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

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.]

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"I don't see any other options here, do you?" he fires back, sounding mildly offended despite his best efforts to not sound mildly offended. "What, you rather fancy running in circles in the fucking woods?"

Very obviously ignoring the proffered hand, Rush turns on his heel and starts forging blindly ahead with absolutely no regard for the concept of stealth.

"Yep," says Nathaira as he shoves a particularly obstinate branch out of the way with an earsplitting crack, "that's definitely the best way to go about doing this. Hey, break those twigs a little louder, why don't you? I think there's someone on the other side of the planet who didn't hear you coming."

He whirls on the panther, teeth gritted, fuming.

"Shut. Up."

"I'm just saying that might be what ends up happening," says Johnny, withdrawing his hand and breaking into a brisk walk to follow. "But sure, I'd rather get out."

And okay, he likes the panther, but even he thinks that's being a little harsh. "Hey, all right," he says, stopping with them and raising a hand. "Bagheera, Dr. Happy. Nobody wants to be here, okay? Let's just chill out for a second."

But man, being the sensible one is a lot easier when his own terror, irrational or not, is spiking back out of control. He turns to look behind him, for a moment certain there's something there, looming. There isn't, but that does not make him feel better.

"Let's just - let's keep going," he says. "And let's keep the loving banter to a fucking minimum."

Nathaira has the audacity to shoot Rush a significant look at the words "fucking minimum," which earns her a glare of equal or greater proportion. Then she mouths "Bagheera?" at him, incredulous. Rush simply shrugs, as if to say don't look at me. He doesn't have answers to anyone's fucking questions, much less hers.

He echoes Johnny's first movement, glancing back over his shoulder, then starts doing it more periodically. He doesn't like the prickle on the back of his neck. He doesn't like it. But his breathing is not erratic, so Rush is going to assume he is doing just fine, thank you.

The assessment significantly increases his resolve.

"Do you think," he begins in a tight whisper, jerking around to stare behind them yet again, "that there is actually anything fucking in these woods? You're the first other person I've even seen." Not that he's been too tremendously helpful, mind. The mention of the multi-dimensional breach remains by far the most interesting and useful thing to come out of this little encounter, and Johnny didn't even know much about it.

"There's gotta be other dreamers, at least," says Johnny. "This definitely isn't one of mine, and the group ones are usually like... big events. Tons of people have them at a time. But no, I haven't seen anyone else."

At least, he doesn't think so. He has a weird feeling that he has, but as usual that probably won't make any sense until he wakes up. Fuck, he hopes none of his encounters are fucking horrible.

"But trust me, bad shit can happen here. Even if there isn't actually anything after us. There are plenty of dreamers you don't want to meet."

"Can't be anything worse than -"

Incredibly, he breaks himself off. Whatever personal subconscious horrors his own mind has trapped him in before, he has complete confidence that an interdimensional wavelength can come up with something worse. Especially if it happens to be sentient, which is entirely possible.

"Is it possible we could run into other dreamers? Fuck, how would we know? It could just be our heads -" And again, Rush doesn't complete his sentence, abruptly falls silent halfway into it. Too many dark interspersions of thought gathering there, too many things a dream could harvest from his subconscious, too many ways for a Rift to unmake the tenuous grasp of calm he's managed to establish.

Johnny knows a thing or two about just how bad his own subconscious can be as compared to the rift, though really, the rift seems to love working in tandem with what he already has to offer, so what's the difference, even? He has a suspicion that's where Rush was headed with his first fragmented declaration, but he lets it slide.

"We'd know," he says. "I mean, for one thing, they're people that I've met or can meet in the waking world. But they're more... vivid, here. They can, you know. Do things that you wouldn't expect or predict. And do things to you. That's the wouldn't-want-to-meet-em brand."

He stumbles slightly on a root, pitching forward and catching himself on a tree, scraping his palm on the rough bark. "Fuck," he hisses, and Nova twitches in his hand like she felt the pain.

"How pleasant." No, he has enough to deal with now without tossing additional wild card variables into the mix. He has to sever that new vector of his thoughts ruthlessly; no need to give his subconscious any ideas to make this any more of a disagreeable experience than it already is.

Truant's noise of discomfort is discounted as irrelevant but the noise his rabbit makes is not. Rush makes quiet note of it: some kind of telepathic link there. Interesting. Nonsensical, of course, due to the dubious nature of all dreams, particularly ones involving rabbits and panthers that can verbalize, but interesting.

"This happens frequently, then?" he mutters, almost to himself, spitting out frequently in venomous undertone.

Pleasant. Even sarcastically, it's an absurd word choice. Johnny snorts. "Yeah, it's real fuckin' copacetic."

He peers closely at his hand, struggling to see how bad it is in the dim filtered moonlight, which is sort of a lost cause. It's probably all right. He just wishes he had a handkerchief or something.

"Frequently, yes," he says. "To me, anyway. I'm blessed by having a fucking target painted on my ass, apparently." He keeps moving, looking around uneasily. "I mean, usually not when I'm with someone else. So count your blessings, I guess." Or maybe he should be counting his own. Whatever.

"Yes, I feel very fucking lucky." For Rush, at least, this is an upgrade from the standard simulation fare. Even if it does happen to include rabbits. "Particularly since it still feels like we're about to be fucking assaulted."

But there's nothing behind them, nothing he can see, just trees and trees and more fucking trees. So why won't his sympathetic nervous system leave him the fuck alone.

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

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