dizzy_land | Application: Delirium from Sandman (Reply)

The girl who arrives at the gates looks to be a little younger than fourteen, although her shadow looks, changing from one second to the next, like the shadows of a gnarled tree, a large feathered bird, a monster made up of creeping tentacles with teeth on the end, and finally a flock of butterflies fluttering and diving. The girl herself is as unstable as the shadow. Her hair is currently buzzed short and an unnatural shade of orange, but her multi-coloured highlights keep changing colours. There is something wrong with her-- her mismatched eyes are dazed and unfocused, and her gait is unsteady.

As she approaches, she stops, does a spontaneous twirl on her tip-toes (bare except for the ripped fishnet stockings she's wearing), and then stumbles back onto her feet, swaying from dizzyness. Several cartoonish stars and a few tropical fish circle her head for a moment, and then vanish with a pop like a bubble as she begins to walk forward again. She stops when she reaches the gate and smiles politely at Mickey and the cat, fidgeting while she listens.

Mickey coughs theatrically. "'What is your name?'"

"Hello there, nice to meet you," she says "unless I already met you. I could have. Somewhere." Her eyes widen when she registers the question. "Oh. I forget. Um. It used to be something different, but it, um, changes. Or maybe I don't have one. I don't know..." She looks sadly at Mickey, and feels as though she has let him down.

"What is your quest?" asks the Cat. It's perched, suddenly, on the roof of one of the gate-stiles.

Delirium frowns, rocking back and forth on the balls of her stocking feet. "I'm supposed to be looking for something." She knows this is true-- she had been wandering her domain and peering into the neighbouring worlds for longer than she usually looked for things, but she's forgotten why she was doing that some time ago. And this place looked so fun she just had to visit! Or maybe she didn't mean to come, after all. She isn't sure.

"'What is the average w..?'" Mickey frowns down at the notebook. "You know, I don't really see why that's important." He flips a page. "'If you could be granted three wishes, what would they be?'"

"That's easy," says Delirium petulantly. "Um, I'd wish for candy that tastes like when something happens and you remember that it happened before, except you were someone else. And I'd wish that I remembered what the word for that was, if there even is a word and if there's not I'd wish there was one, and I'd wish that I could be a purple fish swimming inside a bathtub full of orange jello for a thousand years."

"Or," the Cat says, examining its tail with interest, "if you were a genie and someone you were trying to give three wishes to was trying to trick you into giving him more, what would you say?"

"Oh, I change my last wish!" exclaims Delirium, a grin spreading across her face. "I wish I was a genie and I lived inside a magic lamp! But I wouldn't be selfish, I'd give lots and lots of wishes to anybody except to people who are nasty to me, and I'd give them no wishes at all." She frowns, and tears well up in her eyes. "Sometimes people are very nasty to me, you know."

Mickey looks rather nonplused at the next, but reads, "'When the revolution comes, what skills will you be able to barter for food?'"

"I think I'd get too, um, dizzy," says Delirium. "Oh. Unless you mean the other kind. I guess I could wear a big important hat. With a feather in it." She pauses, and considers this thoughtfully, and a large blue Napoleon hat is perched on her head, with a bright green feather that must have belonged to an enormous bird at some point. "I think. Yeah. I'd be good at that."

The Cat rolls its eyes in a friendly (and rather disconcertingly out-of-sync) way, and asks, "Milk, dark, or white chocolate?"

"Why can't chocolate have better flavours? Like mango or melancholy. Except without icky coconut bits inside."

"'Choose the two coolest: robots, pirates, fairies, bears, ninjas, monkeys, vampires, or humans,'" says Mickey, giggling a bit as he goes through the list. "'Explain.'"

When Mickey giggles, Delirium begins to giggle as well. Her giggles get louder and louder as Mickey reads through the list, and she is lying (without any transition between states) on the ground clutching her stomach. "Oh you are so very funny!" she says, giggling. Abruptly, however, she stops laughing, and sits up, crossing her legs.

"Oh. I forgot. Um. What was the joke again?"

"Great!" Mickey flips through the blank pages of the notebook at top, cartoon-y speed. "Well, I think that's just about it! Oh, and I'm supposed to ask, 'for your safety: are you carrying anything sharp?'"

"That," says Delirium, with a disapproving click of her tongue, "is a very nosy question, Mr. Mouse." She glances sadly at the large ornamental sword she is suddenly carrying to match her hat.

((Delirium is from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Bio in her profile. Also, this Del is from mid-Kindly Ones, before the events at the end of that book.))