And the Boats Drift On [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The water is calm, and the night sky is filled with stars. The only light is natural: a patchy, bioluminescent glow coming from the water below, and the bright swath of the Milky Way above. It's not much, but it's more than enough to see by.

The dreamers will find themselves sitting in their own little rowboats, each stocked with two oars, a length of rope, some cushions, and a little picnic basket full of snacks. There is no visible shoreline, but it won't take the dreamers long to realize theirs are not the only boats in this shallow sea. Anything stirring in the water, be it fish or paddle, causes phosphorescent plankton to glow a bright blue, so there isn't really anywhere to hide.

Feel free to paddle around and visit the other dreamers, perhaps tying your boats together and sharing your snacks in an impromptu picnic. Or you could go for a swim - the bioluminescence makes it difficult to see the bottom, but it's not too terribly deep, so the risk of drowning is all but nonexistent. This setting, unlike the last one, isn't actively out to kill you. Or you could simply lie back and look at the stars.



[ooc: Same drill as always, folks. All are welcome, regardless of whether or not your character is in the game. Characters may remember or forget dream shenanigans at the player's discretion.]

Comments

[bibliophale]

Well, isn't this nice. Aziraphale should dream more often, if they're going to be like this! Still water, starry sky - glowy lights under the surface, now that's interesting. Ooh, is that a picnic basket?

There are relevant questions to be asked here, but there's WINE in the picnic basket, and everything is just so pleasant. Surely questions can be asked after a little wine. It's just a dream, after all!

[anguiform]

'Angel,' drawls Crowley, by way of greeting. He's still in the water; he's stuck to the two legs for the best part of five millennia; he's really enjoying swimming about with the tail like this now. It feels rather like the relief one gets when one's been sick and stuck in bed for a fortnight; not that there's anything wrong with lying in bed, but it feels good to get up and stretch again. Change of pace, liven things up, all that.

'Fancy seeing you in my head; thought you didn't go in for sleep.'

He hooks himself over the gunwale of Aziraphale's little boat, peering lazily up at him and dripping onto the deck. Can you call it a deck when the boat's so small? He's not sure. The point remains, regardless.

[bibliophale]

"Oh!" Aziraphale blinks, surprised but not displeased, to see his demonic counterpart. "Hullo!"

"I didn't think I did either, but here I am." Aziraphale shrugs and uncorks the wine bottle with a dainty wrist flick. "You're here, too, I might add. Just as mysteriously." He fishes out a pair of glasses, fills them both with the practiced dexterity of a common companion drinker, and passes one over to Crowley.

"Why're you in the water?" he asks, peering over the edge. "Playing the serpent again?"

[anguiform]

'Mm, but I do actually make a habit of sleeping,' Crowley points out. 'Don't generally find myself in some kind of... shared dream ocean thingy, but I do sleep.'

He accepts the wine glass with a little jerk of the chin that might once have indicated thanks or appreciation but is now so worn down that it functions more or less just as acknowledgement that he now has a glass of wine in his hand. Trying a sip, he swishes it around his teeth thoughtfully and wrinkles his nose. 'Palatable,' he decides.

'And I'm in the water because the water's gorgeous, and it's much easier to swim with a tail than with legs.'

To punctuate his point, the tip of said tail writhes up out of the luminescent froth to flick water at Aziraphale. Crowley drinks his wine, and pretends that his tail is doing nothing at all.

[bibliophale]

Aziraphale huffs as the water spatters him in the face and waves a hand to brush it away, quite lazily, really. "If getting wet's your thing," he sniffs, taking an equally critical sip of wine. His only commentary is a noncommittal hum followed by another, less critical sip.

[anguiform]

'Stick in the mud,' Crowley accuses, without much (or any) venom. 'I thought you lot were supposed to like this sort of thing.'

Wine glass held safely above the water level, he twists his tail to propel himself backwards, just a little, his free hand doing a sweep to encompass the sea and sky and the quiet night. 'Glory of His Up There's creation and all of that.'

[bibliophale]

"I do," says Aziraphale pointedly, frowning not at Crowley, but at the wine. Mostly just as a placeholder for frowning at Crowley. "I like it immensely. Look at me, drinking up all this gloriousness. From the nice, dry boat." To punctuate, he drinks up the rest of the wine. This wine is not to be sipped. And he has a feeling, distantly, that they haven't been drunk together in a while.

