applesaucedream | Better to Receive than to Give [open to all]

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Better to Receive than to Give [open to all]

Somewhere in the cosmos, there is something bright, and young, and playful. Somewhere, this being watches over their little flock and does their best to make those people safe and happy. Somewhere, that godling and their flock celebrate the winter holidays in the happiest of dreams.

And somewhere closer at hand, a sleeping giant stirs.

The bright tapestry of dream threads gathered by Zephyr is suddenly yanked hard enough to pull it from its temporary mooring. Something entirely unlike the little godling reels in the dreamers so neatly gathered and packaged up for it, bringing its own toys back to their proper place and taking all the others it can with them. Unsatisfied, it reaches out again and again, dragging in dreamers from all across the multiverse. It will snare them, all of them, and then it will possess them completely.

Perhaps it's fitting that when the stolen dreamers arrive in this new shared mindscape, they'll find they've been designated the Rift's Christmas gifts to itself. Each might awaken inside a dark box, or cocooned in…is that tissue paper? When they claw their way out they'll be greeted by the sight of an enormous evergreen tree laden with twinkling lights and kitschy knickknacks looming overhead. Beyond the shadow of the tree the rest of the world -- that is, the living room -- is just as large. Or is it that the dreamers have just become very small? Giant packages wrapped in bright paper form an obstacle course, but the wooden floor of the room is wide open between the tree and the hearth where an enormous plate of cookies and glass of milk await a cataclysmic Santa Claus.

All in all, things are fairly normal as far as the rift's dream gatherings go…at least on the surface. The more telepathically sensitive among the dreamers may notice an undercurrent of something darker, more urgent, and more possessive than normal. The rift isn't just sampling the wares of other worlds tonight; this time it means to play for keeps.

[OOC: This is the second part of our crossover with

wethelost! Part one can be found here. Usual dream party rules apply: all players and characters are welcome regardless of whether they are currently in the game, and characters may remember or forget the events of the dream party at the discretion of their players.

For reference, characters of average human height are roughly four inches tall according to the scale of their current surroundings. There is an entire giant house beyond the living room; characters will find a kitchen and dining room on the same floor, a staircase outside the door of the living room that leads up to a second floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom, and another staircase off the kitchen that goes to an unfinished basement. Feel free to add details as needed!

This event takes place on evening of August 8th/morning of August 9th in Applesauce time, and December 31 in WtL time.]

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"Yes, yes, I'm all right," Giles reflexively replies, before pausing in the middle of dusting off his trousers to glance in the direction of the voice. The man isn't familiar, but he also isn't giving any impression of being dangerous, so Giles straightens and moves toward him.

Only then does Giles actually get a look at where they are. The tree - the Christmas tree - they are under indicates that his gift bag wasn't the only thing out of proportion (though whether the bag and tree are huge or Giles and the other man small is still in question). He blinks up at the festive display as he reaches the stranger.

"Are we small, or is that really big?"

"Good question." One Daniel's been pondering at worried length himself. He squints upward at the great hulking thing, all spiky green branches and brightly colored bulbs and oh, look at that, a jagged golden star perched precariously at the top. All very Yuletide. All very festive. All very normal and heartwarming and fuzzy, if one neglected to notice how it is all entirely too big. Or - small, depending on one's point of view.

He's getting distracted.

"I'm not sure, honestly," he admits, dropping his stare back to the other man, equally bespectacled and bewildered. "Woke up in a bag, like you. Like we're all - um, sorry, Daniel." That bit's rather important. He sticks out his hand and offers a tight, nervous smile. "Daniel Jackson."

"Giles, Rupert Giles," he returns, taking the offered hand and giving it a shake. "I take it you haven't been here that long, then?"

"Er, here, specifically? No, not really." Here as in the metaphysical here, anyhow, as far as he's aware, but Daniel knows time has a way of moving nonlinearly even outside of the dreamspace. But he's fairly certain he's in it, unless he's been spatially and temporally displaced again.

