"Oh come on Yona... It's not there's a lot of choices for us in Karricks' Bend and even if there was beauty isn't everything. Take our good friend Shard here...
Don't you think he would rather be with someone intelligent over someone like me that can't sit still for five minutes?"
Ariadne cracked her whip once into thin air as sort of punctuating her point. Then looked at with a satisfied grin.
"Besides, Auntie Em says there are no ugly people. Just poor makeup."

If the suggestion of leaving town was an uncomfortable one for Peck, then the direction of Ariadne and Yona's discussion is so much more so.

Strange that Ariadne should mention Chaia ... she and Peck had been close when young, before things got complicated, and even now ... well, if there was one girl in Karick's Bend, then it would be her, though perhaps she'd changed rather too much ...

But Yona ... Peck's surprise at her outburst is that of a big brother looking out for his little sister, and that's the way he's always thought of her ...

"I had the strangest dream ..." the young blacksmith begins as it comes flooding back to him, face colouring nicely as he realises how that must sound on the back of the girls' conversation.  "Began in a schoolroom, underground," he hurries on.  "I was a merchant's son.  Yona was there ... my sister ... in fact most of you were there.  Then there was some sort of uproar ?  And we were attacked."

"By the townsfolk ?" he struggles to recall the fleeting dream-memory, disturbed at how it mirrors the current conversation.

"I... I had the same dream!" Yona exclaims, glad of the change of subject.  "We were there, but we weren't us.  We were different.  That is, everybody looked and acted the same, but the memories were different.  And I didn't need a stick to walk."

In reply to Ariadne (msg # 121):

Shard, pondering the lessons taught by his mentor half listened to what the others talked about, not really concerned about the future figuring if the group or members failed to understand the lessons then the future would be different.  'Why worry something that hasn't come to fruit yet.' he thought to himself before returning back to the reflection of the lessons.

Glancing at Ariadne he frowns, girls were still a mystery to him and he hadn't given much thought about dating much less marriage.  He took another look at the young woman and shrugs, letting Ariadne at least know that he was listening to the group.

At mention of dreams, Shard had to really think about what he had dreamed of last night and ... really couldn't even remember.  Listening to the others, he takes in what they had to say.

Ariadne once again coiled her whip and laid it under the basket with apples before taking one and trying to listen to what Yona and Peck were going to say about their dream.
Apple in hand and a face that at least looked interested.

"Different," Peck nods eagerly, fascinated and more than a little scared that Yona shared that dream.  "I was not really me," cheeks colour again as he recalls the less than pleasant way he addressed his Dwarven friend.

"Kerric was there, and Opluriko," he looks towards the T'skrang, wonderingly, "and Alia ... and Chaia and Laethwyr."

"School, we were in a schoolroom ..." and that gets a furrowing of the brow as he draws the obvious parallel, though at least the place they are now is in the light, " ... then something happened."

"I remember.  We were trying to keep people out.  It was dark, and they were acting strange." Yona's voice is quiet and low, as she recalls more details, "As if they'd gone mad.  And whatever caused it was away from us at first, on all sides, and then it got closer as the people did.  Like they were carrying it towards us."

"Hammering at the door," Peck nods, shaking his head, more than uncomfortable in the light of their earlier discussion.  "At the time it was just ... terrifying, least when I woke.  Now ... it has the feel of a sending."

""Sending"... What do you mean "Sending"?"
Ariadne cocked her head and gave Peck a wondrous look.
"Like they were sent to you by the Passions?"
Ariadne polished her apple absentmindedly in her dress while keeping her eyes on Peck.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:16, Mon 28 July 2014.

Shard gave a grunt as way of letting Peck know he heard what had been said.  Chewing on his lip thoughtfully, he gave the two's dream a quick mulling over.  "Could be some sort of foretelling or vision of a prophecy that may take place." he offered really not sure.  "Teachers may know more.  Perhaps its just the magic we are learning waking up some hidden talents ya'll have."

"Felt like just a dream at the time," Peck mumbles, looking to Yona to see her reaction to Ariadne and Shard's suggestion.  "Unpleasant certainly, and in the cold light of day it does seem a reflection of what might happen if things go bad."

"My father is ... uncertain about what Kira was showing me, and he has always been fair and open-minded."  The young man tries to close his ears to the Dwarf's mention of magic.

A soft breeze takes advantage of its relatively unfinished nature to brush through the schoolhouse.

"I... don't think it did feel like a dream.  It felt real to me.  Like... " Yona stops, staring down at her hands, as if she could find an answer to this new mystery there.  "It felt real.  Scarier than any dream would be.  I could do things that I never learned how to do.  Things that I'd say are impossible, but they weren't impossible in the dream."

She looks around the room, at the faces of her friends.

"And they didn't help at all.  We were still trapped, and the townsfolk came."

