Gina
Uriel shuts their eyes, turning their phone off with a sigh. 

They couldn't do much— they were a comforting presence, and they did not have the constitution or reflexes to help on the physical part. 

They could do only one thing, but they could do it well. Within the theatre of their mind, hands travelled along interconnected strings, following them until they reached a familiar knot: *Fennel.* 

*Are you there?* They flick the string, the vibrations carrying their message as a whisper in Fennel's dream— if only to get a response from them, to see what kind of activity their mind was putting on. It could be nothing, or... It could be a twisted nightmare that corroded their sanity. 

No one knew. No one except them, that is. 

Uriel gently runs their fingers along the edges of Fennel's mind, attempting to get a gleam of their dream.
Jason
Uriel flicks the string, and it makes no sound. It barely vibrates - it simply snaps and crumbles to dust and ash. If the mind had scents, it would smell like burning plastic.

...

Day 4,294,967,295.

Fennel is sitting on a rock, observing the barren landscape. The monotony has stopped getting to them. Their life now is nothing more than a numbing haze, wandering an endless, desolate wasteland in which all life is artificial and light brings only destruction.

They're used to it.

One of the black ash-clouds snaps, like a string, and vanishes.

Fennel snaps a twig in response.

...

The snapping sound reverberates back again and again, far longer than it should. Perhaps, somehow, Uriel got through after all.
Gina
It wouldn't be safe to go in. But— Fennel had been kind to them, so kind, and a deep part of Uriel's heart wanted to prove they could do something for good. Their powers were more than horrors that haunted Ares and Amelie and Danica's mind— perhaps they could be a hero too. 

Uriel sticks a hand in slowly, as if testing the water. Their imaginary heart beats in their incorporeal chest, and they dive into the dream.
Jason
Fennel's mind is brittle. Uriel is taking a risk - if it collapses, it'll collapse on them - but it's still stable enough that it can survive Uriel's presence.

There's no sun in Fennel's 'dream'. There are no clouds. Light is produced by an explosion swallowing perhaps a fourth of the sky, and clouds of ash and smoke are the closest approximation to real clouds anyone will see anywhere else.

There's no life. The landscape is barren and rocky. Trees are plastic, animals don't really move. It's a poor facsimile of life, populating a poor facsimile of reality. It's all fake.

Except, of course, for Fennel and Uriel - though at first glance, Fennel might seem to be just as false and lifeless as everything else.

They don't even turn their head to look when Uriel arrives.
Gina
There's silence save for the sound of rocks crunching underneath their heel. A spring of lavender falls to the ground, a sole beacon of life in this barren wasteland, and Uriel takes a silent seat next to Fennel. 

"*What did it do to you*?" They ask, and it's almost as difficult as speaking in the vacuum of space. Air itself barely feels real, the concept of particles moving in the sky too full of life for even this hell. 

And yet, the sentiment travels anyway. Here, they are their sun, the moon, the sky, and their words are commandments. This was their world, too.

A follow up question falls from their lips. *Where are we?* They ask, and kick a pebble.
Jason
*"I don't know,"* Fennel replies matter-of-factly, not even expending the effort to cast a gaze in Uriel's direction. Their voice is emotionless and flat - they seem not to care that they don't know what happened, or where they are.

*"I've been here for four billion, two hundred and ninety four million, nine hundred and sixty seven thousand and two hundred and ninety five days. You're the first thing here that's ever spoken to me. I don't think there's anyone around to name this place except us."*

In that sense, they do know where they are. It's all they've ever known. But the question, 'where are we'... It implies, perhaps, that there is somewhere else to be that is not here. And in that scheme of things, Fennel doesn't know.

*"You can, if you want."*
Gina
"*This place is you. It already has a name— Fennel.*"

Uriel pauses, toying their words in their mind before sending them into the dream like paper cranes taking flight. 

"*You saw something bad. Your mind formed this protective shell around itself, and you retreated into nothing to avoid everything.*" It was shell-shock. A way to deal with trauma, perhaps the mind's way to deal with the horrors of passing out while in the spot. 