"But there's the whole - dream thing which, um, I'm not sure if you're really aware, uh. Well." No easy way to say it, is there? "You're dreaming. That is to say, we are, both of us, it's a whole shared consciousness thing, um." The accompanying sloppy, circular hand gestures probably aren't helping a great deal so Daniel ends up folding his arms uncomfortably across his chest with an exaggerated shrug, and rounds off that clumsy little explanation with a hesitant, "Welcome?"

That stops Giles, and he turns from his examination of the bauble hanging nearest them to stare at Daniel. "So we're dreaming?" He nods to himself, giving the room a look with fresh eyes. "That makes more sense."

Theoretically, anyway. He'd been a little worried that he'd somehow gotten shrunk; at least now he knows that whatever is happening isn't really happening. However, shared dreams aren't exactly safe either.

"So do you think there are other people here? Since it's a 'shared consciousness thing'?"

"That's usually the case, yeah." He pulls off his glasses and cleans them on his shirt, if only to give his hands something to do for the moment, then crams them back on with less care than how a pair of glasses should typically be handled. Giles looks to be taking this calmly, leading to Daniel to believe that maybe he's had experience with this sort of thing. Possibly? "I've run into a few, er. I think."

A crease appears between Daniel's eyebrows. Contemporaneous time-streams are difficult enough to sort through without relativity and dream logic getting tangled along in for the ride.

"Sorry." He shakes his head, the smile easing into something more apologetic. "It's hard to tell sometimes. Everything bleeds together, stuff happening nonsequentially, and it all gets, you know," and Daniel spins a finger pointing skyward in a wiggly, conical gesture, "jumbled."

Well, there's at least one other person here, in falcon shape and approaching at high velocity. It's taken Daine quite a while to explore the full extent of the giant house, but relocating Daniel was comparatively easy. He's talking to a two-legger she doesn't recognize, which might get a bit awkward, but there's not much to be done about that. Daine lets out a piercing shriek - probably easier for them to hear than calling out with her mind would be - and folds her wings, stooping towards the pair.

Giles looks around sharply at the cry. Oh, great. There's a bird. He has a moment to be grateful that it seems to be proportionally their size - all he needs now is to be attacked by a giant bird of prey - before he realizes that it's coming right at them.

He risks a glance in Daniel's direction, trying to gauge whether this is something that happens often in these dreams. The other man doesn't seem all that perturbed, so Giles doesn't dive for cover, though he can't help but tense up as the bird closes in on them.

"It's okay," he quickly assures Giles with a wince, because that timing probably could have been better. Then again, there's probably never a great time to be spontaneously sprung upon by a shapeshifting bird. "She's, she's a friend."

He waves at Daine, halfway relieved and halfway worried over what kind of explanation he's going to have to unravel for this.

"Er - she's Daine," Daniel contributes somewhat unhelpfully. That...probably isn't going to do much in terms of clearing things up. Whoops.

Daine aims for one of the giant tree's branches as she pulls up for a landing, then thinks better of it when she sees just how long its needles are up close. Odd's bobs, she mutters to herself, because there's no better perch unless one of the two-leggers sticks an arm out, and that seems like too much to ask from a complete stranger or someone she doesn't know all that well. There's nothing for it but to land on the ground, so land on the ground she does, ruffling her feathers sheepishly.

Hullo, she says to the stranger, cocking her head so she can look up at him with one eye. I'm Daine. Hang on… She doesn't like being grounded in falcon shape; it feels silly. Forgetting that human is an option, she switches to wolf, instead. Much more comfortable, and she gives her fur a settling shake before wagging her tail broadly. There we go; that's better. Daniel, this place is enormous.

Giles' eyebrows rise slightly when he hears the voice inside his head.

"Hello, I'm Giles," he returns, still trying to puzzle out what a bird with psychic communication abilities is doing in the dream. For a moment, ideas of what it means rush through him, but he knows neither the form nor its presence is symbolic. Is this an actual bird that Daniel knows outside of the dream? That certainly seems to be the case based on how Daniel spoke of her.

