Cigarette Daydreams @animotoph0bia - Tumblr Blog

Oct 12, 2024

TIMING: Last Week PARTIES: @animotoph0bia & @amonstrousdream LOCATION: Finn's Apartment SUMMARY: Finn is having a dream and wishing a particular visitor would show up. Lucky him, Leila does! TRIGGER WARNING: Parental Death (brief mention), Child Death (brief mention)

The role of a mare- a proper mare- in the balance of the world was supposed to be to create fear in the minds of others. If there was a scale upon which one could weigh the success of a mare, then Leila was certain that she was an abject failure. She could create a nightmare, certainly, to survive. To feed. But it brought her no pleasure to do so. It brought no good to the world either. So when she had seen Finn and his terrible dream that held fast to him like a snare in the astral, it was so easy to want to make it go away.

Which was dangerous. It was always dangerous to want what you could not have, to be what you were not. She was not a mother, and she had wanted, and now one of the ones she loved like a child was dead. She had wanted a family to love and keep safe, and at every turn someone was hurt, or leaving, or both, and there was nothing she could do about it. She wanted to be good. To do good. It was only a matter of time before this wish-upon-a-star of helping dreamers went awry. But it wouldn’t stop Leila from trying. It couldn’t.

Through a keyhole, up the stairs, and under the crack below the door and the floorboards. The mare could almost taste Finn’s dream. It wasn’t bad yet. It lived in that strange in between that so many dreams did- neither good nor bad, decidedly mundane… but going in might provide her the chance to talk to the dreamer. Leila pushed aside the thought of how terribly wrong it might be before placing a gentle hand on the boy’s arm and slipping into his dream.

Tonight was the third night in a row without Charlie, the newest bout of shows keeping him away, and still there was no sign of a visit from the mare. His regularly scheduled nightmares had of course kept him company instead - the first night in an empty bed was always the roughest - but the woman with the soft voice and gentle touch was absent. On the second night, Finn had even tried leaving a very offended Lucky in his crate but no luck. He wanted to know more and selfishly, wanted to know if there was a way for her to do what she’d done again. Pulling him out before he’d spiraled completely, before everything got drenched in sweat and his heart threatened to eject out through his throat.

But that all seemed stuck in the realm of wishful thinking.

There was no telling why tonight’s dreams had brought him back to his old high school. At least the halls were empty, providing some relief. The building itself wasn’t scary, only the people that had shared this space with him for four dreadful years. Aimless wandering brought Finn to the dimly lit hockey rink, the ice and the stalls just as empty as where he was coming from. Maybe it should have been eerie but at least this way, nothing could hurt and overwhelm him. Probably wishful thinking as well because the dim lights flickered and unease settled in his stomach. Only… she had been part of the shadows at first, hadn’t she? The awareness that he was in fact dreaming grew and with it, a flicker of hope.

“Hello?” His voice echoed across the empty rink, breath fogging in front of his face as if it was somehow below freezing in here. Finn scanned the empty seats, hoping against hope that he’d see the mare. “I don’t… know your name but uh… if you’re here, I’d love to talk.” A pause. “This is stupid,” he muttered, slumping into one of the seats. Maybe tonight’s sleep would at the very least not bring blood or pain - and if it did, there was the possibility of being able to wake himself up.

It was a fine line the mare was dancing across. To alter a dream was to feed upon it. It wasn’t like Leila had the experience to change the images in one’s mind and not feed. Even now, as she became a simple observer hovering in the dark corners of Finn’s mind, she wondered and worried if simply being in the presence of fear was enough to imbibe upon a dream accidentally. Thankfully, there wasn’t too much fear welling up. Things were thankfully bland in the boy’s mind that night. It didn’t cut into her like the sugary taste of a sweet dream or the intoxicating waft of fear. The lack of those overwhelming sensations was enough to allow her to focus.

The world she entered was cold. Not physically- a dream was never really what it seemed, but the ideas of the concept were often implied. Images of goosebumps on skin and whisps of foggy breath swirling through the air fluttered through the mare’s mind as she moved about in the shadowy corners of the skating rink. The lights, fluorescent and flickering, cast a strangely clinical sheen across the large room, casting long shadows where there should be none.

Leila had just about settled into the darkest corners she could find- just in case, she had told herself- when she heard the boy speak. Red eyes flicked around the great empty space. Had a figure conjured themself out of memory? Was there someone else there besides the dreamer and herself? But the more he talked, the more she realized… he was talking to her. Looking for her.

