Starring:
Summary: The Muse gives the water baby a new nickname, and a little information on the List mission.
Date It Happened: Sometime before dawn, July 12, 2008
Undine Dreams
…In Dreams…
Jamie's dreamscape is detailed. A circus tent, with enough texture to be a memory than purely from imagination. It's not a big top, but what looks to be some kind of private dressing room. A woman with hair the same colour's as Jamie is helping the girl into a brightly coloured, really shiny leotard. Jamie's younger in this dream/memory too, maybe around eight. Just as Jamie finishes dressing, some movement and voices come from outside. They're muffled, Jamie probably did't hear what was being said, but the woman with her looks worried suddenly. The dream has the texture, if Kory can sense such things, of a nightmare brewing.
Kory does, but for the moment, she remains silent, invisible, observing. The former is caution — the dreamer may not be dreaming alone. There are other talents that could give Jamie a hanger-on or evesdropper. If the dream takes on the texture of terror, she'll intervene, but separating a dreamer from a happy memory? Kory simply doesn't have the heart to do that right now. Happy memories have jangled between her ears with sad ones, and trying to keep herself suspended between the two has been exhausting work for her in the waking. So she waits.
The woman looks around a moment, then pulls Jamie over to a large clothes trunk. She opens it and says, "Hide in here. Quiet now." Jamie gets in, starting to fear but not too much yet. The trunk is closed around her, and the dreamscape goes dark as Jamie's cut off from outside. Voices can be heard. The woman, saying, "What do you want?" A man responding, "Shit, I thought this was supposed to be empty." Another man says, "Nevermind. You, give us everything of value, and you won't be hurt." Jamie starts to whisper, probably an echo of her present mind that's experienced this before, "Nononono…"
Okay, hiding your child in a trunk? Yeah, that's nightmarish. The bottom of the trunk suddenly goes intangible, and Jamie drops right through it into a new dreamscape. It looks a lot like botanical garden. Jamie lands as light as a feather on a hammock beside a fountain. The fountain itself is beside a statue of a Greek lady in a toga, stone hands reaching toward the sky.
Jamie gives a slight yelp of surprise and a flash of fear as she falls, but when she finds herself in a much more pleasant place, she starts to calm, though she ends up just hugging herself a few moments. Finally, looking around, she walks up to the fountain, looking up at it.
The fountain is a typical ornate stone thing. There are fish spitting water, and little cherubs pouring it from pitchers. The garden itself is quiet and cool, sun filtering in from a canopy of leaves overhead. There's a breeze that sets the hammock to swaying, ruffles Jamie's hair, and sets flower petals and leaves to dancing merrily around her. "Hello, Jamie." The voice is familiar. It comes from the stone statue, even though the lips of said statue do not move.
Jamie blinks, looking around and then back up to the statue, then answers, "Hi. I know your voice," she adds, a little uncertain though as she stares up at the fountain.
"Yes, you do. I promised I'd come visit you again if your grownups and you didn't get back to me. It's me, Kory. But these days, when I visit dreams, I go by 'Muse', okay?" Kory's voice is gentle, and the statue's head turns to look more directly at Jamie. The lips still aren't moving but the features are quite distinctly Kory's now. "Your new family must be way busy."
Jamie smiles again, "Muse? Cool. Like music." Then she nods quickly and says, "Yep, they are! Ali's always working or sleeping, it seems like. And Erin's a TV star, so she's busy all the time too. Glad you finally came." Then she looks around, "This is a dream?"
"Kind of, yeah," Kory explains, stepping down off the pedestal and sitting down on the edge of the fountain. "Muses are people who inspire dreams. Peter nicknamed me that." She gestures around at the botanical garden. "Yep. Well, it was your dream, but that didn't really look like such a pleasant one, so…I figured you wouldn't mind if I changed it up a little."
Jamie nods quickly and says, "Yeah, that one's awful bad. It's when my mom died. I only get it sometimes, but it's the worst. Thanks for changing it." She looks back up and changes the topic by asking, "Can you tell me how we can save the world now? I kept asking Sophie, but she wouldn't say 'cause you didn't."
"I'm glad I changed it too, then," Kory says sincerely. "And the thing is, I'm not totally sure myself. All I know so far is that a company called Pinehearst — and they're the bad guys. They want to give everybody powers, which is …" Kory's stone visage crumples a little in a frown. "Not as cool as it sounds. They've already started doing it. And if they keep doing it, the future is going to turn — really ugly."
