RP:Garden Variety Nightmare

Summary: Zedidiah Gawkroger makes good on his promise to Queen Josleen to deliver the magical and rare jade wisp fern, a plant esteemed for its curative properties. However, unbeknownst to Zedidiah, an impish creature lives in the fern and plays a prank on the hobbit and queen, lulling them to sleep and placing them in a nightmarish dreamscape that plays on their worst fears. Queen Josleen dreams of Kelovath murdering her family, and her own death in childbirth, leaving Macon heartbroken and alone in caring for their child. Zedidiah dreams of a world with no snacks, no food, nothing to anxiously munch on in times of great stress, such as during a nightmare.

Botanical Garden, Larket

Zedidiah drives his same shabby cart down one of the longer roads in his life. For once he looks as tired as his horse is bored. The Gawkroger Shipping Company cart now carries only a single parcel, and honestly it's not that large of one either. Still, this could be the most important delivery of his career. Mentally he tries to retrace the steps that brought him here, but fact blurs with fiction in his tired mind. The Queen of Larket needed dog food. He's fairly certain on that front. Then for some reason he needed to get a plant. So he met with a magical dark elf in an empty warehouse eating cake? Then he's fairly certain the elf turned into a traveling curiosity broker, but it was still the elf. Did they face a vampire, or did he make that part up? He's reasonably sure that he is not himself, currently, a vampire. He runs his tongue along his teeth to be sure, as the cart pulls toward the Royal Arborium. He calls down to an eager young man named Greg, who looks like he knows the score around these parts, that either the Queen or the Royal Botanist, perhaps both, should be alerted to a high priority delivery. He park the cart between two trees. The horse remains bored. Looking about at the tranquil nature/active construction site, Zedidiah at last feels content. Job done. Nothing to do now but collect his pay. He glances about once more, then tucks his hat down over his eyes. Maybe best to catch a little nap, no telling how long the Queen will be. Besides, those probably aren't really two little eyes peeking out from his parcel. Snores follow.

Josleen cheered when she heard the hobbit had returned, and with the fern, too. Had he not, she would have been disappointed but forgiven him immediately both because the jade wisp fern is near impossible to source, and because his fat chubby cheeks demand it. Josleen summoned the royal golden carriage for a quick trot across town. She arrives to find the hobbit having a little snooze, fat belly rising and falling, bare hairy foot twitching at a phantom threat in some heady dream. She suppresses a squeal, but cannot dampen the glimmer in her eyes nor her glee at having all the quaintest stereotypes about hobbits confirmed. She dismisses her guard and asks them to wait outside please. “Zedidiah,” she calls in a lilting voice as she waddles towards him, her pregnancy much further along than it was when they first met. The trouble with pregnancy is the sudden and unexpected onslaught of overpowering symptoms, such as the acute fatigue which takes Josleen now. She yawns into the back of her head and sways into a seat on the grass, which she would never have done before, not in this dress whose resale value could feed Larket’s orphans for a year. “Zed…” She collapses onto her side, arm beneath her head like a pillow, and succumbs to a deep sleep.

Zedidiah looks around the dark arborium. It's quiet all of a sudden, he could have sworn people were working a moment ago. He must have slept too long. He frowns at himself as he stands up in the cart, the peaceful trees he parked between seem to have a bit more sinister bent in the cast of their branches. Night is definitively worse than day, in his opinion. Not least of all because no meals are scheduled. He hops off the cart, not noticing at first that his horse is missing, and tries looking up and down the road for anyone helpful. Young Greg perhaps. He nearly trips over Josleen, which is an extremely unlikely turn of events since his vantage is so low to the ground he scarcely ever misses an obstacle. "Oh! Your Majesty! If you were a snake, you would have bit me. Hope I didn't pull you from pressing business."

