Moira gasped for air as she took a moment's respite against a tree, hand pressed to a stitch in her side. Even the trees seemed somehow ominous, as though the branches were attempted to snag her and hold her captive for her pursuers until they caught up. She was so tired of running but she couldn't stop. She didn't dare because the consequences would be most likely fatal for her.

Hearing the bay of the hounds caused her feet to start moving and she started running once again through the still air that was night quite day but not quite night and caught somewhere in between. Once or twice she tripped but managed to regain her feet and resume her blind course.

Naturally none of this was happening in reality and everything was inside her mind. In truth, Moira was sitting at the base of one of the trees by the lake as she usually did on pleasant evenings. Her breathing was a bit stressed, sweat adorned her brow, and her hands kept clenching and unclenching but otherwise it appeared to be perfectly normal.

After a stressful day between classes and annoying students and just a general feeling of blah Moira had needed to unwind. Her usual tool of unwinding - animals - , however, was non-accessible because of even more annoying students. Sitting at the lake hadn't been enough so she had pulled a Patented Day Dream Charm out of her bag that she'd had for a while. She didn't know exactly when she had gotten it but many others had received them around the same time. With a lack of motivation for drawing or anything else Moira had decided to finally use it and the results were less than pleasing.

"Blast and damnation," muttered Alvis under his breath as he ruffled through his bag for the third time. He wasn't going to find what he was looking for and he knew it. No doubt, his notes for History of Magic were lying right outside the common room, where he'd been nearly run down by a second-year on his way out the door. And here he'd gotten all set up for a long study session outside...

Nothing for it then. He closed up his bag and started back towards the castle. This time of the afternoon, there was hardly anyone around, so the yellow-robed figured beneath the tree stood out. Recognizing her cheered Alvis up immensely. Maybe he could still make up for lost time.

"Hey, McBoid!" He waved to get her attention and jogged to where she sat. "Do you have the notes from History today? I think I dropped mine and I was hoping to cross-check the dates with the --- McBoid?"

She didn't answer. She didn't even look up. Alvis hung back, suddenly aware that he might have been interrupting something. He should probably leave...but something seemed off. McBoid stared dead ahead, her breathing strained, her eyes glassy. Even when he was nearly on top of her, she didn't move.

"McBoid?" Alvis knelt besides her. "Are you all right? You don't look so good..." An understatement. Now that he was next to her, he could see her hands clench and the sweat dripping down her forehead.

His eyes fell to the packaging on the grass beside them, the one with a woman in period dress swooning into the arms of a shirtless knight. It looked like the box had taken a beating, with its worn down corners and faded art. Filled with creeping suspicion, Alvis picked it up and confirmed his fears. Daydream Charms had an expiration date, and this one was long past. Moira must not have known. It didn't look like she used them very often.

Alvis tamped down his initial surge of panic in favor of discarding his bag and going over in his mind everything he'd heard about the expired charm's ill effects. Obviously, the dream went bad. Its already powerful hold on the user would be even stronger, robbing them of the lucidity that normally defined day-dreams compared to sleeping ones. The dream was only meant to last for thirty minutes, but could go longer if the user got too lost in it. How long had McBoid been like this?

He shook her by the shoulder, starting gentle and progressing up to as rough as he dared. "Moira. Moira, can you hear me? You need to wake up, Moira. You're in a dream. Wake up. Wake up!"

As Moira ran a disembodied and unintelligible voice murmured through the leaves pushing into the air a more forceful feeling of urgency. Unable to understand more than the urgency she began to run a little faster, pushing herself more than she should have. It wasn't much longer before a tree root lifted out of the ground and tripped her, sending her tumbling down a hill to land winded against the trunk of another tree.

Dazed, Moira struggled to her feet and as she did a shrill cry filled her ears. Turning her head she made out a fuzzy image of a thestral and a dark cloaked rider bearing down on her. She attempted to run again however her body was frozen in place. The thestral reared, and a hoof found the mark on her forehead from long ago, cutting it open so it ran with blood once more.

The shock caused her to recoil, in the real world as well as in the nightmare, and she resumed her retreat albeit at a much slower pace than before.

Nothing. Alvis gave Moira another shake, hard as he dared, but still -- no change. The daydream was too strong. She wouldn't break out of it anytime soon, not without desperate measures...

Alvis undid his school uniform tie, which suddenly felt too tight. He glanced up and down the path for anyone else who might be able to help; but, of course, they were isolated and on their own. That could be both good and bad. Good, because no one would see what he was about to do, no one would witness him putting his "talent" for legilimency to use. Bad, because there'd be no one to stop him if things went out of control.

No time to worry about that, though. Moira was stuck and she wouldn't break out of this daydream on her own. Alvis tugged off his tie and loosened a button to give himself extra breathing room, the way he wore his uniform in the common room. He couldn't be distracted by his body's condition right now. McBoid needed help, and he was the only one available.

