn’t a single place he felt safe but this pavilion, his home. Leaving was terrifying. He took a deep breath and held it, simply staring at the cloth door that was stood between the bizarre and dangerous outside world and the familiar and safe pavilion. Tears ran down his cheeks as he finally parted the cloth and took the step he feared more than anything else in the world.
Last edited by Wikus on December 19th, 2015, 3:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Ornea on December 14th, 2015, 3:32 pm

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Ornea was dreaming about the end of Mount Skyinarta, in Wind Reach in the northern part of Kalea. In her dream, the volcano that had awakened in the earth beneath the city after Ivak’s dramatic escape in the djed storm of 212 AV had finally decided to get down to business, and finish the city of the Inarta. The landslides, tremors and abnormal heat that had been going on for a long time had only been the first name. What she witnessed now was the real thing. The volcano was spewing out fire in mindless rage, streams of red hot magma ran down the slopes, and everything was consumed.

It was the end of the world she had known. But not the end of the Inarta.

“I am Inarta. I am the eagle. Thus I can fly.” She heard her own voice echo like a hoarse raptors call through her dream. And the echo went out to the edge of the world and back, and it resounded in her, as she spread her huge wings and started to circle around in the air with the others. She saw her whole life burn. Ashes to ashes. Ivak was gone, Mount Sky was gone too, but the Inarta had been saved by the Wind Eagles.

The eagles, always the eagles. They had foreseen this possibility, in the dream she felt convinced of that. They had tried. They had searched for Ivak. They had searched for places where their people could move in case the worst would happen. She knew, in the dream, that this was the reason for why some of them had been hunting farther and farther away from their home, sometimes for unusually long period of time.


In the dream it seemed perfectly natural that she was now a wind eagle. She didn’t question it.

A being came out from the sheltering tent that had emerged down there in the shadows in the outskirts of her vision; dark in the darkness it stood there like waiting for something ... Zith! The conclusion was instantaneous. Fire and zith, zith and fire, these had been the threats for a long enough time to make it natural to assume that everything that wasn’t fire must be zith.

The eagles couldn’t carry them all. The Inarta refugees who were on horseback or even on foot would have to find their way through the wilds, down to the coast. But the wilderness was infested with zith colonies these days. It was only to expect that the evil beings would try to take advantage of the situation. And here she had spotted the first of the winged monsters now ...

Ornea fixed her piercing eagle gaze on the being down there, as she broke out of the circle of giant raptors and dove through the air towards her target, her beak still closed, but her talons already prepared to grab the prey, snatch it off the ground and carry it away. Exactly what she would do with the assumed zith if she managed to catch it wasn’t clear to her yet. She was just intent on catching it. If it would stand still, not observing her, she would strike like lightning and try her best to make quick work of it before it even understood what happened. If it detected her and started to run she would follow and hunt it, relentlessly and without mercy. And if it didn’t run, but boldly took to the air and tried to attack her, she was going to show it that more than one can fight in flight.

In short, she aimed to give the assumed zith that had come out from the assumed zith tent down there the shock of its life! And it's death ...

OOCYou were right. It’s a dangerous dream outside the tent ;)
...
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Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Wikus on December 14th, 2015, 5:37 pm

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His world was his tent, his pavilion.

Long and weary seasons he had hid in the textile walls like a child, no matter how gray his hair became, how wrinkled his skin turned. Whoever raised those beams, whoever had woven those walls, it was a mystery he didn’t wish to unveil. He was born inside, and only wished to one day fall dead inside, never having left, never having seen what laid outside, never having seen his pavilion fade away in the distance. The Pavilion was a part of him, embedded so deep within that life itself became an obstacle, that living and breathing was unnatural unless the pavilion itself breathed with him. How he longed for eternity, to never wither, to never die, to never leave the comfortable warmth of his home. He knew all this – his whole life revolved around this notion. So why did he have a family when it could have been only him in the pavilion? Why did he raise his children so that they could use the pavilion instead of keeping it for himself? How ungrateful they were! Every night, every single night they slept under its care, under its protection! How many days would they last without that roof over their heads, without its hearth to warm their scalps? And where were they now that the Pavilion needed them!? They took its care, they grew and they left without ever returning the favor. "Damned be the children", he thought, "Damned be my selfish children". It irked at him, the notion of ungratefulness they displayed towards him, towards the Pavilion. It irked him so deeply that he forgot it was him the one looking outside, the one taking a step off the soft rug and into the burning rocks that scarred his feet and charred his flesh. It was him the one whom abandoned his home while blaming those who left before him, excusing and forgiving himself up until he finally realized that this… was his own mistake.