Red eyes widened from the dark on the other side of the arena. She had already made enough of a mistake by interfering as much as she had. Mares made nightmares, they could be nothing more than that. But that needling hollow feeling that had grown inside her over the past months pleaded with her. Please, it called, this could be your purpose, a chance to make the failures right…

“Hello…” Her voice was nothing more than a murmur on the far side of the arena, but she tugged a thread of the dream so gently that it sounded nearer to the boy. “I won’t come closer if you don’t want me to.”

At the edges of the dream, the edges of his mind, everything unwanted and uninvited lingered, knowing that if it pushed hard enough it might manage to slip in. It existed in the form of an anxious, jittery feeling that lived in his bones, both while waking and asleep. At least outside of the dreams, Finn had his little methods of dealing with it, from good company to distractions to the meds. In here, there had only been resignation and fear. Until now.

A quiet voice like this one, coming from right behind him and next to him all at the same time, it should have been terrifying, a bad omen. Would have been, if Finn didn’t immediately know the voice, having been actively hoping for it. Funny how a whisper could be either horrifying or a welcome relief depending on the circumstances.

Finn rushed to his feet, head whipping around but not finding the owner of the disembodied voice. That was fine, she was still here. From what he had gathered about mares so far, admittedly not the most detailed information but still, it was almost kinda funny that she was the one hiding and not him. Or maybe Finn’s sense of self-preservation was just more broken than he realized. “You can!” he assured her quickly, peering across the rink. With the gross fluorescent lighting still on, he wouldn’t have seen her red gaze even if it was there.

“If you want to, I mean,” Finn added after a beat, not wanting his eagerness to pressure her. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off, lose her back to the shadows. At least here, there was no dog to bark at her and from what he could tell, she was supposedly in charge. Just as well, leaving Finn’s mind in charge of his dreams all these years hadn’t done much good, a change in regime couldn’t provide much worse results.

“Just… wanted to thank you properly. And apologize for Lucky, he gets a bit protective but I swear, he’s actually the nicest boy.” He was rambling, apparently not immune to that in dreams, wringing his hands and heart leaping everytime a shadow shifted.

Maybe it was too hopeful to think the boy sounded happy to know she was there. There was the slightest flicker of… Leila didn’t know what to make of it, but a positive emotion. It couldn’t be excitement, but it certainly wasn’t disdain… Whatever it was, it was not a feeling she was used to sensing as a response to her presence in a dream. It was strange. Stranger still to hear the voice of her dreamer calling out from across the rink, inviting her closer. As if she wasn’t some leech who could feed upon his dreams if she wanted. As if she were something good.

Was she good? She didn’t know anymore. The mare tried so very hard to be good, to do as little harm as she possibly could. She didn’t know if fluttering about in the back of someone’s mind in some stupid attempt at keeping the dark at bay was effective or safe. Maybe it would just do more damage… but Leila had failed so much in the last year, that it just made her all the more desperate to do something right.

She took a deep breath and willed herself closer. She moved through the shadows cast in the wake of objects by clinical fluorescent light. Leila’s image flickered in and out, in and out, like a picture on an old fuzzy television. A woman of shadow and infernal light appearing and vanishing without a trace. It was harder to hold onto the threads of a dream, she realized, if she wasn’t anchoring herself in a person’s fear. By the time the mare found herself in a seat a few rows behind Finn the faintest flicker of aching filled her chest. She would definitely need to go find an actual meal after this…

“You’ve nothing to apologize for, chéri… Animals aren’t too fond of things like me. He didn’t know I didn’t mean any harm…” Leila kept her voice low and steady, hoping a bit of calm in his usually stormy mind would keep his fears at bay. “I just… didn’t want to see you suffer through that nightmare.”

Finally, what had just been the normal flicker of a shadow, trick of the dark, was actually the mare. If breathing had been something you noticed in dreams, aside from when it hurt or came hard and fast like a panic attack or when it felt like you couldn’t breathe, Finn would have held his breath. As it was, his gaze simpy tracked the mare’s approach, unaware of his breathing now while it didn’t trouble him. In a way, she looked… less here, somehow. She had seemed so corporeal back in the bedroom that haunted his dreams and sometimes the waking moments as well but now, Finn wondered if she would evaporate with a strong gust of wind. Not that it got particularly windy inside a skating rink but dreams rarely made sense, did they?

