2023-06-11: Seems Legit

• Log: 2023-06-11 Seems Legit
• Cast: Lan Lilac, Eleanor Klein
• Where: Klein Manor
• Date: June 11, 2023
• Summary: Eleanor asks Lan for advice about dreamwalking - namely, how to make it safer.

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<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Depending on who you asked, it could be said that Lan Lilac owes Eleanor Klein a great debt. The rescue party that came to Macalania saved Lan's (and arguably Loren Voss's) life a few short months ago.

    If you asked Lan, she'd definitely agree that she's still kicking thanks to Eleanor and Gwen and Marivel (and definitely Loren Voss), but the concept of owing a debt because her friends came to her aid... Would she expect them to owe her, if she saved them? It's a little silly, isn't it...?

    Of course friends help each other, especially when life is at stake. Lan doesn't like to think about people acting otherwise.

    Life can be fragile. That's why people want to help each other.

    But, even saying all that, Lan still thought long and hard about doing something nice for Eleanor and the others in return. A paper-wrapped package crinkles quietly in her hand as she's led in by one of the Klein family's staff, Lan's usual dusty traveling clothes replaced by a plain-but-presentably-nice dress that hits just below her knees. She only has the one pair of sandals, though. She's responding to an invitation sent by Memory Cube. Eleanor had mentioned once or twice that she wanted to ask Lan some questions about dreamwalking. Lan hopes that the questions are ones she has answers for!

<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.

If you ask Eleanor, then Lan doesn't owe Eleanor a thing. So they'd be in agreement!

It's a good way to live, Eleanor thinks.

Eleanor had wanted to talk to Lan, though the matter of the Heimdall Gazzo delayed her. So when she heard that Lan had actually come to talk, she was delighted, and Lan has been shown to a nice sitting-room with art on the warm orange walls and chairs and a table for tea. Tea is brought before Eleanor arrived.

But Eleanor arrived pretty quickly after. "Lan!" she greets warmly, and steps up towards her with a smile. "I'm so glad that you could come! I hope you're finding things comfortable."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    The tea smells amazing. Eleanor's house smells amazing. Clean, polished wood, the fabric of upholstered furniture, the sea breeze from far below the cliffs. It's so different than the warm wood and stone and sand smell of Little Firelight. There are way fewer geckos, too.

    Eleanor arrives just as Lan has leaned over the tea tray to lift the lid of the teapot for an appreciative sniff. There's nothing wrong with that!! Lan doesn't even have the etiquette to look abashed.

    Instead she grins brightly, tea forgotten as she stands up to sweep Eleanor into a big hug. "Eleanor! Thanks so much for inviting me over! And for coming to get me and Loren back then," because she didn't forget even though there's no debt to owe. The package, wrapped in brown paper and string, is pushed into Eleanor's hands.

    "It's so pretty here! You can just look outside and see the ocean whenever you want, huh?" Lan could be comfortable just about anywhere. Especially near the sea.

    Whatever's in the package feels like thin circle. A bracelet, maybe?

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Eleanor is always polite, but she is never stuffy. Lan may not really 'get' etiquette, but she gets wanting to make people happy and comfortable. That's the important part, isn't it?

    "I love it too," Lan nods, blowing gently across her cup to cool it. "Even the parts of it that smell like fish." She's looking at you, Spiran House Arrest. "It's hard to believe now that once I'd never seen it. Not like... uh, literally, because I can remember not knowing what it really looked like, but--" She realizes that she's not saying anything that makes a lot of sense, and smiles instead. Lan has the feeling that Eleanor Gets It.

    The bracelet is made of fallen strands of Lan's long, pale hair, gathered and stored carefully one-by-one until she had enough, and then delicately woven into something fine. (She thought she was going to go blind before she got all the tiniest loops done...!) The few precious seed beads are the same pale color as the bracelet, neither silver nor gold but something in between.

    "Oh good! I hoped you'd like it. It'll take just about any enchantment you can put on it~"

    With the reassurance that Eleanor likes it and she hasn't made some faux pas, Lan takes a test sip and hums contentedly. "You wanted to know a little about dreamwalking, right?" she asks. "I'll try my best to explain, if you've got questions."

<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.

Eleanor picks up a cup too, inhales the scent, and lets it warm her hands. Then she laughs a little. "Yes, there definitely are those parts." Hard to believe... Yes. Eleanro does 'get it', and she smiles back, with a nod.

The intricacy of the bracelet is appealing even before its beauty. "I do!" She considers that. "Yes, I'll have to decide on something good. And something hand-made by a friend would have even more receptivity..."

She sees what Lan did; a good gift for a wizard. And she smiles.

Then, "I did. I..."

She considers. "I have visions of the future, as you know, sometimes waking, sometimes dreaming. And lately it's not only the future anymore. More to the point," she says, "There are others capable of this from whom I need to learn to protect myself. ...Like Ganondorf. I had a vision, and in it, he was able to see me. Not just that I had a vision of him noticing me--that he noticed me in the vision."

"...So ways of guarding myself would be... good."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Eleanor talks about her visions, and Lan listens. When she gets to the part about Ganondorf, Lan's expression pulls into a frown. To say that she hadn't exactly liked the guy would be... putting it really mildly.

    "That's not the problem I expected you to have," Lan admits, and quietly slurps some of her tea while she gathers her thoughts. "But I think I can help anyway."

