((OOC: Run on sentences can be useful.))
[In which Kai told me weird visions happen after people mess with Evil!Fred, my town is flooded, school was canceled, and I totally had some time to do some creative writing. I've only written one actual "dream" post for Cecile ( back in May last year, which was amusing). Actually written with 
kilderok in mind, because she is one of my favorite beta readers~ Read if you want, ignore if you'd like, but it was fun~ ♥]
Dreams were always peculiar things, and they were partly the reason why Cecile decided to stop sleeping for that one foolish week a year ago.
Most of her dreams were senseless, the kinds you'd forget shortly after waking up, but they were reoccurring. Simple, pleasant dreams, such as Martha fixing her hair, reading a book with Eike, or idly sitting at her post. Sometimes they were stranger; a singularly memorable dream when Hervey sprouted an impressive pair of antlers from his head and hung empty beer bottles from it, much like one would decorate a Christmas tree, was a difficult dream to forget. Others, such as Tai Ho fishing tiny pink birds from the lake, scolding the vegetables in Barts's garden for trying to steal money from the trade shop, or watching Ted eat mint chocolate chip ice cream from a bottomless carton, were equally peculiar.
They became increasingly distressing after Thomas dropped his title and left Budehuc for a while to recuperate, for most of them were about him either getting lost, attacked, or simply changing his mind and refusing to return to Budehuc. One particular dream in which she received a startlingly fierce multitude of kisses was equally distressing, for she woke up quite suddenly with her heart racing, a burning, tingling feeling spreading from head to toe, and a sense of bewilderment mingled with shame and self-resentment, unreasonably petrified (as most people are upon awakening from a disconcerting dream) that somehow Thomas had heard her dream from wherever he was at the moment, and he abhorred her for the indecent and selfish wishes that had managed to slip past her defenses and into her reverie. While Koroku proved to be patient company for the remainder of the evening, needless to say he was rather disgruntled come morning. Shortly afterward, the patrol schedule was altered, leaving no time for sleep, even though this sort of dream was rare.
Once order had been restored around the castle and she returned to a normal sleeping schedule, the distressing dreams dwindled until they were few and far between. Yet things had begun to grow hectic again, as was the nature of any place with a concentration of people from different places living together tends to be, and the sleeping drought Hugo made did nothing to stifle any invading dreams.
It started out like most "insecurity" dreams began, as they were often the same. A strange girl (who frequently looked similar to Kinnison, but the girl lacked the kind tone Kinnison's voice had and the graceful movements of a skilled archer; however, once she faintly resembled Caesar) would arrive at Budehuc, and in each dream it would be in a different manner. Usually she simply appeared at the front gates, but once a large fish surfaced from the lake and spat her out onto the shore, and another time she fell down the chimney in the dinning hall. In her younger years when Cecile had only known Thomas for a short while, the girl in her dreams looked like a simple girl from the village, and when she arrived she usually claimed to be a sister, a cousin, and once his mother.
But as the girl changed physical appearance with each new insecure dream over the years, her relation to Thomas would change, and she became known as "The Fiancé." And always, always, the strange girl would mistake Cecile for a boy, which hurt almost as much as her unannounced arrival. In her more confident dreams, Cecile would give the girl a map of the castle grounds, but it would misguide the girl to somewhere unpleasant, like the sublevels or an empty room. Once when The Fiancé was particularly insistent, the map led her to the library, where Eike made her read all the volumes of the encyclopedia. However, most of the time The Fiancé would be chased away by Shiro, who would nip at her ankles. Upon awakening from these insecure dreams, however, Cecile would always feel a lingering sense of guilt for acting rudely, even if the guest only existed in nightmares and not in real life.
This time The Fiancé arrived on a large boat anchored in the lake, Colton at her right arm as an escort. Reaching for her skirt pocket, Cecile went to grab the spare copy of the Budehuc map, but her pocket was empty, as her last map had been given away to Fred as a "birthday gift." The Fiancé and Colton gave her a cold look.