She was seated, fully visible now and Finn continued to wring his hands, even if they did still at the soft term of endearment. The same one she had used in the other dream, again bringing with it a sort of warmth mixed with a bit of hollowness. It highlighted the lack of something, which hurt but not enough to draw away from how nice it felt, too.

“I’m still sorry. And I still want to thank you.” It had only been that one dream, that one night where she had spared him the full extent of his mind’s guilt and loss but more than just that one night, she’d brought a flicker of hope that maybe there would be others like it. Ones not haunted by the past. “I… asked around. About… y’know, and so I guess I’m also saying thanks for not… snacking on my trauma, I guess?”

Were jokes that weren’t really funny the way to go? Finn hadn’t ever talked to a strangely maternal dream creature inside his own subconscious before, not like there was a rule book. “Since you could have. But didn’t.” A pause. “I’m Finn, by the way.” Did she care? Maybe she was just here to make sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat, that he wouldn’t sound the alarm and send something or someone deadly her way. The air inside the rink felt a little bit colder, still, a shiver mixing in with Finn’s nervous energy that maybe, he’d read the situation wrong.

So he knew what she was.

Leila wasn’t sure whom he had asked- hopefully not a hunter, or anyone else who might paint her and her kind in the guise of a monstrous thing that did not care. She was sure that there were probably still a few hunters in town who would happily see her turned into a cloud of stardust. “I wouldn’t have… not for anything in the world. I don’t know about all others like me, but… I wouldn’t.” The lines she’d drawn for herself- the ethics of a monster- were so engrained in her being that the mere thought of feeding on a dreamer who did not deserve a little fear in their lives was abhorrent. But even then, a small voice in her mind told her that the dreamers she did feed upon probably didn’t deserve it either…

She didn’t know how much of an explanation the boy wanted. If he just wanted a promise that she would not feed upon the dreams made of the shadows in his life. The little flinches and shivers of worry kept taunting her. Still a monster… But would a dreamer share their name with the monster under the bed? Willingly? A little smile flickered across her face. Something tugged at the stitches that held a mangled heart together.

“Hello Finn…” The reply came with the faintest hint of brightness dancing across the syllables. “I’m Leila.”

In a way, it was reassuring that his sleeping mind had been tormenting him since way before moving to Wicked’s Rest, meaning that he probably wasn’t being accosted by mares that weren’t his new friend every night. That didn’t mean none had ever made a nice meal out of his nightmares, a concept that was both interesting (because how the fuck does that sustain you?) and a bit violating. Finn hadn’t liked it one bit when the vampire had tried to make a meal of him, this realization had felt just as icky. She didn’t make him feel icky, though, not after showing her true colors the other night.

“Yeah, I know,” he assured her, even though he couldn’t really know and even now, was maybe still 5% convinced she was a figment of his imagination. Her being this protective, real presence was a much nicer alternative, though. The smile, faint as it was, brought with it a surge of relief and Finn felt lighter. “Hi, Leila,” he greeted back with a small smile of his own and honestly, there was no way his mind would have come up with the name Leila. And anyway, why would it have been a woman he’d never seen instead of, say, his mother? Not that she’d ever felt like a good fit for the role of protector, not really. She’d seemed more intent on fixing him than anything else.

That train of thought was a slippery slope and Finn dragged his focus back to Leila, who was here and real and a mare and she had chosen to help him. “You do that a lot? Help people out of bad dreams?” he asked, ignoring the way those other thoughts nagged and asked to be regarded, contemplated and dwelled on.

—

There was another little tug on her heart. The boy was reassuring her, wasn’t he? That he thought she wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t his responsibility- not even a little bit. If anything, it was Leila’s responsibility to prove that she wasn’t there to hurt him- continuously, unendingly. After all, it wasn’t as if she ceased to be a nightmare. It was a constant thing. Something that defined her. But the little smile on his face was sweet. Honest.

She shouldn’t let herself get attached. It would only hurt herself in the long run. And yet…

The mare continued to hold the shadows at bay. They wouldn’t creep up on the sweet boy, not if she could help it. It hurt- only a little, only like hunger hurt- but it was a good thing she as doing. A good thing. “I… if I’m being honest, no. I usually don’t go into the dreams of people like you- good people, I mean.” Don’t scare the boy. “I’m trying to now, though…”

The dream continued to ebb and flow only it felt less and less… volatile the longer it went on. Where it would usually switch things up, change at a pace that felt fitting for someone with Finn’s anxiously fast mind, it had now held steady for what felt like forever. It was nice - and probably would have been strange if his unconscious mind had the wavelength to really, truly notice it.