Or perhaps it wasn't— after all, Uriel had never seen anything quite like this. But they had done something similar long ago, when the horrors of everyday life made them retreat into the comfortable recesses of their mind. 

Perhaps Fennel was doing the same. 

"*What happened to Amelie?*" They ask carefully. Jogging Fennel's memory of the events of the waking world needed to be done, but it was dangerous— who knew how their dream would react upon recalling such horrid events. 

Ignorance is bliss, but it was a luxury neither of them could afford.
Jason
Fennel couldn't refute it. After all, they don't remember much. Whatever their mind is protecting itself from, it's working well enough... If that was true, at least.

Still, Fennel learned something - they were inside their own head. No wonder no one else was there.

They calmly turn their head to look at their new companion. Uriel is there, but ephemeral - unquestionably alive, but only half there, like they could dissolve into wisps of dream-stuff at any moment.

Uriel, for their part, gets their first good look at Fennel's face. It's blank, emotionless - totally unlike how they've ever seen Fennel before. And something about Fennel's deadpan response just makes it even worse:

*"Who's Amelie?"*
Gina
"....Never mind." 

A full shut down of the outside world, then. A coma, not our of necessity, but for protection. A mental refusal to interact with reality. 

"Do you remember how you first entered this place?" 

Uriel's boots (boots— they always seemed to wear their usual outfits in dreams. Their modesty extended to the subconscious, funnily enough) tapped on the ground once, and a plant began to sprout from the ground. A single spring of fennel grew before their very eyes, as if fast-forwarded by a television remote. Time was meaningless in the land of dreams, and so, the sprout began to grow. 

"Time still flows in the outside world, despite the reprieve of reality this place seems to offer." Their voice echoes, and they turn to face Fennel. "Would you like to get out of here?"
Jason
The truth is, Fennel is only partly shut down as a defense mechanism. Their mind was damaged, not beyond repair entirely, but still severely - the outside world a figment of their imagination and their memories of it practically absent.

*"I've been here as long as I can remember,"* Fennel replied. They stepped forward to observe the sprouting fennel. It was alive. They pulled it out of the rock effortlessly, as though it were little more than air, and bit into the bulb. It tasted... They didn't have the words to describe it, but they did like it.

Fennel mulled over Uriel's offer for a moment. *"If there's something out there apart from this..."* They nod. *"I think I'd like that."*
Gina
Uriel nods solemnly, their cold pale hand taking Fennel's wrist and holding it up to their chest. 

"*You have to find that resolve in yourself. I can only guide you, but you have to be the one to take the leap and wake up.*" Their fingers drum against the inner side of Fennel's wrist, and the landscape around them begins to shift. 

The decrepit, withered emptiness began to fall away from the interior of Fennel's mind. Features of the landscape began to fall away and were swapped out like props in a play, with new features taking their place— cold concrete walls and a familiar hallway. 

In the middle of the floor were two dolls, collapsed on top of each other. One bearing a striking resemblance to Fennel, the other Amelie. 

The dolls eyes were empty, black buttons. Their skin was made of yarn, and they lacked the hands or feet to do anything besides slump on the ground, in the pile of injuries and Amelie and bone. 

*Remember. Remember. Remember.* 

It's echoing, but no longer from Uriel— the landscape itself is talking to Fennel, speaking with Uriel's same accented voice but coming from everywhere simultaneously. They were the landscape, and the landscape was them, and the landscape was giving Fennel a command: 

**Wake up.**
Jason
Uriel bent Fennel's mindscape drastically and suddenly, and Fennel could only watch - and perhaps feel a slight headache - as the world around them twisted and vanished into a scene they didn't recognize, and Uriel's voice spoke to them. In the dream itself, the conscious - if it can be called conscious - part of Fennel felt little, but the rest of Fennel's mind was creaking under the strain, having been bent out of shape by an outside force into something it no longer recognized as itself.

The landscape held, Uriel intertwined with it, until it could not hold any longer - and broke, exploding with the light of a thousand suns and expelling Uriel's influence on Fennel's mind entirely.

Whether Fennel would 'wake up' or not...

Fennel wasn't sure. They'd have to sit on that rock a few more days and think about it.