"Don't worry, sweet pea," Colton mused. "I'm sure we'll find our way around the castle just fine, with or without your help." The Fiancé remained silent, but her eyes flashed with cold cynicism.
Someone elbowed her shoulder. "Aren't you going to do something about him, little bean?" Juan asked, a remarkably large dandelion hanging out of his mouth where his trademark herb usually sat, a fat, lazy bumblebee perched atop the petals.
"Cecile isn't going to speak with Colton," Lucas added, who suddenly appeared next to Juan, his arms folded.
"Speaking is one thing," Juan yawned. "Visiting is another."
"I think they're both understandably understandable, even if you don't understand how they're differently different," the young man responded.
The bee left Juan's dandelion and lazily flew in a circle around Lucas's head before landing on his nose.
"You should think first about his motives before agreeing to anything," came Mathiu's voice, and Cecile turned to see him sitting across from Queen, both with drinks, and a tiny puppy sitting in the palm of his hand. "Do you remember what I told you about Colton? He's a terrible man."
"Quite agreed," the puppy added before taking a sip of Mathiu's drink, a large crab skittering out of the cup and down the side of the table.
Queen grabbed the crab by a spindly leg and popped it into her own drink with one swift motion. "You don't have to worry about making a choice right now. Besides, isn't it that time of the month?"
"N-no! That has nothing to do with that," Cecile began to flail. "It's not even..." she looked away as Queen plucked another crab out of Mathiu's drink.
"You can't be backing out now, my dear!" A shrill voice resonated, and Cecile turned to find Reinbach sitting in front of her, quite comfortably stationed withing a richly padded teacup. "You promised to help me find my beloved rose brooch!"
Cecile began to flail again, trying not to step on Mathiu's tiny puppy, which was scurrying past her feet in hot pursuit of a crab. "I'm trying, Lord Reinbach!! R-really, I am!"
"You're not helping anyone," Nash interrupted, attempting to push the gaudy teacup away. "Not until you help me make everyone else understand my misunderstanding."
A large pine cone dropped from above onto Nash's head, and he looked up irritably at Cray, who was sitting atop a high limb on a tree, dangling dangerously close to the edge. "Do your own explaining, you arse."
"I would, but people listen to her better than me anyway," Nash protested. "Besides, that skirt..."
"But Sir Nash-" she held up a hand, yet it seemed no one would listen, regardless of her skirt.
"You needn't waste your concern on such trivial things," the younger Viki remarked in an emotionless tone, sitting beside Reinbach in the teacup. "Once I've relocated everyone to their proper times, things will be resolved-" suddenly a rather irate crab found its way into her hair, and the younger Viki broke off in mid sentence, teleporting the unfortunate crustacean back into someone's drink.
Another crab was picked up by one of Ace's carrier pigeons, and it flew over to Geddoe, perching on his shoulder. "I hate this place," he intoned monosyllabically, taking the crab and stuffing it into his mouth.
Before Cecile had the chance to reprimand him, Queen did the job for her and smacked Geddoe on the back, causing him to choke the crab up. Cecile turned to walk away, abruptly halting in front of Futch. "You need to keep your guard up," he remarked while looking down upon her. He was tall, tall as he had been when he was an adult. "Don't let your guard down around anyone, even if it is their birthday," he added, then hopped onto the back of Bright and took off into the sky, nearly smacking Cray off the tree branch and knocking several more pine cones onto the ground.
"You don't have to do anything if it makes you feel uncomfortable," Stallion's kindly voice responded from behind her, but he quickly zipped forward to face her. "If the adults are doing things that make you feel uneasy, no one is making you listen."
"Everything makes me so uneasy lately, Sir Stallion, but if I just ignore it..."
"No said you had to ignore it," he responded, running off with extraordinary dexterity, his feet seeming to not even touch the ground, leaving her feeling even more alone than she had before, but The Fiancé and Colton stepped up beside her, and The Fiancé held out a hand.
"I can't find my way around here at all, boy. This castle changes too much. Why don't you give me one of your charming maps?"
