writing dare -- ASW prompt
Sep. 15th, 2010 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charybdisInspired by the latest installment of A Softer World:
I wonder how many hauntings go unreported / because wailing and the clank of chains / are still better than an empty house.
The dreamlessness induced by Somnacin is a known and well-documented phenomenon. Yusuf has spent so many hours observing dreamers, he's found that natural sleep characteristics can predict, with eighty-eight percent accuracy in defined categories, how long a person's been in the dream business. This isn't always a good thing -- he was deeply disturbed the first time he saw Cobb in natural sleep, breathing slow and shallow, in a body that has seen its death and is merely waiting.
He mentions this to Ariadne, just an offhand comment on Cobb's general state of mental instability, but she jumps on it, asks at once what she's like when she sleeps.
Yusuf doesn't want tell her that she's a restless sleeper; he's afraid she'll take it as a criticism of how young she is, or her lack of professionalism and experience. He's afraid she'll take to going under deeper and more often, until she naturally falls dead-asleep, just like the rest of them. She won't understand that she has a gift, not a flaw.
The thing is, Yusuf is terrbly good at lying, but not terribly good at judging when it's appropriate -- that's why he's running a back-alley dreamhouse in Mombasa and not a legitimate lab in Switzerland.
So he tells her that her natural sleep is quiet, already showing the effects of Somnacin, exactly as expected.
Watching her sleep is the most inspiring thing he's done in years.
I wonder how many hauntings go unreported / because wailing and the clank of chains / are still better than an empty house.
The dreamlessness induced by Somnacin is a known and well-documented phenomenon. Yusuf has spent so many hours observing dreamers, he's found that natural sleep characteristics can predict, with eighty-eight percent accuracy in defined categories, how long a person's been in the dream business. This isn't always a good thing -- he was deeply disturbed the first time he saw Cobb in natural sleep, breathing slow and shallow, in a body that has seen its death and is merely waiting.
He mentions this to Ariadne, just an offhand comment on Cobb's general state of mental instability, but she jumps on it, asks at once what she's like when she sleeps.
Yusuf doesn't want tell her that she's a restless sleeper; he's afraid she'll take it as a criticism of how young she is, or her lack of professionalism and experience. He's afraid she'll take to going under deeper and more often, until she naturally falls dead-asleep, just like the rest of them. She won't understand that she has a gift, not a flaw.
The thing is, Yusuf is terrbly good at lying, but not terribly good at judging when it's appropriate -- that's why he's running a back-alley dreamhouse in Mombasa and not a legitimate lab in Switzerland.
So he tells her that her natural sleep is quiet, already showing the effects of Somnacin, exactly as expected.
Watching her sleep is the most inspiring thing he's done in years.
