Cursed Night Market

[pantheraliam]

Welcome

You’re not sure how you got here, but you don’t seem to mind. You feel a pervasive sense of calm with regard to your environment. You have entered what appears to be a night market. Perhaps the concept is familiar to you, or perhaps it isn’t. Colorful stalls, glowing with lantern light, line the path before you. You know what you need to do to return to where you came from. Investigate the various stalls - buy and sell what you have, until you’re able to purchase a path back. The merchants will take any currency that you have on hand. If you don’t have any, you will find some coins of an ambiguous nature in your pocket.

Rare Items

The first stall that you encounter boasts that you can buy and sell rare items. After trading a coin, the merchant hands you something - insists you take it. You don’t recognize the item, but the person behind you does. It is something extremely dear to them. If they check their person, they will find the item missing. If you attempt to return the item to them, you will find that you are unable to. Helpfully, the merchant offers that the person the item belongs to must tell the buyer a story about the item before it can be returned.

Fortunes

The second stall you encounter claims to buy and sell fortunes. Trading a coin, the merchant will relay to you a fortune, but, as you listen, you realize that it isn’t your fortune at all. With a cackle, the merchant explains that you must deliver the fortune with the person behind you. Neither of you can leave the booth until you have revealed to them their future.

Memories

The third stall you encounter claims to buy and sell memories. You can choose to sell the merchant a memory you would like to forget, or you can ask to buy someone else’s memory. Selling your memory will transfer it to the person behind you. In return, you will gain one of their memories. Buying a random memory will instead cause you to forget one of the people most important to you. In some instances, you might feel a great urgency to find someone, although you don't know who it is.

Dreams

The fourth stall you encounter claims to buy and sell dreams. Trading a coin at this stall will cause you and the person behind you to be transported into a shared dream. The dream may be about the highest point in your life or the lowest. It may also be about a close friend, there or gone. It may reveal your greatest desire or your greatest insecurity. Or any number of other things!

OOC notes

Suggestions on prompts: if you’re going to write one where someone will be seeing/receiving something from your character, it’s helpful to describe it in detail in the brackets in your TL. I know some of these prompts are probably a little confusing, but, I mean…it’s roleplay. Just fuck around. No one’s gonna police how you do things here.

Please feel free to top-level, tag in, and share this meme wherever you’d like - it is open to anyone. The four stalls mentioned are prompt suggestions, but you can go crazy and have any stall do basically anything you want. Please see/use subject line CWs. This musebox doesn’t have a dedicated rule list because it’s just for my personal shit, but please be kind, follow standard RP rules - just be nice! Do the right thing! If you have any questions, hit me up here.

code by Flyleaf ❖ inspired by event code by 10billionghosts ❖ background via unsplash

Comments

dreams bc i am as terrible as ever

[dreamsofwings]

[ Is this Armin's dream? Or is it Eren's? It's impossible to say. Their oceans blend together, Armin's sparkling blue that they imagined as children and Eren's distant, too-dark water that he will fill with blood.

It's still water now, though. This is a dream, not something he's controlling. Probably.

He turns to look for land, but there isn't any. They're standing here calf-deep in water. When he turns again, he's facing Armin, the different colours of the water clashing at their feet. ]

What do you think happens now?

GOD I AM EATING THIS makes it worse

[thebomb]

[Right. Eren's here. This is how the dream is meant to be. It comes to him so often, now that Eren's gone. It's the world they both wanted deep down, isn't it? Empty...]

You don't usually talk to me here. It's nice to hear your voice.

[The waters do indeed mix at their feet. That seems right too. Eventually, it will all be blood.]

Nothing happens now. It's only us.

[dreamsofwings]

[ Is this the world Eren wanted? Maybe. Probably. He wanted a blank slate, the world wiped clean. At least here there aren't carrion birds, birds that flew fast enough to escape the heat of the titans. ]

I don't usually dream.

[ He'd have to be asleep to dream, and he doesn't know when he last slept. Does he sleep at all after breaking out of the jail cell? Does it count that he was unconscious while Ymir rebuilt him in the Paths? In his head he's been awake for eons.

Either way, he doesn't really dream anymore. What point would there be in having dreams now? None of that matters. ]

It's nice to hear yours too.

[ Armin's voice not yelling at him, neither of them are crying (yet). Just them and the blue ocean. This is what he's longed for since he was a child. Isn't it? ]

[thebomb]

[He longed to see the ocean, which made up so much of an unknown world - as a child, though? He didn't wish for nothing but. It's a dead wish - proof of rot; Armin should be gutted.]

Your dead, aren't you? I didn't think you could dream. [And it is, as ever, only a dream, as far as Armin knows. You could spend your time in dreams yelling and screaming at the ghosts that haunt them, or you could take in the muddy ocean and reach for a moment of peace.

[It's his dream. He doesn't want to get angry. And he doesn't feel angry. Eren is here. It's nice to hear his voice.]

[dreamsofwings]

[ Eren's eyes go a little wide at that. ]

Am I?

[ Is he? He could be dead. He has to die for it to end. That's always been true. There was only one ending they could reach.