Opluriko hadn't really wanted to add her voice to the dream, but with the continued talking, felt that maybe she should. "I remember it to. I thought if I could get around them, through them, maybe I could see what had riled everyone up. But the crowd, they just kept attacking...

That's not a dream I care to spend a lot of time remembering."

Peck's brows furrow at Ariadne's mention of the Passions, though he swiftly turns back to the conversation, shaking his head in agreement with Opluriko.  "Not at all pleasant," he replies, shuddering at the memory, despite the warmth of the patch of sunlight he's in.

"As Yona says, too real for one thing.  And less comforting that we all dreamed the same thing.  I've not heard of that before ..."

"How do you remember what you dreamt?  I never do."

Anora speaks quietly as she ransacks her mind.  She is not even sure she ever had dreamt, since she never had recalled a single one.

"Sometimes when I dream I find out I'm dreaming.
I love when that happens. Then I can fly and all kinds of everything.
It's quite handy when I'm dueling with Quendaala and she thinks she can get away."
Ariadne took a crunchy bite off her apple followed by a slurping sound as the juice started cascading down her chin.
"Hng! Juicy!"
Before she wiped her face clean with her hand before it dug into her apron and reemerged with a ragged piece of cloth resembling something that was once a napkin.

Anora's question confuses Yona for a moment.  Then, "I don't know.  I dream, I wake up, and I remember what I dreamed.  At least for a little while."

She shrugs, and lays back on the boards, staring at the sky through a hole in the ceiling which somebody needs to cover up before the next time it rains.  "If I don't try to remember the dream straight away, it fades away quickly.  Unless it's something that isn't nice.  Those dreams hang about for ages, no matter how I try to not think of them."

Ariadne's comment is interesting, "I don't know if I've ever had a dream where I knew I was dreaming, and changed the story."

"Ha!  There's a cloud that looks like old Marawel!"

"Well, I... don't remember dreams..."

A feeble protest, barely worthy of the label.

At the mention of a cloud Anora looks up and is quick to point out, "I had nothing to do with that.  Um, I mean, how could I?  That is to say, I...  Never mind."

Silence, always a good option.

Shard listened to the others, but didn't put much in store by dreams.  Like Anora, he usually didn't remember much of his dreams.  They were fragmented at best and usually made little sense or logic.  Flying dogs, hammers that talked, fires that couldn't go out no matter how much dirt or water you threw at it, Spiders with crossbows that were invading the village and many other odd dreams that in Shard's opinion were simply bad dreams, not omens or fortellings of things to come.

Rather than be rude and say as much, Shard closed his eyes and attempted to meditate and review what the instructor had said yesterday to learn the lesson better.

"I don't dream much ... or if I do then I suppose I just rarely remember my dreams," Peck adds.  "Marden says if you have time to dream then you're not working hard enough !" he grins.

"Last night, though ... definitely more nightmare than dream," the young smith agrees with Yona, "though it felt like my choices were affecting what was happening to me," he shrugs to Ariadne.

"Lunchtime" stretches on for longer than simply lunch might reasonably take, even if one assumes the Mayor is trying to impress the Strangers with a fancy, multi-course sort of luncheon.  Nevertheless, your perseverance (or in some cases, perhaps it's laziness, as staying in the Schoolhouse is certainly easier than going home to find out if there are chores available) pays off, and after a few hours, Tralistaire's voice carries through the doorway.  "..nk it's worth remaining wary, nevertheless.  If there is one thing reliable about a Horror, it is their talent for deception."

This is followed by a sound of agreement; Kira's voice.

Then Calisaren's, from above you, "Our protegès are still here!"  She's standing, of course, on the edge of the wall, waving down through the open ceiling.  Moments later, the others - Flechette in front - start coming in through the doorway, save Jenette, who, yet again, pulls herself up over the wall and sits, legs dangling, a few feet from Calisaren.

Yona, half dozing, comes fully awake as the strangers reappear.  She sits up, turning to dangle her legs over the edge of the boards where she rests.  But she says nothing... Tralistaire had been talking, of course, just before they entered, and Yona doesn't much like the subject matter.  It makes her feel nervous.

Stifling a yawn, she looks for Jenette.  Not surprisingly, the woman does not simply walk in through the door.  Yona smiles at a sudden thought which occurs to her, Of course she doesn't.  Doors are for ordinary people.

Ariadne quickly sat up straight and folded her hands neatly on the table as her mentors strode in the door. Once she saw her chance for it she leaned over and asked Peck "What's a Horror?" from the corner of her mouth.

Opluriko was bored. She was the active type, and what she did was active, and sitting in a schoolhouse for half of the day was not her idea of... well, anything, really. She was only doing it because she really did want to continue to learn from Llewendan. "Thank goodness you are back. I was thinking I was going to go through another molt before you returned at this rate," she blurted out.