Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)
<h1 id="title">Elliquiy Role Playing Forums</h1>
		<h2 id="linktree">Play-By-Post: Bondage, D/s, S&amp;M =&gt; Bondage: Human Solos =&gt; Topic started by: Oniya on 24-09-2009, 17:34:41</h2>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>24-09-2009, 17:34:41</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				It was hard to tell how long she had been walking.&nbsp; She couldn't see the sun, and the way the light changed didn't seem to follow the usual patterns.&nbsp; More than once, she was sure that she had seen the shadows shift by a quarter turn in the time it took to cross a distance shorter than a city block.<br><br>Not that she was in a city - at least, not now.&nbsp; There had been a city a while ago, full of glass buildings that reflected everything but her face.&nbsp; Then she had crossed a street and the buildings had mutated into trees - still apparently glass as far as she could tell - but when she looked behind her, the strange forest stretched as far as she could see.<br><br>Things like that had happened periodically after that.&nbsp; It got dark occasionally, but she couldn't tell how long that lasted.&nbsp; She didn't feel tired, or hungry, or thirsty.&nbsp; Even her feet didn't protest when she continued walking.&nbsp; But as strange as her surroundings were, no one else seemed to notice.<br><br>Yes, there were others there - after a fashion.&nbsp; When the forest had changed into squat fungoid growths, and then into houses perched on short columns like elephant legs, she had encountered the first 'people'.&nbsp; They looked normal enough, but no matter what she said to them, none would admit the existence of the glass forest or the empty city.&nbsp; The village 'was as it had always been', surrounded by fields of luminous crops.&nbsp; Even more disturbing was the fact that when she left a person and returned to speak with them later, it was as if they had never met her before.<br><br><em>In a dimly lit room, as alien in its own way as the bizarre lands, a young woman lay under a white sheet.&nbsp; Dark hair formed a soft cloud around her face.&nbsp; The gentle rise and fall of her chest was the only movement.&nbsp; Were it not for the wires and monitors attached to her, one might think her merely asleep.&nbsp; A chart at the foot of the bed showed reports over the course of several weeks, along with a name: Tanya Brooks.</em>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>26-09-2009, 13:59:16</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Godzilla was destroying Tokyo, again, in the dreams of a Japanese film student Daniel had been hoping to get to know better.&nbsp; Daniel sighed in irritation, and slid shut the Shoji screen to cover the sight of the immense radioactive beast.&nbsp; He attempted, once again, to distract Suki with a fine plum wine he'd brought from the dream of an American veteran whose fond memories of his shore leave in Japan had included an exquisite collection of food and drink sweetened by nostalgia.&nbsp; But Suki would not be distracted by wine, or his conversation, and opened the screen again, armed with her camera and determination to catch the monster on film.<br><br>For a moment, Daniel considered enlarging himself to monstrous proportions, banishing the creature from Suki's dreams before he giving up entirely on the night's planned seduction.&nbsp; He said goodbye to the girl, who paid him no attention, before leaving her apartment and walking down the spiraling staircase to emerge onto the streets below.&nbsp; A panicked mob fled, but since they weren't the focus of Suki's dream at the moment they were only human-shaped things, featureless and indistinguishable, caricatures of people in identical blue-gray clothes.&nbsp; Daniel's red silk shirt and white slacks stood out in the crowd like a single drop of blood on snow moving through the streets as he retraced his steps back to the door he'd left in Suki's dreamscape.<br><br>The door had been mutated by the random fluctuations of the dream into the shape of a revolving turnstile in the middle of the street, with velvet ropes forming a line leading to it and from it.&nbsp; Daniel pushed the silver bar of the stile with a last, backwards glance at the monster, at Suki's apartment, at six wasted months in Japan.<br><br>He left the dream, sealing shut the breach in Suki's mind with the careless ease of long practice as he left.&nbsp; Daniel was adrift on the ethereal sea, Suki's Tokyo drifting behind him into a dim pinpoint of light.&nbsp; Surrounding him were brilliant constellations of multicolored stars that winked in and out with orgasmic fury.&nbsp; Each represented a dreaming mind and the fantastic landscape it sculpted about itself as it dreamed.&nbsp; Worlds of wonder and terror, jumbled sequences and prophetic warnings, girls that got away, girls that never were.&nbsp; And, at the center of the disparate worlds, Daniel.<br><br>He appeared to be a ginger-haired man in his early middle ages, that was how he appeared to the minds whose dreams he invaded and helped to shape.&nbsp; Most people would have been prepared to say that his features were handsome enough, if a little too lean and wolfish at times.