He doesn't remember dying. He remembers the moments before, because he already knew what they were like. He'll be ready for that long before it actually happens. But here in this water, the future is blessedly blank. ]

Maybe we're both dead.

[ In the end, no one makes it out alive. That's just life. And Armin did make him a promise. Eren can't hold him to it, but he knows it wasn't a lie. ]

[thebomb]

[Armin seems to consider this. What would Hell look like? Maybe the Hell they created (the water is getting redder), but it feels a bit too peaceful for that. He's had this dream a thousand times. It's playing out just like it always does, and it's no Hell - not until he wakes up again.

[Armin heaves a deep breath - smiles, shakes his head.]

Sorry, Eren. I didn't think I'd be the one to break that news to you. No, I think I'm still alive. I've had this dream before. I do all the time.

[dreamsofwings]

It's not really news. I know I have to die.

[ Or already did, whatever, it's the same in the end. It doesn't faze him too much that maybe they're from incongruous points in time. It's not like Eren could pinpoint when he's from, when he's just from every time he's ever lived anyway.

Eren truly can't imagine any hell other than the one he created. The world after him is nonexistent, because he's the centre of the universe, the thing that will affect all other things for an unknowable amount of years once he no longer exists. The world before him was bleak and furious. The world with him in it was worse.

The red spreads from the distance slowly towards them. He's vaguely aware of it, but he's been swimming in blood his whole life. What's a little more blood between monsters? ]

Is it a good dream or a bad one?

[thebomb]

[Ah. Armin's smile warms. It's genuine. It's Eren, always thinking in black and white - even here, even now. He manages the mindset while violating it at every step with some contradiction that only makes sense to Eren, Eren, Eren, ever Eren, and Armin will never know him, and know all of him, as well as he knows himself, which might not be at all...

[Is it a good dream? A bad one?]

Good and bad has never made sense to me. You know that.

[There's water. Armin shifts his leg back and forth, kicking up small waves; they wash back red.]

It's a terrible dream, but it looked beautiful for a minute, didn't it?

[Armin turns his head over his shoulder, where the endless ocean's horizon is still clean, clear blue.]

Look that way, and it's still beautiful.

[The other direction, looming behind Eren - thick, viscous red, sloshing.

[But that direction looks beautiful too. It's where Armin's dear friend is standing.]

I don't mean to talk in riddles, though...this is a dream. What I mean by all that is...

It's exactly the type of dream someone like me would have. Good or bad? I guess I can't really decide.

[dreamsofwings]

[ Of course Eren wonders at the nature of the dream, hoping for Armin's sake that it isn't a nightmare. But even "good" dreams can be sinister, and doesn't Eren's presence here mean it could never be good either? He still thinks this way, though, even if it's at odds with what he knows about himself and the world. ]

Yeah. It did.

[ Eren doesn't bother looking behind him. He knows what that ocean looks like. He's been walking through it for lifetimes. ]

If it's a dream, you can make it be whatever you want.

[ As if that's how dreams work. Maybe for someone who forgot how to dream, it seems like they should. ]

[thebomb]

[Armin takes Eren's hand. He shakes his head.] Not me, Eren. I've never been able to control what I dream.

But you took me where I wanted to go. You showed me everything we promised we'd see...

Where else is there to go, really?

I'd like to stay with you. That's all, for now.

[Just a little more, a little longer in this wonderful, terrible dream. When he wakes up, Eren will be gone again. It happens every morning.]

I love you. Did I forget to say that last time?

[dreamsofwings]

[ Eren tightens his hand in Armin's. He had done that, or…will do it, or is doing it. He showed Armin the world as they wanted to see it, mountains of fire and vast oceans and a land of ice, unpopulated, just the two of them. Even if that was just Eren's madness manifested, it was their world, a world with only them.

It was a nice sort of lie, unlike most of his others. At the end of it, there was still the horrible truth. Here in this endless water, it's the same. There's something beautiful about it and something that was sad even without all the blood. ]

I don't know. Did you say it?

[ This is Armin's dream, but Eren isn't a figment of his imagination. Who knows what the last dream was like, or what the next one will be? Even Eren has no idea.

He's a terrible conversationalist anyway, especially now, leaving too much of the direction up to Armin. But this isn't the Paths and he can't really control where they go either. So they'll stay. ]

I love you too. I never stopped. I just…

[ Wanted to. That's not it, though. He didn't want to stop caring about anyone. He tried to shove that all in a box but alongside his childish selfishness, it was always that he loved them all too much. His love is like this ocean, endless and sinister and all encompassing. ]

[thebomb]

[There is something more real about this dream than the others, and Armin realizes it. He's the farthest thing from stupid.

[It's easier if this is a dream. Eren will go away like he always does, and it will be terrible, like it always is - but to think that Armin actually saw him, touched him, smelled his scent, felt his warmth, and then had to lose it all again?

[This is only a dream, because a dream can happen again and again and again and again - it has been.

[Armin looks at Eren. He hadn't noticed that his hand had found the man's cheek, gently cupping. Blue eyes well up. He closes his them, serene, blinking tears down his cheeks.]

I did say it. I always do.

And I know you didn't. Maybe...I doubted it...for just one second, but I know...

[His thumb strokes over warm skin.]

I know, Eren.