The Lunatic is In My Head | Video | Open

[ushahin]

[It's right around three in the morning, but does Ushahin care? No. The video opens up with a tapping sound that seems to happen every couple of seconds. He's tapping the phone, unable to tell if the video is playing. He's been able to figure out text and even audio, but thus far, the video function has eluded him. Give him time.

When he's satisfied that it is indeed working, it begins to focus in. The light in the room is dim, providing barely enough illumination to see by. Considering how sensitive his left eye is to light, this isn't just for a mood enhancer. He's lying in a bathtub empty of water, fully clothed, a pillow and blankets evident.]

It's quiet again. [His voice is soft and exactly the sort one would expect to hear in the middle of the night in a dimly lit room.] Back to the usual dreams. And such strange ones you all have. So many questions and all the space of the slumbering mind in which to think them.

[He pauses and his eyes drift off to the side as if his mind has gone elsewhere. Finally, he blinks and seems to come back to where he is.] It's all just a spider's web. Snap one thread and it all can disappear.

Comments

[ushahin]

And yet you're awake talking to me instead of trying to regain that which you have lost. It must not be that important to you.

[Deal with it. He's not apologizing.]

[tongueamok]

Some of us don't get back to sleep so easily, so what little sleep we do get is doubly important.

[ushahin]

Very well then.

[Tsk. Some people are so very touchy about their sleeping patterns.]

Would you like to know a sure remedy for getting back to sleep?

[tongueamok]

If you're about to suggest I get off the communicator and take some deep breaths, I'm getting there.

[ushahin]

Actually, I was going to suggest you worry. Clear your mind of everything but your worries. Worry about what is to come and what is to be. Everything you are and everything you are not. By the time you're done, lying there in the dark, you'll be so exhausted that you'll drift right off.

[tongueamok]

I worry all the time already. That's half the reason I can't sleep.

[ushahin]

You look too young to have that many worries.

[Stick around for a thousand years and then Ushahin will believe him when he says he has worries.]

Do they follow you into your dreams, these worries you have?

[tongueamok]

Sometimes. Though I don't see what age has to do with it.

[Though he has to admit it's nice someone isn't calling him old for a change. Old-fashioned, maybe, but not old.]

[ushahin]

People live short lives.

[The way he says the word, 'People', makes it clear he doesn't think of himself as one, all appearances to the contrary.]

There's enough worries in the later half when you get experienced. The first half shouldn't have that many.

[tongueamok]

[He's starting to get the feeling this guy isn't human, and just looks the part. While not comforting, it's not unheard of, even back in his homeland.]

Some of us don't get a second half, so we've got to do all our worrying when we can.

[ushahin]

My point exactly. Worrying while you're young will do you no good.

[Granted, in a place like this, with monsters and gods only know what else roaming around, he can see why some people might become neurotic messes.]

Learn to enjoy the small parts of life that let you. Otherwise, you will end up miserable. Though that part might be too late for you.

[tongueamok]

I'm not miserable.

[Sometimes.]

[ushahin]

Then try smiling.

[Ushahin demonstrates, although between the shadows caused by the dim lighting and his already uneven, broken-up features, it doesn't precisely look friendly.]

Or at least not looking like a cat someone has forgotten and left outside all night.

[tongueamok]

[Carlisle grimaces, his expression clear enough in the light from his phone.]

Going to be a touch honest here, lad. That demonstration, not very reassuring that you know how to do it, either.

[ushahin]

I will concede you that point.

[He knows precisely what he looks like better. Low lighting is actually kinder to him than what he looks like stark outright. It's rather unfair, given how beautiful and graceful the Ellylon were known for being. But then nothing in his life had ever been fair.]

But do as I say, not as I do.

[tongueamok]

And what is it you do, while you're on that? Aside from waking up people in the dead of the night.

[ushahin]

Dreams. One of my names is Dreamspinner. I create them. I control them. I walk through them.

[Being wide awake at three-thirty in the morning just happens to be the consequence of dreamwalking all night.]

[tongueamok]

You do that... all the time?

[He looks a little horrified.]

Were you here when the false gods put us up to that? That wasn't your doing, was it?

[Because after this mess with the girl and the fog, he'd like to be a little more aware of what his fellow prisoners are up to.]

[ushahin]

Yes, I do, and have been doing so for a long, long time.

[He knows that horrified look well. It tends to be the reaction of most people back in Urulat.]

No, I wasn't. I only arrived a short time ago. If I did anything to you people, trust me when I say you'd never go to sleep again.

[A little overdramatic, yes, but it gets the point about his powers across.]

[tongueamok]

Not exactly reassuring me there, lad. Or making me want to go back to sleep.

[ushahin]

It wasn't meant to reassure you. It was a warning. My powers can hurt people, and hurt them very badly, when I choose to do so.

[Something flickers in his good eye, and for a single moment, there's a dark presence that presses up against Carlisle's mind. Then it is gone again in the blink of an eye.]

But when people leave me alone, I tend to do the same.

[tongueamok]

[Carlisle visibly stiffens at the feeling of an impression upon his mind. His cursed abilities with Influence have given him a keen awareness of such forces, though the thought that they could be conveyed through his device with a simple look is utterly terrifying.

So next comes several seconds of him on the other end pressing buttons madly until his phone hangs up. He's just going to be sleeping with that infernal device out of the room from now on, thank you very much.]