meadowlarklogs | sometimes I can push ahead; some nights, the wheels just spin.

This isn't the first time he's come back to prison in his dreams. First time, though, since he woke up groggy in the back of a hovering ambulance.

Maybe he's had reason to brood a little.

The air in there is humid, made worse by the fact that the endless concrete doesn't offer much in the way of circulation. Whatever you breathe, you just keep breathing: sweat, mildew, plenty of other odors that don't need naming. The crappy lighting gives the whole place a sense of otherworldliness; squint a little, and the bare bulb down the hall might as well be torchlight.

He's on the floor, doing situps. Not much else to do, ever since his access to reading material got a whole lot spottier. And he's not doing a good job of them--working through the pain where he was kicked in the gut a few times too many only goes so far. But he's restless, and pacing makes him feel like a tiger in the goddamn zoo.

A set of footsteps, unfamiliar in their weight, makes him perk his ears up.

"Ey!" he calls, not too loud, and in Spanish worked over in the same accent as his English, "Don't tell me you're back for more."

You know, from the guy with a black eye and a fat lip. Definitely ready to go, if he has to.

Kyna realizes very quickly that this isn't her dream, which is really a relief. It doesn't mean she's not going to end up sharing any deep dark secrets, but at least anyone isn't popping into her childhood home like Ian did.

This place is gross, though. She tries not to think too hard about what she's smelling or seeing as she wanders, although it's fascinating what has detail and what doesn't. Each cell she passes just has a hazy silhouette, like the placeholder of a person, but the odors and sounds are crystal clear.

The problem is, the place is labyrinthine, and she has absolutely no idea where she's going. It's a relief when she hears someone call out, and the accent is so distinct she knows it must be Sam immediately. When she peeks through the bars of his cell, she's grinning. She's never heard Spanish with such a heavy Boston twist before.

"Your Spanish sucks, guey," she says playfully.

He falls back from where he's halfway to a situp--that's about as far as he can get, the bruises being what they are--and lies there on the cement for a second. Of all the women who could wander into the prison and find him behind bars, it had to be one he's already struck out with.

Seems like this makes it definitely one of those goddamn dreams people have here, if she's here and busting his balls. She seems too lifelike, somehow, to be something his own subconscious conjured up.

When he comes back up again, getting gingerly to his feet, he's grinning like there's nothing unusual in the slightest about their surroundings. "Could you understand it?"

It's brimming with slang, and he never bothers with any accent but his own, but there's a fluency there that suggests he's been switching between languages for a good chunk of his life.

"Barely," she shoots back, but something in her tone screams teasing. She's not willing to touch the grimy bars, but she does stand on her tiptoes and lean forward as though trying to get a better look at him.

Yikes. Someone beat the shit out of him, huh? Kyna tries—and definitely fails—to keep the concern off of her face, but she manages to keep her voice light.

"Want me to spring you out of here?"

"Then it ain't that bad." This, in English, with a shrug. He takes a few steps over, coming a little further into the half-light of the hallway, where the sheen of sweat on his skin's a little more noticeable. Not quite close enough to lean up against the bars, though he's done so plenty before.

"You a pickpocket now?" he asks, his grin crooked as always. "Dunno if you've been to prison before, but una llave helps if you wanna fly the coop."

"I know how to pick locks," she replies, mock-offended. "Plus, my brother's a cop." Which gives her secret jail knowledge, apparently.

To be fair, usually she couldn't pick the lock. They'd be too secure, but this place is so run down it's not using the usual electromechanical locks which, oddly, sends a little rush of disappointment though her. If she had her magic, and they were those kind of locks, she could probably just short circuit it. But here she is, with placeholder powers that still don't really feel like they're hers.

She shoves that aside, digs into her jacket pocket and finds her lock picks right where she usually keeps them on jobs back home. The bonus of being in a dream, maybe. A part of her thinks that she could probably just get the door to swing open with enough focus, but her control over these things is still sketchy. It feels strange to try.

So, shady lockpicking it is. It takes her a moment, but eventually the lock clicks open and she steps back.

"Ta-da."

Now Sam comes over and leans against the bars, craning his neck in hopes of getting a look at her work as she does it. Her hands are steady and fairly quick--and accurate enough that the door's open in a minute or two. She backs up, and he pushes it open, walking out without bothering to look back. Nothing behind him worth taking with, dream or no dream.

"Not bad." Kyna gets more interesting by the minute. So now, all they gotta do is stroll through the endless corridors--that hallway looks a hell of a lot longer than he remembers, stretching away into distant nothingness--and then they're out. Easier said than done, a dream like this, but what else are they gonna do? "Your brother the cop know you know how to do that?"

Doesn't seem like the kind of trick law and order types tend to like--but on the other hand, there aren't any cops in his family, so how would he know? Maybe that's who taught her.

"He disapproves. But usually quietly."

