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

[applesaucemod]

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.]

Comments

[bluesuit_handy]

Andrew is quickly discovering that it's hard to run with two growing babies inside of him. He's been sticking to the apartment more than ever lately; while overall the pregnancy symptoms haven't made him feel as awful lately, his growing belly has become impossible to hide. On a woman the shape of it would be familiar enough to likely be recognized for what it is, but on Andrew...well, it's possible for a man to carry excess fat almost entirely on his belly, right?

Right now, though, he's not so concerned about how he looks as about how slowly he moves. Panting, he looks behind him at the spreading darkness, knowing what lurks inside. There had been another person when he first found himself in this dilapidated library...or at least, there'd been part of another person before the vashta nerada had finished picking the bones clean in front of his eyes.

He reaches the heavy double doors, knees feeling weak...and finds the doors locked. In a flash he's got his screwdriver out and buzzing against the lock, which thankfully gives a click just in time for him to shove the doors open and fling himself through before the shadows catch up with him.

[bagropa]

Croach has, sensibly, remained where he arrived in the good house - in a hallway, decorated in a Earthen style with which he is unfamiliar, which contains many doors. He has inspected several of the rooms from their doorways, and while all appear to be empty and of average interior design, he senses something dangerous about them, and so remains on guard in the hallway. He walks up and down it and occasionally sits in one of the chairs up against the wall, making note of the strange floor coverings and the patterned walls. It is not clear to him why so many of the human dreams occur within human houses. Frankly, he does not understand the appeal.

His watch is interrupted by the clatter of a set of doors opening from what Croach had observed to be the library. A humanoid emerges, and Croach is immediately on alert - he had noticed no immediate dangers within the room, and senses none still, apart from the general... unease he is experiencing.

"Do you require assistance, humanoid?" Croach asks, reaching for his quantum bow. He can tell that the humanoid is in distress, and also... "You are fertilized!" Croach exclaims, and were he to identify this emotion, he might designate it excitement.

[bluesuit_handy]

Finding another being on the other side of the door, appealing as it is to the instinct to group together for safety, means Andrew now has the added responsibility of preventing this stranger's death. He slams the doors behind him and sonics it shut, waddling hurrying away from it with a warning already on his lips.

"That won't hold them -- I'll explain later, but right now I need you to ru--"

He falters, mouth flapping open and closed for a moment. "What? N -- well, yes -- now's really not the time. Come on!"

So saying, he flails at the alien as if to herd Croach ahead of himself as he waddles like the wind away from the library door.

[bagropa]

Croach raises one brow, antennae twitching, but obliges the humanoid stranger - he and his younglings may require defending - and follows him, walking, at most, slightly faster than his average pace and helpfully supporting the stranger by his elbow. He has direct knowledge of how off-balance one can be while gestating. "I sense no present danger," he points out. Then, "Do you designate this pace as 'running'?" Genuinely curious.

[bluesuit_handy]

"I'd like to see you run with a watermelon inside you!" retorts Andrew, feelings hurt. He's good at running, okay, he's just having an off day. And alright, it's really more like two avocados at this point, but that's more than enough. But if his new blue friend is going to -- Andrew moves as if to jerk his elbow away, then thinks better of it due to his increased propensity for falling over lately -- is going to fail to take this seriously, it's time for an explanation.

"And most people can't sense them -- it's the vashta nerada. Living shadows, digest you where you stand. The light in here will slow them down, but it won't stop them."

[bagropa]

Croach slows to a stop, antennae straightening and then relaxing, looking puzzled. "I am not 'most people'," he points out, sounding slightly offended, "and I do not sense proximate danger with any of my twenty-eight senses." He adds the last bit to impress upon the humanoid Croach's confidence in his statement. "Are you..." His brows raise as he appears to have some kind of revelation, and he approximates a human smile (badly). Without an ounce of sarcasm, "Bagropa! Do you possess hormones? It is normal to desire to protect your younglings."

[bluesuit_handy]

"Vashta nerada," repeats Andrew, slowing and turning to stare at the other being like he's grown two heads. Or spontaneously shed his antennae, perhaps. "Piranhas of the air, ringing any b-- hang on, did you say twenty-eight?"

He's not sure how seriously to take this claim. Then again, whoever this is did just casually spot a pregnancy in a member of a different species. "....Is one of them good for sensing microscopic predators?"