Facing your Inner Demons (Stitch, PM to join)

[Wrenmae]

He had been here before.

It wasn't the first thought he had, but it certainly resonated the strongest, echoing along the hard cut mountain pass and vanishing into an abyss of black and white. Jagged teeth shattered the earth around him and pierced the horizon, wet with sky's blood. He was alone here, for the moment, and knee deep in snow. Surprisingly, it was not cold. Instead the flakes clustered around his feet like expectant kittens, mewling for attention. Pushing through them he walked. He was shorter, he could feel it, in a body much smaller than the one he was used to having.

He was ten again, a gangly creature of bony arms and legs, pushing as hard as they could pump to a destination he didn't remember wanting to visit, scarcely remembered at all. The mountain pass was forbidding, the Kalea ranges themselves seeming to hover over him like spears, waiting for him to slip or fall, to die here as so many others had.

Each breath

Echoed

Each footfall

Resounded

It was loud, the only sounds in the entire world were his own explosive breaths and the movement of his body. Faster he ran, faster he stumbled, as though all of the horror and fear of every mind nipped and bit at his heels.

Heart in his throat, breath caught in the transition between throat and mouth, he burst around the corner of the pass and fell, twisting and spinning impossibly long, before hitting the ground. Buried. Failed. Quiet. Dead.

Above him the wind started to howl, a screaming gibberish of half words and anger. It called him to rise, to see, to look with eyes averted and shut. Beating, his heart played a stacatto beat to compliment the wailing northwind gripping at his underarms and back. Forced, pulling away at the dreamstuff around him, the Cheva roiling out of his control, Wrenmae was forced to look upon the sight ahead...a lonely wagon shackled to two dead horses.

Covered in ice it waited for him, the fabric drawn across the entrance seductively, a whispering sort of tranquility. Child as he was, Wrenmae could not help but stand and trudge to the scene of his singular most abominable and damning act. With frozen hands (Which did not feel cold) he wrapped his fingers around the edge of the flap. The material was coarse, slippery and frozen. The wagon had been left here a long time, always in the coldest part of his memories, shoved into silence. He began to pull it open.

"Stop," the voice was young, a reed of thin piping noise against the howl of the storm. Turning, Wrenmae looked upon himself, the child of ten that stood shivering in the snow. He was sick, obviously so and the paleness of his skin and the frosty kiss of blue around his lips did not disguise the fevered glare of his eyes or the red around his cheeks. What little color was left only heralded a rosy death, blossoming in the cheeks. "Don't open it Wrenmae, turn around and go back."

"Why?" he asked, now himself again, "Why can't I open this flap? Are you telling me I don't know what's inside?"

"Nothing is certain here," the child mused, chewing on the bottom of his lip, "You know what happened, why revisit?"

"He wants the story." The new voice startled both Wrenmae and the child, and they stared at the figure sitting atop the wagon. Clad in the finest of Wrenmae's clothes, including his cape and wide brimmed hat, the Storyteller clicked his heels together and grinned, his eyes obscured beneath the shadow of his hat. As hard as the wind blew, it did not blow it off. "Boy, oh Boy, I was wondering when you'd get the curiosity to roll on down to the memory vault, got bored waiting for you boyo!"

"Who are you?"

"The Storyteller, Tale Weaver, Gift of Gabber, the Recorder, Listener, or whatever you have the guts to pin onto my shirt of titles...I am all stories you know, and all desire to know more. So let's play it like it is, what's in the magic wagon?"

"Don't!" The child yelled, strafing forward with incredible speed and placing his frail body between Wrenmae and the opening. "You don't want what's inside."

"But I..." he looked at the opening, knowing what lay beyond. His brother, his sister, still frozen in the positions he'd left them. His sister would have died first, his brother soon to follow...both at his curse, at Vayt's request. He knew what was inside...why then was it so hard to open the flap?

He knew...that was why...he knew that they were not the only things behind the flap. There was something else. Someone else.

"Please," the child warned, shivering, "Just turn around, do not seek what you do not want."

"Knowledge is power lil guy," the Storyteller chuckled, gazing down at the drama with a grin spread across his face, "How does anyone move forward without knowing the shit they stepped in ages past?"

"Shut up!" the child growled furious so suddenly, his face twisting hatefully, "Help me stop him, you know what's frozen here, beyond. Not even you will be immune if its freed."

"Petch, kiddo, Petch and another Petch...Dunno if I want to play party to denial, we're cutting out an important player don'tcha think? Story's hardly as compellin without our antagonist to liven up the play. Live a little pipsqueak, sit back and enjoy plot twists once in awhile."

