hadriel | The Lunatic is In My Head | Video

[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.

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[Too late to be awake. Too early to be asleep. Real conundrum.

Someone's talking on the network, so Sans answers. The light from a nearby lamp and an open window reflects off the white of his skull, limning him in curious relief, even for a skeleton.]

Can't sleep either, huh?

[...That's a skeleton. There is a skeleton talking to him. Ushahin's eyebrows raise up in a moment of surprise. Well, why not? This place has had giant spiders, and monsters straight from inside his brain, and now he shall have a skeleton.]

The beds here are too soft.

[Hence as to why he's trying out the bathtub as a substitute.]

That's not typically a problem where I come from. Not used to soft beds?

[He braces a hand at the small of his...spinal area, and flexes the vertebrae with a soft crack.

There. Much better.]

[Ushahin suppresses a shudder at the sound of cracking bones. He turns his head and the light catches sight of his ruined face a little better. Someone had done something terrible to him once upon a time.]

Before coming here, I spent a great deal of time sleeping on the ground. Now the mattress feels like it's trying to drag me in.

[Humans have got awful flimsy bodies, don't they? Funny how that scarring seems to last forever. Skin is nothing at all like bones.]

Well, can't say a bathtub is a decent alternative. Though I suppose you could go worse.

[ Sometime later in the morning, like way later: ]

So—how drunk were you on a scale of one to you can't remember?

[He's catnapping when he receives the video, but almost instantly comes awake again.]

None at all. I don't drink.

[Psychic powers plus alcohol is a bad combination. This also means that, yes, Ushahin really is just that crazy on a nightly basis.]

[ He's just gonna focus on the least crazy part of the craziness because it's still morning and some of that is just nah. ]

So you sleep in a bathtub because why not, life's short?

It feels safer than anywhere else. The dreams don't bother me here...[Random question time.] Do you sleep?

[Seeing as how he's a skeleton, Ushahin feels this is a valid inquiry.]

[This is just the tip of the crazy iceberg. Ushahin can be relatively normal at times, but right now, he's not entirely in touch with reality.]

The beds here are too soft. It feels like I'm sinking in and then the walls close in, talking and whispering terrible things. This is much safer.

[ HOO BOY. He's probably gonna regret asking this, but— ]

Terrible things like what?

Imagine the worst nightmare that you have ever had in your entire life. The kind that you would have done anything to stop until you finally awoke, terrified that it was still going on as you looked around the room to assure yourself you were actually awake this time. The kind that left you weeping in the dark hours of the night while you did whatever you could to stay awake. The kind that made you afraid to sleep the next night, for fear it would come back to tear your mind to shreds again. Those are the kinds of terrible things I hear.

[He did ask. Gojyo has no one to blame for this but himself.]

All the time.

[Sans yawns. Somehow. His mouth doesn't open, but he...definitely yawns. Or at least says "open parentheses yawns close parentheses," either one.]

It's a real important hobby of mine.

Some of us rather enjoy our sleep. You know, the sleep we may have been doing just now.

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.]

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

A wise man once said that naps are the stuff of life.

[He almost smiles, one side of his mouth twisting up.]

Do you actually need to breathe or is it more of a habit?

[What does he know about living skeletons? Not much, but he does know human beings needs lungs and airways to breathe and talk. Maybe the skeleton runs on magic. Sans has his interest now. He could keep up with the questions all night.

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?

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

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.

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

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?

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.]

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.

[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.

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