No longer he felt home. No longer he knew the color of the walls, the softness of the rug, the sound of the breeze filtering and dancing inside. He had left a part of him behind, leaving him naked and scarred, empty and weary. Pain and lonesomeness was the only thing he felt now that he looked at the red chaos ahead – the life he had to lead now.

Wikus looked behind, barely able to move his neck now that he was as weary as he felt. The Pavilion had collapsed behind him, many ages ago. It died the moment he stepped out, betrayed by its own Ankal, and now burned under the heat. And as it burned, it slowly sank into the rocks, absorbed into the world to never return, a burial done now that its Ankal no longer felt satisfied with what laid inside. Wikus slowly returned his sight forward, for he no longer wished to remember.

Chaos was indeed all around. Menacing fires burned everywhere, extinguishing hope itself. Smoke flooded the air, tainting and dyeing whatever was left of the world in black nothingness. Many wished to escape it, fleeing with neighing horses or bleeding feet, some dragging backpacks the size of mountains while others simply covered their eyes in hopes of escape. Those whom didn’t wish to fight simply walked to the fires and tossed themselves inside, accepting their fate sheepishly. Oh, fools! Why did you leave the safety of your tents? Don’t you know that only fire awaits? Only a few lucky ones flew through the ashen skies, born with wings capable of soaring out even if the situation was as dire as it was now.

But Wikus’ wings were gone. His Pavilion once gave them to him, two strong wings capable of raising a tent or destroy it, of raising children or burying them. Those wings were his hands, strong and firm, undoubting and unsatisfied, that once pampered beams and now instead were consumed to nothingness, as the same pavilion that gifted them had taken them back. Armless and old, he felt like the prey for the very first time. Up from the skies came his doom, a gigantic eagle that wished to end him just as he himself had ended his tent. It was terrifying. His arms weren’t there to defend him, his pavilion not being there to protect him. He had only his legs, which shake with every lunge he gave, threatening a collapse from which he couldn’t stand up again. The gray hair waved through the air, threatening to fall off once and for all, kidnapped by the burning breeze. The rocky ground was slowly crushing his bones as he ran, his legs becoming harder and harder to move, his breathing becoming heavier to catch. Inevitably he looked behind, mistake that brought tears to his eyes.

It was all there – the fire, the lava, the rocks and the smoke. All to compliment the fierce and colossal bird that was to capture him, to crush him and end his misery once and for all. But even in the most desperate situation, he was still willing to fight, perhaps because he held the knowledge that he would only have to take a few more lunges until it all ended, afterwards being able to claim hypocritically that he fought until the end and chuckle, able to assure he did not regret a thing when instead he had regretted every moment spent outside his pavilion. A dozen yards forth he saw a group of that fleeing and morose nation, and in his last hopes, he yelled for help. Only a newborn’s wail came out of him.


OOCHaha! I loved your reply :D
Last edited by Wikus on December 19th, 2015, 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Ornea on December 19th, 2015, 3:11 pm

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Ornea-turned-eagle followed running figure much like a hunting raptor following a fleeing hare. The excitement of hunting at high speed flooded her. Her thoughts narrowed down to one single goal. They fell into a rhythm that went on repeat in her mind, like chanting to a monotone drum.