Josleen wakes with a start when Zedidiah nearly trips over her. “Zedidiah! If I were-? Oh. I don’t believe so… Though...” Her brow creases and she observes the dark, brittle grass beneath her which a moment ago was lush. And only beneath her feet. She doesn’t remember lying down, nor does she remember the strange black oil oozing from the wheel wells of Zedidiah’s cart. “I must have fainted… from the heat.” She shivers. It’s quite cold all of a sudden, though she had worked up a sweat in the carriage ride over. She rubs her hands protectively over her belly, unnerved by this disconnect between her surroundings and her expectations of what they should be, and yet for some unexamined reason she believes everything she sees is as spooky as it should be, and her expectations were in error. “Is your cart meant to be doing that?” She points at the wheel. From several yards behind Zedidiah, through the fog and darkness, comes a disembodied laugh. The Queen shudders again. “I’ve never been in the gardens at night.” Indeed, she doesn’t recall that it was nights just moments ago. How long was she out for? Is her baby safe? She heard that a woman had died in labor just yesterday. Her child was abnormally large, practically a toddler, and the child and mother died after a painful, fruitless labor. The royal doctors told her that this freak anomaly should not worry the pregnant Queen, but at the moment she cannot forget that woman’s story. “Where is my husband?” “Have you ever delivered a baby?” She gasps at her own words, and presses her fingertips to her lips in horror. “I don’t know why I said that. I am sorry. That was inappropriate.” “But have you?” She smacks both hands over her mouth again, eyes wide with terror.

Zedidiah is still for a long moment. It's a survival trait, and it has served deer, posums, and hobbits well in many scenarios. And sometimes gets them eaten by fangorious beasts. His cart is bleeding ichor. The Queen is delirious. His horse is missing. Night has fallen. The trees are definitely reaching for him every time he turns his back. He chews his lip thoughtfully, then nods. "I have had occasion to assist in a few births in my day. Every hand helps on the farms, you know. But I think what's most important is you just remain calm and have a..." the hobbit trails off, patting at an empty pocket of his coat. Frowning, he reaches into his pants pocket. "No... no no no..." He rips his coat off in a flurry, turning it inside out and nearly ripping the seams as he searches the four secret inner pockets. He throws it aside and checks his shirt pockets frantically, even the hem of his pants for emergency jerky, but nothing. Where are his snacks?!? Wild eyes leap from the Queen to the trees. Where are his snacks?!?

Josleen breathes in rough, loud spurts as Zedidiah panics, doing her best not to follow suit and failing. “What? What is it?!” She embraces her belly and struggles to her feet, ready to run if necessary (it seems really necessary). “Let’s go. To the fort! I have the carriage waiting just outside. Come!” She leads sprints towards the arborium’s gate, but doesn’t make it more than five feet before she trips of a curlicue, black and green, slick root the undulates of its own will. The Queen screams loud enough to send the birds roosting in the gardens scrambling for the starry sky. The squawk roughly, unlike anything she has ever heard before. A massive vulture swoops above the glass dome directly above Zedidiah and Josleen, its head swivels 180 degrees towards them, its glassy red eyes focused on their frightened forms. Josleen screams again, this time for the guards, and louder, making use of her bardic gifts to magically amplify and throw her voice. No one comes.

Zedidiah moves after Josleen in a quick succession of fits and bursts, running a few steps forward, turning, going back to the cart a step, frowning and running back to Josleen, looking in his pants for a pastry to settle his nerves when he forgets his snacks are gone. Crying quietly a little bit, scared and confused. Confused at why he's scared, even, since while everything is terrible nothing has threatened him directly. Everything is just so out of kilter he can't get his bearings. He wipes at his tears and tries to stay strong for the Queen, trying and failing to put on a brave face as he helps her to her feet, "Your carriage, it has a roof. Roofs are good. We'll go to your roof. Just one step at a time now." He yelps at another shriek that seems to come from every direction.

