sixthiterationlogs | what does it mean when you drown in a dream

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.

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"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.

"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."

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.

From what she's seen of the inn, she is starting to feel that she might stay here. The rooms are well appointed enough, or at least, the one she ducked into is. She's gone visiting some toffs' and their houses, and she doesn't understand why you'd need so much stuff.

A room to her own is luxury enough. Although she might see if one on the upper storey has a working bed. It might have a decent view of the fountain, in case anything happens.

"What's the houses like, then? Still in one piece, fallin' down?"

She hasn't seen much, on the way from fountain to inn, but she caught hints of proper houses. No shacks, no huts.

He shrugs his shoulders when she asks about the houses, because he doesn't think that they're so bad. Then again, he's lived in enough shacks in his life to really care about what's over his head and under his back so long as there's protection and enough comfort to get by.

"Not falling, but not luxury. For me, is close to it," he admits, because he knows that he's got four comfortable walls around him that he thanks God for every day. "It does the job."

For a woman whose childhood home has been described as a hovel, not falling in is more than fine in a dwelling. She's used to bare walls - hell, she's used to having only one room, with cloth partitions hung from the roof to try and divide the space.

If it does the job, it does the job. Come rain, come hail and come wind, that's more than enough.

So his little clarifications make her curious.

"People were expectin' more than that?" she asks. "For it to be fancy?"

"People are used to better things, sometimes," is Cougar's opinion on the subject, because some people (through no fault of their own) have never had to rough it or slum anything. Some people have never had to struggle for food or clean drinking water and Cougar doesn't blame them for it. He'd joined the army to help and make sure that people had those luxuries.

Even here, he wants to do his best, but self-protection has to come first.

"Fancy also means different things to different people."

"I know it does," she says, frowning a little. "I did not phrase that as I intended."

Although, he is right in his polite pointing out of different meanings to different people. She can be dismissive of those more comfortable than herself, and at the age of twenty, she simply hasn't grown up enough to truly acknowledge it.

"It is more that we've been kidnapped. Of course the lodgings are not going to be the kind frequented by the upper-crust. I'm more surprised that there are buildings.

At least we don't have to construct our own shelters."

He would have been okay building his own tent to camp in, would that be needed. He's often had only the stars above them to keep them company, so to have a house and a bed and company is more than he would have ever expected before.

"If we had to, we would have made do," he promises. "Might be strangers, but need to make sure that people are okay."

And that, more than anything else Mr Cougar has done, makes her trust him. Not a lot, it is true. Not unreservedly. But a little, enough for reasonableness without further testing.

"Well," she says. "As a stranger, I am certainly very glad of that."

what does it mean when you drown in a dream

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