applesaucedream | The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

photo JulyDreamPartyImage01_zps8d9e51ff.jpg

Picture a house. Actually, picture two houses. They're (almost) identical structures that share an uneasy coexistence, tangled together on a quantum level. One of the houses is Good: bright, cheerful, full of comfortable furniture and a pervasive feeling of safety. The other house is Evil: dingy, dilapidated, and haunted by the dreamers' greatest fears.

The good news - and bad news - is that travel from one house to the other is as simple as passing through a door. All a dreamer has to do is walk through a doorway, any doorway, and they'll find themselves in whichever house they weren't in before they crossed the threshold. Perhaps they'll step out of a beautiful library and find themselves in a threatening hallway - or perhaps they'll flee a menacing kitchen and find themselves in a perfectly safe dining room. That is the nature of the houses' entanglement: every door is a portal between the two.

There are, of course, complications. Dreamers in one house can't perceive the other; if you're in the Good house and looking through a doorway, the space beyond will look as nice and inviting as the space you're in now (until you step through that doorway, of course). Dreamers also can't really perceive one another if they're in the same room, but in different houses, though they might see a flash of movement out of the corner of their eye, or think they heard something.

Perhaps the greatest complications are the houses themselves. They have rather strong personalities, and they aren't very fond of one another. Each house will want to keep you if it can (keep you safe, in the case of the Good house, or keep you for itself, in the case of the Evil one). Dreamers may attempt to cross a hall and find the door that looked open and inviting a moment ago is now barred shut, leaving them trapped in the hall - or have doors suddenly close in their faces before they can end up anywhere unpleasant. Still, there's only so much either house can do, and even a locked door can be jimmied open or busted down.

Escape from the houses is possible, but the formal gardens beyond are similarly entangled, with neatly trimmed lawns and expertly plotted flower beds becoming overgrown tangles of nettles and algae-choked reflecting pools. An archway is as good as a door, as far as the gardens are concerned, and there are plenty of arbors and arches over the paths. Of course, dreamers may find that a sound arbor in the Good garden has collapsed in the Evil one… and heaven help anyone who dares to explore the hedge maze.

[ooc: y'all know the drill. ALL characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.

Also, this dream party marks the aforementioned calendar freeze. For the next three weeks, the IG date will sit on July 3rd. Posts dated July 3rd or earlier are allowed and encouraged. The calendar will resume forward motion at a 4:1 ratio on Saturday, July 26th.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sunshine is running from vampires.

And it's absurd. On some distant level, she's aware that running from vampires is just… inherently ridiculous. You can't run from them, because by the time you've gone two steps, they've caught you eight times over. Hell, you don't even make it two steps. You just wake up by a carthaginian campfire surrounded by them, because one of them put the Breath on you before you even knew they were there. That's how vampires catch you.

And yet here she is, bolting down a hallway, knowing it's futile and ten different kinds of stupid and unable to stop herself, because even if her fight is more effective, flight is far, far more appealing.

"Shit!" she hisses when the hallway abruptly ends in a door. She jiggles the handle - it's locked - then growls a word under her breath. There's a begrudging click from the lock, and Sunshine wrenches the door open and stumbles through, slamming it shut behind her.

"Well, this is different."

Giles turns on the spot, taking in every nook and cranny of the room he is in, trying to recall where he is and how he got there. He's found himself in a small, cozy sitting room of a sort, furnished with squashy armchairs just begging to be used as reading spots for any one of the books filling the cases that line one wall. The rugs are cushy, the pillows plump, the fireplace glowing and - unless the glorious smell and the steam rising from it deceive him - the pot on one of the spindly tables is full of tea.

There's a whisper of unease under the pervading sense of contentment he feels, and Giles listens to that whisper as if it were a shout. Giving the tea a look full of longing and distrust, he strides toward the nearest door, determined to figure out what is going on and why it is going on around him.

Before he can reach the door, however, it flies open and is just as quickly slammed shut, having disgorged a dark-haired woman into the room. She turns from the closed door, about to break into full sprint, and plows right into Giles, who stumbles, but manages to keep them both upright.