Cecile bit her lip, her hand instinctively grasping the shield and spear that were not there. "I'm not a boy, and I don't have any more maps for you!" She looked around, spotting Thomas standing quietly in the corner, and she fervently wished he would speak out, say something, or at least distract them. But did he have a reason to? What claim did she have on him? Did she even have a claim? But he was too busy looking over a stack of papers, and with each page he turned, he seemed to grow thinner, paler, and almost transparent. She felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest, and wondered if that was how a flower feels when it finally musters the courage to blossom, only to be stepped upon and crushed moments later.
"Of course you don't have any more maps, darling," Colton nodded, his mustache seemed to bristle patronizingly.
More than anything, Cecile wished Shiro would come and scare them away, just as he had her previous dreams. But then she realized Shiro was not around to scare them away. He had been missing for several days. A reassuring hand reached out and touched her shoulder. "It's okay, Cecile," Hugo said to her, his eyes, which she had always admired, watching her sadly. "At least Luca likes you."
Her blood ran cold. "No, you're wrong! I'm not going to believe it! I love Master Thomas," but Hugo's comforting hand had already left, and Luca was looking down at her, standing uncomfortably close as he had grown accustomed to lately. The lantern he had taken from her the other night, in one hand, and a suspicious looking slice of pie in the other. Koichi's nose poked out of the lantern and sniffed the pie.
"So you're in love with your master," Luca said, and she recognized it as exactly what he stated only a few weeks ago while patrolling by the lake. "I see...captain."
"Whom I care for is none of your business," she retorted, instinctively grabbing for the weapons that were not there again.
The former prince took a large bite out of the slice of pie. "I think it is my business."
Cecile took a step backwards, grabbing her last shoe off her foot. The other one had been thrown at Fred, and she only had one shot to take. She lifted her hand to take aim, her conscience causing her to falter for a moment, then a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.
"You don't really want to do that, do you?"
"S-Sir Fred?" The voice was his, she'd recognize it anywhere, but it was almost as cold as his breath on the nape of her neck. "You're not well yet, remember?"
"You should have listened to Futch," he responded icily, the grip around her wrist tightening. It felt as though her fingers would turn blue with cold, and the shoe slipped from her hand. "Perhaps it is you who are not quite well right now. So many tumultuous thoughts, and not a decent way to deal with them all," he let out a curt laugh. "It appears that you've broken your promise to take care of yourself again."
"It was not...it was not intentional!! I would never-" she froze, hearing the sound of a blade being unsheathed. "Sir Fred, or whomever you are, let go of me. I will not let you kill yourself."
"Did I not already explain this to you? It isn't suicide if it is someone else," he laughed, but this time she felt the blade pierce through her back, and her knees gave out underneath her.
Was it possible to die in your dream? What was it that Eike had said, about having dreams in which you died? She could not remember.
But it no longer felt as though she were dreaming her own dream, although the foggy dizziness spinning through her head remained. It seemed like she was watching someone else's dream through a partially-cleaned lens, a spectator who did not belong. Cecile raised an unsteady hand to her back, feeling for a wound that was not there, but the ground was damp and hard, and the air was cold. Droplets of mist gathered on her face while her eyes adjusted to the dark.
Even when one does not know what is exactly occurring in a dream-even if that dream does not belong to them-there is are instinctive feelings that must be inexplicably followed, and she knew for some reason she needed to remain concealed. Her surroundings were unfamiliar. There was an altar of some sort, but sensibly she knew the only identifiable altar was at Mount Senai, and Cecile had never even traveled there to see it. How was it possible to dream about something she had never seen? There was a voice, but it was too quiet to hear. What language was that?
The figure outlined by a burning torch near the altar had a similar side-profile to Fred, but everything was growing foggy again, and the dream shifted, like a puddle of water reflecting the sky, but the image in a puddle is always broken up when someone steps into it, trailing miniature puddles of the original puddle with each step, leaving a wet trail behind them that some unfortunate person will clean because it it their turn to do the chores for the week, and as they run the mop over the smaller puddles, they create even smaller puddles, and the original puddle is never truly gone, only dispersed into thousands of tiny puddles so nothing was ever truly cleaned up in the first place...
kilderok in mind, because she is one of my favorite beta readers~ Read if you want, ignore if you'd like, but it was fun~ ♥]
Dreams were always peculiar things, and they were partly the reason why Cecile decided to stop sleeping for that one foolish week a year ago.
Most of her dreams were senseless, the kinds you'd forget shortly after waking up, but they were reoccurring. Simple, pleasant dreams, such as Martha fixing her hair, reading a book with Eike, or idly sitting at her post. Sometimes they were stranger; a singularly memorable dream when Hervey sprouted an impressive pair of antlers from his head and hung empty beer bottles from it, much like one would decorate a Christmas tree, was a difficult dream to forget. Others, such as Tai Ho fishing tiny pink birds from the lake, scolding the vegetables in Barts's garden for trying to steal money from the trade shop, or watching Ted eat mint chocolate chip ice cream from a bottomless carton, were equally peculiar.
They became increasingly distressing after Thomas dropped his title and left Budehuc for a while to recuperate, for most of them were about him either getting lost, attacked, or simply changing his mind and refusing to return to Budehuc. One particular dream in which she received a startlingly fierce multitude of kisses was equally distressing, for she woke up quite suddenly with her heart racing, a burning, tingling feeling spreading from head to toe, and a sense of bewilderment mingled with shame and self-resentment, unreasonably petrified (as most people are upon awakening from a disconcerting dream) that somehow Thomas had heard her dream from wherever he was at the moment, and he abhorred her for the indecent and selfish wishes that had managed to slip past her defenses and into her reverie. While Koroku proved to be patient company for the remainder of the evening, needless to say he was rather disgruntled come morning. Shortly afterward, the patrol schedule was altered, leaving no time for sleep, even though this sort of dream was rare.
Once order had been restored around the castle and she returned to a normal sleeping schedule, the distressing dreams dwindled until they were few and far between. Yet things had begun to grow hectic again, as was the nature of any place with a concentration of people from different places living together tends to be, and the sleeping drought Hugo made did nothing to stifle any invading dreams.
It started out like most "insecurity" dreams began, as they were often the same. A strange girl (who frequently looked similar to Kinnison, but the girl lacked the kind tone Kinnison's voice had and the graceful movements of a skilled archer; however, once she faintly resembled Caesar) would arrive at Budehuc, and in each dream it would be in a different manner. Usually she simply appeared at the front gates, but once a large fish surfaced from the lake and spat her out onto the shore, and another time she fell down the chimney in the dinning hall. In her younger years when Cecile had only known Thomas for a short while, the girl in her dreams looked like a simple girl from the village, and when she arrived she usually claimed to be a sister, a cousin, and once his mother.
But as the girl changed physical appearance with each new insecure dream over the years, her relation to Thomas would change, and she became known as "The Fiancé." And always, always, the strange girl would mistake Cecile for a boy, which hurt almost as much as her unannounced arrival. In her more confident dreams, Cecile would give the girl a map of the castle grounds, but it would misguide the girl to somewhere unpleasant, like the sublevels or an empty room. Once when The Fiancé was particularly insistent, the map led her to the library, where Eike made her read all the volumes of the encyclopedia. However, most of the time The Fiancé would be chased away by Shiro, who would nip at her ankles. Upon awakening from these insecure dreams, however, Cecile would always feel a lingering sense of guilt for acting rudely, even if the guest only existed in nightmares and not in real life.
This time The Fiancé arrived on a large boat anchored in the lake, Colton at her right arm as an escort. Reaching for her skirt pocket, Cecile went to grab the spare copy of the Budehuc map, but her pocket was empty, as her last map had been given away to Fred as a "birthday gift." The Fiancé and Colton gave her a cold look.
"Don't worry, sweet pea," Colton mused. "I'm sure we'll find our way around the castle just fine, with or without your help." The Fiancé remained silent, but her eyes flashed with cold cynicism.
Someone elbowed her shoulder. "Aren't you going to do something about him, little bean?" Juan asked, a remarkably large dandelion hanging out of his mouth where his trademark herb usually sat, a fat, lazy bumblebee perched atop the petals.
"Cecile isn't going to speak with Colton," Lucas added, who suddenly appeared next to Juan, his arms folded.
"Speaking is one thing," Juan yawned. "Visiting is another."
"I think they're both understandably understandable, even if you don't understand how they're differently different," the young man responded.
The bee left Juan's dandelion and lazily flew in a circle around Lucas's head before landing on his nose.
"You should think first about his motives before agreeing to anything," came Mathiu's voice, and Cecile turned to see him sitting across from Queen, both with drinks, and a tiny puppy sitting in the palm of his hand. "Do you remember what I told you about Colton? He's a terrible man."
"Quite agreed," the puppy added before taking a sip of Mathiu's drink, a large crab skittering out of the cup and down the side of the table.
Queen grabbed the crab by a spindly leg and popped it into her own drink with one swift motion. "You don't have to worry about making a choice right now. Besides, isn't it that time of the month?"
"N-no! That has nothing to do with that," Cecile began to flail. "It's not even..." she looked away as Queen plucked another crab out of Mathiu's drink.
"You can't be backing out now, my dear!" A shrill voice resonated, and Cecile turned to find Reinbach sitting in front of her, quite comfortably stationed withing a richly padded teacup. "You promised to help me find my beloved rose brooch!"
Cecile began to flail again, trying not to step on Mathiu's tiny puppy, which was scurrying past her feet in hot pursuit of a crab. "I'm trying, Lord Reinbach!! R-really, I am!"
"You're not helping anyone," Nash interrupted, attempting to push the gaudy teacup away. "Not until you help me make everyone else understand my misunderstanding."
A large pine cone dropped from above onto Nash's head, and he looked up irritably at Cray, who was sitting atop a high limb on a tree, dangling dangerously close to the edge. "Do your own explaining, you arse."
"I would, but people listen to her better than me anyway," Nash protested. "Besides, that skirt..."
"But Sir Nash-" she held up a hand, yet it seemed no one would listen, regardless of her skirt.
"You needn't waste your concern on such trivial things," the younger Viki remarked in an emotionless tone, sitting beside Reinbach in the teacup. "Once I've relocated everyone to their proper times, things will be resolved-" suddenly a rather irate crab found its way into her hair, and the younger Viki broke off in mid sentence, teleporting the unfortunate crustacean back into someone's drink.
Another crab was picked up by one of Ace's carrier pigeons, and it flew over to Geddoe, perching on his shoulder. "I hate this place," he intoned monosyllabically, taking the crab and stuffing it into his mouth.
Before Cecile had the chance to reprimand him, Queen did the job for her and smacked Geddoe on the back, causing him to choke the crab up. Cecile turned to walk away, abruptly halting in front of Futch. "You need to keep your guard up," he remarked while looking down upon her. He was tall, tall as he had been when he was an adult. "Don't let your guard down around anyone, even if it is their birthday," he added, then hopped onto the back of Bright and took off into the sky, nearly smacking Cray off the tree branch and knocking several more pine cones onto the ground.
"You don't have to do anything if it makes you feel uncomfortable," Stallion's kindly voice responded from behind her, but he quickly zipped forward to face her. "If the adults are doing things that make you feel uneasy, no one is making you listen."
"Everything makes me so uneasy lately, Sir Stallion, but if I just ignore it..."
"No said you had to ignore it," he responded, running off with extraordinary dexterity, his feet seeming to not even touch the ground, leaving her feeling even more alone than she had before, but The Fiancé and Colton stepped up beside her, and The Fiancé held out a hand.
"I can't find my way around here at all, boy. This castle changes too much. Why don't you give me one of your charming maps?"
