[all of my secrets won’t let me go]

[dreamweaving]

Felicia Amaria Bailey was born in Brooklyn, NY twenty-one years ago, the first of three children born to Coralla nee Gravett and Denson Bailey. Life was uneventful, completely normal even. Her parents clearly loved each other and their kids, albeit there was the occasional argument between husband and wife and siblings. They weren’t rich, but comfortable enough that no one wanted for anything necessary and a yearly vacation was easily doable. It was the kind of life anybody would ask for: a happy childhood, a warm bed, and the dependable visit from Santa every year with something from their Christmas wishlist.

But like childhood itself, things don't stay that way forever. Around the onset of puberty, Felicia realized that she didn't feel the same as she assumed the rest of her friends did. At night, her sleep was fitful with vivid dreams of places she had never visited, people she'd never met, doing things no kid should be doing. During the day, she felt like she wasn't in her body sometimes, like her physical form was there but the rest of her skipped math to wander around in places nobody would believe were real. Things worsened when she would start remembering events and details that never happened to her while forgetting her own, telling anybody who was in listening range what she experienced every night she went to bed. Her periods of lapsed memory, along with her chronic exhaustion and headaches, worried her teachers and worried her mother but not for the same reasons. Coralla had a secret--her whole side of the family did-- and now her daughter was showing the signs of it. It terrified her because Coralla knew that this was how the familial ability of dreamseeking presented itself. While her teachers was soothed by excuses that they'd gotten their daughter checked by doctors and the reason for everything was Felicia being a child with an overactive imagination who would stay up way past her bedtime playing around, there were no lies her parents could tell themselves. Nothing that would actually trick them into convincing themselves, anyway.

Coralla and Denson, once he was told and only because Coralla didn't feel she could handle Felicia's developing attitude on her own, feared the worst for their eldest child. The ability was rarely spoken about in Gravett family, aside from the few times it was brought up in reference to Great Aunt Pauline who swore up and down she could enter dreams and control them as she wished. Of course, this was also the same crazy Great Aunt Pauline who chased both her first and second husbands down the street waving a cast iron frying pan, so maybe whatever she said about dreams was just part of her... uh, quirks.

But Coralla knew better. Of course she did. She could do the same thing too, but she didn't want anybody labeling her daughter a basketcase, so she did what she thought was best: she told Felicia to just pay more attention in school because that was her only job as a child. Stop with the silly stories, go to bed when told, and just keep her nose in the books.

To make matters worse for her parents, by the time Felicia was fifteen, she decided to bring home her first girlfriend over for Tuesday night dinner and shamelessly introduced her as such, knowing that her parents would be outwardly polite until the poor girl left. When she did, Felicia got drilled about her antics and why did she choose now to go through this phase because to them, that's all that it really was. Too bad the oldest Bailey child was well known to put her foot down about who and what she liked and didn't like. She quickly ended the conversation when she brought up the subject about her still disturbing sleeping habits, with the knowledge that bringing up that unmentionable condition would make her parents leave her alone. Any attempt to dissuade Felicia ended up with her asking more and more questions that went unanswered and only served to frustrate her when her parents decided to act like they knew nothing. It was then that Coralla and Denson decided they would rather have a queer child who acted normal, and was therefore safe from labels, over a gay child who could tap into her supernatural powers and tinker with thoughts. If they left her alone about who she dated--regardless if Tuesday she brought a girl home and then next Sunday she brought a boy--maybe she will stop asking for reasons why she can't have a full night's sleep.

As with all things, though, plans backfire and they really just instilled more issues in Felicia because now they have a child who does everything to announce that she's living an alternative lifestyle in sexuality and in dress because she can't tell the world that she really is different from them. Her hair color changes whenever her mood strikes. She took up dance because it's the only times she knows she has full control over her body. She threw herself into fashion design because it's how she can express herself using the images burned into her memory by other people's dreams and nightmares without being too obvious that's what she's doing. Call it overcompensation. Call it problems. Whatever they are, Felicia has them.

At a visit to her housebound grandmother, who was in the last stages of dementia, a rare moment of lucidity on Granny's part fed the curious monster within. Felicia was eighteen at the time, thinking she would forever suffer from insomnia when her grandmother said a handful of words that would change her life: "Your parents know that you can play with dreams." If Felicia didn't already have a feeling about those dreams, she would have just chalked it up to a crazy old woman babbling. But it gave her reason to search and ask questions on the Internet, in books, and finally, she found what she was looking for in her grandmother's attic: her great grandmother's dream diary, detailing every single thing that popped into her head at night. It was like Felicia was reading her own writing and if she didn't know better, she'd be convinced she was. But it was all she needed to know that there are things her parents lied to her about and right now, she has no idea how to field that feeling of betrayal. One thing at a time, though. One thing at a time.

Since then, Felicia's been tinkering with the power, learning what to do and what not to do, though most of her time is spent getting her mental and physical asses kicked because she does it in secret, making up a slapdash version of the bits she can understand and the ones she can't, not to mention she can't quite get the whole do it whenever she wants and not whenever the ability decides thing down, at least not reliably. Of course, dreamwalking leaves her wide open for all and sundry that's dead, undead, and demonic to come a-knocking, but the girl loves her wigs and shoes far too much to give it up. It come in pretty dang handy for ghosthunting which is the best method Felicia's found to pay her rent and still have some leftover for those wigs and shoes.

Now if she can just get rid of that one not so evil demon who's become an unlikely friend and confidante...