applesaucedream | Enchantment Under the Sea

Current Music: Evening of July 12th/Morning of July 13th, 2013

Enchantment Under the Sea

Tonight, the dreamers of Manhattan will find themselves transported to what is unmistakably a high school gymnasium. Granted, it's lavishly decorated in blues, greens, and violets. There are jellyfish made of tissue paper and streamers, painted cardboard fish are dangling from ceiling, and an abundance of transparent balloons serve as substitute bubbles. Tables and chairs are clustered around the periphery for those who'd like to sit, but the majority of the floor is open for dancing. Along one wall, folding tables hold snacks and bowls of punch. There's no DJ to be seen, but a sound system is playing a steady stream of classic dance songs.

It's impressive work for a nonexistent prom committee, all things considered.

But the setting is not the only thing that hearkens back to one's teenage years. The dreamers will find, regardless of age or species, that they're now saddled with the hormones of an average sixteen-year-old human being… and with the delightful mood fluctuations and bouts of irrationality that come with the package. (Dreamers who are already teenagers might be said to be getting a reprieve… but dealing with adults in such a state will be trying enough on its own. Someone has to chaperone, right?)

The good news for dreamers who aren't into dances is that there's an entire high school to explore, though the hallways will only be half-lit and many of the classrooms will be locked up. Even the parking lot and athletic fields are accessible, but dreamers may find themselves getting mysteriously turned around if they try to actually leave school property.

[ooc: you all know the drill. Any and all characters are welcome, regardless of whether or not they're in the game. Dreamers may remember or forget the events of the party at the player's discretion.]

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Aglet takes a sip, a little surprised at the aftertaste but not so much that he doesn't take a second. "Aunt Euphony told me that her mother said borrowers used to be like beans," he admits. "But I don't know if I believe that."

"Huh. I suppose a big enough magic could do it, but it's been ages since we had enough for that sort of thing back home." She motions for the glass so she can have another sip. There's definitely something strange about the taste, but she can't place it. It's not entirely unpleasant, though, and it's not as if there are other beverage options. "A few people get shrunk, and few generations later, you have an entirely new species."

"Or maybe a few borrowers got embiggoned and that's why there's beans," suggests Aglet facetiously. It's obviously not true, but it's still weird for him to think he could ever have descended from a bean. They're so different...though right now maybe the differences seem a little less obvious.

Jennifer snorts inelegantly and passes the glass back over. She's aware of how ridiculous this is. Her first lengthy interaction with a same-sized Aglet, and they're both just sitting beneath a table drinking questionable punch. But then again, she can't imagine a non-ridiculous way for such a thing to happen, and at least he's not trying to climb the walls or having a panic attack.

"Or maybe borrowers used to be humans, but a rift pulled them into a universe where everything was the more or less the same, only bigger," she suggests with mock seriousness, eyebrows raised.

Just give him time and/or a loss of protective table. Aglet's beginning to really like this punch, and he takes a bigger couple of sips than he should. "Or maybe we all used to have the power to get big but all the other borrowers before me forgot about it," he says after a moment of trying to think up an even more ridiculous theory.

"Or maybe," Jennifer says, trying to one-up the ridiculousness, "Borrowers aren't tiny at all; they're just somehow, perpetually, very far away at all times." There's a term for that, isn't there? She thinks about it for a few moments, then cries, "Forced perspective!" and lifts the punch glass in a congratulatory toast to herself.

"Wouldn't that mean beans are always really close? No wonder I always feel like you're about to step on me." Yoink, going to take that glass back once she's done toasting. Only...well, it seems to be running dry once he takes another swig.

"Must be," Jennifer agrees, "though I'd never step on you." Ugh, what an image.

And there goes the last of her punch down a certain greedy borrower's gullet. "Now you've done it," she says. "I'll have to go fetch more, and climbing out of here in this dress is going to be a pain." Jennifer is not a pouter, but she's pouting at Aglet, now. It seems the thing to do.

He sees that image in his head all the time, Jennifer.

Aglet holds up a hand to stave off her complaining, the motion turning into a sort of wave/pawing at the air. "No no no," he says firmly. "You're a bean, and I'm a borrower, and I'm going to show you how it's done. I'm going to borrow us some more, just wait."

Jennifer sputters out a laugh, because it's not as if the punch isn't free for the taking. But Aglet seems keen to give it a shot, and she's not about to stop him. It doesn't occur to her that he might step out from beneath the table and immediately become petrified, but then again, surely it would only result him diving back under the table.

"I'm waiting," she says, waving him on encouragingly. "Bring back enough for both of us, this time!"

Aglet solemnly hands her the empty glass, then nimbly turns over into a crouch, hands on the floor so he can silently lower himself enough to peer out from under the tablecloth without making himself any more visible by actually moving it aside. Then...he waits.

Aglet watches and waits as a pair of feet approach the table, automatically going into quiet mode as if Jennifer weren't there watching him. Head cocked, he listens for the telltale sounds of food being dished out -- and there, punch being ladled. He adjusts his position to be underneath where he's fairly sure the punchbowl is located, licking his lips as he patiently waits for the person to walk away...and then when they do he waits some more to be sure they're not coming back and that there isn't anyone else pointed in the direction of the snack table.

Someone else apparently isn't so patient, though, and Aglet doesn't get any warning before a shove from behind sends him face-first into the open. To his credit he doesn't shriek or bolt when he suddenly finds himself unprotected. He does freeze for a moment, breath and gaze quick as he looks around for anyone watching, but he quickly recovers enough to scramble to his knees, grab the punch bowl off the table, and disappear back underneath with only a few drops spilled. "What were you doing?" he hisses at Jennifer, apparently unaware that he's just pulled off a more or less superhuman feat by silently and successfully absconding with something as big and awkward as a filled punch bowl.

