The darkness of sleep lightens into dream. A broken, weathered carnival fades into view; you seem to be standing on the outskirts. The rides, funhouses, and games are so old they may well be pre-Dark; they're scoured by the wind, rusted by rain, faded by sun, and all are smashed by some vandal of old. There's no sound except the wind muttering harshly, and nobody else is in sight.

Serendipity glances around, taking in his surroundings -- both the carnival, and what's behind him. Every border goes two ways, after all. The gleam off a broken mirror on the side of a booth catches his eyes, and he starts toward it, adding the sound of his footsteps to the wind's noise.

Out from behind the booth sidles a familiar shape, a shape you know instinctively: a coyote. Lean, ribby, rough-coated, and leggy. He snuffles at the bare ground, snorts at such slim pickings, then looks up at you. His ears go flat and he wags his tail eagerly.

Serendipity smiles slightly, and inclines his head a touch in acknowledgement to the animal as he continues walking casually in its general direction. "Satimos, miro pral," he addresses him quietly, along with an awkward but understandable attempt at beast speech -- greetings, my brother. He pats his pockets lightly, determining whether they might contain food.

The coyote shakes himself, his ears rattling comically against his skull. Tongue lolling, he trots up to you and helps you search your pockets, at least the ones of the appropriate level. A wet nose goes snuffling at your hands as he tries to insinuate his muzzle into a coat pocket.

Serendipity laughs, still checking the pockets. "So keres? May mishto phabol o kasht o chordano, eh?" he teases, and finds a handkerchief in the pocket, bound around a small meal of bread, cheese, sausage and an apple. "Aha!" he exclaims as he unties it, and he breaks the sausage in two, offering the larger portion over to the coyote in an open hand. "Te avel angle tute," he says almost formally.

The sausage vanishes in a slurp and two chomps. Gulp! The coyote washes Ren's palm to make sure he didn't miss anything tasty. From this angle, there's something around his neck...a collar. A tooled leather collar. In an almost subliminal flash--there's the Nuwisha glyph, pressed into the leather.

Serendipity's brow furrows, and he reaches out to touch and examine the collar. "...Kaski san?" he asks, and it's not entirely clear whether he's asking the coyote or the collar itself. The rudimentary beastspeech is clear enough this time, though -- whose are you?

Before Ren can touch the leather, the coyote dances away--but not before a glimpse of a small carved-bone tube can be seen, attached to the collar. A message tube. The coyote shakes himself again, stares up at Ren with blank, adoring eyes, then begins to trot further into the broken carnival.

"Achavaia, pral, av akai!" Ren calls after him, already following the animal deeper along the path, trying to catch up without chasing. "...si tut komi bucklo?" He flourishes the remaining bit of sausage temptingly.

Bright yellow eyes flash over the coyote's shoulder as he looks back, his tongue hanging sideways out of his muzzle. He yips back at Ren, then lopes off again, but not too fast, not fast enough that Ren can't catch at least a glimpse of where he's gone.

The carnival is vaster than it seemed, and more convoluted, or perhaps it's getting twistier as Ren follows the coyote into its depths. Darker, too; the overcast grey sky recedes away as the crumpled buildings begin to lean against each other, creating tunnels through which the coyote goes. Small details leap out with frightening clarity: a leering funhouse face; a mural of a man with arms and teeth growing from his chest; a gleaming, greasy pile of pale, fleshy loops underneath a gazebo.

Serendipity puts the sausage back in his pocket and follows doggedly, keeping an eye on the coyote as best he can, despite the many things around him that draw his eye. He tenses as he continues along, the strange surroundings becoming more disconcerting the farther he follows.

The coyote runs through a particularly tight squeeze of a passage, all jagged with twisted steel girders and broken glass. He slinks through and yips. As Ren approaches, he can see the coyote on the other side, nosing at a form on the ground, whimpering and yipping.

Serendipity approaches the passage somewhat more slowly than he'd been following before, since his quarry seems to have stopped, and makes his way very carefully as far after him as he can, trying to get a better look at the situation.

As Ren approaches, the coyote looks up and whines. The tunnel is passable, barely; Ren's coat catches and tears on one especially sneaky and vicious snag. On the other side is a broad flat featureless gray plain. Featureless, that is, except for the bodies. Humans. Coyotes. Short, stocky horses with upbrushed manes. Thousands of them. Dead. The coyote is standing next to a strapping elderly man with a terrible wound taken out of his belly. The animal whines again, pawing at the man's arm.