Catch it
Get it
Catch it and get it
Catch it
Get it
Catch it and get it


The target kept running and she kept chasing after it, until it felt like it had gone on forever. There was no normal sense of time and room. She wasn’t sure if she had decreased the distance between them, or if the running being was still out of range. Sometimes it looked like the prey was nearly within reach, and she would soon be able to pounce on it and grab it with her clawed talons . But sometimes it looked far away an out of reach, like it would disappear over the horizon. Her vision oscillated between these two extremes, zooming in and out, seeming near and far away, going back and forth, like an invisible spring sent the prey within range just to snatch it away again.

Far away
Near
There and back


The prey gave a sound like baby’s wail. As the tiny sound spread through the world it changed and started to sound like maddening, deafening twitter. A cloud of birds formed beneath the sky and the smoke.

The world started to slow down, heartbeat by heartbeat. The smoke was everywhere and the air seemed to thicken. The flight of the giant eagle that was her started to feel like swimming under water. The odd “water” that wasn’t water seemed to thicken too, and soon she was moving so slowly that she felt like she was passing through a layer of glue. But it became worse. The glue seemed to thicken too. It went nearly impossible to move.

Finally everything stopped, frozen in place.

The volcano rumbled. Ornea-the-eagle opened her beak and let out a huge flame of fire.

OOCAs this is a dream, feel free to (lightly) control my PC if you need it to drive things on.
...
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Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Wikus on January 11th, 2016, 7:44 pm

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Slower and slower, the world was frozen in time apparently forever. Wikus could breathe the smoke, choke on it and die on it for the rest of the eternity. He could feel the heat scorching his flesh, eating away his skin and his hair in a painful agony that would never leave. In a way, he knew his destiny was this one, and that he’d never escape this place no matter what happened. Buried in the rock, stampeded by the fire, drowned in tine he would remain from now on until the world crumbled into pieces one day far away. Closing his eyes, he finally channeled the calm now that he accepted the prison and gladly accepted the chains of time that were binding him in place. He closed his eyes and kept them closed, perhaps for chimes, perhaps for days or perhaps for centuries. Time was deluded as much as he was confused, only after the eternity waited in the darkness that dwelled in his closed eyelids he opened them again.

Nothing was still anymore, or so he thought. The world wasn’t moving, everything having remained in its place just as it was before his improvised hibernation. His eyes looked down only to discover that it wasn’t the world moving, but only him sinking in the rock. How? What type of rocks slowly swallows a man? As he slowly descended upon the rock, the truth was slowly revealed. The rock was not rock, it was nothing but a pit filled with an infinite amount of abominations, worms that danced below his feet to their meal as their sound slowly became known to his ears. Panicking, desperate to free himself from this new fate that scared him, feeling how the worms eagerly pecked at his flesh and tore him apart bit by bit, he turned around to seek help from the very eagle that craved his death as much as the worms below him. Reaching out pathetically with the remains of his limbs as he attempted to stir away from the creatures, he could only see how the flame was slowly approaching him as it came out of the giant eagle’s beak. The flame was too slow, too chained to the rules of time that somehow ignored him. He begged in yells, in desperate cries for the flame to reach him and burn him alive, to burn away his eyes and his flesh so that he could at least not feel what was slowly devouring him.


“No… Not again… I did my part already!” Spoke a voice, perhaps his own yet not coming from his mouth. “I am not that anymore!” The voice spoke the words caught in the back of his mind, speaking his thoughts as instead he tried to hold on to something, anything really, as now he felt how his head was about to be submersed in the mistakes of ages past. In a last attempt, his teeth came into play as now they attempted to bite the life out of the foul creatures no matter how disgusting their smell or how unnatural their texture. And so he tried to gasp his last breath before he was completely lost in the nothingness that awaited below him, feeling betrayed and backstabbed by the world, swearing vengeance no matter how futile such promise was.