Then Daine shifts from bird to wolf, and Giles's eyebrows nearly disappear in his hairline. "Ah, what are you?" he asks, all but blurting it out before he can stop himself. "I'm sorry," he tacks on reflexively - though not without sincere apology in his tone, "but shapeshifting like yours is a rare ability." And usually an evil one, not that he's getting that sort of a feel from her.

Ahh - yes, this is going to be a shade problematic explanation-wise, particularly because Daniel doesn't actually know himself. He's gotten better at watching Daine shift without flinching in amazement at least.

"Daine, Giles." Which...yes, they've already covered, but Daniel's trying to reestablish his conversational footing here. "No it's, it's okay, um, she - she does that. It's a - thing she does." A thing she does. How eloquent. Hopefully Daine can describe it better, because right now Daniel's hastily cobbled-together explanation hasn't really extended beyond she has this thing with animals, see. He's concerned over exactly how enormous this place is, though based on casual observation alone he'd assume it's likely it expands beyond this central room with the tree. Still, it's probably best to cover the introductory bases first. Safest. "Um, how big?"

Wildmage, Daine explains, sitting down. She doesn't feel tired (though she has the vague idea that she ought to), but she figures her wolf shape will seem a bit less threatening this way. I've got magic that lets me talk to animals and take their shape. That's the short version, anyway; there are other things to discuss.

And it's very big. There's a second story above this one, and a cellar below us. She barely poked her nose into the cellar; even in her smallest, most difficult to spot owl shape, it had given her the creeps. She only peered down long enough to establish that there was a room down there before winging away. But it's empty. There's furniture and things - it looks like folk live here - but I didn't see any two-leggers.

Wildmage. It isn't a familiar term, but Daine's explanation, brief as it is, paints the picture well enough. He nods, mostly to himself, and focuses on her report of their location.

Something like a cold chill across the back of his neck comes over him when she mentions a cellar, come and gone in the space of a breath. His brain translates "two-leggers" without deliberation, but he can't say that the idea of them not sharing the house with giant beings offers anything in the way of comfort.

"Did you see anything of interest?" he asks, wondering what might be in the house. "Anything we should check out?"

Kudos to Giles for taking all this in stride, giant house and shapeshifting wolf and all, but Daniel supposes that when one opens on this is a dream the ability to keep an open mind gets rather infinitely expanded.

"And what about ways out?" That's a priority. Especially if the missing owners are proportioned as largely as their living space and plan on coming back soon.

It just looks like a normal house, Daine says. That's something of an assumption on her part, because it's not normal by her universe's standards and she lacks any experience with this universe's suburbia, but it does look like pictures she's seen in books and in movies. It's easy enough to get from room to room - even if the doors are shut, you can just get under them - but I don't know about leaving the house completely. I expect we'd have to open a door or a window, somehow. S

he glances toward the nearest window, then adds, It looked cold out. No trouble for her, but quite probably trouble for everyone else.

A way out hadn't even occurred to Giles, surprisingly, but he gives Daniel a nod of approval and turns to Daine for her answer. Her assertion of unfavorable weather is a bit of a disappointment - more so than he expected given that he hadn't been thinking about escape prior to Daniel mentioning it.

Giles follows Daine's gaze and notices the windows for the first time. From his angle on the floor, he can't tell much about the outdoor conditions, but he's sure that Daine had a better view in her avian form.

"So what should we do now?" he asks. In other situations he might take the lead, but he doesn't know Daniel and Daine well enough to just take control. Besides which, they're probably more familiar with this dream process than he is.

"Well." He rubs a hand under his jaw, tongue between his teeth. "Ideally we find a way out that doesn't involve freezing to death." Dream or no, dying is rarely a pleasant activity, especially if it involves the slow process of frostbite. Complete escape might not be feasible in this particular environment, especially with everyone downgraded to the approximate height of four inches and presumably the comparative bodily strength to match.