&nbsp; He had dark eyes and a perpetually thoughtful expression, frown lines at the corners of his thin lips, and fine, shapely hands.&nbsp; He wore a suit with a crimson shirt and tie, and his jacket and slacks were white.&nbsp; Pinned to his tie was a tack with a single cut emerald, a miniature simulacrum of the emerald pendant he wore around the neck of his sleeping body, back in Dorset.&nbsp; It was to the emerald he drew his will as he prepared to travel back to his sleeping body after his adventure in Japan.<br><br>After a long moment, the shifting constellations of Eastern dreams began to bleed into red-shifting vistas of receding objects.&nbsp; Daniel was never certain if he moved through the ethereal sea, or if he moved the collective unconscious mind of the world around him whilst staying in exactly the same place.&nbsp; He didn't suppose it made a difference to anyone but himself, and in only an academic context even there, but whatever the answer was would tend to define his nature as a being that could enter awake into the dreams of others.&nbsp; Did he move amongst them, or did he move them about himself?<br><br>Daniel stopped on the way back to his body to visit the American veteran and return his bottle of plum wine.&nbsp; The tea house he'd been dreaming of had been replaced by a dream of the veteran, in the body of a teenager, shaping clay on a potter's wheel underwater, making bowls and vases for a school of bare-breasted mermaids.<br><br>The doorway into the veteran's dream was in the shape of a giant clam shell, such from which Venus emerged in Bottecelli's famous painting.&nbsp; Daniel let the wine bottle drift on the undersea currents, and waved in polite familiarity to the sculpting teenager.&nbsp; The teenager looked at Daniel with nonrecognition, even a trace of hostility as several of the mermaids turned to Daniel and began beckoning that he should join.&nbsp; Daniel willed into the emerald, and changed the mermaids by giving them fine legs, rounded hips, and other important feminine attributes.&nbsp; The teenager would thank him for it later, he was sure.<br><br>No, he wouldn't he thought to himself once he had left the underwater vista.&nbsp; He wouldn't even remember Daniel the next time he visited his dream, just as he hadn't known the man with whom he'd had wine at the Japanese teahouse where the geisha danced.&nbsp; No dreamer had ever remembered him upon waking, upon the shifting of their own personal dreamspace into a new reality, a new logic, a new story.&nbsp; It had pained him to discover years ago that despite all of the power he had to shape dreams, he was ever nothing but an outsider, a stranger to the sleeping minds he touched.&nbsp; <br><br>Daniel surrendered his will to the emerald, and let himself drift on the unseen currents in the swirling ethereal sea.&nbsp; He was pulled by the gravity of strong minds, rebuffed by the metallic-scented borders of nightmares, and went this way and that without care or concern.&nbsp; He sought out a new mind to visit without care for the particulars of his destination, and he saw the dreaming mind as he approached it, filling his vision of the horizon like an oncoming storm, and he touched its crystalline surface and fell in to a dream of houses perched on squat gray columns.&nbsp; He saw the woman, walking through this strange land, and fell in to walking at her side, a blackthorn walking stick in his hand.<br><br>"Hello," he said in the mild accent of an English gentleman.&nbsp; "Been walking long?"
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>26-09-2009, 19:43:02</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"I think so," Tanya responded.&nbsp; "Hard to tell, really."&nbsp; The stranger looked out of place - but what would be 'in place' where she was?&nbsp; He could be another one of the population - or the first person she was meeting in some other permutation of the bizarre landscape.<br><br>She looked around.&nbsp; The fields were releasing glowing balloon-like - were they fruits? - into the air, where they hovered like small moons.&nbsp; Another change.&nbsp; She knew it would be no use to try to return to the village at this point.&nbsp; It had already vanished into the endless expanse of the fields, even though she had only taken a few score steps beyond the last house.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>27-09-2009, 14:57:55</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				"Then I say you have earned a rest," Daniel said.&nbsp; When he turned to face her, she could see that he held in his other hand a wicker picnic basket with a fastened lid.&nbsp; The smell of hot food wafted from within, and it was as if the smell of food itself brought with it the sensation of hunger and thirst.&nbsp; He handed her the basket, and swept his hand over the field of blossoming sky balloons.&nbsp; All at once the ground beneath their feet resolved into a grassy field at the side of a crystalline lake fed by a tranquil stream.&nbsp; Wildflowers bloomed at their feet, and the drifting balloons transformed mid flight into twittering birds.<br><br>"My name is Daniel.&nbsp; Would you like to share my lunch?"
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>27-09-2009, 19:27:02</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				This was the first time that a sudden change had been caused by something Tanya could identify.&nbsp; Before, they had seemed to occur randomly - at the very least, there hadn't been any sort of signal.<br><br>"I'm - I'm Tanya," she said as she took the basket and seated herself among the flowers.&nbsp; "And thank you.&nbsp; You're - not from the village, are you."&nbsp; It was more of a statement than a question.&nbsp; Even with this small interaction, she could sense an extra 'depth' to Daniel.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>28-09-2009, 02:43:41</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Not as such, no," Daniel said as he began unpacking the basket.&nbsp; Hot roast beef, doughy rolls, a jar of mustard and the fixings for sandwiches.&nbsp; Two long-stemmed wineglasses, and a bottle of some tasty French table wine completed the meal.&nbsp; <br><br>"I'm from Liverpool, actually.&nbsp; I'm just in for a bit of a visit.&nbsp; Limited engagement, one night only."
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>28-09-2009, 19:14:36</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Tanya looked back up at him, brushing brown curls out of her face and revealing crystalline blue eyes.&nbsp; "One night?" she asked.&nbsp; "You mean - a night here?&nbsp; It doesn't get <em>really</em> dark that often - it has once or twice, but I don't think it was long enough to really be night."<br><br>She looked down again, brushing her hands on her jeans before plucking a piece of grass and twisting it absently.&nbsp; "That's why I don't know how long I've been walking."<br><br>The gesture made her look a little younger, almost like a teenager running away from home, even though her height and curves put her somewhere in her early twenties.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>28-09-2009, 20:55:38</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Daniel smiled, and poured wine for both of them.&nbsp; "I have a feeling that the sun will set and true night will fall after a time, my dear.&nbsp; But I have it on good authority that the moon and the stars will be quite beautiful."<br><br>Eating a bit of dreamfood, he reclined among the grasses, glancing upwards to draw the sun in the sky as it descended towards the horizon in late afternoon.&nbsp; "Almost as beautiful as you are, if I may be so fresh."
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>28-09-2009, 21:42:45</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Tanya felt a blush creep over her face - another unusual thing in this world where everything seemed to maintain a rather nondescript and temperate climate.&nbsp; She nibbled at a roll to excuse her momentary silence.&nbsp; To her surprise, it was still warm, as if just from the bakery.<br><br>"So - if you're just here for the day - do you know where <em>this</em> is?"
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>29-09-2009, 02:50:52</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Daniel ate himself, letting her question go unanswered for a moment.&nbsp; It was not unexpected a question, and yet he still had no answer for it that satisfied him, nevermind those that asked it of him.<br><br>"Where is a question," he began, in a slow, deliberate voice, "that only makes sense within context.&nbsp; If the entire universe consisted of a blade of grass, then where is the blade of grass?&nbsp; In relation to what? <br><br>"Similarly, your question is without a context, because the 'where' of this place is part of what is, for all intents and purposes, the only place in the universe.&nbsp; You're dreaming, Tanya, and I have invited myself into your dream for the pleasure of your company."
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>29-09-2009, 04:18:30</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Dreaming?&nbsp; That can't - dreams don't last this long," Tanya replied.&nbsp; Something seemed wrong about it, although the explanation neatly summed up the bizarre time-flow and scene changes.&nbsp; "If it's a dream, I should waking up soon, right?"<br><br>That was something she'd always heard - that if you realized that you were dreaming, you'd wake up.&nbsp; Of course, nothing <em>felt</em> different, and the smells from the basket were still enticing enough for her to start putting together a sandwich.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>29-09-2009, 22:41:43</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Having only just arrived myself, I'm not prepared to say one way or another how long this has lasted.&nbsp; I can only offer that in my own experience, an hour's worth of time in the real world amounts to perhaps eight or more here."&nbsp; Daniel shrugged.&nbsp; "It's not important, though, whether or not you accept it.&nbsp; What <em>is</em> important is that, for the time being, this place is our own personal paradise, and I'm very happy to be sharing it with you."<br><br>The Englishman took Tanya's hand in his own, and brought it to his lips.&nbsp; The wine had left a stain on his mouth, a stain he transferred to the back of her hand, just behind the row of her knuckles.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>30-09-2009, 16:59:12</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Well, it hasn't exactly been a paradise - although this has made it a little better," Tanya said with a shy smile.&nbsp; "Mostly, it's just been weird."&nbsp; She tilted her head as she looked at the lip-print on her hand, then rubbed at it, seemingly surprised that&nbsp; it behaved the way such a mark would behave in the waking world.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>01-10-2009, 03:19:07</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Dreams follow their own rules, their own logic, their own sense of time and cause and effect.&nbsp; Even the most pleasant are often strange children of chaos."&nbsp; Daniel shrugged, and put his wine glass down on the grass.&nbsp; He rested his hands on Tanya's shoulders, caressing her like her dearest lover.<br><br>"Are you willing to settle for only a 'little' better?" he asked.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>01-10-2009, 04:56:20</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"If that's all I can find, I sort of have to, don't I?" Tanya said with a giggle.&nbsp; "At least until I wake up.&nbsp; After that, it's just a dream."<br><br>She leaned a little bit into his touch, half expecting to slip right through him.&nbsp; Instead, she found his hands to be just as warm and solid as anyone else's.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>03-10-2009, 17:03:37</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"'Just' a dream is not a phrase that I use very frequently.&nbsp; I understand what you mean, though."&nbsp; His hands moved from her shoulders to her back, drawing her close into his embrace.&nbsp; "But what I meant was that I believe I have the ability to make things more than just a little better for you, if you'll let me.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>04-10-2009, 07:14:43</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"Let you?&nbsp; Can't see any reason not to - but you just changed the sky and everything without me saying anything."<br><br>It was comforting being held.&nbsp; With that alone, she could ignore the mutating landscape as she ate the sandwich.&nbsp; It didn't seem to be that much, but her hunger faded as rapidly as if it was a full meal.&nbsp; 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>04-10-2009, 19:38:10</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Chuckling, Daniel leaned even closer to Tanya.&nbsp; His warm breath tickled her ear and cheek.&nbsp; "There are other liberties of which I speak, my dear.&nbsp; Liberties which I am not prepared to take without asking."&nbsp; Damn the woman, he thought to himself.&nbsp; Did he have to spell it out for her?&nbsp; Daniel didn't know if she truly was as innocent as she made out, or being deliberately coy.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>06-10-2009, 18:07:40</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"I understand," Tanya replied.&nbsp; To an extent, she did - the changes he'd made were slight nudges to an already chaotic landscape.&nbsp; She had had every opportunity to walk away from the picnic, and the dream-world would probably mutate again before she got too far.<br><br>"It's nice having someone to talk to," she said with a smile.&nbsp; "Everyone else here seems, well, <em>empty</em>.&nbsp; If you know what I mean."
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Served Cold</strong> on <strong>09-10-2009, 01:31:43</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				"It's a common enough feature of lost dreams.&nbsp; Trying to find our way...people unable to help us, seem lost themselves."&nbsp; Daniel backed away since Tanya seemed uninterested at the moment in his advances.&nbsp; For the moment.&nbsp; He could court her, it was even enjoyable in its own way, but sooner or later he would run out of patience, and he would show her what a dream shaper could do to get his way.<br><br>"Tell me about yourself.&nbsp; Who are you when you're awake?" he asked, pouring more dream wine.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: Landscapes of the Mind (Oniya and Served Cold)</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Oniya</strong> on <strong>15-10-2009, 07:23:34</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The question seemed to puzzle Tanya, as if she couldn't quite remember.<br><br>"I - I'm a college student.&nbsp; We're heading down to Miami for Spring Break.&nbsp; Julia's gotten us a beach house for a week."&nbsp; Her words flowed more easily as she talked, but the confused look didn't leave her face until she'd finished.<br><br>"That's a pretty long haul from Liverpool, I guess.&nbsp; Otherwise, I'd ask you to join us."
			</dd>
		</dl>
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