"It isn't just my brother and sister, is it?"


The child thought a moment before answering, nervously wringing bone white hands together, "No, it was never just them. If it was just about them we wouldn't be here now."

"So what, what is it that I don't understand? Why is this here? Why now?"

"Someone's scritch scratching at your doors boyo," the Storyteller crooned, falling back along the wagon top and rolling down. He was a flurry of cape and hat, still obscuring his eyes. His smile though, it was unnaturally long, a cut of white and glee below a shadowed nothingness. The space between the hat brim and the mouth...it was the Void. The Void Seidaku had taught him about so long ago. "Ole egg's a mite scrambled wouldn't you say?" Rapping his knuckles on Wrenmae's head the extravagant Storyteller pressed on. Surprisingly, it hurt...the knuckles made contact and hurt, and only in that moment did Wrenmae realize he hadn't felt anything else so far, not his clothes nor the wind or even the texture of the tent flap. He'd imagined it, imagined it all.

The Storyteller's grin stretched wider yet. "Someone give the boy a sweet, well played Wrenmae ole chap, straight on the miza there. This isn't real, not by a long shot, and all this razzmatazz with your inner voices? We're only dancing a jig to save time on qualifying details. You aren't repressing memory boyo, not anything so delightfully droll."

The Storyteller, he spoke like Vayt, the charm and lackadaisical phrasing almost grating despite the jocular joy in which the words were spoken. Madness, the Storyteller was utter madness.

"Please," the child said again, taking Wrenmae by the hand, "You don't want to know what you're holding back. Be as you are now, return with me." He glanced at the storyteller, small eyes almost comically furious at the grinning jester. "I can handle him, we can handle him...that part of you is not hard to please."

"So what about him?" Wrenmae pointed to the wagon, the flap, what lay beyond, all of it "I can't control him?"

The boy's face fell. The Storyteller laughed.

"Who is he?" Wrenmae asked, first to the child who would not meet his eyes, snow and ice lancing his brown hair like invasive beetles.

"Who?" Wrenmae asked again, turning to the Storyteller.

The jester only offered him a wider smile, impossibly wide, frighteningly wide, indicating the flap with an outstretched hand. "Well you know my answer boyo," he crooned, tipping his hat-void lower on his face, "If you want to know the true story, best to start at the source."

Neither of them touched the opening, Wrenmae doubted they could. What lay behind that flap was a part of him he kept away from even himself. But what could possess his own subconcious to hide a shard of his own nature? What was behind that curtain? His fingers twitched, begged to touch the material.

Above him, the world continued to howl.

It roared for answers.

[Stitch]

A sea of beautiful lights swirled together, looking like a brilliant color show to the untrained eye. If one could drift closer, if one could manage to look closer, they would be able to see something much different. The sea of color was something much more intricate once you looked past the mass, and delved deeper into the intricacies. It was like seeing a blanket, then peering a little closer just to notice it actually consisted of a thousand little strings. This was almost the exact same, actually. Leaning in close to the blanket of beautiful colors, one would be able to see they were all strings. Little strands of mystical, alluring colors, each and every string looking different from the one before. Some are faint and weak, while some ripple with pure and utter power. Some are blinding, while some are so small that even the trained eye has a hard time seeing them. All of these strings, they all danced, but they danced apart. Some came close, but they hardly ever touched. If you watched long enough though, sometimes they would rub together. Lightly, briefly, but there it was. This was a beautiful place, but a place that no mere mortal could visit.

Not unless they were dreaming.

Two of the Chavi clashed. An explosion of light rippled across the Chavena, the power of the two Chavi sparking off the other.

The blind man turned his head, staring off into the oppressive red distance. How odd. The rest of his sky wasn't that color. The rest of his sky was a crystal clear blue, like it always had been. It was the blue that had covered the sky when he had taken that walk with her, out in that snow covered field. So why was there a little piece of his sky over there that had turned red?

He bite his lower lip, a small moment of fear ringing across his face. Was it the witch? Had she found her way into his dreams yet again?

Don't be scared.

Stitch blinked his blind eyes, turning the glowing orbs, flickering them over the horizon. He was in a simple field, with hints of snow touching swaying golden stalks. He was alone. Who had spoken? Who was that voice in the back of his head that sounded so incredibly familiar? Chewing his lower lip, he took an unsure step forward, as if thinking it would send him closer to the quiet voice. It did nothing. He was still alone in the snowy field, with that looming red horizion in the far distance.