Serendipity stops absolutely still for a moment, stunned by the sight before him. "...kako Coyote, neros manush," he breathes, eyes wide as his gaze tries to find the end of the spread of bodies. He shakes his head once as if to clear it, and looks to the man the coyote is nudging, reaching out to touch the animal with one hand as he leans down to check for any sign of life.

The coyote permits the touch this time, staring up with a pleading gaze as if asking Ren to make it all better. Ren's fingertips brush tooled leather.

The man is quite dead. For more than a few days, as well, judging by certain signs his corpse bears.

Serendipity gives the coyote a few strokes, as much to soothe himself as the animal, and crouches beside him, very gently examining the collar and trying to remove the message tube, or any message within it. "Ay, pral," he murmurs, soft and regretful, and scritches.

The message tube comes off, and inside is a little scroll of parchment. The coyote whines, pressing his nose to Ren's thigh.

Almost without volition, your gaze is filled with the parchment. Normally it's hard to read in dreams; this is an exception, the letters leaping out in bold black calligraphy. "I don't know where he is. I know that he's born. I know that he's of age. I know he has my fetish. He does not come, and they close in on us. Our people will fai" and that is where the ink dribbles away, and the spatters of blood sppear. At first a few drops on the parchment. Then they expand, circles merging with each other, until the parchment drips with thick, fresh red blood.

The coyote makes a curious singsong whine. He rolls on the ground, on the bodies, then leaps up and capers, clawing at his muzzle. Foam drips from his jaws. He bounds in place, frothing tongue hanging out, his eyes stark and rabid. He lunges, and then--

you wake up, your heart hammering furiously in your chest.

It's far from morning -- farther from sunset, but there are still hours 'til dawn. Ren's slept a touch more fitfully than usual, though nothing terribly remarkable. Until now, when he quite suddenly awakens, sitting up straight with a yelp of terror and dismay, breathing hard as if he'd been running.

Martin has been sleeping like the dead, that is if the dead are rising from their graves and snoring voraciously. Ren's yelp causes a snore to cut off short, and then the big man shifts where he lays, turning over to drape an arm around where Ren's supposed to be. It's the lack of Ren, since the kin is sitting up, that causes Martin to awaken fully.

Serendipity is still breathing hard, and he's trembling slightly; as much as it's slowly sinking in that it was a dream and he's safe, he still looks as Martin's not seen him yet: truly frightened.

Martin blinks a bit, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Sweetheart?" he mumbles drowsily. As he sees Ren, he first looks relieved, and then immediately concerned. "Darling, what's the matter?" he asks as he reaches for the kin.

Serendipity starts to answer, quiet but passionate, but stops after a few moments, when he realises Martin can't understand a word of it. He takes a breath, and starts again, in English. "I dreamed -- they were all dead. All killed. There was a carnival, old an broken, and, and a coyote..." The fear has subsided, but in its place, he looks haunted, and restless.

Martin draws Ren into his arms, all nice and warm and smelling like Martin. Calloused fingers curl into his hair, stroking soothingly. "It was just a dream," he whispers. "Come here, love. It's okay."

Serendipity leans in, and takes control of his breath. He takes several slow, deep breaths, and then sighs. "I don't know, pireno. I dunno if it is. Was a message for me. Said... said, 'I don't know where he is. I know that he's born. I know that he's of age. I know he has my fetish. He does not come, and they close in on us. Our people will fai-' and then it was cut off with blood. There were so many bodies. People, coyotes. Horses like... horses like th' unicorn told me they took with 'em." He searches out Martin's eyes with his own. "What if it's not just a dream?"

Martin strokes Ren's cheek with the pad of his thumb, regarding him worriedly. "I don't know," he admits quietly. "I don't know if it's a message of some sort, and if it is, what it means. Do you... are you going to look for them? Did the dream show you where to find them?"

Serendipity thinks about it for several seconds before shaking his head, just a little. "I dunno. I don't... I don't think so, 'less that carnival's out there somewhere. I dunno where t'look. But I hafta find 'em..." He bites his bottom lip briefly. "I gotta... I should talk t' Rae 'bout it, maybe. Maybe Danny. With their dream things, an' all."

Martin nods quickly, leaning forward to press a warm, lingering kiss to Ren's brow. "You could ask them in the morning," he suggests softly. "I think that's a good idea. Do you... do you want me to put on some tea? Or just hold you?" With a slightly crooked smile, he adds, "I'm my love's to command."