Mostly because he knows by now that disapproving loudly doesn't really solve anything with her. She crosses her arms, hesitating before they head down the hallway.

"So is this some sort of weird subconscious thing or were you really in jail?"

Sam's brows go up, and he shrugs, a kind of huh sound. A brother in law enforcement sounds like a pain in the ass, but she carries it well. More and more interesting by the moment, that's for goddamn sure.

"Whaddaya think?" he asks--cheerfully, like he's conducting a poll. They've got nothing but time, especially since it doesn't look like there's any end to this hallway. "I seem like a jailbird to you?"

Kyna peers at him, standing up on her tiptoes as though to get a better look at his face. She's analyzing.

"You're totally a jailbird. Maybe former jailbird? A misspent youth?"

As she's talking, something shifts down the hallway, so subtle it's just a shadow flitting in the corner of her eye. She tenses, turning to look, but doesn't see anything.

"You know the way out of here, right?"

Sam considers that, shrugs. Misspent youth, maybe. The rest remains to be seen--who knows when the future police'll pick him up for something or other? "The tattoos tip you off?"

The prison tattoos are the most visible ones, after all. But her attention's drawn away, and his goes immediately, too, glancing back over her head in search of whatever it is she saw. Nothing but where they came from.

"Hate to break it to you," he says, waving a hand toward the hallway that seems to disappear into the horizon, "but last time I was here, it didn't look like the Twilight Zone."

But it's a dream, for God's sake. Can't they just...imagine an exit? (Pity he's not much of a lucid dreamer normally.) The main thing keeping him from trying is the awareness that squeezing his eyes shut and trying to imagine a cantina around them is going to make him look constipated. And even if he's got no chance with Kyna, he's still gonna play it like he might.

"It's your dream," she shoots back, but maybe that's only half true. She's never sure where her subconscious ends and the other person's begins in these things. Maybe she could take control of it, wish them an exit, but lately her dreams haven't been great. She's not sure what will happen if she does. That shadow she saw only feels like proof.

"Come on, try it."

Well, if the lady demands it. He shuts his eyes tight, feeling like an idiot, and imagines them a way out. And hell, it works out all right--when he opens them again, there's a brick wall right in front of their noses, a few bricks sticking out far enough to grasp. Sunlight pours down on them through a ragged hole in the ceiling.

For a Drake, it's as good a solution as anything, possibly better. This'll be fun.

"You wanna go first, I'll catch you if you fall," he says cheerfully, like she obviously knows the rough-and-tumble art of freeclimbing his subconscious.

That's... well. Vaguely terrifying.

"We're climbing?

It isn't that Kyna is afraid of heights, exactly. In fact, some people might even call her an adrenaline junkie. It's just that the most rock climbing she's ever done is on one of those walls when she was in high school.

But it's not like she can die, right?

"Fuck it. It's just a dream."

"What, you never climbed before? Thought you were friends with my brother." He pats her shoulder, half reassurance, half pushing her forward. "C'mon, it's easy. I'll tell you where to put your hand if you ain't sure."

We learn by doing, Kyna, specifically by just getting tossed into the middle of stuff--just ask Nathan. Fortunately, his subconscious has thrown together a fairly easy path for them.

Well. Easy for him, anyway.

Kyna shoots him a look over her shoulder, wrinkling her nose, an I can totally do this look. It starts out easy enough, closer to the bottom. The brick doesn't bite into her fingers like it would in real life, but about ten feet up, she hits a section of wall that makes her stop. The problem is, she's short, and her arms aren't long enough to reach the next handhold.

Sam's behind and beneath her, and not just because it's a nice view. At some point, maybe it's inevitable that she'll struggle a little. Everybody does, especially at first.

"It's a dream," he calls up, reaching up to pat her heel--look, it's what he can reach--in an attempt at encouragement. "Stretch a little further."

If he can grow a goddamn wall in front of them, she can make her arm a little longer.

Kyna looks over her shoulder for the sole purpose of shooting him a look, sticking her tongue out in a very mature way. She really doesn't want to pull some body horror shit in here, so she focuses on the wall instead, and miracle of miracles, it shifts in a way she can't quite track or parse. It doesn't matter, though, because suddenly there's a handhold right where she needs it. Ta-da.

So up she goes, the whole thing much easier with the wall transforming as she needs it to.

Right back atcha, Kyna--he sticks his tongue out, too. And then, watching her shift the wall around, he groans a little. "That's cheating, y'know."

But it's probably better than hanging out here all night, waiting for her to figure out how to grow longer arms. He scrambles up behind her once she starts moving again, and eventually, they're hauling themselves onto a roof of concrete and metal. Below them, past the other buildings, the yard, all of it, the Panamanian jungle stretches out.

Doesn't quite look the way he expects, though. Sam gives Kyna a glance. "You recognize anything out there?"

sometimes I can push ahead; some nights, the wheels just spin.

>kyna.

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