Josleen, like Zedidiah, is more scared than the situation warrants, and she fights back tears spurred on by fear more so than pain or direct threat. Despite falling forward onto her stomach, which did not hurt, she does not fear for her baby’s health. In fact, she intuits that the baby is fine, and that the greatest threat to the child, and herself, is a birth as ill-fated as that which took the life of a Larketian woman yesterday. The fact that Josleen still has four months to go before her due date doesn’t register at all. She behaves as if her due date is imminent, and believes it to be so under the twisted power of this place that implants stressful thoughts and fears (i.e. fatal births, no snacks) as an unavoidable reality. “Go to the roof? What for!” They make it to the gate. There are her guards, with their backs to Josleen and Zedidiah, standing stock still. “Sir Greg? Sir Craig?” she calls. Slowly, and without moving their feet, but breaking their own ankles and pivoting unnaturally against their joints, the guards turn like tops towards their charge. Their faces split vertically along cheshire grins turned 90 degrees. Bat wings sprout from their backs and they take flight, leaving their broken feet behind. Josleen screams shrilly again and runs towards the carriage which is black instead of gold, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Can you drive the horses?” The horses look sickly and weak, with knees that bend in the wrong direction.

Zedidiah sobs between breaths. Demon guards. What do you even do when guards turn into demons. He just keeps running for the carriage, and those are not horses they look like horses but they're not horses if you think they're horses that's when they get you but he's not falling for that not Zedidiah they are not horses... he takes a deep breath, and makes his mind take a breath as well. "Don't look at the horses, if you don't look at them they can't see you. Just get inside and close our eyes." He tugs open the carriage door, and a dozen yellow eyes stare back for a moment then blink in unison, leaving the interior of the carriage a dark and foreboding shadow. "We'll just go inside and close our eyes and nothing can hurt you if you close your eyes, and even if it can you won't know so it's okay." He pats his pants for a nice bit of candy and sobs.

Josleen chokes on her own scream when the eyes blink at them. “We can’t go in there,” she gasps as Zedidiah already climbs into the carriage. Although she wants desperately to run, she cannot. As if on a conveyor belt, she glides, stiff-legged and leaning back in terror, into the dark carriage. Once inside, she and Zedidiah are suddenly, with the perplexing space-time illogic of dreams, transported into the fort. Josleen finds nothing odd about this. What she does find odd is the empty halls, the quiet, the dust, the dead flowers in chipped vases, and the empty, gothic portrait frames that frame black swaths of paint. “Macon!” she shouts. “Macon!” Normally she would search his office, the training yard, the council room, or their bedroom for her husband, but today she opts for the dungeon. Something tells her that he will be there, despite the fact he so very rarely is. She races down the cellar stairs, calling for Zedidiah to keep up! He’s the only normal, living, reasonable thing she has at the moment, and she refuses to be separated from this anchor, sobbing and frightened as he may be. So is she. In the cellar they race past disfigured and diseased fermin blacksmiths banging on cheap black armor. In the dungeon the King of Larket stand with his back to Josleen and Zedidiah in his ceremonial armor and heavy marble crown. “Macon,” Josleen gasps breathlessly, with relief. “What is happening?” The King does not move. The room grows darker. “...My love?” Josleen gently touches his arm. The King turns slowly to greet his wife and her terrified guest. However, instead of the middle-aged, rugged, scowling King, Josleen is met by a youthful, handsome paladin. Her ex, to be precise, the Fallen. Paladin Kelovath, the very same who she despises and fears, who, some would say, she betrayed. Beyond Kelovath, lying on the ground is her father, mother, sister Skylei, and Macon’s mother Augusta, all dead, with their throats slain. Their blood drips from Kelovath’s sword. He raises his sword with the languid, theatrical movements of all nightmare villains, ready to strike Josleen, though she has ample opportunity to run, and she does. She grabs Zedidiah’s hand and leads him to the pantry to hide among the food, piles and barrels and boxes of putrid, moldy cakes, cheeses, pies--everything a hobbit covets most.

Zedidiah tags along, his tiny little legs moving reluctantly and automatically, yet he always is just a short distance behind Josleen, whimpering to himself. All of Josleen's deepest horrors are laid bare while the tiny man just tries and fails to close his eyes. Finally they end up in a perverse pantry, where everything good is awful and everything that should soothe and calm is foul. Gently, gingerly, he lifts Josleen's hands in the cramped hiding spot, and covers his own eyes with them. He provided the same service for her. "Just don't look. Just don't look. Just be quiet and hide and don't look." Of course as soon as he can't see the sounds begin, scraping metal on metal, heavy foot steps circling. A hot breath at the back of his neck. "Just don't look at it." A chorus of twisted voices calling their names in a volume that rapidly rises to shouts and falls to whispers at irregular tempos.