Cecile bit her lip, her hand instinctively grasping the shield and spear that were not there. "I'm not a boy, and I don't have any more maps for you!" She looked around, spotting Thomas standing quietly in the corner, and she fervently wished he would speak out, say something, or at least distract them. But did he have a reason to? What claim did she have on him? Did she even have a claim? But he was too busy looking over a stack of papers, and with each page he turned, he seemed to grow thinner, paler, and almost transparent. She felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest, and wondered if that was how a flower feels when it finally musters the courage to blossom, only to be stepped upon and crushed moments later.
"Of course you don't have any more maps, darling," Colton nodded, his mustache seemed to bristle patronizingly.
More than anything, Cecile wished Shiro would come and scare them away, just as he had her previous dreams. But then she realized Shiro was not around to scare them away. He had been missing for several days. A reassuring hand reached out and touched her shoulder. "It's okay, Cecile," Hugo said to her, his eyes, which she had always admired, watching her sadly. "At least Luca likes you."
Her blood ran cold. "No, you're wrong! I'm not going to believe it! I love Master Thomas," but Hugo's comforting hand had already left, and Luca was looking down at her, standing uncomfortably close as he had grown accustomed to lately. The lantern he had taken from her the other night, in one hand, and a suspicious looking slice of pie in the other. Koichi's nose poked out of the lantern and sniffed the pie.
"So you're in love with your master," Luca said, and she recognized it as exactly what he stated only a few weeks ago while patrolling by the lake. "I see...captain."
"Whom I care for is none of your business," she retorted, instinctively grabbing for the weapons that were not there again.
The former prince took a large bite out of the slice of pie. "I think it is my business."
Cecile took a step backwards, grabbing her last shoe off her foot. The other one had been thrown at Fred, and she only had one shot to take. She lifted her hand to take aim, her conscience causing her to falter for a moment, then a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.
"You don't really want to do that, do you?"
"S-Sir Fred?" The voice was his, she'd recognize it anywhere, but it was almost as cold as his breath on the nape of her neck. "You're not well yet, remember?"
"You should have listened to Futch," he responded icily, the grip around her wrist tightening. It felt as though her fingers would turn blue with cold, and the shoe slipped from her hand. "Perhaps it is you who are not quite well right now. So many tumultuous thoughts, and not a decent way to deal with them all," he let out a curt laugh. "It appears that you've broken your promise to take care of yourself again."
"It was not...it was not intentional!! I would never-" she froze, hearing the sound of a blade being unsheathed. "Sir Fred, or whomever you are, let go of me. I will not let you kill yourself."
"Did I not already explain this to you? It isn't suicide if it is someone else," he laughed, but this time she felt the blade pierce through her back, and her knees gave out underneath her.
Was it possible to die in your dream? What was it that Eike had said, about having dreams in which you died? She could not remember.
But it no longer felt as though she were dreaming her own dream, although the foggy dizziness spinning through her head remained. It seemed like she was watching someone else's dream through a partially-cleaned lens, a spectator who did not belong. Cecile raised an unsteady hand to her back, feeling for a wound that was not there, but the ground was damp and hard, and the air was cold. Droplets of mist gathered on her face while her eyes adjusted to the dark.
Even when one does not know what is exactly occurring in a dream-even if that dream does not belong to them-there is are instinctive feelings that must be inexplicably followed, and she knew for some reason she needed to remain concealed. Her surroundings were unfamiliar. There was an altar of some sort, but sensibly she knew the only identifiable altar was at Mount Senai, and Cecile had never even traveled there to see it. How was it possible to dream about something she had never seen? There was a voice, but it was too quiet to hear. What language was that?
The figure outlined by a burning torch near the altar had a similar side-profile to Fred, but everything was growing foggy again, and the dream shifted, like a puddle of water reflecting the sky, but the image in a puddle is always broken up when someone steps into it, trailing miniature puddles of the original puddle with each step, leaving a wet trail behind them that some unfortunate person will clean because it it their turn to do the chores for the week, and as they run the mop over the smaller puddles, they create even smaller puddles, and the original puddle is never truly gone, only dispersed into thousands of tiny puddles so nothing was ever truly cleaned up in the first place...