When he opens his eyes, he’s still looking up at a ceiling, and he feels like he’s just woken up, but…this is definitely not his dorm room.

It’s dark, and smells of smoke and sweat and alcohol and roasting meat. The ceiling is lit in a flickering red-orange. Around him, there’s the sound of laughter and the off-key roar of a drinking song.

This is an extraordinarily cozy dream that will no doubt be invaded by nightmare monsters as soon as he gets out of bed.

He's pretty inclined not to get out of bed.

The couch isn’t too uncomfortable. 

As he lies there newly conscious, his leg starts to throb with dull but insistent pain.

Weird and annoying. He doesn't usually get dream pain. Probably he's sleeping on it weird.

Still. Reduces coziness. He shuffles out from under the really criminally soft furs. This seems like the kind of hall that might have a feast in it.

There’s definitely feasting. Jugs and foaming mugs of something, dark bread and hunks of cheese, an entire roast pig and a whole flock of birds, piles of fruit spilling out of bowls.

To his left, a man covered in furs with an elaborately beaded beard slams a mug on the table and roars the next line of his tall tale. To his right, a muscled, dark-skinned woman with a full head of dark braids cleans the blood off her axe.

Yeah okay this is a pretty great dream. That cheese is his now.

...uh ow fuck standing up hurts a lot. Sitting down time. On the floor.

A pair of leather boots and legs appear, followed shortly by a familiar face.

“Come on, man, not again.”

The usual black eyeliner is a little thicker and more smudged than usual, and it proceeds across the face in a dark, slightly ominous line. His bare chest is covered in red ochre and deep scars.

Z hefts him over his shoulder with slightly embarrassing ease.

"Hey. -- hey! I'm fine!"

Being tossed over Z's shoulder like a sack of potatoes is more soothing than it ought to be.

“Says the guy on the floor.”

They head past and away from the cheese, and (as far as it’s possible to tell with your head hanging behind someone’s torso) towards one of the fires casting their flickering light up to the ceiling.

This is a weirdly vivid dream. Vivid and painful, which isn't the best combination, but cool anyway.

"Where are you taking me!" He kicks, gently, and promptly regrets it.

“To a less boring flat surface! Maybe you’ll be less of a flight risk.”

"I'm not a flight risk," he protests, pointlessly offended.

“Yeah, I know. You had your chance for that one.”

When Z inverts him and drops him (gently) on a chair, there’s a roar of approval from a few of the men in the circle. One of them claps him a little painfully on the back, and a horn of honey-colored liquid is thrust into his hand.

"What does that me--oof."

Camillo sniffs suspiciously. Is this an alcoholic honey-colored liquid.

It definitely is.

He supposes that was predictable.

"Okay but you have to come sit next to me." Even dream-Z is probably cuddly. And also a great target for pawning off his unwanted alcohol.

“I’ve got nowhere to be.”

He sits down next to him, minding the leg carefully. In the brighter light it’s easier to see the broad, significantly bloodstained bandage on his thigh — and a few small, bloody slashes across Z’s abdomen that he hasn’t even bothered to bandage.

"...you are in no position to talk." Camillo pokes the thigh, not quite as gently as he would with anyone else.

He half-moans, half-laughs.

“You saw it! Big shallow papercut! They almost chopped your leg off!”

“Besides. I can just get drunk about it.”

He lifts Camillo’s horn out of his hand and takes a swallow.

Praise Z, who has freed him from his burden.

"My leg is fine," he protests, on absolutely no evidence. "Who hurt you. Do I need to murder them."

That one's 50-50 odds. He might just need to give Z a high-five about it.

“Don’t worry about it. I got him.”

He fishes in his pocket and then dangles what might be a cloak pin from one finger.

"Because you're the best."

Z is great. He should cut class on Friday and take a long weekend to go home and hang out with real non-dream Z. It's been like a month and that's too long.

“Our enemies quiver before me,” he says, in a way that splits the difference between self-deprecating and genuinely smug.

Out of the corner of Kamil’s eye, there’s a moderate commotion, accompanied with another (and much louder) welcoming cheer.