Honestly, she only meant to give him a light nudge of the get-on-with-it variety. But apparently she's having some difficulty judging her own strength, because she ends up booting him right out from beneath the table. She should probably feel bad about that, but she's too busy doubling over in barely-contained mirth. When an indignant Aglet reappears with the entire damn bowl, she can't help it: she bursts out laughing.

"I'm sorry!" she gasps a few moments later, curled on her side by this point. "I didn't meant to… and then you…" she weakly flaps a hand at the punch bowl - how has he not just spilled all of it?! "The whole thing!" she says for emphasis, clumsily wiping her eyes. "How--that's amazing!"

Her laughter finally starts to die down, and she recovers enough to push herself back into a sit. She glances between Aglet and the punch in astonishment, then she looks at the glass still clutched in her hand (miraculously unbroken) and lets out another hiccup of laughter. "We still only have the one cup."

Aglet scowls at all the noise Jennifer's making -- honestly, she's going to bring all the beans right down on their heads -- but he can't help but soften when she uses the word 'amazing.' He glances down at the bowl as if noticing it for the first time.

"I'm a borrower," he repeats to answer the question of how. "And you can get your own cup if you're going to go kicking people."

Oh, as if anyone out there can hear her over the music, anyway.

"It was only supposed to be a nudge," she says sheepishly, scraping her hair back out of her face. "I'm sorry I kicked you."

That does nothing for the cup problem, though, but after some consideration, she shrugs. It hasn't been a hindrance so far. "We could keep sharing," she says. He's managed to nab the ladle, too, though perhaps it's no surprise that the ladle remained in the bowl along with everything else. It's almost like magic, and she shakes her head a little as she refills the cup and passes it over.

"Here," she says with a lopsided grin. "You ought to have the first drink for such excellent borrowing."

Aglet carefully sets the bowl on the floor between them, honestly even a little impressed with himself now that he pauses to think about it. He won't say so, though. "All in a day's work," he says smugly, lifting the cup in a jaunty little toast before drinking half of it in one go. They can afford it now, after all. Something about it makes him cough and his eyes water, though, his throat feeling warm as he passes the cup back. "If you'd shrink I could give you lessons."

"If you shrink me, you'll get big," she points out, polishing off the cup out of an obstinate desire to keep up. She manages not to cough, but it does make her feel just a little bit light-headed. Well, the noise probably isn't helping; she can feel the bass through the floor. "And whenever that happens, you get too nervous to do anything, let alone give me borrowing tips."

Aglet feels...weird. He's weirdly aware of his own body and of a growing feeling of clumsiness and top-heaviness. It must be the loud music; he's hardly ever been anywhere so noisy. "Then we just have to find another borrower," he says. "So I can shrink you and then shrink me and they can be all big and step on...things." Step on us, he almost said, but it's not as funny as he thought it was going to be when he started to say it.

Jennifer blinks at him, suddenly and unexpectedly sort of moved. If they did manage to find another borrower, she wouldn't have been surprised if Aglet just reverted to not talking to her unless he absolutely had to. She can't believe he's even suggesting the idea of terrifying another member of his own species just so he can run around being tiny and ridiculous with her.

"Maybe," she says, scooting a bit closer to him so she doesn't have to raise her voice as much to be heard over the music, "we can find another human who wouldn't mind being shrunk, and I can show you how to be a bean."

Tiny, yes; ridiculous, no. A borrower is never ridiculous, and the suggestion may have something to do with a general lack of empathy on his part for anyone outside himself, bean or borrower.

He's not sure he likes her suggestion as much. "Being a bean sounds hard," he says with a wrinkle of his nose, thinking of all the paperwork Jennifer does day in and day out and of the great wide world she's expected to venture into all the time.

"Wouldn't have to show you the hard parts," she points out with an illustrative wave of the glass. She's starting to feel strangely removed, as if everything is an inch farther off than it really is. "We could just do fun things, like going for--" she stops herself at the last moment from saying 'walkies'--"a walk, or visiting one of the museums or something. It would be fun," she adds, giving his chest a gentle prod for emphasis (and perhaps, a little, in an attempt to judge distance).

"All the other beans would think I'm weird," Aglet points out, bobbing slightly under her prodding, unable to quite keep perfectly upright for some reason. "My cousins thought I was weird. And I think beans are weird. What's in a museum, anyway? What's that for?"

"All the other beans will ignore you," Jennifer says with all the certainty of someone who has been regularly walking a Quarkbeast around the park without incident. "Ignoring each other is what humans in New York are best at. And if they think you might be weird, they'll just ignore you even harder."

Aglet appears to be listing a little. Poor fellow; all this noise and bigness must be getting to him. Jennifer scoots over to sit right next to him, shoulder to shoulder, so he has something to lean against and won't tip over. "I think you'd like museums," she says as she offers him the glass. "They're like big collections of all the most interesting things beans have borrowed. Works of art, really old things, valuable things… and you can just walk through and look at all of it."

"Beans are weird," replies Aglet, leaning on Jennifer with some relief. That does make it easier, doesn't it? He's even balanced enough to take that glass and have more of that tasty punch he borrowed. "Oh," he says, imagining such a thing. His version involves a lot more thimbles than are likely to be found in most museums. "So like how we'd hang things on the walls at home? But why don't they just have it all in their houses?"

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Enchantment Under the Sea

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