However, once the tip of his nose was swallowed by the pool of worms, his legs were suddenly wrapped around a… saddle? Instinctively, he pressed his heels in order to tap the unknown creature’s flesh, and finally he broke free. The worms were gone, and instead he rose up from the poor and up into the skies in the mount. Time was restored, once again the thunderous volcano shattering one’s mind with its loudness, once again the fire of the eagle flying onward to devour him. The horse rose up to the skies in a strange matter, contorting and twisting as the sound of its strangely moist body colliding against the rock. The horse gave his body to the flame, absorbing the heat as such charred its dark grey flesh, the creature shrieking out as loud as the volcano itself. Wikus finally looked down to finally understand. It wasn’t a horse he had found inside the pool of worms, but he had found a gigantic worm that he now rode. Its head was that of a dead horse, decrepit and rotten that hanged from the large cylindrical body that twisted under the heat. Wikus wasn’t on a straddle, but instead only his upper body remained for him as the lower body had sunk into the creature’s body, mending them together as one.

“They all deserved it!” he heard his voice yell from somewhere. “You all deserve me!”

Secret :
Likewise - take full control if you want. You are also free to change the scenery as its getting very weird - its a dream, after all. Sorry for the delay!
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Journey of the Wandering Mind

Postby Ornea on January 23rd, 2016, 10:18 am

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With the composure of a true eagle, Ornea had followed the whole amazing process from above. The being she had chased had been sucked into earth itself. She had started to fly in a circle above the spot where she had seen him sink and disappear. Faster and faster and faster she flew, high up in the dark and sooty air. Her wingspan was enormous and she flew with the full power of a wind eagle in it’s prime. And the air itself started to follow her, and as she flew around and round and round and round like a planet in a fixed orbit, the air took up the movement and joined in, reinforced it and added in it’s own power.

She flew and she spun, in a wide circle high up in the sky, pulling the wind with her as well as being carried by it.

With the eagle eyes of her dream she looked through earth and stone and followed what happened. She was an eagle, free from human fear, and didn't flinch. Finally the earth opened again, but what had gone in wasn’t what came out.

When Ornea-the-eagle spotted the big tasty worm she reacted just like any bird spotting a fat worm. Her basic survival instinct kicked in automatically. She knew she was going to catch this worm and eat it !

Being an eagle she didn’t question its looks. A human being might have felt disgusted by the worm’s head, looking just like a decaying horse head. But Ornea-the-eagle this wasn’t relevant and she didn’t even try to figure out what it resembled. To her it was just the worms head. A human being might have felt like retching at the mere thought of this meal. A human being might have felt terrified by the whole transformation process she had witnessed, and how the two headed worm-being that had arisen from the innards of earth seemed to point both it’s two heads toward her, one worse than the other.

But Ornea-the-eagle wasn’t human in her dream.

She was eagle. Wind-eagle.

What she saw was that her prey had grown bigger and fatter and so it’s worth from eagle point of view had increased tremendously. It had transformed from just one general suspect zith to a top class eagle-dinner.

It goes without saying that she immediately fixed her gaze on the prey and dove towards it without hesitation, intent on catching it, killing it and devouring it. Her goal was the fat worm though, not the tiny being attached to it.

She swooped down, connected with the prey like a cannon bullet hitting it’s goal, promptly buried her sharp talons in its flesh for maximal hold, and started to flap her huge and powerful wings in order to fly away with the catch.

However, when she had dove down into the center of her vision, and broke the contact with the wind she had established when circling higher up, the wind also broke it’s contact with her and was no longer to be ruled. Free now, it roared and gained greater force, taking the form of a tornado. Her dive into the eye of the storm had brought her to the prey, but down there the wind was closer and when she pounced, it pushed her out of her course a little bit, and instead of landing on the tasty worm she had landed on the smaller part on top of it. It was this smaller, humanoid-like part she had sunk her talons in. And so it was this part of the being she was holding on to firmly, as she started to move them upwards.

At this point the tornado took over and they were sucked up in it and whirled away, wind eagle and worm-being alike, swirling mindlessly at high speed, in wider and wider circles, going higher and higher up through the air. Her vision became a blur and she couldn’t see the environment clearly anymore, not the volcano, not the landscape, not the fleeing Inarta people, nothing. All she could hear was the wind. All she could feel was the movement of her huge wings, and the grip of her talons in the flesh of whatever she had pounced on. This grip was so solid that it felt like they were merged, no longer eagle and prey, but something new, unexpected, and winged.
...
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