Serendipity smiles just a little bit; it looks unusually melancholy. "Just... for now just hold me?" he answers softly, curling in closer. "An' yeah, I'll talk to 'em in the morning..." He hesitates, then pulls away to grope for writing materials. "I gotta not forget anya this..."

Martin starts to draw Ren into a hug, but as the kin pulls away, he relaxes his grasp, looking confused. It eventually sinks in, and he leans over to find his inkwell, quill, and a small stack of parchment. There is some writing on a few of the pieces, but he doesn't seem to mind offering it all over to Ren. "Here you go, love." Next, he fumbles for a candle to light.

Serendipity accepts them, catching Martin for a moment in the darkness to give him a slow, deep kiss. "Thank you," he murmurs, before letting him go to hunt the light.

Martin finds a stub of a candle and his matches. It takes some fumbling, but he does manage to get the candle lit and pushed into a wax-laden candle-holder, which he sets near Ren. "Here you are," he murmurs.

Serendipity writes quickly, if not incredibly legibly. Presumably he can read it easily enough, though, and that's all that really matters. He's actually finished quite soon, and sets the paraphrenalia carefully aside before blowing out the candle and crawling back into Martin's arms with a quiet sigh.

Martin watches patiently, and in the meantime he makes a good bed-warmer. The blankets are nice and cozy as Ren crawls back to them, and Martin's arms are a warm, strong, safe place to retreat to. "Feeling better?" he asks quietly.

Serendipity eases in very close, and stays still there, not answering a while. "...there were so many of them," he replies eventually, barely audible.

Martin kisses Ren's brow, then his lips. "It was a dream," he whispers. "At worst, a message. Anything with the power to send you a message so strong surely must have the foresight to send it as a warning, not a sentence."

Serendipity sighs, and closes his eyes, quiet again. "Maybe," he agrees, and then nothing for several minutes. When he speaks next, it's soft and tentative enough that it could almost be missed. "...Martin? Have you ever-" he breaks off, then ends with, "...hurt anyone?"

Martin in the meantime strokes Ren's hair, holding him close, with the patience one might normally attribute to things like meandering glaciers. "Hmm?" he asks, lifting his head a little. "Have I ever hurt anyone? I... I suppose I have," he admits regretfully. "I've been in a few scraps, mostly fights on the docks on the salvage. I've said harsh words to siblings, I've... I'm sure I've hurt people without meaning to."

Serendipity nods just a little. "...but nothin' worse than harsh words or a punch or two, huh?" he murmurs.

Martin thinks about this, frowning as he mulls over the panorama of his life. "Hmm," he grunts, shaking his head slowly. "Nothing intentionally, no. I might've stolen things. I've thrown a few painful punches, mind you... but no. I never... I think I knocked out a guy's tooth once."

Serendipity nods again, with a very soft little laugh. "'s funny," he murmurs, though it's a dark kind of amusement, "...all those people at th' orphan auction bein' all intimidated by you, when really they prolly got more t' fear from me..." Silent a moment, before he steals another kiss, this one tiny but tender.

Martin offers the kiss over freely, and another one so it won't be lonely. "The thing about a big guy is that he doesn't usually have to fight. People back down. I guess I've used that to my advantage. Maybe unfairly."

Serendipity shakes his head a little. "'s never unfair usin' your advantages. Other people use theirs. 's how it works."

Martin rests his cheek against Ren's hair, nodding a little as he murmurs, "I suppose." He sounds sleepy, but comfortably so, not cranky. "Why do you ask?"

Serendipity shrugs slightly. "...dunno. Just... came to mind. All that death, maybe. Dream or not..." He trails off, and tilts his head to bury his face into Martin's shoulder for a bit.

Martin gives Ren a squeeze and strokes his back, carefully drawing the blanket up around him more closely. "It's okay," he whispers softly. "Shh, it's okay, love. I'll be here, and I'll take care of you."

"Promise?" Ren asks, quiet and muffled by Martin's skin. "...I mean..." He sighs again, softly. "Prolly don't deserve someone like you, y'know. But I'm glad you're here."

Martin clucks his tongue and murmurs, "Love, I'm not going anywhere." He gives Ren a kiss, lingering but sweet as opposed to lavascious. "Try to sleep some tonight. I'll be right here, come morning."

Serendipity nods a little again, after returning the kiss quite willingly. "...'kay. G'night, camomescro. An' thanks." He settles in, curling up to try to fall asleep again.

Martin stays up a bit longer, holding Ren and rocking him gently. He eventually drifts off that way, still cradling the kin close to him.