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

[thecatinahat]

"Cougar," is all he gives her, because Jensen knows his last name and only Jensen needs to know. No one here needs to know the name printed on his dogtags, which means that he can offer just the nickname. He tries to size her up as best as he can, noting what she's wearing.

The same as the rest of them.

"What happened before here?"

[lastofthekellys]

It doesn't sound like a nickname, to her. She's never heard the name before, and combined with his accent, she assumes it is a surname. Mr Cougar, then. Or just surnames, she is used to them, too, particularly from men.

"I went to bed." Then she tilts her head a little, makes a small thoughtful sound. "There was practice, with my show. I helped put the horses away. I went to the pub. Then I went upstairs to bed.

I thought the water was a dream."

Which gives a reason as to why she's struggling so much to recover: her mind hadn't caught on to how serious the situation was.

[thecatinahat]

He frowns, because he had been sleeping too before he'd been here. "No dream," he apologizes, though his look is softened because this is hard enough for him to understand. He's very bad at explaining it to other people, which makes him feel bad about him being here with her.

"Come," he coaxes. "We should find you a place so you can change into the dry clothes," he says, knowing there will be some in her pack.

[lastofthekellys]

She'd like to wake up. She hasn't mentioned how much she drank, but it was a lot. Enough to make her sleep and then some. But this isn't a nightmare about Joe. There is no burning inn, her big brothers aren't dying. This is just something strange and chilling and she wants to wake up.

She knows she's awake, though. Fairly convinced. Time is moving too slowly to be anything else.

So Kate just offers Cougar a faint, crooked smile. Acknowledgement and understanding of his apology.

"The buildings," she starts as she gets to her feet, "they are liveable? I mean, they are safe?"

He is right about the clothes, though. She knows she shouldn't catch a chill, and knows there's weight in the pack on her back. But she doesn't want to stop and look in it until she's somewhere more secure.

[thecatinahat]

He nods when she asks about the houses. "Yes, livable." Not just for him, but also to cope with both Veronica and Jake within the same space. He finds that yes, there are things he misses about modern society, but apart from trying to find an escape, there isn't much that they can do other than observe a daily routine heavy with grueling, hand-heavy work. "Many people are here. Lots have taken homes. Including me," he says.

She's a stranger to him, which means that he's not ready to invite her into his place, but there's the inn that he can take her to in order to find a room for the short term. "Good for shelter. Sleeping," he says, seeing as the beds are better than conditions he's had in plenty of places.

[lastofthekellys]

Homes sounds rather permanent. She knows that the word doesn't have to be. A home can just be a hotel room for a few weeks. A hut for a few years working off a transportation sentence. But it still has the heavy clang of settling in it, and for a woman who has seen too many of her male relations go in and out of prison, she doesn't like it.

She can appreciate it, though. That there are safe buildings. That there are people, many people. That there are places to sleep.

(Isn't that a laugh, though. Her and sleeping.)

"Good. I'm glad." But then she glances at him as they walk. "Food? How much food is there?"

[thecatinahat]

"What you find. What you hunt." There are cans and other foods that he hasn't tried, mainly because he's been able to keep his household fed as best as he can. Maybe, eventually, there will be more of a problem when it comes to hunting and gathering, but n ow he is fine.

"Here," he says, gesturing to the inn. "You can dry in here." He's already heading for the fireplace to get it going with a spark and a flint of some rocks, the wood that's been piled up dry in the dusty room.

[lastofthekellys]

Find. Hunt. No farm, but then, maybe it's too early for that (it's never too early, she thinks, remembering the dust of her mother's selection and long hours trying to keep the vegetable garden fruitful.)

"There are weapons to hunt with? Rifles, shotguns? Or just traps?"

Do they have to make the traps, or are there some around? She doesn't ask that, not straight away. It's the next question.

The inn itself is... An inn. But it feels empty, dusty. It lacks the warmth of the owners and many patrons. But it's a solid-looking building and Cougar is already moving to start a fire. It helps keep her moving.

"I'll find a room and be back down. Put on some dry things."