    Lan doesn't have visions (thank goodness; they're always a bigger hassle than they are a help, especially if you listen to Aunt Theda). "I wonder how he knows you're there. Is he just listening for anybody looking at him, or is it specifically you that he notices?" Is it the act that catches his attention, or the person doing it? She waits for a moment, listening and thinking, before her thoughts are gathered enough to continue.

    "I guess it doesn't matter all that much in the end. I might have to borrow your kitchen, though." There are two easy ways to start. "I can teach you the basic idea of how to make yourself be like someone else in the Dreaming. That is, uh, to change your shape and seeming, if you don't already know how. The other idea I have is to make something that will change your... I guess you would think of it as how you smell, but it's not your actual smell. It's like your smell, and your footprints... the trail you make when you move around. ...Does that make sense at all?" she checks, because Lan has never tried to explain any of this before.

<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.

Eleanor is pretty frowny about Ganondorf, too. Personally and spiritually. Along with a number of other ways.

"What did you expect?" Eleanor wonders. "...I do also have... Dreams," she admits. "Some of them are terrible. But I don't think knowledge of Dreaming will help me with those..." SHe could be wrong, though.

"I wonder, too. It was a vision of him, so perhaps he simply has the awareness of someone around him--but he knows the essence of the Sage of Light, too. From when Rauru was in the position. So it may well be both."

Her kitchen! "That can be arranged," Eleanor says. "Once they know you're doing something mystical the staff won't be offended to let you have some space."

"Hmmm..." She thinks about it. "in the Dreaming, I appear in the full regalia of the Sage. It took me a while to understand that. I suppose it would be possible to change that. It would be useful to learn how. But in the meantime..."

"That second part about 'trail' sounds like a good idea. I don't want anyone recognizing me if I can help it. It does make sense."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    "Well," Lan ducks her head a little, maaaaaaaybe blushing a little (it's hard to tell with her dark skin), "I wasn't sure, honestly. Maybe something like 'how to get in there on purpose'? Some people go in because they mean to, and some people go there because the Dreaming likes them." And sometimes it's both, and sometimes it's just an accident.

    If Eleanor wears the mantle of her station whenever she goes in, that could be part of the problem too. Briefly she remembers the cloudbear, and the sunstone that Eleanor left with them, and hopes that she remembered to put the latter securely in her rucksack before leaving it and Runeberry in her room...! "But! We'll start with the seeming, and when we've got that in the bunk we'll work on the rest."

    Doesn't that saying go 'in the bank'...?

    "Mmm. The easiest way to think of it is to..." she trails off, tries to make a gesture, sets her teacup down, and tries again. She outlines the shape of something vaguely humanoid in the air. "To have the idea of it firmly in your mind. To take the shape that you are," and she traces the human shape again, "And squish it, sort of, into something else. And to do it, and do it, and do it and believe it so hard that it becomes how you see yourself." She traces a different shape now, of something four-legged and small. "Believe you're a cat, and you'll be a cat!" And Ganondorf probably isn't looking for cats.

<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.

"Oh!" Eleanor says. "Hmm. I think I'm learning to go in on my own... But I haven't tried to explore that knowledge from Rauru yet, because I didn't know how to protect myself. I suppose it 'likes' me as it stands. I'm not sure the relationship of the Sage to the dreams, except that I have them."

"All right!" In the bunk... Eleanor considers that. She assumes it's a variant on the phrase and would be RUDE to comment on, rather than that Lan just got it wrong. Like hiding money under the bed!

Eleanor sets down her teacup as well. "I..."

She considers. "That's very like casting a spell properly," Eleanor says. "When you put it that way, I'm fairly certain that I can do it. It's not exactly the same--'belief' is different from simply focusing on the imago--but that's a good idea, too. A cat... I could get by very well that way."

"Do you think an owl would work? I know how it is to be an owl."

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    She thinks? Then again, if your attunement and your knowledge are both inherited (in the absolute most literal sense of the word) then yeah, the whole thing is probably pretty vague. "I'll show you every advantage I can think of, and I'm sure you'll refine them into something that works even better for you. If Ganondorf sees you again, it won't be because we slacked off."

    Is... is that what Lan thinks is reassuring?

    "It's kind of like a spell, yeah," Lan nods, because this is pretty familiar footing. "It's... it's something older, I think. Like when you're a kid, and there's something scary outside in the dark, so you make yourself invisible. But you do it on purpose, and you do it so hard that you wake up looking for your whiskers." Wait, is Eleanor supposed to be invisible, or a cat, or an invisible cat, or...

    "But an owl is fine too!" Lan tilts back into the proper conversation thread like a compass finding north. "As long as he's not looking for owls. Does he know you can be an owl?" Lan tucks her chin against her knuckles, toes smoothing across the wood floor. At some point, she took her sandals off.

    "But between that and the oil we'll make to change your scent, I think it should work fine!" Hopefully eleanor likes wearing socks to bed.

<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.

"Thank you," Eleanor says. "That's all I can ask. Destiny is... strange, that way. But I believe that it's something we can prepare for. Something we don't have to simply accept."

It works for Eleanor!

"Hmm... yes. I understand what you mean, I think." Pause. Invisible cat, or cat? Well, either way. It's fine!

"I'm not sure," Eleanor admits. "Rauru could, too. That's where I learned how. But it's for that reason a shape of power for me. I inherited some of it from him. So it may be easier to be hard to spot that way. If not... I do like cats. Cats are nice."

Eleanor is wearing shoes. Heels, even.

"Oh! An oil! I see. Thank you!" This is... starting to get a little weird, but--it's probably fine. She trusts Lan.