The boat dipped and rocked as a dark and abrupt figure smacked into its poofy deck, with a bit of a harder sound than what one would expect from clouds. Fenn startled, clinging shameless to the mast as the foreign presence — person — hauled himself onto his feet and spoke. His heart thudded against his chest. After a moment, he relaxed, realizing that the visitor had clarified himself as not-an-attacker. Though, perhaps “not as great a threat as I appear” was an unfitting phrase. This visitor appeared as a dark-haired boy, reeling back in some sort of hazy daze, his gaze dull and tired. He didn’t look a threat. He looked young, younger than Fenn’s (probable) thirty years of age. Young and a bit sickly.

And yet, he must possess some unspoken power to be present in such a dream the first place.

Fenn blinked and glanced around.

Ahh. The wrong-landscape and the talking bird clicked into perspective. This was merely one of his dreams — and his ability to recognize it as such meant that this mysterious dreamwalker-boy was here with him.

That this dreamwalker-boy was not a mere figment of his meandering mind.

This visitor still stood half-doubled over and bleary-eyed, causing Fenn the twanging notion he should offer… something. Aid? Healing? But how did one go about curing ailments inside a dream? Willing it away? The little fae doubted that his control over his dreamings extended to the avatars of outside minds. Fenn approached over the dense smog of the deck, creeping forward on skittish feet, like a startled ant. Yes, this dreamwalker-boy intrigued him. Intensely. Few others wandered into his mental spaces with such impunity; truthfully, he only knew the intrusions of his good friend (and boss) Banrion.

Banri. What was it she said about unexpected hospitality making unexpected allied and whatnot? Her advices all tended to blend together… Gingerly, Fenn reached up to tap-pat the boy on the shoulder. He hoped it came off as reassuring. Was that hospitable enough?

It was about then that the fae remembered that the altered reality of dreams granted him speech. Oh. Right. <Name?> he asked hesitantly, his voice a light buzz and his mouth not moving in the least. Certainly, Fenn was not going to lend his name until he knew the stranger’s! He didn’t yet know what sort of voodoo this kid had. <Why are you sick?>

A part of him worried that something about the quality of this dream itself made the stranger seem ill. The winds washing over them had shifted somehow. There was a bitterness to them, and a bite. A heat. It made Fenn’s nose wrinkle, and his antennae and ears alike wilted in the face of it. He glanced sternways into the sky. Darkness gathered on the horizon, pierced occasionally by grey flashes, and if Fenn wasn’t imagining it, it was moving toward them. Shudder.. His dreams tended to pull apart under the strain of a visitor, or when he woke up, but this was… not how they normally unravelled. No, this was something else.

<Do you know what that is?> he asked, still accidentally and uneasily gripping the intruder-boy’s shoulder. <Did you bring that with?>

Above them, the flock of snowy ravens cackled.