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DMC L Week 2024 - Dreams
People come to Hilda for a looooot of things. And, okay, some of those things are really bothersome and exhausting, like homework, or practical tests, things like that. Those she could do without. But that's not all they come to her for! She contributes. Mostly in... gossip, and talk, and cute accessories, things like that. It still counts!
Generally speaking, that means other girls, or sometimes guys who are looking to impress other girls. The usual sort of thing you would expect. So it's a little bit of a surprise when she's wandering off away from class to try and maybe catch a quick nap before the next, and gets caught by the last person that she would expect: the princely prince Dimitri himself. "Hilda," he says, straightening up where he's clearly been waiting over down the corridor. "Could I have a moment of your time?"
"Weeeeeell, if the crown prince himself asks, then it'd be pretty rude to refuse, right?" she says, batting her eyelashes. Not that she thinks Dimitri would be upset at her about it, or anything. While she's not a Blue Lion, well, Dimitri is the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve... and it's kind of a heart so big that you could probably see it all the way in Almyra. Maybe even the ocean.
So if she refused, he'd probably let her go without too much fuss... But also because he's that kind of guy, she suspects that he's not asking her for anything tooooooooo terrible. Right?
It's what she tells herself as she allows Dimitri to escort her, like a perfect gentleman, over to where the tea time tables are all set up. It's still just a little bit too early for tea, at least with how Garreg Mach is structured for its classes and all that, and that's a little disappointing. Yet in the end, this is still the best kind of place to settle down with someone for a little talk. Dimitri even pulls her chair out for her! No wonder so many girls get their hearts fluttering around the guy.
For whatever reason, that's not how her own heart works, even if it is really nice to experience. At least that means there's nothing distracting her as she presses her elbows to the table, cheeks cradled in her hands. "So, what would have you coming over to talk to lil' ol' me, Your Highness?"
"Ah, please. You can simply call me Dimitri. We are all fellow students here, after all." He might say that, except it's pretty clear as day that he's anything but relaxed. Sitting there stiff as a board, both of his hands placed carefully along the table. Actually, considering what those hands can do, that's probably for the best. "At any rate, I truly wouldn't want to waste your time..."
Hilda holds back on saying that he's free to waste all of her time if it means not dealing with classwork.
"So I will address things upfront. I, ah..." He flounders, for just a moment, before steeling himself. "I have heard tell that you and some of the other students have taken up the hobby of inquiring into the meaning of dreams?"
Oh ho. Hilda perks up before she remembers to temper her reaction just a little bit. "I mean, I know a little bit, I guess," she says, not wanting to give anyone a too high evaluation of anything. "It's just a fun little hobby that me and some of the others have picked up!" Which is mostly true, honestly. Probably there are all sorts of frauds who'd claim to be experts, and maybe even some genuine types.... But she's just in it because it's fun. Makes dreams a little less boring and more of a mystery upon awakening. "Mm, does that mean you had a dream that you're really wondering about, then?"
A flush spreads across his face that she's nailed him so quickly. "There is no dancing around the subject," he says grimly, tone so hilariously out of place compared to the silly expression he's wearing. "Yes. I normally do not have many dreams, if I am honest."
"Really?" And here she thought everyone had dreams, all the time, even if they couldn't remember them.
Yet there's Dimitri, nodding along. "Truly. Nothing silly or lighthearted or strange, as I have heard others speak tell of. So it was strange to me, that I would come into the morning light with something like that lingering in my mind."
She has to admit, Dimitri sure has a way of speaking that's kind of charming. It reminds her a little bit of Lorenz, she thinks - real uptight guys who never give themselves a break at all. Maybe that sort of thing applies to dreams, too. Who knows? "Well, what was it about?" she asks, unable to help being a little curious now. He's built it up and everything! What is she supposed to do?
A second's hesitation is visible before Dimitri speaks up again. "In the dream, I was on what I believe to be a beach."
"You believe?"
"I have only been to the sunnier coasts once, when I was very young," he explains. "Even then, I never went down onto the beaches properly. In the dream, it felt quite clear to me that I was on one such beach, and yet I could not describe it to you in detail."
Sometimes, when people describe their dreams, Hilda almost feels as though she should be, like... taking notes or something? Except then something fun starts seeming like work, and she'll pass on that thank you very much. So, instead, she just says it aloud, in hopes that will keep it in her memory better. "A beach, huh? Okaaay, got it. What are you doing on the beach?"
"I am clearing the beach of rocks. They don't belong, although I could not scarcely tell you how I knew that. I suppose that is simply an example of the logic of dreams." He shrugs, and she shrugs too. That sounds about right. "There are a lot of rocks there, and they prevent the water from coming in like it was supposed to. Which... is not how beaches work, I am aware." The flush gets a little more vivid, and Hilda giggles. Yeah, he's not a bad guy, this Dimitri. "At any rate, I had the impression that I had been at this task for a very long time on my own, but... Then I was joined by someone."
Hilda makes a little indistinct noise of interesting. Now things are getting interesting. "Did they do something with the rocks too?"
"He was helping me, actually," Dimitri explains. "I think he had also been moving across the beach, moving the rocks, and had simply come from a very different direction than me. Of course... In hindsight, I wonder if this is something I knew in the dream, or something my mind decided upon waking."
"Well, we'll keep it in," Hilda suggests. "Is that when you woke up, or did the dream keep going?" And she is keeping track that he mentioned a definite gender for this mystery dream person. She promises she's keeping track.
Dimitri clears his throat. Adjusts his hands so that their positions swap. Somehow sits up just a little straighter, even though Hilda would have thought that an impossibility. "No, the dream did indeed continue onwards. I could not tell you when, but somehow we left the beach. The water was following us, or, rather... It had swept past us, and we were on a boat. It was as though... a Faerghan forest and a lake had merged together, and we were navigating its labyrinth together. As we were going through it, well, he and I..."
Hm. So, she'd thought that he had gotten pink right away just because she was really upfront about things, or he was embarrassed about the whole dream meaning thing, but this... "What'd you do?" she presses.
In the most obvious form of bracing himself Hilda has ever seen - hands curling into fists, eyes squeezing shut, the whole nine yards - Dimitri takes a breath and just... blurt it out in a quiet rush, keeping it as low as possible to the point she has to lean forward. "The two of us exchanged a kiss."
Yes. Something interesting in a dream about rocks! Hilda tries not to grin too obnoxiously, because, you know, it's unbecoming. But she's definitely smiling just a teeny tiny bit. "How romantic! If a place like in your dreams really existed, then I would love to go." That's not even an exaggeration or anything. Lakes are pretty all on their own, but surrounded by trees, drifting along? Kind of idyllic, she thinks. "What happened next?"
"That is when I woke up, then," Dimitri admits, which is a shame. A short dream, really, although dream time and real time don't always match up. They usually don't, actually. "It has been on my mind all this time, and, well... I thought that perhaps I should look into the matter, if only for my own peace of mind."
Oh boy... She hopes she's not about to get dragged into some big noble sexuality crisis. Hilda knows it's pretty strict up in Faerghus especially, out of the three countries. All about that church life. "So what's been bothering you about it?" she asks instead, and hopes.
"What has been bothering me..." He trails off for a moment, completely unaware of Hilda's desperate desire for this to not be a big counseling session. Is this Sylvain's fault? Somehow, she feels like this should be Sylvain's fault. "I... Well. If I must admit it, it is the person in the dream." Crud. "I have not been able to stop thinking about him..."
Hilda waits a moment, expecting a little more, you know... panic? Stress? Worry? And yet all he does is still sit there blushing. Like this could have been anyone else he was dreaming about.
...Maybe it's that easy with someone like Dimitri?
"W-e-l-l," she says, the word a drawn out roll along her tongue, "there's probably all sorts of meanings to the dream as a whole! But if you're focusing on the guy in your dream over everything else that happened, then it's probably enough to focus on that right now. What did he look like? Maybe there's something in, like, the color of his eyes, or how he wore his hair."
Dimitri's face is so burning red that it could put Leonie's hair to utter shame. "I am very aware of what he looks like," he says, voice tight. "Because it was actually. Someone. That I know, here at the Academy."
Okay. Okay okay okay. If she gasps and gets a little excited and has her hands to her mouth, can anyone really blame her? With a bunch of nobles running around in this place, romance gossip practically is worth gold. And for it to be genuine, rather than a bunch of uptight people saving themselves for an arranged marriage or just idle gossip regarding Sylvain, again, it's just - it's a reason to gasp, okay? She's gasping.
"So who is it?" she asks before she has a chance to think twice. "Wait - someone like you probably wouldn't tell me, right?" It's understandable. Much like that princely image he lives up to so well, Dimitri is the kind of guy who loathes to engage in gossip. Probably why he's been hesitating in talking to her. "Well then, I think it would be pretty clear. If your kind of mind decided that you needed a nice dream about this guy, then it's a sign you should act on it, don't you think?" What that means in the big picture... Well, that's not her responsibility, is it? She just thinks that maybe it'd be good for Dimitri to actually do something outside of that prince persona of his.
And... Okay, so it's not as though she really knows him, she knows that. But a guy as earnest and nice as Dimitri? Probably he'd be good for whoever got his attention.
Or maybe she's just weak to puppy dog eyes, who knows.
Like the puppy dog eyes that he's making right now, as though she's just handed him a death sentence of some sort. "Do you really think so?" he asks. "What if he lacks interest? I shouldn't burden him with these sorts of feelings."
See? Look at that. So sincere and earnest. "Mmm, maybe it might happen... But you know, if you keep these kind of feelings all locked up, I bet you'll just keep having dreams like that about him, so it'll never stop being on your mind." She flicks up one finger away from her cheek. "And then that will leak into how you act around him in real life. I see it happen all the time!" That might be a little bit of a fib. Maybe. A tiny bit. "But if you're just honest with him, even if it ends sadly, it will be over and done with!"
"I wonder if that would not make things awkward in an entirely different fashion... but I cannot deny there is a logic of sorts with what you say." Dimitri sighs, before giving a determined little nod. "I will have to face this matter head on. Thank you for this, Hilda. I apologize for taking up so much of your time. Should you need any assistance, please let me know, and I will lend my hand."
There's tons of things she could use Dimitri's help on, but maybe less that she should use his help on. This will actually require a little bit of thought. Dang. "No problem," is what she actually says, waggling her fingers in farewell as Dimitri gets up to his feet. "I'm just glad I could help~. Good luck~."
And she doesn't think about the whole thing, for a little while. Not in depth, anyway, she doesn't stress herself or anything. She considers it a few times on and off throughout the day, and then the next one, but idly. No real rush to it or anything. While it had been delightful to find out at the time, it's still ultimately none of her business and probably won't affect her, right? So she's content all the way up to lunch the next day, digging into a nice hot meal, and that's when Claude enters the hall rather late.
Not like that is completely unusual. Claude gets up to all sorts of things, while pretending that he's not getting up to all sorts of things. But because she is a good friend, Hilda waves him over to eat besides her. "So just what have you been up to?" she asks, expecting to hear talk of experiments or rumors or general snooping.
"Ha, well," Claude says, and his words are just a little stilted. A little off. It's then that she notices he's picked up a whole hodgepodge of food, like he wasn't even paying attention. Maybe he wasn't. His gaze flicks back to the exits. "Just... getting a romance confession, as it turns out."
This isn't strange. Hilda's gotten a few herself; it's just what happens when you have a Crest. Everyone wants in on that connection. She knows both of them have had to turn down people even this time into the school year. But... She narrows her eyes. "Aaaaaaaaand?"
Claude fiddles with some silverware, stabs it into a piece of fish. "You don't have to get that tone with me, young lady," he says, regaining just a little bit of himself as he waggles the fish at her. "But - I'm not over it. The entire thing felt almost dreamlike, I guess." He shoves the fish into his mouth, a clear bid to buy time if she's ever seen it. "...Might have said yes to an outing."
Will wonders never cease. "Now look who's actually taking an interest in other people," she teases. Claude is friendly and funny and all that, she knows, but, well... She's not sure if she'd ever have called him flirty before. Not even interested in getting too close to people, if she wants to really look smart, which, she doesn't. "So who was it? Someone that I know?" Sure, it's Garreg Mach, there's so many families here, but it's still pretty small. She has to know, right?
"Ha, well, I guess you'd definitely know him..." Claude glances away. Fork makes presses down into the fish and doesn't pick a thing up. "Turns out... it was His Princeliness, Dimitri."
Hilda nearly spills her drink all over herself.
Generally speaking, that means other girls, or sometimes guys who are looking to impress other girls. The usual sort of thing you would expect. So it's a little bit of a surprise when she's wandering off away from class to try and maybe catch a quick nap before the next, and gets caught by the last person that she would expect: the princely prince Dimitri himself. "Hilda," he says, straightening up where he's clearly been waiting over down the corridor. "Could I have a moment of your time?"
"Weeeeeell, if the crown prince himself asks, then it'd be pretty rude to refuse, right?" she says, batting her eyelashes. Not that she thinks Dimitri would be upset at her about it, or anything. While she's not a Blue Lion, well, Dimitri is the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve... and it's kind of a heart so big that you could probably see it all the way in Almyra. Maybe even the ocean.
So if she refused, he'd probably let her go without too much fuss... But also because he's that kind of guy, she suspects that he's not asking her for anything tooooooooo terrible. Right?
It's what she tells herself as she allows Dimitri to escort her, like a perfect gentleman, over to where the tea time tables are all set up. It's still just a little bit too early for tea, at least with how Garreg Mach is structured for its classes and all that, and that's a little disappointing. Yet in the end, this is still the best kind of place to settle down with someone for a little talk. Dimitri even pulls her chair out for her! No wonder so many girls get their hearts fluttering around the guy.
For whatever reason, that's not how her own heart works, even if it is really nice to experience. At least that means there's nothing distracting her as she presses her elbows to the table, cheeks cradled in her hands. "So, what would have you coming over to talk to lil' ol' me, Your Highness?"
"Ah, please. You can simply call me Dimitri. We are all fellow students here, after all." He might say that, except it's pretty clear as day that he's anything but relaxed. Sitting there stiff as a board, both of his hands placed carefully along the table. Actually, considering what those hands can do, that's probably for the best. "At any rate, I truly wouldn't want to waste your time..."
Hilda holds back on saying that he's free to waste all of her time if it means not dealing with classwork.
"So I will address things upfront. I, ah..." He flounders, for just a moment, before steeling himself. "I have heard tell that you and some of the other students have taken up the hobby of inquiring into the meaning of dreams?"
Oh ho. Hilda perks up before she remembers to temper her reaction just a little bit. "I mean, I know a little bit, I guess," she says, not wanting to give anyone a too high evaluation of anything. "It's just a fun little hobby that me and some of the others have picked up!" Which is mostly true, honestly. Probably there are all sorts of frauds who'd claim to be experts, and maybe even some genuine types.... But she's just in it because it's fun. Makes dreams a little less boring and more of a mystery upon awakening. "Mm, does that mean you had a dream that you're really wondering about, then?"
A flush spreads across his face that she's nailed him so quickly. "There is no dancing around the subject," he says grimly, tone so hilariously out of place compared to the silly expression he's wearing. "Yes. I normally do not have many dreams, if I am honest."
"Really?" And here she thought everyone had dreams, all the time, even if they couldn't remember them.
Yet there's Dimitri, nodding along. "Truly. Nothing silly or lighthearted or strange, as I have heard others speak tell of. So it was strange to me, that I would come into the morning light with something like that lingering in my mind."
She has to admit, Dimitri sure has a way of speaking that's kind of charming. It reminds her a little bit of Lorenz, she thinks - real uptight guys who never give themselves a break at all. Maybe that sort of thing applies to dreams, too. Who knows? "Well, what was it about?" she asks, unable to help being a little curious now. He's built it up and everything! What is she supposed to do?
A second's hesitation is visible before Dimitri speaks up again. "In the dream, I was on what I believe to be a beach."
"You believe?"
"I have only been to the sunnier coasts once, when I was very young," he explains. "Even then, I never went down onto the beaches properly. In the dream, it felt quite clear to me that I was on one such beach, and yet I could not describe it to you in detail."
Sometimes, when people describe their dreams, Hilda almost feels as though she should be, like... taking notes or something? Except then something fun starts seeming like work, and she'll pass on that thank you very much. So, instead, she just says it aloud, in hopes that will keep it in her memory better. "A beach, huh? Okaaay, got it. What are you doing on the beach?"
"I am clearing the beach of rocks. They don't belong, although I could not scarcely tell you how I knew that. I suppose that is simply an example of the logic of dreams." He shrugs, and she shrugs too. That sounds about right. "There are a lot of rocks there, and they prevent the water from coming in like it was supposed to. Which... is not how beaches work, I am aware." The flush gets a little more vivid, and Hilda giggles. Yeah, he's not a bad guy, this Dimitri. "At any rate, I had the impression that I had been at this task for a very long time on my own, but... Then I was joined by someone."
Hilda makes a little indistinct noise of interesting. Now things are getting interesting. "Did they do something with the rocks too?"
"He was helping me, actually," Dimitri explains. "I think he had also been moving across the beach, moving the rocks, and had simply come from a very different direction than me. Of course... In hindsight, I wonder if this is something I knew in the dream, or something my mind decided upon waking."
"Well, we'll keep it in," Hilda suggests. "Is that when you woke up, or did the dream keep going?" And she is keeping track that he mentioned a definite gender for this mystery dream person. She promises she's keeping track.
Dimitri clears his throat. Adjusts his hands so that their positions swap. Somehow sits up just a little straighter, even though Hilda would have thought that an impossibility. "No, the dream did indeed continue onwards. I could not tell you when, but somehow we left the beach. The water was following us, or, rather... It had swept past us, and we were on a boat. It was as though... a Faerghan forest and a lake had merged together, and we were navigating its labyrinth together. As we were going through it, well, he and I..."
Hm. So, she'd thought that he had gotten pink right away just because she was really upfront about things, or he was embarrassed about the whole dream meaning thing, but this... "What'd you do?" she presses.
In the most obvious form of bracing himself Hilda has ever seen - hands curling into fists, eyes squeezing shut, the whole nine yards - Dimitri takes a breath and just... blurt it out in a quiet rush, keeping it as low as possible to the point she has to lean forward. "The two of us exchanged a kiss."
Yes. Something interesting in a dream about rocks! Hilda tries not to grin too obnoxiously, because, you know, it's unbecoming. But she's definitely smiling just a teeny tiny bit. "How romantic! If a place like in your dreams really existed, then I would love to go." That's not even an exaggeration or anything. Lakes are pretty all on their own, but surrounded by trees, drifting along? Kind of idyllic, she thinks. "What happened next?"
"That is when I woke up, then," Dimitri admits, which is a shame. A short dream, really, although dream time and real time don't always match up. They usually don't, actually. "It has been on my mind all this time, and, well... I thought that perhaps I should look into the matter, if only for my own peace of mind."
Oh boy... She hopes she's not about to get dragged into some big noble sexuality crisis. Hilda knows it's pretty strict up in Faerghus especially, out of the three countries. All about that church life. "So what's been bothering you about it?" she asks instead, and hopes.
"What has been bothering me..." He trails off for a moment, completely unaware of Hilda's desperate desire for this to not be a big counseling session. Is this Sylvain's fault? Somehow, she feels like this should be Sylvain's fault. "I... Well. If I must admit it, it is the person in the dream." Crud. "I have not been able to stop thinking about him..."
Hilda waits a moment, expecting a little more, you know... panic? Stress? Worry? And yet all he does is still sit there blushing. Like this could have been anyone else he was dreaming about.
...Maybe it's that easy with someone like Dimitri?
"W-e-l-l," she says, the word a drawn out roll along her tongue, "there's probably all sorts of meanings to the dream as a whole! But if you're focusing on the guy in your dream over everything else that happened, then it's probably enough to focus on that right now. What did he look like? Maybe there's something in, like, the color of his eyes, or how he wore his hair."
Dimitri's face is so burning red that it could put Leonie's hair to utter shame. "I am very aware of what he looks like," he says, voice tight. "Because it was actually. Someone. That I know, here at the Academy."
Okay. Okay okay okay. If she gasps and gets a little excited and has her hands to her mouth, can anyone really blame her? With a bunch of nobles running around in this place, romance gossip practically is worth gold. And for it to be genuine, rather than a bunch of uptight people saving themselves for an arranged marriage or just idle gossip regarding Sylvain, again, it's just - it's a reason to gasp, okay? She's gasping.
"So who is it?" she asks before she has a chance to think twice. "Wait - someone like you probably wouldn't tell me, right?" It's understandable. Much like that princely image he lives up to so well, Dimitri is the kind of guy who loathes to engage in gossip. Probably why he's been hesitating in talking to her. "Well then, I think it would be pretty clear. If your kind of mind decided that you needed a nice dream about this guy, then it's a sign you should act on it, don't you think?" What that means in the big picture... Well, that's not her responsibility, is it? She just thinks that maybe it'd be good for Dimitri to actually do something outside of that prince persona of his.
And... Okay, so it's not as though she really knows him, she knows that. But a guy as earnest and nice as Dimitri? Probably he'd be good for whoever got his attention.
Or maybe she's just weak to puppy dog eyes, who knows.
Like the puppy dog eyes that he's making right now, as though she's just handed him a death sentence of some sort. "Do you really think so?" he asks. "What if he lacks interest? I shouldn't burden him with these sorts of feelings."
See? Look at that. So sincere and earnest. "Mmm, maybe it might happen... But you know, if you keep these kind of feelings all locked up, I bet you'll just keep having dreams like that about him, so it'll never stop being on your mind." She flicks up one finger away from her cheek. "And then that will leak into how you act around him in real life. I see it happen all the time!" That might be a little bit of a fib. Maybe. A tiny bit. "But if you're just honest with him, even if it ends sadly, it will be over and done with!"
"I wonder if that would not make things awkward in an entirely different fashion... but I cannot deny there is a logic of sorts with what you say." Dimitri sighs, before giving a determined little nod. "I will have to face this matter head on. Thank you for this, Hilda. I apologize for taking up so much of your time. Should you need any assistance, please let me know, and I will lend my hand."
There's tons of things she could use Dimitri's help on, but maybe less that she should use his help on. This will actually require a little bit of thought. Dang. "No problem," is what she actually says, waggling her fingers in farewell as Dimitri gets up to his feet. "I'm just glad I could help~. Good luck~."
And she doesn't think about the whole thing, for a little while. Not in depth, anyway, she doesn't stress herself or anything. She considers it a few times on and off throughout the day, and then the next one, but idly. No real rush to it or anything. While it had been delightful to find out at the time, it's still ultimately none of her business and probably won't affect her, right? So she's content all the way up to lunch the next day, digging into a nice hot meal, and that's when Claude enters the hall rather late.
Not like that is completely unusual. Claude gets up to all sorts of things, while pretending that he's not getting up to all sorts of things. But because she is a good friend, Hilda waves him over to eat besides her. "So just what have you been up to?" she asks, expecting to hear talk of experiments or rumors or general snooping.
"Ha, well," Claude says, and his words are just a little stilted. A little off. It's then that she notices he's picked up a whole hodgepodge of food, like he wasn't even paying attention. Maybe he wasn't. His gaze flicks back to the exits. "Just... getting a romance confession, as it turns out."
This isn't strange. Hilda's gotten a few herself; it's just what happens when you have a Crest. Everyone wants in on that connection. She knows both of them have had to turn down people even this time into the school year. But... She narrows her eyes. "Aaaaaaaaand?"
Claude fiddles with some silverware, stabs it into a piece of fish. "You don't have to get that tone with me, young lady," he says, regaining just a little bit of himself as he waggles the fish at her. "But - I'm not over it. The entire thing felt almost dreamlike, I guess." He shoves the fish into his mouth, a clear bid to buy time if she's ever seen it. "...Might have said yes to an outing."
Will wonders never cease. "Now look who's actually taking an interest in other people," she teases. Claude is friendly and funny and all that, she knows, but, well... She's not sure if she'd ever have called him flirty before. Not even interested in getting too close to people, if she wants to really look smart, which, she doesn't. "So who was it? Someone that I know?" Sure, it's Garreg Mach, there's so many families here, but it's still pretty small. She has to know, right?
"Ha, well, I guess you'd definitely know him..." Claude glances away. Fork makes presses down into the fish and doesn't pick a thing up. "Turns out... it was His Princeliness, Dimitri."
Hilda nearly spills her drink all over herself.