Jamie blinks, "They do? But what's…oh, I think I see. People like… like the ones who hurt mom, and stuff, if they got powers too, it'd be really bad, huh?" She then asks, "How do we stop them?"
Kory touches her nose in a 'got it on the nose' gesture. "You got it." Faster than some of the adults, even. Which makes the Muse smile warmly at the Undine child. "I'm not sure, exactly. That's the problem. But we have Peter, and he and Niki and a few other people are thinking it over. How to do it without hurting people if they can help it."
Jamie smiles back. Then she thinks a moment, considering it, before saying, "Can't you just go in to here they're doing it and steal whatever they need to do it?"
"Probably," Kory agrees, but then adds, brow furrowed, "But what would stop them from coming after us for stealing it and getting revenge on us for stealing it?"
Jamie blinks, and says, "Oh." She shrugs a bit then and says, "Well, dunno. Unless you made sure somehow it didn't trace back to you. Joe sometimes hired people for one job and just one job, but those times he never met them himself, so they couldn't tell the cops who hired them. Know 'cause I was the one he usually sent to give em the papers with their orders. 'Cause he knew I'd never get caught."
"Yeah, but Joe sent you to do jobs against regulars," Kory points out. "Pinehearst's got regulars and — specials like us. So we don't know for sure that somebody may or may not have powers that can track even clever little Undine girls who can slip down the drain."
Kory smiles faintly. "Yes. It is. Even for us big ones," she admits, to ease the sting for Jamie. "Undine is a type of fairy. She lives in the water, and controls water, and turns into water. Just like you. I'll see if I still have my book of mythology where I read about Undines, so you can learn more if you want to."
Jamie's eyes widen a little and she says, "There's a fairy like that? Yeah, I wanna learn! Never even heard anybody, even in stories before who can do what I can. Except Peter." Then she says, "Dunno how to help stop them, but promise, I will. Soon as you say how."
"She shows up in a lot of old school video games, too," Kory says pensively. "Played a few when I was your age. They control the snow and the rain and can pull from rivers and streams. And high pressure water makes a pretty good weapon." She looks solemnly at Jamie. "I don't know how yet, but Peter and Niki and Gabriel are all working on it." There was a faint pause before Gabriel's name, but something about the way the man looked at her when she came in from Future Peter's pyre that made her feel like the man had decided then and there he was on board, even more than he'd already agreed to. Worriesome, but for whom? "So we're just gonna fly by the seat of our pants, I guess."
Jamie blinks, "Wow, that's lots more than I can do. Well, I sorta can pull water from other stuff. That's how I heal myself. But takes like hours, sometimes. Gotta forget where the difference is 'tween me and the water 'round me, that's kinda hard." Then she nods a bit and says, "Dunno them, but cool. And promise, won't tell anybody."
"You'll get the hang of it, I'm sure," Kory says reassuringly. "As faeries and mythological creatures reckon things, you're just a baby Undine." And, theoretically, as long as there is water, Jamie could, conceivably, live for a very, very long time. "I know I can trust you. You're a good kid even if you've got some naughty kid talents." The statue winks, and then turns to hop up on her pedestal again. "Keep your eyes and ears open. If you see anything you think I should know about— " Kory lifts a hand, and the wind returns, swirling flower petals into a five digit number. "Find a cellphone and text me here." The flower petals hold for a long moment, dream cementing in Jamie's mind so she may not remember it as such on waking, but if she needs it, it will spring immediately out of her subconscious. "Or concentrate on me as you fall asleep if it can wait that long, and I will hear you calling me when you start dreaming."
Jamie gives a grin at the wink. Then she nods quickly again at the instructions, looking at the flower petals as she reads them. "I don't got a cellphone, they don't like getting wet. But I'll find one if I gotta." Then she gives a little wave and says, "Bye. Thanks for visiting me."
"They make waterproof cases for them," Kory says. "I'll see you get one." She hops down off the statue's pedestal again, gives Jamie a quick, tight hug, and a kiss on the forehead before returning to the pedestal once more. "You're welcome. Stay in touch, okay?" She gets herself into an appropriately dignified Grecian statue pose and asks, "How's this?" Playfully letting Jamie pose her before she leaves altogether.
Jamie returns the hug, smiling brightly back up to the Kory-statue, and says, "I will, promise." She giggles a little at the question of the pose, and says, "Looks great."
"Sweet dreams," the Muse tells her new Undine, and holds the pose. The dreamscape shifts again. The fountain moves like some sort of Transformer, revealing a long, wide, loopy waterslide and a big, cool pool far below. Kory's notion of giving a waterbaby happy dreams.