[SH] I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Yuuka Kazami

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Doremy adjusted her hat and flicked her tail, paging through an immense tome of names. Names, names, names, nothing but names from top to bottom. When peering through the set of reading glasses set on the bridge of her nose, each was marked with a colored dot beside it, in a vivid spectrum of greens, yellows and reds. Mostly one or the other, thankfully.

The dream world was ever so more nuanced than reality, and so too were its standards on the already vague concepts of naughty and nice.

She was familiar with this song and dance, having done it perhaps dozens of times before at the behest of jolly old Saint Nick and his elves. After all, what was the holiday season without fanciful dreams of sugarplums and general niceties? But it was just as difficult to cover the entire dreaming realm of the Medium as it was to cover the physical Crossroads, if not even moreso due to its ever-changing nature. That meant it was only natural to hire a local familiar with the metaphorical lay of the metaphorical land, and given how well she already looked the part, Doremy was the obvious choice.

This meant that each and every year, she was sent out to go and make sure that no one on the good list was subjected to nightmares by devouring their dreams before they could progress to that point.

Hey, what did they expect, hiring a dream eater?

That being said, she did occasionally have the thought pass her mind that it was far more trouble than it was worth. Having a nonstop stomach-ache from eating nothing but nightmares for weeks at a time was... draining. Surely there was an easier and more time efficient way. Perhaps a bit of assistance? That was what the elves had hired her for in the first place, just as another set of hands on deck. It wasn't like getting a bit more help was all that different from what they were doing with her in the first place.

Dream selves were typically uncooperative, however. Without the lucid layer of consciousness to control their actions, they typically became belligerent when asked for much of anything, let alone work. And she wasn't about to just yank aside just any normal person and potentially risk them getting trapped here. Not that she was morally above it, but rather that it seemed like even more hassle than just dealing with a stomachache.

Her eyes lingered on the page, eventually landing on a cluster of names that had never been there before- two conspicuously missing markings, and one marked in a brilliant red. Well, without free will, perhaps they would be more cooperative, she reasoned. And the other? She'd just consider it repayment on an old debt. A debt in her sister's name, perhaps, but-

That smug smile reappeared on her face, and she flipped the book closed. Took off her reading glasses. Righted herself, and floated off in a direction seemingly at random. Thankfully, it seemed like they were already on their way in.

They'd do.

514 words. Expect the rest of this thread to be way less coherent, at least on my end.
 

Yuuka Kazami

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Being metaphorically yanked by the collar into the dream world was disorienting, but not unfamiliar.

Satono stumbled to her feet first, though Mai clung to her elbow and pulled herself up shortly afterward. Though "to her feet" was a bit of an exaggeration when it came to the dream world, given it, too, was mostly floorless.

"Well hello there. I'm going to need you folks to save Christmas."

This opaque remark hit Satono like a truck and almost threatened to knock her back to the ground.

Indeed, floating there at her leisure, nose in some sort of book and lounging much as Okina had earlier, was the supposed ruler of dreams, someone she'd scarcely met before but had heard plenty of tell of- or, at least, she seemed to vaguely recall hearing tell of. The dream self's memories were hazy, like a fine silken curtain was covering them playing in a theatre somewhere far away. So they were in the dream world, huh? How and why? Were they just asleep? Satono supposed not, if Doremy was just like... standing there. She didn't usually stand around in dreams. Why, then? And, most importantly...

"What's Christmas?" Chimed Mai, a bit more of an interrogative edge to her tone than the Douji would have dared were their master around. And, though Satono hated to admit it...

"...Seriously, what's Christmas?" She questioned as well, though less roughly than her compatriot.

Someone heaved a deep sigh from behind the two, and Mai whirled around to lock eyes with Shion. Her gaze relocated itself to the 'floor' almost instantly before she spoke, though. "It's... a holiday, I guess. People tend to bankrupt themselves giving gifts to other people who may or may not appreciate them. But at least the sales afterward are worth it."

"That's the spirit! ...I suppose!" Doremy's smug grin was dripping with as much of the sentiment of 'good enough' as her words were. "Now! Take these, and go deliver some presents for me. I'm very busy."

Though about to quip something about how she didn't recall agreeing to becoming the Baku's delivery woman, Satono was silenced by the feeling of Doremy flicking her hat straight off her head with a single finger, only to smash a red one with a pom-pom right on there in its place. One that seemed to conveniently match Doremy's, of course. Before the douji could even comment on this, she also had a pair of glasses, a sheet of paper, and a sack of... somethings... thrust into her arms like a particularly ugly newborn child the doctor wanted out of the hospital as soon as possible. As in, with some amount of care so as not to break the thing, but mostly haste.

Mai and Shion were soon given the same treatment, though Doremy took the care to more gingerly hand the hat and stuff to Shion. Even she wasn't stupid or egotistical enough to actually touch the living embodiment of misfortune, of course. "There! Now you're properly equipped. Go get 'em, kids! Make some dreams merry!"

"Wait- You never remotely told us what we're supposed to be doing here-" Satono's complaint fell on deaf ears, as she was shoved roughly into the pitch-black door frame that seemed to apparate from nowhere. (Doremy was very lucky that was standard procedure for them.)

And very suddenly she was falling facefirst towards some snowy figment of the ground in some poor shmuck's imagination.

574 words.
 
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