Don't be scared. I will handle her. I have been planning on it for a long time.

The blind man trembled, a flex rippling through his entire body. The world flexed around him, warping for a brief second, as if his muscles had flexed the very air. His head arched back, his eyes glowing a brighter blue for the faintest of seconds. Then, he lowered his head, and returned to staring at that red horizon. His look had changed from gentle to stoic, his eyes from curious to apathetic. Slowly, a small grin snaked it's way across his face, and then, he chuckled. As if magic had suddenly taken ahold of him, he vanished, blurring and ceasing to exist. Empty expanse was left, and slowly, the red horizon began to expand and take it over. That red sky crawled to consume the blue, until the entirity of the world existed as Wrenmae's.

--------

In the real world, Stitch was laying prone in his Icewatch bed. He was fully sprawled out, as if he had been struck in the skull, and had just collapsed back onto the mattress. In one of his open palms, a vial was laying, recently drained of liquid. It was a dose of sleeping poison, one that would keep him fully submerged in his dreams for at least four straight hours.

He was poisoning himself to dream.

--------

Behind Wrenmae, a man suddenly appeared. His presence would hopefully go un-noticed by the boy, as he had just been willed silently into existance. Blue and flickering eyes would regard the young child, ignoring the rest of those around him. It was just the tormented Wrename and Stitch, for now. He regarded him with that cold smile and those glowing blue eyes, studying him as if he was some sort of specimen.

Not her.

Then, suddenly, the smile would shift into something much more gentle. Much more loving. His face would slack into something that was gentle and caring, and with a quiet voice, he would speak. "Hello, milords." At that, he raised his head, nodding in turn at the other two present. "This one is pleased to meet you all."

This was random. And this was foreign. The tall man with the glowing blue eyes, he did not belong here. He wasn't a part of this, or them. But he had just waltzed in with such a casual and callous air. Was this just another piece of the dream to be puzzled out?

[Wrenmae]

It was not the voice that startled Wrenmae from his decision, more the displaced essence of something different. Briefly there was resistance, as if the world rippled and roiled within itself. The fragile nature of his Cheva shuddered with impact, pushed against the alien influence, and was allowed to swallow it whole. Now beyond space and time, in the midst of a scene as real as any metaphor, he was not alone.

There was himself, himself, himself, and another.

Turning, Wrenmae regarded the newcomer. This was not a part of him, nor a piece of the dreamscape. There was something alien to this one, an unexpected inclusion. He was taller than Wrenmae, standing with the kind of practiced ease a God might hold himself. There was confidence here, an assurance of self beyond the ken Wrenmae had access to. The landscape reacted to his presence, twisting at the behest of his own unconscious efforts. Snow and loose stone solidified, a clear glassy ice taking the ground in growing advance. Such a divided soul as Wrenmae's own could not hold itself against Stitch's own for long...there was too much indecision in him, a sense of incomplete that haunted his waking life and even the dream world around him.

"An intruder," the child's voice was firm, distrustful "You do not belong here." His first response was to fear, distrust, the guarded emotions of a skeptical child. In that sense, Wrenmae had never let this part of him go. The guilt that held a grip in his own being manifested as this being, a creature uncorrupted and yet on the edge of starvation. What he was, what he might have become, everything was within that one.

And above him...

The storyteller's grin never faltered, if anything growing wider, stretching the limits of what might be physically possible. At first he had said nothing, noting the stranger and his attention to Wrenmae, the undecided. Bowing with almost mock respect, the figure applauded the strange arrival. "My, my but you have some balls on you, don't you boyo? All posh and poise, this one's and milords, you don't belong here...but petch if you don't make an entrance."

Silence whispered from the wagon, an expectant understanding just possibly with a hint of fury. Impotent revelation, interrupted journeys...the Child crossed his cold, shivering arms and the Storyteller looked on, kicking his legs in a slow pattern against the wagon's canvas roof.

"Who are you..." Wrenmae asked at last, almost afraid to know. It felt embarrassing, here among his own internal dilemmas and in attendance by a perfect stranger. "I, apologize for this, all of this. My name is Wren-"

"Gyptus" the child interjected pointedly, the Storyteller just laughed.

"Wrenmae." the Dreamer asserted, biting his bottom lip in both shame and concentration. Everything here was two sided, double-meaning'd and valued. He could not afford to say anything loosely, the capabilities of his other 'selves' had not yet made themselves manifest.

"Who are you?"