Chapter Text
I hadn't noticed when I slipped into dreaming, only when I was already there. It was different. It was so very different. It felt like I was in the final stages of drowning. What I imagined it to be, anyway.
It was... I was floating. It was soft. My head was stuffed full of fluffy cotton, but I could hear murmurs from just out of range. My limbs moved like lead, but at the same time I felt as if I had moved them across all of space in a single twitch. It felt as if I were wrapped within damp but warm cloth, the softest and thickest imaginable - what would normally be an uncomfortable sensation being calming. I wouldn't have been able to stand it were I awake, but here..? It felt like a mother's first embrace.
It was so strange. It was peaceful. If I could open my eyes, I felt that I would see the star nebulae from the whole universe all at once. I wanted so desperately to see that. It took tremendous effort, like clawing myself through mud. Every muscle in my face contorted except for that of my eyelids. Eventually, I dragged them open.
Deep blue, blue of the sky, blue like puddles of rain in clouds; all the shades of blue danced above me in the sky, blending out from a soft and warm dawn. I breathed deeply through wet lungs, blinking through grogginess in my eyes.
I was truly wet, an aching cold developing on my front, and floating lightly in a shallow pond. The clouds in my head dissipated as I pulled my head up, freeing my ears from the water as they clicked and popped.
Where was I? It felt like I had woken up. I felt so strange. Everything was so far away, and yet I felt like I would grab right past anything I wished to touch. Why was I in a pond? The thought drifted away from me, as did most feelings besides a soft touch enveloping my head in what I can only describe as a spiritual way.
With my head above water, I heard faint shouts of a woman's name. I looked around myself more as I tried to place where it was coming from. Along the edges of the pond, there were small bushes - looking like lantana, but too far away to smell. Just barely further past and to the right, there was a hyacinth patch peeking above the bushes; potted in a pyramid style and with a beautiful faded lilac and almost white colored one atop the collection of deep blues and dark purples.
I pushed my hands underneath me, raising my head further away from the water and dragging my torso out of it. The sloshing of water and wet fabric pulling from my skin were the only noises besides my deep breaths. I stared more at the hyacinth pyramid, looking over how beautiful it was.
A rustle to my left, a slow hush of footsteps. I glance over to a group of people in full regency regalia gaping at my person. One of the girls - middling in height, dark hair, pale faced, and wrapping her hands rather tightly around a pair of gloves - spoke.
“Pen..?” The rest of the group gaped in silence. I looked on in curiosity. I felt floaty and far away, still.
A rush of footsteps from behind the group sound, sharp clacking and heavy footfalls thudding ever closer. The group was shoved aside and separated by a portly woman in similar attire - though this time far more… eye catching, would be the polite phrase. In reality it was a horrible and lurid purple on top of an even worse and eye searing yellow. She appeared to gape for a moment before hauling her shoulders up high round her neck and bellowing in my direction.
“Penelope Ann Featherington!”
Oh, I see, still dreaming then, I suppose. I close my eyes and collapse back into the pond to try and wake up.