"Moira. Moira, listen." He knew McBoid couldn't hear him, consciously, as the daydream would have overridden most of her senses. But subconsciously, her body might still respond. "I need you to look at me, all right? Right here." With two fingers, he pointed to his own eyes, then to hers. Eye contact. That's one thing that had been consistent between the readings and his own experiences. "Look here. Just look at me. I'm right here."

He held her gaze, ducking his head to maintain eye contact, his hand steady on her shoulder. He willed his mind to reach out, to reach in, to get a taste of what she was going through, what images and stories were running through her mind...

In between one breath and the next, it caught him. Dragged in like a fish on the line, Alvis plunged head-first into Moira's dream.

He came up in the next gasp in the woods, a dark and twisted woods unlike any he would have dared to enter on his own. Hoofbeats sounded in the distance, a wild haunt one beasts and creatures and beings, all devoted to chasing down their prey. Alvis's pounding heart told him to run, but his common sense -- which remained strong despite the strain -- told him that he was not the one pursued. No, that "honor" fell to the blur that darted past him, a girl rushing on stumbling feet...

"Moira!" Alvis's hand snapped out, grabbing the girl by the wrist and digging his heels in to bring them up short. "Moira, stop! This isn't real! You're in the middle of a dream!"

The sudden grip on her wrist caused Moira some alarm as it ground her to a halt. Running was no longer an option so instead she turned towards her presumed aggressor ready to fight. However, she recognized Norling quickly and the will to fight turned readily into confusion.

Norling claimed everything around them was a dream: the forest, the Hunt, the instinct to survive that was pounding through her veins. It all seemed rather real to her but his announcement wasn't entirely without merit.

Before she could focus more on the possibility of Alvis being correct another shrill cry sounded as the creature was closing in on their position, causing her to glance in the direction the sound. Blood covered the left side of her face and matted her hair though the bleeding had stopped. That reminder, not that she needed one, claimed she deserved to be hunted. It said she might as well have committed homicide because a horse could not be held accountable for murder.

Officials would call the creature dangerous, probably put it down if they could. The papers would read "Woman killed by Creature" but if a person did it.... "Woman murdered by ..." Murder had a much different sound.

Hearing another screaming whinny Moira's heart rate jumped up and she would have taken off running again if Alvis hadn't touched her arm again to make her focus and remind her that he was there now too.

Sharing Moira's dream had to be one of the most disconcerting things that Alvis had ever experienced.

On one level, he remained inside himself, completely aware of his body as he knelt beside Moira with her head in his hands. On another, he was in the dream, trapped in the dark woods with its shadows and its hunters and its imminent danger, all the more twisted and alien to an outsider than to its natural host. And on yet another, there was Moira herself, her thoughts and emotions driving the vision like a deadly current and taking Alvis along for the ride.

He could feel it, almost taste it; Moira's fear and guilt and despair. He caught the fleeting thought of newspaper headlines and heard, beneath the scream, the memory of a real-world whinny that lay at its heart.

Outside the dream, Alvis leaned in until he and Moira were practically sharing air. Inside, he pulled her back from another terrified flight and tried to wipe the dried blood from her face.

"You don't deserve this. This is a dream. It's a mistake -- a spoiled spell. That's all."

The not-so-distant spectral shriek sent a shiver up his spine, his perception of the dream lurching sickeningly for a moment before it settled down. He tightened his grip on Moira's arm as his real-word right hand drifted down to hold her wrist in the same way. He had to remind her of what was real.

"This is a dream," he said again as the pounding hoofbeats drew ever closer. "This is your mind, Moira. You're in control here. They won't be able to find you if you don't want to be found."

Moira paid little to no attention to his wiping at the blood on her face, mostly due to the fact that she was focusing on what he said. His touch was simply helping to ground herself again.

A spoiled spell, Alvis said. Something about that clicked in her mind. It was just a dream... a spoiled day dream. Glancing around as her consciousness gripped onto that thought more she found the setting rather fitting in a sick, twisted sort of way. The setting was reminiscent of some of her many nightmares over the years. Nightmares haunted by her own guilt and her mother's willing sacrifice.

Moments later the Thestral and its rider crossed into the clearing, no longer running as if sensing a change, and she gazed at them with a determined - yet detached - expression and in the blink of an eye the pair disappeared. The cry of the hounds ceased after and in a wave with Norling and McBoid at the center, everything vanished.

Blinking fully awake again Moira stared at a remarkably close Alvis. "Hello. Um, thanks."

Alvis held his breath as rider and mount burst into the clearing, half-expecting to be trampled or cut down. Neither occurred. Alvis sighed, his relief -- and Moira's too? -- leaving him weak at the joints, like a strong breeze could blow him to pieces.

The dream retreated, fading slowly at first, then faster until Alvis couldn't keep up. Unmoored, his mind flailed for a hold, though all his attempts slipped away as the dream retreated and reality took hold. In a blink, he was back, staring deep into Moira's eyes. For the first time, he realized how close they'd gotten. He flushed.

"Hello. Um, thanks."

Alvis swallowed, his throat tight and dry. "No problem."