Which is easier said then done.

She finds a room, finds some towels, but the chance to change out of her clothes and pull on the ones in the pack lets her examine what, exactly, her captors have put her into. And Catherine Ada Kelly is not impressed.

No drawers. No stays. Instead, she has these tiny fitted garments hugging her chest and her bottom. Instead of proper drawers, the white garments look like the seat of some trousers closely cropped in. And the - she doesn't even know what to call it. But it has a clasp on the back, adjustable straps.

It's all better than nothing, but still. She does not really approve.

There's also no comb, no brush, she knows after such a dunking her curly hair is going to be in a right state. Nothing for it, though. She pulls on the dry pair of the not-really-drawers and the top-part-of-stays (with some fumbling of the clasp on the later), pulls on the thicker socks and the flannel undershirt, then the blue, cotton overalls. Not that she can appear like this. Or, she won't, not if she has a choice. So towel in hand to keep drying her hair, when she emerges again she's wearing the black coat over it all. Buttoned up.

It's all the best she can manage.

[thecatinahat]

He shakes his head. "Knives from the kitchen," he clarifies. "Self-made bow and arrows." The heads of which are dull and require more velocity than anything to do the work he needs them to do, but Cougar's been running those kinds of equations and setting his targets for years, now. He knows how to wound, but he also knows how to kill.

He waits for her, drawing a chair to sit in with one boot on the table. When she returns, he offers her the softest of smiles. He doesn't mean to flirt, exactly, but there's a part of him that always likes to be polite to a lady. Especially one that isn't trying to kill him.

"You will be warm in that," Cougar warns. "It's summer."

[lastofthekellys]

"Ah, you call this summer?" She can tease and flirt back, can Kate Kelly. Three older brothers for teasing, and then she was the local beauty since the age of twelve. She thinks this man doesn't mean it, not seriously, but it makes her feel a little like herself again. A little normal.

"Summer's when it's a hundred in the shade. This is just spring."

She doesn't say: I won't be decent wearing anything else here while my things dry. For one reason, it's not true, but mostly, there's a difference between social charming and anything more and she worries that mentioning that will be seen as more.

[thecatinahat]

Cougar can't help his amused smile as he shakes his head, having seen many more countries in summer that are hotter than this, but he still thinks the coat is a little overboard. He defers to her with a nod of his head, though, because it's what she chooses and what she wants. "Australian?" he guesses from her accent, sliding the glass of water he'd prepared while she changed, pushing it towards her for her to drink.

[lastofthekellys]

"Yes. From the colony of Victoria, originally." She's travelled since then, unable to stand the hill-country of her birth and all the memories with it.

Then she looks at him for a moment as she accepts the glass of water and, apologetically, adds, "I can't place your accent, I'm sorry."

Swarthy and accented do not, as it happens, get a girl very far at all.

[thecatinahat]

He remembers Sydney and the outback. They had been dropped there to do extreme temperature training in the middle of summer, back in spec ops, and he remembers the delirium that had set in, in the middle of things. "Mexico," he replies, thinking that if she's talking about Victorian colonies (and judging from her attitude about her dress), then maybe she won't know where he's from.

"Sur de Texas, just South," he clarifies.

[lastofthekellys]

"Oh," Kate says, and actually laughs quietly. "I know Texas. And Mexico, too. I'm a performer in a show, that's... They bill it as like the Wild West, but I'm sure it's nothing like that actually."

If nothing else, because they are performing in Australia, to Australians, and giving their own twist on show and skills.

"But this is far from home for you? The..." She gestures towards the outer walls and beyond. "The forest and weather."

[thecatinahat]

"No home, not anymore," is Cougar's answer to her question. He can't really name a place that's home, though Bolivia had been the longest prison in recent months. Even there, it hadn't been by choice that they'd all stayed. No, it had been a forced confinement.

He snorts a little as he gives her an amused look. "Wild West?" he echoes. "With guns and horses and vaqueros?"

[lastofthekellys]

She actually knows the last word, a lingering piece of knowledge from one of the crew who had arrived for the gold rush in the '50s and stayed on. Cowboys - drovers, stockhands.