"Whoa, easy," he says, taking her gently by the shoulders in a steadying gesture. "What is it?"

Sunshine lets out a rather undignified squawk of surprise when she slams right into someone, and for a moment, she thinks: that's it, they've got her, the end. But her wards are quiet, and it's a human voice that addresses her. She looks up at him, a stranger, but with kind eyes and shadows that lie so quietly. A sense of profound reassurance swamps her, and she feels a brief, ridiculous impulse to throw her arms around him.

She doesn't. Instead, she straightens, gulps in a lungful of air, and looks back over her shoulder at the door. Can they get through without an invitation? This isn't her house, but it isn't abandoned, either - gods, how do things even work in this kind of situation?

"Vampires," she says before she can consider how patently ridiculous that might sound, turning back to face him. "In the hall."

The poor woman is clearly terrified, and despite the calming aura of the room, Giles feels all of his instincts kick into high gear. His wariness is justified by the first word out of her mouth, and his demeanor shifts slightly, face tightening and a hint of weariness showing around eyes that have hardened by faint degrees.

Releasing the woman's shoulders, he strides toward the door, grabbing a chair mid-stride and shoving the back under the door handle in one fluid motion.

"Barricade the door," he orders in a brisk, no-nonsense tone, already moving to push a nearby desk over. It registers that he might have spoken more bluntly than he meant to, but he takes the fact that the woman could talk at all after meeting vampires as indication that she is made of tougher stuff than most. Usually it's just high-pitched screaming and unintelligible babble from would-be victims.

When his expression shifts, her shoulders slump a little in silent self-recrimination. She could have just said there were knife-wielding maniacs out there or something, anything but creatures that are mythical to the entire native population; he must think she's an idiot…

… And then he props a chair under the door handle with practiced ease. Sunshine wavers, torn between stunned appreciation for the fact that he's trying and some serious doubts as to the effectiveness of that chair, but his next choice in barricade material is a bit more promising.

"Um. Right." No time for blanking. He seems to have that desk well in hand, so Sunshine looks around the room for something else to shove in front of the door. There are a few comfortable-looking armchairs that might do, but she can't shake the conviction that anything light enough for her to move would be light enough for a vampire to move with a hell of a lot more ease. Then her eyes find the windows, heavily curtained but with sunlight - bright, friendly sunlight - twinkling around the edges. It's daylight.

Sunshine crosses to the windows in three quick strides and yanks back the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight. It settles on her like a down comforter, and she lets out a sigh of relief. No vampire can kill in daylight. They're safe.

Desk firmly situated against the door, Giles turns his attention to the procurement of weapons. Flipping over one of the chairs - and with only a small internal wince at having to damage the beautiful woodwork - he slams a foot down on one of the legs, causing it to splinter away with a satisfying crack. He picks up the detached leg, giving the point on its broken end a satisfied nod. It will do.

He's lifting his foot to do the same to a second leg when a wash of blinding sunshine pours over him. He blinks in its direction, squinting against the sudden brightness, to find the young woman standing in the window, haloed by the light.

"Good idea," he says, abandoning the chair. With quick, measured steps, he moves to the nearest window, throwing open its curtains as well. "Even if they get in, they won't get far." He stalks past her to uncover the two other windows in the room.

He turns to survey the room, now awash with protecting sunlight, and spots another door, tucked into an odd corner opposite the already barricaded one. Tucking the makeshift stake in his back pocket, Giles hurries to bar the second door. "How many vampires were there?" he asks.

Sunshine turns her back to the window, pulling her hair aside so the sunlight can get to the back of her neck. Her anxiety has been draining away since she opened the windows, to the point where it now seems obvious to her that they have nothing to fear so long as they stay in this room. Still, she can't help but be impressed by the guy's efforts - did he just casually make a stake out of a chair leg? Gods and angels. What a pro.

