When you return to the dining room, you find they have snuck in, indeed! Your father and mother seated in their chairs; your siblings arrayed along the long table and gabbling impatiently for you to join them, so you can eat together. As is sometimes the case with such dreams, the faces and natures of your family are both not apparent and do not strike you as odd for not being apparent. Not until you have sat down, and your father is leaning over to ladle some food on to your plate, does the illusion start to unravel. After all, this is not your home; this is not your family; this is not a life you have lived. And the first thing to betray the blissful fugue is the smell.

Foul. It rises from the food slopped on your plate - a repulsive splash of grey-brown mush that smells of rot and discarded scrap-flesh. Your stomach used to know how to eat such food; back when that was all that was on offer.

"Come-come, Nee-Ruh-Kaha. You no eat-eat, you no get dessert!" Your father, his russet fur with its familiar grey streaks crisscrossed with the stripes of his torture, implores you with paternal fondness.

"If you're not hungry, Mey-La, then your brothers and sisters will leave none for you!" Your mother warns, her eyebrow tilted; the norscan mistress seemingly in one of her doting rather than cruel moods for the moment.

"I'll eat it!" Vittorio cries, reaching over the table to grab your plate in his his hands and drag it greedily toward himself.

"Share!" Demands The Boy; with whom you played at swords in the northern snows between your oppressing duties.

"Boys, don't fight - you'll spill it, and ruin the tablecloth!" This is Bella pleading for peace beside them, her good nature falling on deaf ears as they tussle.

Bella's presence is the breaking point. This isn't right. You're not here - and as soon as you pick at it, all the manifold, insane conjunctions of characters strike you with all their absurdity and horror. But the moment you flinch and push back from the table, the chair beneath you crashes apart in a burst of clattering timber. You hit the ground so hard you taste blood.

"Taalia!" Bella whispers.

* * * * *

"Taalia!" Bella whispers.

You taste blood. And your body aches all over - the crash of the flying machine returning to your sense of events. You are on your back. Above you, a sky just now filling with stars tells you at once you have been unconscious for an hour or more.

Bella is a mess. There is a cut or scratch somewhere behind her hair line that has been trickling blood on to her face, which is now mostly dried in palm-smears to one side; but the smears have been cut through with the run of tears.

Spoiler: OOC:
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You are battered and bruised for certain - down to half your maximum wounds, rounding up. This might also be a good time to decide on a new scar from the crash of the flying machine.


"Taalia, you need to get up - there's not much time."

Signore Cestié largely succeeded in his controlled crash. He bled off enough momentum that no one was killed, even if pieces of wood and canvas are scattered all around the top of the grassy hill where you have ended up. Even Milo was spared, thrown free of the crash and scooped up by Bella in the aftermath; mewing in distress when not being actively soothed. Bella's injuries, and yours, are largely superficial.

But Signore Cestié lies on his back, breathing in shallow wheezes, shivering beneath the blanket Bella has pulled over him while you were unconscious. Your immediate examination finds no critical wound - he was battered in the crash like you, and his old skin has split in places; likely some of his bones are fractured. All the same, you know with heart-splitting assurance that he is dying. His pulse is shallow, and slow, even though his breath comes in those wheezy puffs. Bella has been going back and forth between you while you were out, trying to manage the crisis; now that you are awake, and you have no miracle knowledge that might restore the flagging energies of your elderly friend, she sits with you both in the cold night air, sharing the helplessness with you.

Signore Cestié gives you a damp eyed, apologetic smile from where he lies. He reaches for your hand.