don't you mess with a little girl's dreams

Two weeks ago, a thing that was only doing a very poor job of pretending to be a woman crawled in through Nausicaa's window and raised its knife above her head and she screamed -

And her friend the boogieman tore it apart.

Nausicaa had been scared of him back then. It only made sense. But he seemed so lonely hiding under her bed, so she crawled down there - and kept crawling into the infinite shadows -

He seemed to need a hug, was all. And he did save her.

They've been best friends since, and Nausicaa's become more aware. Of the way Nanny doesn't seem to sleep - no actually she doesn't sleep - and seems to know a weird amount of things, and is always meeting with other Nannies outside in the dark...

Of how her friend Sue's sister died, and how it was probably way more horrible than what the adults told them. Which was nothing. How Sue now has a monster of her own, a skeletal thing (Nausicaa's glad she only needs to keep her boogieman from scaring people, not from eating people).

How there's something wrong with two of her teachers, and how her classmate Lianne has something weird in her family and people are following Silvie around who shouldn't be -

She's also become aware that she probably made her friend the boogieman. Three weeks ago, she saw a fox's skeleton, half decayed, and convinced herself it was going to follow her home and haunt her -

So, naturally, it did.

And now the rain-monster who brought the drowning dreams touched her boogieman and changed him, and he's weird lately and his shadows keep dripping, and maybe if she believed him she can believe very hard in someone who'll fix him -

A magical girl, obviously. Someone who will fight for truth and justice and humanity. Someone who can look into people's hearts and bring out their true selves. Someone who'll help because there's something horrible in this town and none of the adults want to know -

Nausicaa sits on her bed, scrunches up her face, and believes very, very hard.

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slumber-and-disaster

"All right." She takes his hand.

fear-itself

And everything's perfect, the air is delightful, the clouds are funny, nothing can ever be wrong -

slumber-and-disaster

Wowww, that's a rush. She pulls out her gem and admires it sparkling blue in the sun.

fear-itself

He raises an eyebrow. "That gem's related to your emotions, isn't it?" he asks, voice curious.

slumber-and-disaster

"You might think of it as a sort of meter!"

fear-itself

"Convenient. Most people need to guess," he says, dismissing it as a magical mood ring.

slumber-and-disaster

"Very useful, yes." She tucks her gem away again. "So that worked. You mentioned something about artifacts?"

fear-itself

"Ah, yeah. Magical items. They do a lot of different things, are usually made by mages but some we don't know the origin of. We try to track them down, keep people from using them irresponsibly, so there's a lot of paperwork in getting one pulled out." He shrugs.

slumber-and-disaster

"If there's one that does the same sort of thing you do, that might be more convenient than meeting up every day or two. I could help with the paperwork."

fear-itself

"Bosses might want to wait until they know you're not evil? Which mostly just means hanging around for a while being conspicuously non-evil, we can't really run magic background checks."

slumber-and-disaster

"Fair enough. Is there an easy way for me to contact you?"

fear-itself

"Yeah. Got a cellphone." He rattles off a number.

slumber-and-disaster

Right, she'll need to get a phone of her own.

"Do you have a day job or are you generally pretty free?"

fear-itself

"My day job's looking out for magic. We vary a lot between too busy to think and waiting to be too busy to think, so texting's probably best?"

slumber-and-disaster

"Okay! Thank you for your help!"

fear-itself

"You're welcome! Easiest favor I've ever done someone, really."

slumber-and-disaster

"That's good. I'd feel guilty about asking you to keep doing it otherwise."

fear-itself

He shrugs. "I don't mind helping people. And I'll bug requisitions about an emotion artifact."

slumber-and-disaster

"I really appreciate it, thank you."

fear-itself

"Ah. No problem. Though if there's nothing else I probably should get back to work..."

slumber-and-disaster

"I won't take up any more of your time. Bye!"

fear-itself

"Bye!" And he's off.

slumber-and-disaster

Okay. Cool. That went well. Is the Nanny still around?

The Crone

within-yourself

Yes, and she heads over when she notices them parting. "Everything alright?" she asks.

slumber-and-disaster