Her words caught him off guard, being called a ‘good people’ tugging at his heart in the same way it tended to flip and flop when Charlie called him worthy or something equally mushy. At the same time, he yearned for that sort of confirmation while also being terrified of it being untrue. Instead of letting himself be lost in that, of starting a discussion on human morality and where he fell on that spectrum, Finn set his sight on the unspoken part of her words. If she didn’t normally enter dreams like his, then…

“So you try to… feed off people that… deserve it?” he asked hesitantly, careful that nothing even close to judgment could be heard in his voice. Because Finn didn’t judge her - maybe he would have months ago but once monsters had become a regular part of his life, right and wrong had gotten so many more shades of gray.

—

The carefully worded question made her stomach twist with revulsion- not for the boy, but for herself. Cruelty was the means of survival for a mare. That’s what it was to weave a nightmare, wasn’t it? A cruel twisting of the innermost thoughts and fears of a person, trapping them within a place of ultimate vulnerability and benefiting from it? To say ‘I feed upon those who deserve it’ begged the question ‘who really deserves that sort of torment?’- the answer should have been ‘no one’.

But in the face of this boy, who she so desperately wanted to trust her, Leila realized her centuries long folly. She swallowed heavily, guilt weighing down on her. “… Do you know A Christmas Carol? A person scared by spirits and dreams of their own misdeeds? I… watch during the days… for those who might need a scare towards a better path…” Her red eyes were distant as she thought through her words. “It isn’t right, I know… but it’s the only way I can survive…”

Guilt had teeth almost as sharp as hunger. When compounded, the pain was nearly all consuming. Guilt of what she was, and what she had done for all those years; guilt of those she had failed and guilt for those she would likely go on and continue to fail in some way… Shadows flickered for a moment, wobbling dangerously as Leila’s concentration slipped for a moment. A heartbeat later and the shadows froze in place, her hands in fists at her sides attempting to hold the weave of the dream firmly in her control. Quiet apologies in a mix of English and French tumbled from her mouth in a nearly incoherent jumble as things settled once more. “You’re alright, I promise you are safe…”

___

Even if he’d tried for careful wording, Finn could tell his question had knocked the mare off kilter. Leila looked pained and he grimaced, wishing he could take it back. Clearly, his social skills were just as lacking in dreams as they were in the real world, mouth letting things slip that it really shouldn’t. Despite all that, Leila answered and in such a gentle way, too. Finn didn’t know if it was the dream or her or something else but where he might have normally kicked off at the notion of being spoken to like a child, here it didn’t feel patronizing.

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” It was out before he could stop it, as honest as could be. So he continued. “I don’t think I would have even thought of something like that. Trying to help, do something good with a situation that’s…” As Finn trailed off, he noticed the shadows flickering and then felt it - his stomach swooped, something cold clawed at his chest and squeezed and the single moment felt like an eternity until just as quickly as it came along, it was over. Anything resembling thoughts returned to him slowly, it took a second to remember he was in a dream through the confusion of being at a skating rink, Leila’s muttering providing an anchor. Promising that he was alright.

“Are you?” he asked carefully once he’d found his voice again, clambering over the plastic seats of the rink to reach the mare. In here, and with her in general, Finn couldn’t feel her emotions. But he’d learned enough through the years to see the trouble on Leila’s face, take note of the clenched fists.

___

She didn’t quite understand why this boy trusted her. It was possible that Leila was a liar, or that she was going to feed on his mind in other ways. Not that she ever would. Just that it was possible. Mares were dangerous. She was dangerous. But instead, he was climbing over plastic seats to get closer to her. Was it dangerous for him to be so close? She didn’t know. The whole situation was fraught with unknowns- probably because mares stopping nightmares simply wasn’t done.

Was she safe? It wasn’t a question that Leila had asked herself. There hadn’t been any rationalization or thinking things through. Just a need to help someone and mend the seemingly unmendable hole in her chest of failures and losses. She reached out to steady Finn as he clambered over to her side, all the while trying her best to ignore the strange ache growing in her chest. Who climbed beside the monster under the bed and truly cared how they were?