He should have pulled away, but before he could the headache set in, making his world spin. He sank forward with a groan and pressed his eyes against the first thing that could guard them from the nasty, nasty sunlight -- Moira's shoulder. "Merlin's beard, that hurts. Feels like I just got kicked by..."

He stopped, something in the back of his mind warning him that it would not be wise to finish that sentence. Nor should he linger as he was, as his warring instinct to hide and protect had devolved into an awkward half-hug, which Moira might to appreciate. Alvis pushed up his glasses to cover his eyes with one hand and settled onto the grass beside McBoid, leaning his back against the tree to get as far from the sunlight as he could.

"Are you okay, McBoid?" he muttered without looking at her. "Hell of a day-scare you had there. Always got to check the expiration dates of things. You regret it when you don't."

Moira wouldn't admit it but it was taking her a bit to... settle back into reality and out of the dream world as well. Everything was so much brighter. So much quieter, too. The unintelligible and accusing whispers that had been screaming at her, though she didn't notice them at the time, were gone.

At least she wasn't plagued like it seemed Alvis was. Barely had he said a response before he faltered and sank his head to her shoulder. Instinctively her opposite side's hand lifted and caressed the back of his head in a soothing way. Moira heard what he said. She knew what he was going to say however she ignored his choice of words considering he had been in her day terror and feeling her emotions. Maybe that was something that had passed over to him.

It wasn't until he shifted that she fully realized what it was that she was doing and also that he was half-hugging her. Lowering her hand a bit quickly she watched as he sat by her in the shadiest spot he could while covering his eyes. While she couldn't fully remember the pain from when she was five, she could still imagine how he felt.

At his question Moira considered a moment before speaking. She only acknowledging his mentioning of checking expiration dates with a nod of her head despite him not looking at her, "I've had worse nightmares to be honest. I'll be okay. What about you? Seems like one hell of a headache."

Alvis chuckled. There was nothing funny about what she said or the situation where they found themselves; still, the laugh came. Maybe the headache was making him loopy. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Who, me? I'm fine. This happens every time I..."

He winced, cutting himself off in mid-thought. Not that it mattered. He'd already given his secret away from the moment he decided to step in. There was no taking back what he'd done, not now.

He could lie. It'd be simple enough to tell Moira that he'd talked her through the terror and that her subconscious planted him in her dreams because of it. But no. He was a rubbish lair, and even with the connection broken they were still close enough that he knew, without a doubt, that Moira knew what he'd done. If she didn't know the details, she must know he'd done something with magic. It was time to come clean.

"Listen...about what just happened..." Alvis peaked hesitantly from his hand with one eye. The light hurt and, without his glasses, he couldn't focus enough to see Moira's expression. "I...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...I shouldn't have...what I mean is..."

He groaned, barely resisting the urge to slam his own aching head into the tree trunk. Just spit it out already!

"I never would've tried anything like...that...if I didn't think it would help. I swear. This...This won't happen again so p-please don't tell anybody?"

By his final words, his voice had shrunk to be so soft it was hard to hear. He held his breath, half-terrified to receive her answer.

Moira watched him flounder around with his words, clearly upset and worried about what she might do. She considered everything with a thoughtful expression as Alvis was practically squirming where he sat avoiding the sunlight.

"If you ask me... I say you should never be sorry for helping someone. I suppose no one really likes a mental invasion but it's not the worst thing. Who knows how long that would have gone on if you hadn't seen and done something."

Taking a breath she gave a pause so that could sink in before she continued. "No, Alvis. I wouldn't have told anyone anyhow, it's not my secret  to tell. Besides, you may have gleaned something from me that I don't want others to know about so I reckon that makes us even. Assuming my word's not enough."

After another silence she looked towards him fully again. "Are you sure there's nothing you can take or do about that? Maybe Madam Nagde might know something."

"Even. Yeah."

Alvis frowned. He didn't think he'd 'gleaned' anything off Moira...but then again, maybe the dream itself was enough. Dreams were personal, after all. If he took the time to analyze her feelings and the symbols he'd seen, he probably would have been able to figure out her secret. But he wouldn't do that. Like she said, it wasn't his to own or tell.

He chuckled again at her concern for his health and shook his head -- only a little. It hurt too much to do more. "Nagde already knows. I've got some stuff in my bag..." Essense of willowfine and aspirin to be exact. You weren't supposed to mix treatments, but they'd long since stopped effecting him otherwise. He cracked open one eye and gave Moira a slight grin. "Hut might be a good idea though. For you, I mean. Could still be some side-effects.

"Here." Using the tree for support, he hauled himself to his feet and offered Moira a hand. "I'll walk you."

He pulled her up, gathering their things and retrieving his various headache treatments as they idled back around the lake towards school. The day was once again peaceful and pleasant, with a warm breeze over the cool lake as the sun crept ever closer to the mountains. Whatever nightmare they'd shared, it wouldn't be coming back any time soon.

"By the way...you wouldn't happen to have your History notes around, would you?"