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

"So is there time now to go find these mages or will that have to wait?"

within-yourself

She shakes her head. "There's been one or two poking their noses around, but I don't know how to find any quick-like."

slumber-and-disaster

"Ah well." The boogieman might know. Worth asking later.

within-yourself

"For now - anything to eat or drink?"

slumber-and-disaster

"That would be lovely, thank you."

within-yourself

She's a good cook, and is fairly talented at gauging people's likes and dislikes, so something that's at a minimum inoffensive will soon be produced.

slumber-and-disaster

Makoto's not hard to please in this regard.

"This is delicious."

within-yourself

"Thank you dear. Now, do you have plans for what you'll be doing while you're here?"

slumber-and-disaster

"Well, it sounds like there are a lot of problems. Monsters and so forth. If I can get my magic sorted, I'd like to help with that."

within-yourself

"Good. We're always understaffed, it seems..."

slumber-and-disaster

"I know how that goes. It's so hard to find good people."

within-yourself

"Hopefully you'll be able to do some good, here."

slumber-and-disaster

"It's been a while since I wasn't mostly management. I'm looking forward to it."

within-yourself

"What do you manage, if I may ask?"

slumber-and-disaster

"A sort of magical girl union. Making sure everyone had the resources they needed and enough help and so forth."

within-yourself

"Good. I'm somewhat in charge of the Nannies, but, well... They don't really answer to me."

slumber-and-disaster

"That sounds difficult," Makoto says sympathetically.

within-yourself

"Usually we're able to manage ourselves. It's been... Fairly rare, that something big enough to demand large-scale cooperation has come up."

slumber-and-disaster

"Has the situation changed recently?"

within-yourself

"There's been - a lot of activity lately. More Horrors passing by than there should, a rash of windigos, poltergeists, and assorted demons and monsters have seemed agitated."

slumber-and-disaster

"Some sort of gathering? A celestial alignment? A summoner? What's the hypothesis space look like?"

within-yourself