"I didn't take a head count," she says mildly. Hell, if you're trying to count multiple vampires, 'more than one' is about all you can definitively say, given how quickly they move and how difficult they are to tell apart. Besides, what does it matter? It's daylight.

She gives the guy a thoughtful look. He doesn't have the bearing she associates with SOF - even ex-SOF (though if he's ex-SOF, he doesn't have the scars). But this is a way more practiced reaction to vampires than she'd expect from a civilian. So, what, did he just pick up a few tricks during the Wars? Well, he wouldn't be the only one. It occurs to her that she might have actually… set him off… and she winces. Well done, Sunshine. She really ought to know better, given her own dalliances with post-traumatic whatever. Adopting a tone that she hopes is soothing without being patronizing, she says, "I'm pretty sure we're safe now."

He didn't expect an exact number - most people don't pay enough attention to actually count as they're too busy screaming and/or running - but he thought he might get something along the lines of "a few" or "an army" just to go by. However, the woman's calm tone as she suggests their safety gives him pause and he stops almost at the door, pivoting to face her. The look he gives her is a mixture of incredulous and curious, and a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"Have you encountered many vampires?" he asks. She looks so calm and content, standing there with her back to the sun. And while it's true that sunlight can kill vampires, that doesn't necessarily mean they are safe. It won't be daylight forever.

Her eyes narrow a little at the question. She wonders, dispassionately, if he missed her cameo on the nine o'clock news. It's a fair question, though; regardless of this guy's experience, he'll have no reason to trust her word on the matter if he thinks all of her knowledge is just a result of spending hours on the dark line (like so many other people her age, too young to have really taken part in the Wars and too impressionable at the time to avoid a bit of an obsession).

But she's not some wide-eyed rube with zero practical experience, and she doesn't want him to get that impression. She doesn't exactly take pride in the fact that she can dispatch a vampire more effectively with her bare hands than he probably could with his improvised stake, but she doesn't deny it, either. "Like I said," she says, choosing her words carefully, "I haven't taken a head count." ~~Or general dismembered body part count.~~

Edited 2014-07-06 18:19 (UTC)

At her response, Giles' eyes narrow in return. What he'd originally taken to be a strong constitution seems upon closer inspection to be something more significant. He take a step away from the door, back toward her, head tilted slightly in consideration.

Vampire hunter? She doesn't seem the type. For one, a vampire hunter typically doesn't run unless there are too many vampires to fight. And if that were the case, a hunter would just say so. It's possible she's a demon bounty hunter and is playing her hand close in case he turns out to be a rival, but that just doesn't feel right, either. Neither does the possibility of vampire groupie, which is considered and dismissed in the space of a heartbeat.

The way she is standing triggers something in his mind, the thought rising to the surface that some magic is based around sunlight. Maybe she is a magic handler, but if so, why is she here? Could she be a demon of some sort who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Giles take another step toward her. "Who are you?" he asks, opting for the more polite version of what are you.

She hears the unspoken question loud and clear, and lets out a quiet huff of amusement. Okay, so she may have encouraged him to presume things a little too far down the competency end of the spectrum. "Not SOF, if that's what you're thinking," she says, her tone bone dry. "Rae Seddon, but everyone calls me Sunshine. I'm a baker."

Not that any of that accounts for her vampire experience. "I was, um… kidnapped… by a gang of suckers a few months ago. I escaped." Obviously. She shrugs, as if a human escaping from a bunch of vampires isn't an unprecedented event that hasn't made SOF all but salivate over her, then turns the question right back around on him. "What about you?"

Giles' eyebrows furrow at 'SOF', quirk when she says she's a baker, then rise almost to his hairline when she uses the term 'suckers.'

Kidnapping isn't the standard M.O. for vampires - they tend to just kill wherever they happen to be - but it isn't unheard of. Unusual, but not impossible. Still, it's a strange way to know vampires, and an even more unusual reason to be so comfortable about them.

"Rupert Giles," he offers in turn. "Former Watcher to the Slayer," he adds, watching Sunshine carefully for her reaction. What she gets - or does not - from that sentence will tell him much about her. "What's 'SOF'?" he asks.

