( OPEN ) MISSION 3.1 | time shifts, dreams fade, ripples blur the illusion

[soups]

CHARACTERS: Jiang Yanli & You
LOCATION: Jiang Yanli's Dreamscape
DATE: Throughout the mission
CONTENT: Having fallen into a deep sleep, Jiang Yanli's dreams and memories play out for others to see and take part in
WARNINGS: Possible violence, mentions of death, canon spoilers guaranteed to be mentioned. Look below for specific warnings for each memory.

⇢ LOTUS PIER: relatively tame, more nostalgic and wistful than traumatic
⇢ JIN CLAN CHAMBERS: a little more psychologically complicated; involves issues of loss of child (abstract) and abandoned motherhood
⇢ NIGHTLESS CITY: obvious death and undead yanli. totally lost in the dream sauce here. injury is highly likely.

If you want to talk out another memory to enjoy, PM me or hit me up at haseul!

Comments

[soups]

❰ even the simple question leads her face to crumple, hands moving to clutch the sides of her robes with white knuckles. if it was so easy to answer, help wouldn't even be needed -- it's almost shameful, to involve an otherworldly stranger in this dispute, but they are much lesser importance to her than completing this task.

it's barely even noticed that she's now being carried; the sudden offsetting movement and shift of vision are par for the course with how surreal and warped her entire head feels. ❱

I've looked everywhere...he's nowhere to be found, and yet he has to be here. ❰ with a shake of her head, she scans the crowd of clashing disciples to no avail. concentrate, focus...where is he? ❱ He must be...I can hear his flute...

❰ previously absent but now eerily obvious is a sorrowful woodwind melody, looping without end. normally it may be easy to directly locate the source of the noise based on clarity and volume, but this song seems ambient: like it's one with the atmosphere itself; it's perhaps loudest in jiang yanli's brain, if anywhere. ❱

[hannyas]

He can't have just disappeared — hold on, flute?

[ yamato's head snaps up as they hear the unmistakable sound of a flute... but where is it coming from? it is impossible to say, more a part of the air itself, or perhaps the sounds of fighting, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

yamato, running as they'd been, slows to a halt. closes their eyes. ]

... right. He's playing a flute. That's enough.

[ eyes closed, they feel everything around them: the movements of the fighters, the kicked up dust, the drops of blood staining the battlefield. and the aura of a man holding a flute. ]

My lady... please look up. Can you see him?

[ he is above them, is he not? that is what yamato's senses are telling them, but whether observation haki works the same in a dream... it is hard to be sure. ]

[soups]

❰ jiang yanli's eyes are also closed as she tries to reorient herself. the more she actually thinks about finding where wei wuxian is as an actual task, not just a panicked state of mental anguish, the more it feels as if her brain is being pulled apart. something about the statement feels ridiculous, but why? he must be somewhere, right? he has the ability to leap such great distances, so he could have bounded away to a much safer place.

as she tilts her head and opens her eyes, the presence of the stars and the blackness beyond her makes her head spin. one of her hands quickly flies to her mouth, disoriented to the point of stomach upset and a more pressing desire to sob. somehow looking at just how impossibly vast the world is makes it all seem much more likely that this is a fool's errand.

the sound of the flute stops, and along with it all of the warriors freeze, mid-action. ❱ He is not here. My brother is not anywhere.

[hannyas]

[ the rules of a dream follow no logic — the world around them slows to a halt as a sob builds inside yanli's chest; yamato, holding her still, looks at the frozen warriors, the ones alive and the ones who look more corpses than anything living, and grits their teeth.

they can fight any thing, living or dead. what they can't fight is the chaos of jiang yanli's mind... nor her sorrow. ]

He is. He is. This is a dream, isn't it? Then — take control of it! Don't let it control you. If you want to find him... you will. Show the dream your will is stronger than whatever strange thing that's creating this.

[ they shift her slightly, gently, so that she's looking right at them instead of the vast sky. ]

I believe in you! [ it is her dream... her will. she's the one who can make sense of this. she just needs to believe it, too. ]