“I’m alright,” It wasn’t an answer, nor was it really true. The fact of the matter was that she hadn’t been alright for a while. But she had to be. With all the care of a mother, she reached out and brushed the boy’s hair away from his forehead. “I’m more worried about you… I can stay and let you get some rest, if you like… Try and keep your nightmares in check.”

____

Around the time climbing over the second row out of the five necessary to reach Leila, he realized it ultimately would have been quicker to go around to the aisles, maybe even ask the mare to swoop closer. Theoretically at least, this being a dream and all, Finn couldn’t quite count on logic being in charge here. Whatever, he didn’t fall over and no chair threatened to morph into a flesh eating monster so all in all, a win. Leila reached out and he accepted the offered support of balance, still in awe of how real she felt. Of course she was real and well, Finn was only as real as the objects around him now but she still managed to feel more here somehow, even if she had been a part of the shadows just moments ago.

Feet finally back on the ground, Finn could direct all his focus on the very unconvincing answer. He’d given enough halfhearted ‘I’m fine’ answers throughout the years to spot one from miles away. Before he could tell her that she was a shit liar (he would have done it nicely, of course) Leila was tucking his hair back in a way that immediately disarmed him, any sass vanishing. Charlie was the only one that ever messed with his hair but it wasn’t the same, a similarly soft thing but entirely different except for the warmth it inspired in his chest.

“Yeah?” For someone so generally opposed to being ‘taken care of’, Finn found himself surprisingly enticed by the thought. Even if he’d been worried, was worried, about Leila because she definitely wasn’t alright, her offer was a good one. It did make him feel selfish, she’d already helped him out once and Finn had done nothing in return other than have his dog growl at her and then here she was again, offering more help. It didn’t help that he was literally asleep except not so his brain wasn’t exactly working at full capacity - the offer to not be for a little while was a wonderful one. Of protection in a place he had never been protected at before. The normal argument, that he’d been managing so far, didn’t get past his lips because how nice would it be to not be just managing, even if just for a night?

“I wouldn’t… mind that.”

—

If she could, if it was alright and she knew that her hold upon the dream would not slip, Leila would have gathered the boy up in her arms. She would have been a shield from the dark things his mind concocted. Or at least, she would have tried. If she was being brutally honest with herself, what she was doing was likely dangerous. After all, to go against one’s nature was always a complicated thing. What if her muddling the path of his own nightmares was just as bad as if she had fed on him? What if she accidentally turned his nightmares into something worse?

But the soft sound of her dreamer’s voice tugged her up, up, and out of the spiral of worries. Sweet boy… How long had his dreams been so dark? How long had he been a prisoner in his own mind? Leila remembered her own hellish prison of the mind. There had been nights where she would pinch herself until she bruised, talked to herself until her voice was lost entirely, all to keep from falling asleep. But sleep came in the end, and the mare that had made her feasted until there was nothing left to consume. She had wished for someone to save her back then. No one had come…

The ghost of a smile played at her lips as Leila bowed her head in a slight nod. “Alright then… you rest. Nothing’s going to harm you as long as I’m here, sweetheart… I promise.”

___

Any doubts or regret that had instantly sprouted the second Finn agreed to her offer, they melted away at Leila’s faint smile. Agreeing to it seemed to have made her happy. It was logical, people wanted to feel useful, like they had a purpose and in every way that mattered, the shadow joining Finn in his dream was still a person. He had thoughts about how to repay her for the kindness, for showing him a kind of care he hadn’t felt since around the time his dad had left them. A fruit basket was cliched and also not enough, wine seemed like the sort of thing adults like to gift but Finn didn’t know good wine from fucking Ribena and maybe she didn’t even like wine and again, that felt inadequate.

His thoughts were running away from him, one train of thought derailing and molding into the next in the way that if you stopped to wonder what was on your mind, you had no idea how you got there from where you’d started. The kind of thoughts that preceded falling asleep and with them, the heavy feeling of something like a warm blanket encasing you, pulling you down. Finn had her promise, he would be fine, he was protected. The comfort of that enveloped him as whatever setting his mind had previously made up melted, including Leila who also vanished into the darkness as Finn’s mind became blissfully quiet.

#writing #thread:leila #amonstrousdream #leila.002

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Cigarette Daydreams