'Slayer'? Not just that, actually, but 'the Slayer.' There's a faint ping of recognition somewhere deep in her mind (accompanied by an equally faint, tired ugh), but for the most part, she's just baffled by the terminology - like, is that a job title she's supposed to recognize? Right up there with the President or the Global Council or something.

The confusion makes a bit more sense when he doesn't seem to recognize 'SOF.' Even disregarding the accent, most people recognize the acronyms for other countries' Other-related divisions, like how Albion has the OID and France has the GIAGN. They're all over the news and pretty damn hard to miss. Even if he is from Albion (the accent's kind of a giveaway), he ought to recognize 'SOF' - or he would, if he was from the same universe as she was.

"Special Other Forces," she explains. "Sucker cops. They're the ones who typically handle vampires and rogue Weres and demons and whatnot - at least, that's how it works where I'm from."

"Oh, oh that makes complete sense," Giles sighs, relaxing slightly in relief. "We aren't from the same world."

He pulls off his glasses, giving each lens a swipe with a handkerchief he tugs from a coat pocket. Tucking the handkerchief away again, he replaces his glasses and surveys the room with a more curious glance. "But are we in your world right now, or mine?" he says, half to himself. He steps over to the window, looking through it as if expecting to find some sort of signpost naming where they are.

He's deeply curious about Sunshine's world - where the supernatural is common knowledge, apparently - but for the sake of self preservation, his questions will have to wait. He needs to know which world's laws he is beholden to, and immediately.

Wait. Wait, she knows this one. Sunshine sits up a bit straighter, hands gripping the edge of the sill, as awareness starts to seep into her mind like the first milky light of dawn. She holds her breath, and then she has it, the sun finally breaking over the horizon. "We're dreaming!"

She probably sounds a bit more triumphant than such an announcement would warrant, but she isn't always quick on the uptake in these things, and it's nice to not be beaten to the punch for once. Still, this explains everything, and she finally leaves the window so she can flop into one of the armchairs that hasn't been upended. "This happens sometimes," she says with recently unearthed knowledgeability. "Shared dreams - it's a Thing." Not a Thing she particularly enjoys, granted, but she'll gladly take a shared dream over a legitimate vampire threat.

Giles looks around sharply at that. "Shared dreams?" The very idea seems to have calmed Sunshine significantly, but it does little for him. "In my experience, shared dreams are not a 'Thing'," he says pointedly, "and never a good thing when they happen."

He turns to prowl the room, pausing to give the door behind him a glance of interest. If they are dreaming, what could be behind it? He isn't sure he wants to find out. The last shared dream he had, the thing behind the door was waiting to kill him.

Sunshine watches him pace around the room as if it's a cage, and she starts to feel just a little bit sorry for him. He must be new.

"Well, yeah, they're not fun," Sunshine agrees, finally noticing the teapot and thinking: yes. Skeg the whole 'no eating and drinking in dreams' rule, she is going to pour herself some tea. "But they don't seem to cause any lasting damage in my experience." She glances over at Rupert (gods, is that seriously his name? It's so tweedy. What if she can't say it with a straight face?) while she pours herself a cup. "Did you just come through the Rift recently?"

Edited 2014-07-06 22:24 (UTC)

Giles comes to an abrupt halt in his pacing next to the table where Sunshine is pouring the tea. "What rift?"

Bloody hell. If he's fallen through a dimensional portal, he could be anywhere. Suddenly overwhelmed, he sits down heavily in the empty chair by the table, opposite Sunshine, muttering bloody hell under his breath.

He must be really new. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for all the details to filter back - Sunshine knows that all too well - and she offers him a sympathetic wince as he flops into the chair opposite.

"The rift above Central Park," she offers, hoping that might jog his memory. "Came as a hell of a shock to me, too. The Manhattan in my universe isn't exactly, uh, habitable, so when I landed in this one, it was like some kind of carthaginian awful joke."

