do you wanna read a book about nightmares

Melanie let Lochlann carry her books to his table, pulling out one of the seats and settling down. Her face was placid, perhaps bored looking, but deep in thought as she considered the implications of what he was telling her, like a scientist measuring small quantities of cobalt and mixing together a concoction. It was just in her nature. She was a witch, she'd always been a witch. Coldly and calculatingly measuring everything around her was just how she had to do things.

"It sounds like you want more control over your subconscious, like a..." she gestures in circles somewhat vaguely. "Lucid dream, but stronger."

Then, there was the matter of the other person in the place he planned to go. Looking at his face she surmised that it was a place he didn't want her to know about. Perhaps he didn't want her thinking certain things about him, like potentially incriminating things. She found herself wondering if he was going to be murdering someone.

She shook her head. She needed to stop immediately jumping to conclusions of murder every time someone is vaguely suspicious. Blame it on the CSI.

Melanie gave a thoughtful nod. "Well, I'm pleased to be able to tell you that it's definitely possible for you to exercise some control over your dreams. Perhaps it'll be harder to get good enough at it to resist manipulations, but you can get it."

"Ah. A lucid dream is a dream that you can control. Your brain is still your brain--it doesn't go completely off the rails when you start dreaming. So once you realize a dream is, in fact, a dream, you can begin exercising some amount of control over the elements in it." Melanie explained making small, simple gestures with her hands as she explained the science behind it. She found it uniquely interesting as a being whose whole existence revolved around people not being able to understand or control their subconscious mind or what they were afraid of.

Looking at Lochlann, someone who she was beginning to see wasn't completely able to control his own mind, trying to become someone who could resist dream control was interesting. She wondered if she could convince him to let her use him for a series of tests. After all, it sounded like her powers would be extremely similar to whoever he was going to, so it might be worthwhile to hear his thoughts on exactly how it felt to have his dreams manipulated and to go off from there.

"So, for your dream walking friend, and the person who can manipulate your dreams, if you can exercise more control over your dreams, it'll probably solve your problems." She took one of the books out from the bottom of her part of the stack. 1001 Fears Everyone Has. "I mean, as long as its just dreams. Dreams are easy."

Melanie's eyes were glued to her book, but it was clear that she was listening by the way she would nod her head whenever his sentence punctuated. The feeling of your own dreams spiraling out of control. Feeling helpless, and unable to stop what your mind was conjuring up even though they were your memories, created by you and from your experiences. Accidentally baring parts of yourself you didn't want others to see, and the potential feelings of vulnerability that could come from someone knowing your secrets that your never meant to share.

It sounded like the most perfect test case she'd ever heard. But she kept a level tone. It'd be weird if she got too excited by the prospect of this guy uncontrollable subconscious. Perhaps if it was bad enough, even she would be able to do it. She'd definitely have to ask him if that was okay.

At the question of lucid dreaming, she looked up, her hand on her chin as she thought. "Hmm.... most people start by giving themselves a signal. For example, some people think 'if i see a big red ball in my dream, then I know I'm dreaming." She touched her pointer finger to her temple to illustrate. "And then its a matter of getting your brain to conjure that image while you sleep, and from there, lucid dreaming is more or less as easy as... thinking about what you want to have in your dream."

Melanie listened, resting her chin on her hand as she thought pensively. "Yes, I suppose you could will things out of your dreams. Most people don't realize they're sleeping until they almost wake up, which is too late to do anything about your dreams."

She hummed and closed her book, looking at Lochlann. She supposed to someone else that he would look very handsome, but her fear senses were telling her that there was something that he wasn't quite being honest about. She twigged on that his fears were tied to water and his relationship to it, but what exactly that relationship was was alien to her. Did he fear drowning? Or did he fear water itself? Maybe he feared something that was in the water?

Ugh. Nothing made sense.

"Ah, yes. As... well, not... humans, but... you know what I mean." She gestured vaguely before moving on with her thought. "Its hard for our brains to move on without completing a task. Its easy for it to get stuck into a spiral if we leave our minds to wander. Lucid dreaming can allow you do.... 'kick' your mind out of that rutt, if you understand me."