Josleen keeps still and quiet at Zedidiah’s behest, despite the fact that in her waking life she would not. At the moment, it simply makes sense, but soon the sounds and sensations send her skin crawling and she cannot bear to hide in the darkness any longer. “No! We must find my husband, the King. He will know what to do. He always knows what to do. He is looking for me, he must be worried.” She rises and leads Zedidiah out of the pantry. The door does not open back into the cellar hallway, but instead into the Royal Bed Chambers. Macon is bent over a crib sobbing into his hand. The baby cries. Josleen smooths a hand over her own pregnant belly, but it is gone! The bedsheets are bloody. Outside the massive glass walls, beyond the marble balcony, the sky is crimson and purple, like a deep bruise. “...Macon?” She walks over to her husband, places a hand on his shoulder, and suddenly jerks awake in the Botanical Gardens of Larket. The late summer day is warm and bright. Tree branches sway gently in the breeze. Sparrow and swallow song fill the air. A horse neighs near the arborium gates. Zedidiah’s pony lazily eats the expensive arborium grass, imported from across the ocean. Josleen breathes unevenly, and sweats profusely and in a fit. Her heart still races from the dream. Thank the gods it was only a dream. “Zedidiah…? I’m so sorry. I must have fainted.”

Zedidiah shrieks at the pitch of a little girl, no more than nine years old at most, as he sits up drenched in sweat. Immediately three cookies slip from his pocket and cram into his mouth, stifling his scream with coughs and then chewing noises. Oatmeal raisin. He looks around with wide eyes. The Queen is still here. But so is his horse. Also, the sun, his boon companion who he will never take for granted again. He swallows a mash of cookie with a forceful gulp. "Quite alright, your majesty, just make sure you take time for yourself. You're running a country for two now, you need rest, and to keep your blood sugar up." He extends a handful of butterscotch candies. "In other news, we were able to wrap up the paperwork on that plant you were looking for. Safe and sound across the seas, and a bit under schedule if I do say so myself." Technically this is true, since he never framed a specific schedule until after he had the plant in hand, then drew one up on his task board quickly before coming to Larket.

Josleen downs the butterscotch candies without question, savoring the sugary, sweet, light, buttery, happy sensations that she didn’t realize she missed until she was deprived of them absolutely. “...The plant?” She blinks a few times before she remembers THE plant. “Right. Of course. The jade wisp fern. My head is still not quite right after my spell there. It’s the heat. It’s such a hot summer. So darn hot, isn’t it so? I am glad you found the fern, and under schedule. I am impressed.” She doesn’t sound particularly impressed, though she should be because she was prepared to wait years for the fern. But alas, Queens are accustomed to having their expectations exceeded. Under schedule? As it should be. “Let me see it,” she says as she rises to her feet. She examines the healthy specimen of a plant and, satisfied, pulls out her coin purse. “We had agreed to 3,000, is that right?” They had not agreed to anything. “Tell you what, let me add a bonus to thank you for your effort, which has paid off handsomely. Would 3,500 do?” She hands him the hold before he can answer, a haggling tactic she learned from her frugal father. ‘Few will turn down the gold already in their hands, Jos.’ Indeed, father.

Zedidiah stares at the money. Barely enough to break even after hiring specialists and supplies. Not to mention his pastry expenses, which have gone straight through the roof from all the stress. Then he looks back at the Queen. A happy Queen. A Queen happy with his work who, with luck and good fortune, will not scrutinize her dog's weight loss progress too closely. The hobbit smiles, a fake smile, but faking sincerity was the first step on the road to building a business empire. "Of course, and what an honor it had been to be of service. Do not hesitate to look to the Gawkroger Shipping Company for your needs in the future." Hopefully after he gets a decent meal in his belly, and then a good nap. What had he been thinking, napping on a mostly empty stomach? That's where nightmares come from.