Andie grinned to herself, lost inside her own mind - metaphorically, of course. She didn’t know how or if she could enter her own mindscape, and wasn’t interested in changing that. Introspection was more of Cedric’s thing. Andie was perfectly fine with who she was, and found that any conversations on why she was that way rapidly spiraled out of control. Everyone was always over-analyzing things, telling her who she was, and why. Maybe Andie was just Andie? Was the fact that she was just born this way really so unbelievable? Sure, she’d been influenced by her parents a bunch, inspired even, but it was like she wasn’t allowed to just be her - it always had to be because of something or someone else. Like she was just some pile of clay with no will of its own, to be shaped by fate and her -
A building started to whiz past Andie, giving her a half-second warning before she collided with a sidewalk head on.
It seemed she had spent a little too much time lost in thought. Thankfully, her dreamwalker form was both lighter and more durable than her physical form. As such, the worst injury she’d gotten from falling in this form was a bloody nose; so she was more humiliated than injured.
Andie pulled herself off the ground, and wiped a few drops of Will to Live off her face. They floated off into the distance when she flicked them off her sleeve, flickering like electricity as they went. Now that she was back on her feet, it was time to get a grip on her surroundings.
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Streetlights were flickering, glass was cracked and opaque, and faded posters for various nerdy science things plastered the whole place like wallpaper. Not that Andie had any particular distaste for science. She was always curious to learn something new, and prone to reading textbooks for fun. Only when she was bored though, and it was usually on the recommendation of Cedric’s dad, who had been enthusiastically gifting her copies of his favorites ever since he found out Cedric was more interested in philosophy and politics than astrophysics.
That being said, the posters covering the place seemed really… boring. There just wasn’t a gentle way to put it. Facts about prehistoric crustaceans instead of dinosaurs, ants instead of spaceships, and deep sea plankton instead of sharks and giant squid. There was no scale to it - no wondering at the sheer size of the universe, or enticing visions of a distant tomorrow. Still, it made Andie a little sad to see them abandoned and buried like this. Maybe they’d get some of their color back once she’d beaten up the Nightmare and cleaned out the shadow goo. The stuff wasn’t splattered about quite as overtly as it was in the more damaged mindscapes, but given how run down this section of the mindscape was it was almost guaranteed to be lurking in droves under the surface. The local Nightmare probably hung out nearby as well.
A gurgled voice struggled to eke out an understandable word, hushed in tone despite clearly straining to be as loud as possible. “wh-WH… whyyy…”
“Well.” Andie grinned. “Speak of the devil.”