Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

Comments

[the_strenuous_life]

Theodore Roosevelt rides his daemon through the woods, and for the first time in his life, he is afraid. There is one bison left on earth, and it is somewhere in these woods, and if he doesn't act soon, someone will kill it before he himself gets the chance.

His mission is clear. He is a hunter, he is at home in the dark. He will be the master of his fear, and he will find and kill his prey. This he knows.

The wind rises, setting branches creaking against each other in a hoarse moan. Theodore suppresses a shudder. He will not be afraid.

"Come on, Sanoba," he says, patting the moose's mighty antlers. "Let's go."

[oldasmountains]

Fourteen foot high, limbs creaking like the slow bend of trees in the wind, feet like great root systems sinking into the earth as he treads, Fangorn makes his way through the forest, daemon clinging among his foliage, barely distinguishable from the bark of his skin with the moss growing green on her fur.

Though it is plainly a forest, alive with the songs of trees and smaller, growing things, he feels as he did when walking amongst the burnt and broken bodies of his tree-herds. There is a chill on the air, and the scent of bad magic and machinery and scorched oil.

'Hmmm, hum,' he grumbles, a deep, nearly subvocal groan of sound, branches shivering, 'Burárum.'

There is something very wrong here, and he does not like it. These are not his woods, and something is sick in the heart of them.

He is not expecting to come across a man-- or he takes it for a man, at least-- riding through the forest astride some animal like a great elk, and Fangorn comes to a slow halt, the sloth amid his branches slowly lifting her head to peer down. 'Hoom, hum! And what have we here?'

[the_strenuous_life]

The sound doesn't alarm him at first; he assumes it belongs to some majestic creature, and so he reaches for the rifle slung over his shoulder in a fluid, practiced motion.

But the sound is followed by motion, and at first he doesn't know what he's seeing, it's not an animal movement, it's something else entirely, like trees in a nor'easter but slow, impossibly slow. It takes until the thing is in front of him for Theodore to realize that it is a tree, or something very like one, and the great rumbling hollow sound is something like words, and for all practical purposes it seems to be addressing him.

"Ho there!" he announces, raising one hand in greeting while keeping a secure hold on his gun with the other. Sanoba digs at the leaves with one huge hoof, restless, and steps from side to side. They are both unsure of what to make of this creature. "I'm a man, have you seen one of those before? I'm not too proud to admit that I've never laid eyes on anything like you, good sir."

[oldasmountains]

'Hmmmm, yes, I know Men,' Fangorn answers, after what will, perhaps, to Teddy, seem a very long pause indeed. 'Though they are rarely so... bold as you.'

He peers down, fixing the man with a gaze, sharper than his eyes, like sunlit pools, would seem capable of. He does not know what to make of the object the man holds tucked at his side, though he holds it as Fangorn has seen generations of the Sons and Daughters of Eru hold weapons. Still, there is no blade that he can see, nor any fire, and those are the only weapons of Men he need fear.

'I am an Ent,' he intones, toes flexing into the dirt. 'There are tales, I hear, told still of us in the cities of Men, but it has been long years since I ranged as I used.'

'What,' comes the voice of the sloth from over his shoulder, the deepest alto like a great woodwind, 'is that?'

They have seen elk and deer, but the creature this man rides upon is neither of those.