onepassingnight | [001] → the house

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[001] → the house

You're aware of a deep, chilling darkness that surrounds you. You're in an unfamiliar basement, and there's a terrible potpourri of dust and formaldehyde that creates the stench of the dank place. There's something like a whisper in your ear, voices speaking in undertones that you can't hear, even though there's really no one there with you. A chill runs up your spine, as if a wind has come through, but the air is still, and the silence all around hangs heavy.

Amid musty boxes, a claw-footed tub, and numerous other things, there stands a girl. She's dressed fairly typically for a girl her age in the 21st century, and for one who is trying to set herself apart. The teenager stands, staring off into the shadows of the room, holding her arms as if she's cold.

"Why am I... here?"

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Startled, Violet snaps out of her musing to look at the stranger. Her eyes travel Lethe up and down, trying to decide what to think of this person. She doesn't look like she's one of the ghosts... there aren't any wounds, anyway.

"I--" she begins, not exactly sure why she's responding, "... I don't know. I'm looking for someone, I think."

Violet nods, slowly at first, and then with certainty. "Yeah, there's someone I'm trying to find. But this place... I mean, it's always weird, but something feels different about it."

"Do they often come here?" It's a reasonable question, on the face of it. But in a dream, much like at her river, it can become so difficult to remember things, to find the logic between the search and the location.

Lethe glances towards the tub, and various of the the other objects. "Is this place meaningful to them?"

"He--"

She stops, seemingly confused by something. The face of the person had flashed across her mind: a young man with messy, blonde hair. But, she couldn't remember his name. It was right there, on the tip of her tongue! But her brain felt foggy, as if everything was working much more slowly than usual.

"... I think so," she finished, frowning.

"What sort of person is he?" It's a natural question, of course; and she's not particularly engaged in asking it, but she lets it stand and waits for the answer.

"What sort of person is he, to hang around a rundown house like this?" Her hand runs along one of the nearby walls.

The image of the young man in question is still piecing itself together in her head. Violet responds instead to the bit about the house, as the frown deepens.

"I live here," she says firmly, "This is the basement of my house."

"And it's crappy because it's fucking haunted," she thinks, but doesn't say. Instead, she shakes her head and tries to remember who exactly she was looking for.

"He's my friend," she begins, slowly. "... My boyfriend."

A boyfriend. It's a common theme: I can't leave him behind, I can't go without him, I have to go back, my lover is waiting.

She supposes perhaps, in another life, she'd be foolish enough to want a lover, too. But in this one, she knows that such a relationship is also doomed, and ultimately futile. And the day would surely come when she would ferry him to her shores, if she chose a man. He would lose everything there, and she would lose him.

"Did you agree to meet here? Will he know to come?"

Why is it so hard to think? Violet's slowly becoming more aware, though, and there's a growing edge to her voice as it dawns on her that this person really isn't supposed to be here, whether it's in her house, or her dream.

"I think so," she says again, her eyes narrowing slightly in both confusion and suspicion.

"... Why are you here?" she asks finally.

"By fate," says Lethe simply, as if this makes perfect sense as an explanation. "I had no conscious intention of arriving."

This is true, though as she says it, she has that feeling of things being out of place. She does not belong in a house in... wherever this is, on whatever planet it may be.

"Fate?" Violet repeats it, as if it could possibly make sense, but ends up shaking her head again.

"What does that even mean?" she asked, pressing Lethe for answers. "You just showed up? Well, you'd fit right in with all the freaks here."

"If you want to understand..." Lethe considers whether to answer for just a moment. "Then know this is a dream."

This is not exactly an easy idea to accept, and she waits calmly for the denial she is almost sure will come.

"A dream...?"

Yeah, it makes sense. Because nothing here makes sense. Her headache goes away, at least a little bit. As strange as her reality is, this life, this place... it has to be a dream.