[anguiform]

Crowley snickers and downs his wine as well, swimming back over to once again drape himself over the gunwale. He holds out his empty glass in mute appeal for a top-up. 'How many bottles you reckon it'll take before I can get you in here with me?'

He is, evidently, in a mood to poke at Aziraphale tonight.

[bibliophale]

Aziraphale obliges him pleasantly, his steady hold stuttering slightly as the question comes.

"Ah..." He hesitates, eyeing Crowley suspiciously. "I don't think we have enough bottles for that."

He is, perhaps a little more subtly, in a mood to encourage Crowley by being specifically uncooperative. A complex, honed dynamic.

[anguiform]

'Well, not of this stuff, that's for sure.' He takes another gulp of the wine and grits his teeth, waving a hand in the direction of the remaining bottles. Their contents imperceptibly change from the unremarkable Merlot currently residing there to a ripe 1959 Bordeaux.

Seeing Aziraphale's suspicious look, Crowley chuckles. 'Aw, what's that face? What am I going to do to you? You've been immune to my wiles for millennia.' His own expression suggests that Aziraphale's insistence on being so makes him a terrible sport.

[bibliophale]

"I don't rightly know," says Aziraphale stoically. "But I'm sure you'll think of something, and it'll be a whole affair." He glances over at the newly minted wines, nodding his approval to what he assumes has been done. He finishes his second glass, now quite keen on getting to the good stuff.

[anguiform]

As it should be. No point in getting drunk on bad wine, after all. Crowley finishes off his own glass and yawns pointedly. 'Nah, I'm done with affairs for at least another hundred years, maybe two. After the eleven years we've just had, I'd quite happily sleep through the twenty-first century. Frankly I can't be buggered with anything worse than garden-variety evil at the moment.'

[bibliophale]

"I'll drink to that," says Aziraphale, though maybe he shouldn't? Whatever, it's out now. He clinks his glass against Crowley's, though they're both empty. He fills them both, then downs his in one go. One more round ought to do it for this bottle.

"What do you suppose we're meant to do here?" he asks. It's a little early to get philosophical, but it's more of a practical matter.

[anguiform]

There seems little point anymore in pretending that they're not more or less on the same side, so Crowley doesn't even bother needling him. Instead, he smirks, and lifts his refilled glass in appreciative recognition of the toast, and follows Aziraphale's example, emptying it with a practiced sort of swallow and depositing it back in the boat so he can lean back in the water.

'Fairly sure dreams don't usually have a purpose,' he says, his tail coiling beneath him, flexing in a lazy arc to send him in a slow circle around the boat, disturbing the bioluminescent plankton as he goes. 'Unless they're prophetic, which, this'd be a new level of enigmatic even for Him if it were.'

[bibliophale]

"I don't think that's what I meant." Aziraphale frowns, marginally distracted by the heavy, fluid movements of Crowley's tail. He shakes his head and opens the next bottle, eschewing the glasses this time for a quicker, easier gulp from the bottle. "Good choice," he says appraisingly, then continues: "A boat on a sea, it isn't much, is it? Isn't there supposed to be something exciting happening?" He blushes slightly, wondering if these are silly questions. "At least that's what I'm given to understand," he amends apologetically, "about dreams."

[anguiform]

'Mm, I thought so,' Crowley says, regarding the wine, and continues his slow circling.

'Doesn't have to be,' he shrugs. 'I mean, there's all sorts of dreams, isn't there? Dull, Dadaist, terrifying.' Crowley pauses and squints at Aziraphale. 'Don't you read any of those books of yours? Humans are constantly writing about dreams; dreams and sex and death, those are, like, the three things they're constantly preoccupied with.'

'Anyway,' he strokes over to the side of the boat and snitches Aziraphale's bottle, taking a swig, 'dreams don't usually involve more than one person, do they? Assuming that you are actually here and I'm not just dreaming you, in which case I'll agree with you; dead dull, we could just as easily have this conversation awake.'

[bibliophale]

"That's another thing," says Aziraphale, energized by the conversation in spite of its asserted dullness. "We're both here. This isn't a regular dream. Hasn't that got to mean something important?"

Does it, though? Maybe they're just here to drink and gripe.