"With guns and horses and vaqueros," Kate says, not mangling the last word as badly as she might have.

"I had a fancy hat and everything."

She doesn't mention what she already implicitly agreed to - that she also had guns, and that she was accurate with them. You have to be, in a show.

[thecatinahat]

"So did I," Cougar sighs, because of all the things he misses, he thinks that he should miss other things more than his rifle and his hat, but, there it is. He hasn't got close ties to a family, he doesn't have a home, and with Jensen here, the only other things he wants are a gun and a hat to shoot under.

Pooch needs to stay with his kid. Clay and Aisha? No, Cougar wouldn't wish them on this place. "I'm not a cowboy, though," he clarifies. "I just had a hat." And a very big gun.

[lastofthekellys]

"I was not really a cowgirl, either," she admits. "We didn't have enough cattle. My family has more horses."

The horses tended to stay. The few sheep, too. But they had enough cows for them, to milk and sell, and that was all.

When Ned and the Greta Mob stole cattle, they never came near Ma's selection.

"I do miss my hates. I saw the little... bonnet, cap hats our captors have given us. They ain't gonna be much use on a sunny day."

[thecatinahat]

He'd seen farms like that in his youth, though Cougar's family hadn't done much with them -- especially not after they had moved from Mexico to California, leaving the family home and land behind for opportunity. "They will do," he admits, but he dislikes them and misses his Stetson, which had been good for so many things. The best had been the way it kept his eyes hidden and his face from being exposed.

He feels on display here, in a way he doesn't like. "Do you think there are horses here?" he asks. "Could you tame one?"

[lastofthekellys]

"I don't know if there are horses here. There could be. Be enough feed for 'em, at least a few. And if there are, I could. Yes."

The Kellys are famously good riders. Famously in love with their horses. She's been riding since almost before she could walk, and in that time has seen a wide, wide range of training and obedience.

"It takes time. Would need a paddock. A halter, a lead. Reins. But I could."

[thecatinahat]

If there are some, he wouldn't mind riding one. It would be like going back in time, to ranches and his cousins taking him out for the day. It's a life before the Army and before his nightmares, where simplicity might be a reminder of the man he used to be.

"If you find one," he says, a longing look in his eyes that he can't exactly hide, "yes, find me. I would like to join."

[lastofthekellys]

He's been here, but not seen any horses. It's a possibility and Kate now looks at a future - even if it's brief and please let it be brief - without horses. Without riding, without caring for them, without greeting them and brushing down their silky coats.

It hurts. She's a Kelly, and all of Red's brood have inherited a love of horses.

So she doesn't judge that longing, but rather matches it with a quiet smile.

"I will. I promise."

[thecatinahat]

"Cows, goats, sheep." He lists the animals and gives her a nod of his head. "Those, we have." He gestures that if she wants, they can go outside and he can show the lay of the land to her. He will have to check on the traps at some point today and forage for a little more greens. "I can show," he offers. "And where the rest live."

He doesn't think that he's the best person to explain everything, given his limited English (and his even more limited talking), but he can do his best to get her to someone who can do a better job.

[lastofthekellys]

"I can milk cows and goats," Kate murmurs. "Card wool. Clean it." She can't shear, though. There were always brothers, cousins. Itinerant men.

Except is this what's doing? Really? Offering her skills like she's turned up to one of the world's worst job interviews? For farming? Her back and arms start to ache with the memory of countless hours of work. Even minding the sheep, the cows.

But if she sits here, she has the awful feeling that she's going to start to scream.

"I'd like that," is what she says. "Thank you."

[thecatinahat]

He gestures with a nod of his head, thinking that now that she's changed and is drying, she might be starting to feel better. It could go the other way, too, where she's given time to start thinking about it. "Houses go all ways," he says, talking about the roads. "Inn has rooms, too."

Cougar had found those during his initial exploration and keeps them in mind, because there are some nights he needs to not worry about hurting Jake or Veronica with his night terrors, if they ever come back.