"Alright," she says, nodding. "I get that. I mean, everything's so screwy already that I just figured I could be awake. But, I guess I'm really not. At least, right now I'm not."

Now came the stranger part.

"I'm also somewhere else, and dreaming." Two people, who'd never met in reality, were somehow sharing a dream. She wouldn't guess it so quickly like this except for her prior experience with the shared dreams, yet there it was.

That's definitely the stranger part. Violet watches the other girl with a raised brow, becoming more on her guard once again. How could someone possibly be sharing her dream? That kind of stuff never happened.

"... My dad would have a field day with this," she sighs, shaking her head. "Like you wouldn't believe."

Crossing her arms, Violet continues to watch the stranger.

"So, you're saying that I didn't just dream you up?" Violet asks. "You're real?"

"I'm real," Lethe says easily. "However, we will probably never meet in our waking lives." She seems to treat it as normal, that something so outside the usual course of reality could exist. It says something about her own experiences.

"This place... is very far away from where I am." There was no regret to that statement. She'd never had a normal life to regret giving up, born into war.

It was definitely a dream; Violet had no problem with that. But, she didn't exactly buy that they were sharing the same space, and that this other person was real. Then, though, Constance's words flitted across her mind... hadn't she said something about different perceptions? Realities?

"Where are you, then?" she asks hesitantly.

"I'm at the shores of the River Lethe." Where else would she, the senshi who guards that river, belong? She must be there, to guide her ferry and its passengers.

Of course, that role has changed recently... She now ushers the ones who oppose her hopes for peace into forgetfulness, and defeat.

The River Lethe? Violet wracked her brain, frowning as she did so, trying to remember if she had ever heard of a place like that. Finally, the teenager just shook her head, accepting that... well, she wasn't the most educated in geography.

"Okay," she began slowly. "... Wherever that is."

She paused, taking a small breath of the basement's musty air.

"How is this... possible, though? All of this dream stuff."

If Violet is familiar with mythology, it should be a familiar name indeed: the river every person is forced to drink from to forget everything before they pass into their next lives.

"It's at the end of the galaxy," Lethe says, a slight difference from the myths, but when have myths ever gotten the stories perfectly? "As to why, it's simply a strange happening."

She's decently familiar with mythology; it interests her, at the very least. But, she's too preoccupied with the situation for her mind to wander to that information now, and she just nods, slowly.

"So, you're at the end of the galaxy right now," Violet begins, "And you're dreaming. Meanwhile, I'm in L.A., and I'm dreaming. But we're both here, in my dream."

Now she's shaking her head. "How did you get here?"

Lethe frowns, and glances away. Her voice is thoughtful. "I fell asleep, and this time the dream I fell into was this one." But she knows how many ways Galaxia has to spy on so many planets and worlds. Is this just another part of a dangerous plan?

Or is it freedom, to be able to go out, to meet others, even to have some shred of semblance of normalcy in these dreams?

Violet tilts her head, as if trying to discern whether this person was telling the truth or not. Finally, the teenager just sighs, resolving to stop questioning her bizarre reality.

"Does that happen... often?" she asks, somewhat doubtfully.

Lethe considers this. When was it that this began...?

"The first time I had this type of dream, was only weeks ago." It had been confusing. She'd been at her river, as always, but the passengers had not been what she'd expected at all.

Again, the teenager shifts her weight. "So, people just start dreaming like this... with others in them. Out of nowhere. And this is... common."

Judging by all the people around, she guessed that it was. Violet's expression is pretty calm by now; it's more interesting than confusing or annoying, at this point.

"Sorry, I forgot," she says suddenly. "I'm Violet."

"I am the guardian of the River of Oblivion," she introduces herself. "Sailor Lethe." There's a certain bold confidence to her posture that stops just short of arrogance; a certain pride in her role that she no longer knows if she feels, but that is expected.

Pride was thrown out when she betrayed her place for the sake of survival.

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[001] → the house

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