"We could do this awake," he concedes, sounding almost disappointed. "I suppose the only element out of place is the... well, the whole thing." He waves inarticulately at the environment, then peers closer at the water. Perhaps he's missing out by not going in. Difficult to say. What if he can't swim? He's fairly certain he can't swim. Or if he can, he really doesn't care to.

"Is it cold?" he inquires pensively.

[anguiform]

'Wouldn't be swimming around in it if it were.'

Reptile and all that. Whilst Crowley might not technically, biologically be cold-blooded, that doesn't mean he has to like the cold. As if to demonstrate, he deposits the wine bottle in Aziraphale's lap, and leans back in a slow backwards dive, tail following after to describe a leisurely circle. When he pops back up again, hair plastered to his head, he spits out an arc of water-- still glowing.

His expression's thoughtful, though; he's pondering Aziraphale's question. 'I admit, I am rather inclined to wonder whether this is all someone else's doing. It doesn't seem the sort of thing that'd happen on accident, popping up in each other's sleeping minds.'

[bibliophale]

Aziraphale grins appreciatively at the showing off and takes a swig from the bottle.

"That seems plausible," he agrees. He reaches out gingerly and pokes the water. It's pretty nice. The glow swirls around him pleasantly. "But what is the someone else? Does this feel like the Authorities to you?" He wrinkles his nose to make his dubiousness clear and takes another contemplative swig.

[anguiform]

'Seems too... pleasant to be my lot,' Crowley agrees thoughtfully, 'And I'd probably be breaking out in a rash if it was yours.'

And even if it were-- dreams sent by the Authorities, of whichever side, surely those are for humans? What's the point in sending a vague and nebulous dream to their own agents when they could just do what they've always done and hijack Crowley's stereo system.

He stills in the water when a thought suddenly occurs to him, and he lifts an eyebrow at Aziraphale over his dark glasses. 'Adam?'

Could be. The kid's certainly got power enough for something like this, and still doesn't know entirely what to do with it. Might even be... his dream, unintentionally expanded to draw the two of them into it. Crowley frowns, and has another go at the wine.

[bibliophale]

"Hm." Aziraphale nods, pondering the possibility, but then pondering becomes too much work. Drinking is easier. Anyway Crowley looks like he's having such fun, and now he's got the wine.

"Well, I'm sure it'll all sort itself out," says Aziraphale, uncorking a second bottle for his own consumption. He knocks about half of it back and flops over, causing the boat to rock worrisomely. "Oh dear." He reaches out to steady it awkwardly. "Better be careful."

Is it just him, or did he get drunk in an awful hurry? Well, no complaints here.

[anguiform]

The sudden, unsteady lurch of the boat throws a little wave up into Crowley's face, interrupting him in mid-smirk. He splutters, shaking his head, and hauls himself up to lean over the side of the boat again, smirk once again firmly in place.

'Not enough bottles here to get you drunk enough to come join me, wasn't it? You've barely had one and a half. Tch,' he shakes his head, tutting dramatically. 'Careful, angel; it isn't usually so easy to make you eat your words.'

[bibliophale]

"I know!!" blurts Aziraphale. "Something's come over me. It must be the dream." He takes a few moments to finish his bottle, then lies his head back. Much better. "Hurry on and catch up," he directs, waggling a finger at his demon.

[anguiform]

'So it's a magical shared dream brought about by an unknown power,' Crowley summarises dryly, his voice heavy with irony. 'Which additionally has the ability to suddenly turn you into a lightweight. I see.'

Muscles cord in his arms as he hauls himself further out of the water, flopping inelegantly into the boat with a little flail, his tail curling around under the hull to hold him steady. The boat rocks briefly, and violently, and then after a moment steadies out as Crowley settles into a liquid slouch, the length of his tail still trailing in the water, swishing lazily back and forth.

'Something's certainly come over you.' Unseen behind his glasses, his eyes are bright, but he affects nonchalance as he pops the cork on a fresh bottle with a wave of one hand.

[bibliophale]

"Or," says Aziraphale, slightly peeved at the accusation of lightweightedness, "maybe it provided us with extra powerful wine." Or maybe he just wanted to feel it quicker.

Crowley getting into the boat is quite an ordeal; Aziraphale grips the edges of it in mild alarm, waiting for everything to settle again. Seeing Crowley's characteristic nonchalance up close and personal causes him a flurry of self consciousness, and he attempts to straighten himself up a bit.

"What ever are you trying to imply?" he says with a raised eyebrow.