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

Probably best not to leave them unattended. Is the Nanny around?

within-yourself

She's findable, sitting on a bench outside, staring at a particular house.

slumber-and-disaster

"Something happening over there?" Makoto asks.

within-yourself

"A poltergeist, I think. It's been causing trouble last few nights, though hasn't yet tonight."

slumber-and-disaster

"What sorts of trouble?"

within-yourself

"Knocking things around, howling, keeping the family up. Last night it started lighting fires. I'm worried about it escalating - poltergeists aren't my area of expertise, but they usually don't get this bad this fast."

slumber-and-disaster

"I'll keep an eye out for it tonight. And on the topic of things that go bump in the night, do you know anything about the flesh monsters?"

within-yourself

She shakes her head. "I've never seen the like."

slumber-and-disaster

"The boogieman collected these crystals from one of them." Makoto shows her the shards.

within-yourself

She looks at them, narrowing her eyes. "Those... They reek of fear. Worse than a Boogeyman gone bad, but more concentrated than a Horror..."

slumber-and-disaster

"So definitely not a natural phenomenon?"

within-yourself

"No, definitely not. Someone made these, most likely."

slumber-and-disaster

"Do you have a safe place to keep them? I'd rather not leave them lying around."

within-yourself

"Where were they originally?"

slumber-and-disaster

"In Boogey's Shadow Home. I have some concerns about possible resonant effects, if they are made of concentrated fear."

within-yourself

"That's a good point. And he's inexperienced at handling complications, too. Still - my own home isn't suitable, not for that... But I can find a place to store them."

slumber-and-disaster

"I might be able to- magically denature them. But that's likely to be expensive, perhaps prohibitively so."

within-yourself

"And I'm not certain it'd be beneficial. They're unlikely to be very useful to whoever made them, like this."

slumber-and-disaster

"Right. Well, here you go."

within-yourself

"Thanks."

She takes the crystals almost gingerly. "I'll try to have these traced to their origins, too."

slumber-and-disaster

"That'd be helpful."

within-yourself

"I don't know how fast it'll be - we need to pursue other avenues while that's running, try to get the source of these things. Hopefully before any escalation."

slumber-and-disaster

"Yeah, zombie apocalypses are not good news."

within-yourself