"Barring that, it might be good if we can find some place to lie low for if the owners do come back." That's assuming there are any and that they actually plan on it, but it seems an oversight not to take that into account. "Upstairs, maybe? Or - the cellar, possibly?"

Daine flicks her ears back uneasily at the cellar suggestion. I didn't like the look of the cellar much, she admits. Then, canting her head a little to one side in consideration, she corrects herself: No, that's not quite right. I didn't like the feel of it. This whole house feels funny, but it's worse down there. Like… another thoughtful pause, not like being hunted, but like you're already caught. Like a cat's got you under its paw. Except cats are nicer. She could talk to a cat; whatever's breathing down their necks here has a mind she can't reach.

Giles is already instinctively shaking his head at Daniel's mention of the cellar when Daine speaks up.

"I agree," he adds. "There is something very off about this place, beyond our diminutive stature - or, conversely, its exaggerated size." Somewhere in the back of his mind he registers how strange it is to be having a conversation - including references to cats - with a wolf. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just another oddity of his current situation. "And I have to admit, the idea of going underground here - even just into a cellar - does not sound very appealing."

Yeah, you know, fair enough. Cellar sounded vaguely appealing by simple virtue that it probably wouldn't sound very appealing to anyone else either, thus lessening their chances of being disturbed. But if it comes at the cost of their dream consciousness lives, Daniel will pass, no matter how much experience he has with the less pleasant methods of dying.

"Pegged it as a last place they might look," he explains, a shrug and an apologetic twist of one corner of his mouth both in order. "Assuming there's a 'they' at all. But, no, you're - I mean, it just - it feels wrong, doesn't it?" Now his shoulders hunch more anxiously, climbing steadily to his ears as he mashes both hands into his pockets. "Even for a dream, even for the Rift, it, I - I thought it was just me."

Not just you, Daine confirms, shaking her head. Upstairs might be a better bet if we just want to hide somewhere.

Of course, there's the not-so-small matter of her companions being unable to just take winged shapes when it suits them. It's one thing for her to fly up there, and quite another for a small two-legger to climb the distance. I don't know if you'd want to tackle the stairs, though. I can certainly help. But she doesn't have any shapes capable of carrying them up that sort of terrain in one go. They'd have to take things one massive step at a time.

Hiding. Hiding would probably be good. Between the general aura of the house and his diminutive size (he can just hear Xander - or Spike - making a joke now), he has no desire to face any possible danger head on.

The idea of trying to tackle normal sized stairs is daunting, but if Daine thinks it's possible, perhaps there's merit in attempting it. "Should we try it, or is there somewhere else on this level would should try first?"

Oof, Daniel hadn't thought about the stairs. Clearly. Daine might be helpful in getting up them but it would be time-consuming, and probably exhausting on everyone's part.

"Well, being sized down has its perks." He squints at the ceiling as if demanding it to start yielding some suggestions. "If we could just find, I dunno, a mousehole, that could be as good a potential hideout as any." Except the idea of confronting a mouse the size of him is more than a little daunting. Which is assuming that the house itself has been upgraded in size, unless all organic matter has been scaled down on the same calibration and - Daniel should stop trying to weasel some kind of logic into this. Dreams, and especially the Rift's dreams, tend to defy logic by definition.

I didn't hear any mice when I was exploring, Daine says with a pensive flick of her ears. That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course. Mice tend to be secretive (at least with folk they don't know; they're terrible gossips with one another), and at this size, her influence might not spread as far as it ought to.

If there were mice, she's certain they'd be happy to share their space with a few friends. Especially if she asked nicely, and maybe brought them a snack (one of the cookies by the hearth would work). It's certainly worth checking--which means finding some way to boost her magic.

I can check, but I need to boost my range, she explains, getting to her feet and looking around. Getting cold and wet does the trick, but… well, there's no straightforward means of doing that, at least not that she can think of.

Better to Receive than to Give [open to all]

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