(no subject)

Lilly hates this. Walking around in nightmares is like flipping through channels at 3 am, only instead instead of infomercials she's watching strangers endure their own personal hells. It's horrifying and it's exhausting and it just keeps going.

Still.

People are getting hurt, she'd said to Maya, and so she's here.

And then suddenly, here becomes somewhere else entirely.

It's a riverbank, and at the same time, it's Milliways. She can feel the bar behind her, can catch glimpses of the patrons in her peripheral vision, but there's grass under her feet and a river stretching before her.

Instead of an apocalypse there's a town across the river, fuzzy and indistinct except for one building (a mill?) that, well. It's on fire. That tends to stand out.

The flames abruptly disappear. The old mill flickers, shifts, and now Lilly's looking at a tall building, all glass and concrete sterility. She shouldn't be able to see inside, but she can.

There are people walking around, doctors and nurses... and ghosts. Some of them are very obviously victims of the fire, and Lilly feels sick.

All of them are talking, or crying, or at least their mouths are moving but- she can't hear them. The sounds don't make it over the river. The voices don't carry.

The voices aren't making it to the bar anymore.

It's dream-knowledge, sudden but certain. Something's shifted, a barrier's sprung up. Lilly's not sure what it is, exactly, but she can feel it and it means-

It means no more nightmares in the bar. It means no one else getting hurt.

It means she can go home.