She takes the liberty of pouring him a cup - he looks like he could use one - then says, "Have some tea…" Okay, she's reasonably certain that if she tries to say 'Rupert' with a straight face, she's going to fail in spectacular fashion, and he's mid-crisis. "… Giles." Is that weird? Whatever. It's better than having an ill-timed snicker at his expense.

Giles registers Sunshine's hesitation over his name, but doesn't think anything of it. Pretty much everyone calls him 'Giles.' Anyway, he has more important things to think about.

"We're in Manhattan?" he asks, confused. "So you're in my universe. That still doesn't explain the dreaming, or how I got here, but -- there's a rift above Central Park? How long has it been there? Who opened it? You said you came through it - has anything else come through?" He instinctively takes the tea Sunshine offers, helping himself to a soothing sip.

"Well… no," Sunshine gently corrects him. "If we both came through the rift, then neither of us are in our home universes. We're both in the Manhattan where the rift dumped us - where it dumps everyone." She shrugs. Being the welcome wagon is not her forte; she's happy to ease rifty sorrows with copious amounts of baked goods, but the whole So You're In Another Dimension 101 orientation business is better left to the experts.

She takes a sip of her own tea, then continues. "It's been at it for years; hundreds of people have come through. I don't know if anyone opened it or if it's naturally occurring. Popular opinion seems to be the latter."

"But I didn't come through any rift," Giles presses. "I am, according to you, dreaming." And while a person's consciousness can travel pretty much anywhere in a dream, the same is not true of the body.

He pauses, considering, sipping his tea - which is much better than any dream tea has right to be - trying to get it all straight in his mind. "I must have been drawn into the dream through the rift. Though how that happened when I am on the other side of the country from it, I have no idea. Inter-dimensional portals shouldn't work that way."

He glances up at Sunshine over the rim of his cup. "Do people often show up in these shared dreams who haven't actually appeared through the rift?"

"From what I understand," which admittedly is not that much, "it's only the one end of the rift that's… anchored… in New York. The other end… wanders." To put it mildly.

His question makes her hesitate. Presuming Spike's telling the truth about the dream where she tried to feed him, then the answer is yes, but the implications aren't very encouraging. "It does happen," she admits. "Happened to me before I actually came through, not that I remember it. But I've… been told that I showed up in a dream before I showed up in Manhattan." Maybe she'll just let him take from that whatever he will instead of explicitly suggesting he put his affairs in order, say goodbye to his loved ones and maybe consider cleaning out his fridge. She makes a face into her tea, then helps herself to another sip.

"So this is a preview of coming attractions," Giles says somewhat sourly, connecting the dots and making exactly the correct assumption. And just when he was settling into his new life in England.

He sighs, and settles back in his chair. "Well at least the dream tea is good," he quips, talking another sip. "And the company interesting," he adds, saluting Sunshine with his cup.

"… Sorry," Sunshine says. Seems he's reached the conclusion she'd sort of hoped he wouldn't (for all that it's probably correct). Is that such a bad thing, though? Hell, she could have done with some warning before the rift snatched her up; at the very least, she would have made sure the morning shift at the bakery was covered…

But she doesn't want to think about her presumed absence or how well everyone is (or isn't) coping. Instead, she shifts her focus to the tea - and the company. His shadows are still some of the most quiet she's seen this side of the rift. There's a very slight movement, but not much of one. That, and the tea appreciation, and that unshakeable aura of propriety he's sporting click together in her mind, and she realizes with a sharp pang that he reminds her of Yolande. Gods, the two of them would probably get along swimmingly.

The little epiphany elicits a faint, sad smile that she disguises with another sip of tea. "Not that interesting," she says, because the ways in which she is interesting are not on her list of pleasant topics of conversation. She's already set him up to protest that escaping from vampires is interesting - damn - and she searches for something else notable but not unpleasant. Well, hell, the transmutation is pretty harmless, right? "Baker and small stuff-changer," she says with a little shrug. "That's about all there is to me."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject