what does it mean when you drown in a dream

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: 15th July
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Potential panic attack
STATUS: Open

---

Kate wonders if her family has a touch of foresight. Ned predicted two deaths: Constable Lonigan, Justice Barry, both died as he said. She dreams of drowning and wonders. Wonders and then drinks, not that drinking helps her when she's already asleep and she opens her eyes underwater and thinks, Again?

There's light, which there isn't always, and a current that pushes her up, which never happens, and she kicks, kicks her way up.

(Is it her imagination or is she actually getting closer in this dream?)

There's weight on her back, pulling at her, digging into her shoulders, making it harder to move her arms. Her imagination or no, no, no, something always goes wrong, she always drowns and this is it, isn't it isn't it isn't it maybe she should just swallow water choke and wake up but that doesn't work she can't wake up she just has to kick and kick and kick and swim and oh God oh God she's actually drowning isn't she air air air air she needs air-

She reaches the surface, gasps, bobs back down, then kicks herself up again.

Air.

Coughing, spluttering, Kate swims over to the edge of the fountain. She takes a moment to haul herself over the edge, falls, but the fall isn't much. More of a roll until she hits the ground, struggles to all fours, all the while coughing up water fit to throw up.

She knows what she needs to it. Sit up, take stock. This isn't a dream, it's not. She needs to get her long, heavy hair out of the way to see, but she can't. All she can do is crouch, cough, and gasp in air.

Comments

[lastofthekellys]

Her emotions are spinning like a drunk compass, fear and rage, panic and calculation. The blonde woman appears near when the compass arrow is hovering in a direction of prickly observation.

"Now that's a relief, I won't have to announce it."

Kate has tried to put herself together. She has plaited her hair, straightened her outer blouse and trousers, flimsy as they are.

She takes care to remain straight-backed, chin up. As if she is always dressed like this. She knows this, from what her brothers told her of prison. Don't walk like you can be kicked.

And don't be like a snarling dog, either.

Kate presses her lips together, almost as if she wants to start over.

"Mr Becket mentioned a large group arrived first. Would you be part of that group?"

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo watches it all. The response, followed by what almost seems like some kind of inner monologue, some flicker of thought Jo can't even guess what are, pressing her mouth together, before the question. Jo can't fault her, not even as much as she hates more people arriving and how this doesn't feel any more right on this world than on any other. The beginnings are always the worst. No one wants to be told your stuck, no one knows why or who, but good luck with staying alive.

"The very first." Jo decided on, though the words carry no bravado. "Everyone came exploding up and tumbling out after me."

Sometimes she wondered if that mattered, but not really.
It never mattered when people arrived first, last, the hundreds in-between.
It was just an odd fact in among all the rest of them about this place. "I'm Jo."

Jo, the girl who kept to herself. Jo, the girl who dragged Thorfinn home behind her.
Jo, who already gave up on her scrubs top, in favor of the tank top under it and stopped caring.
She hadn't shown this much of her sigiled-skin in years, but she'd given up on the kidnapper clothing.

[lastofthekellys]

"I'm Kate Kelly."

'Kate' was too intimate, despite that the woman was standing in front of her wearing the very, very short chemise they were presumably given, not even the light blouse. Or maybe because of that. Because of how undressed they are, and the blonde woman even more so. No reason to lose her manners or all sense of propriety.

'Jo', too, seems too short, to familiar. Miss Jo, then.

"You didn't... see anyone already here? Any... guards?"

It's not an accusation. The Lord knows that Kate wasn't in any state to observe things immediately.

But she has to ask.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo, herself, is past it. Or at least as past it as she can get.

She's done with being dressed by other people, and told what she can and can't wear, and how there aren't other clothes. It grates all the time. This is more of her skin, across her chest, shoulders, back, and upper arms than she's had continuously exposed since three worlds back. But she'd rather get questions about the marks on her skin, from anyone who managed to get that close, than walk around like someone's dress-up doll.

"No one. Except the people the fountain threw up next." Jo was shaking her head, before giving the whole deserted place a vague glance and shrug. "Not here, or anywhere. No one's seen a single other people who didn't come through the fountain with or after us show up anywhere about this place: which isn't so much too big, as it is closed in, it seems."

[lastofthekellys]

"Closed in by what?"

There are any number of ways to close someone in, the Australian woman knows. Desert and bush can enclose as much as any brick wall.

But manmade walls speak of more intent than a God-created mountain or ignorance. And she doesn't really know the people here. She doesn't know what they would considered a barrier, or even what their skills are.

She doesn't like any of this, of course, but she has to focus. Has to gather information and work out the situation. She has to.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo can appreciate her curiosity and the wariness in it. Not taking everything as point blank helpful and not stopping from asking for more details to what is put out there. She's still a bit soft looking for all Jo's liking, but she reminds Jo, like Veronica did, of the girls just barely free of their teens and hardly of their age, that she just left behind. All dark hair and dark eyes. Why did these places seem to take a liking to those.

"Canyon walls, for what we can tell so far." For what everyone or anyone had shared. "We haven't done a full circuit yet, that I know of, but every furthest point has hit them so far, without any room for going over them."

[lastofthekellys]

That all tells Kate more than it does most. That people can travel easily to the perimeters, either by walking or by horse. By which will factor into how large the area is, but it is still going to be smaller than she'd like. Than would be comfortable.

"So," Kate says, thoughtfully, "there's a limited food supply. If there are animals about."

If not, then they are even more buggered. Supplies run out faster than game.

[tobeclosetohim]

"There are." Jo says, easily. It's been too many days and too many nights.

"You don't see them this far out of the forest, but you can hear them at night."

They meant food and they meant danger, which made it all in good that there were people with plans for all of that already, too. She'd find a way even there hadn't been. It wasn't like she'd come in good to The Apocalypse, half starved, but not fully. There were ways to survive that were glorious, but still meant survival, and there was more on hand in this place, even run down and half broken, than she come into in others.

[lastofthekellys]

Something about the way that Miss Jo says that, you can hear them at night, makes Kate shiver. Just a little, a tensing of her back and forearms, a prickling down her spine.

It's a knowing, matter of fact way. Maybe it means nothing more than 'that's when you can hear them', but she's frightened and words seem heavy with meaning like in a play.

"Well," Kate says, her chin coming up a little. "It can't be any worse than hearin' possums squabblin' away. I'll try not to assume that there's bunyips or goblins out there."

[tobeclosetohim]

The slightness of the young girl's shifts pings but nothing much more than as her being human.

Most people never wanted animals that close to them. Jo certain didn't want these, or this place. She wasn't afraid, or even wary, in the way most people here seemed about it. They were animals. Not real monsters, going bump in the dark, in the woods, that might come for her in her sleep.

Still Jo would have liked it better if she had her guns,

But then Jo preferred having her guns just when it came to breathing.


"The list of worst so far only seems to be wolves and bears," Jo clarified, just so she didn't go comforting herself too much. Jo wasn't concerned about attacks, but she wasn't about to tell someone to go hop, skip, jumping in the woods alone even during the day. "But, again. Not anywhere near this main town area so far. They stick to the deeper woods mostly."

[lastofthekellys]

"Oh. Wolves and bears."

Not drop-bears but actual, living bears. She's seen bears, but only in circus, zoo. All mistreated like because she knows animals, and she can tell those little cages aren't fit for man or beast. And wolves, wolves too. Actual wolves.

"That'll be a change. We don't have them in Australia. Any snakes? I know how to deal with snakes. Same with spiders."

[tobeclosetohim]

That flicker of surprise and pause, Jo recognizes that.

Even a few weeks in, she'd rather not be alone with a bear or a wolf.
She liked her odds with a gun against either, but her reflexes and a knife?

"I haven't seen any yet, but given the look of the forest?" Jo looked off in that direction. Not that one could really see much of it from here at all. It was all dusty, undisturbed town. Still looking mostly as deserted, deprived and forgotten as it had when most of them arrived half the month ago. "I'd assume so. There's a number of guys who are in there a lot more often, who'd know a lot more for certain on that."

[lastofthekellys]

"I'll ask. And be careful slippin' on me boots in the morning."

All kinds of nice little hidey-holes in an empty town like this. All kinds of vermin to lure small hunters with scales or too many legs. And then humans come along and mess it all up, or add more lures with no Saint Patrick to banish 'em.

But she doesn't know what to make of the woman in front of her, either. She knows snakes, she knows spiders. She knows the bush, but this isn't the bush surrounding her and this woman is standing there in a brief chemise and trousers without a care in the world.

Not that she objects to the trousers in of themselves.

"Any clothes or the like been left around?" is how she circles around the subject, while trying to ask something important. "I've looked in some of the houses, but not seen any. Or... Anythin' personal."