Just like children sleeping

[The video clicks on to show the Polish exchange student standing in front of a mirror, dressed in the girls' uniform and busily primping for his day. He slips a pair of red and white barrettes into his hair, applies lip gloss (pausing to make a couple of faces at the mirror), makes sure his socks are pulled up to his knees...]

[An alarm clock beeps, and he jumps a little.]

Oh, kurwa, is it that late already? God! Why didn't Liet wake me up earlier?

[Probably because it was impossible. He pulls his shoes on, grabs his bag and communicator, and darts out of the door, hoping to be only a LITTLE late to class.]

[Poland is going for a walk. Pretty ordinary, except that he's at home. And that the dream keeps switching at random between a bustling city--I don't suppose anyone's been to 15th-century Kraków--and a calm, quiet countryside, seemingly endless fields of late-summer rye dotted only sporadically with settlements, homes, and barns, spanned over by a clear blue sky. The scent of the rye permeates the dream, even the city part.]

[Oh, and besides Poland, everyone's a pretty pony--the workers in the fields, the nobles with their fancy saddles, the peasant girls with flowers in their manes, the merchants lining the city street, everyone. Yay, ponies! His dress is super-pretty, too. Totally the height of 1410 fashion.]

[For some reason--he can't remember why--it feels like a huge relief to be able to feel all of this, his cities and his land and his people, the steady heartbeat of everyday life and the sense of his fields turning from green to gold, getting ready for the harvest.]

[Poland is alone in his room, looking contemplatively at a little pile of clothing from the last event. After a few long moments, he goes and takes a dress off of the top of the pile, conveniently wandering offscreen as he changes. He returns to the screen a moment later, to take a little container of lip gloss out from under his mattress and apply it to his lips. When he's finished, he looks at himself in the mirror, straightening his hair and skirts.]

...I so still rock this.

[Little smile!]

[...The hilarious/sad part of this is how he really thinks this is some big secret. When most of the modern nations have seen him in WAY less modest skirts.]