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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What a question! Or pair of questions. Greta looks faintly perplexed. "The Village at the edge of the Wood," she replies in response to the first one.

"And I…" She hesitates a moment. Is he asking where she's sleeping? It feels vaguely indecent, as questions go, and she colors slightly. "if you mean to ask where I am really, then... the answer's the same." He doesn't need any more detail than that, she thinks. It's enough for her to get her head around the idea of being both at home, asleep in their little room above the bakery, and having a conversation with a near stranger in some dream-giant's sitting room. She's not going to go giving said near stranger the floor plan of her home, for goodness' sake.

He didn't want any more detail than that. That is, he didn't want to know the gritty details of her bedroom and pillows and blankets and so forth -- but a little more detail wouldn't go amiss. "...Which one?" he asks with what he feels is a good deal of patience.

What does he mean, 'which one'? Perhaps he misheard her. "… The Village," she repeats slowly, annunciating carefully this time. "The Village at the edge of the Woods." Then, incredulously, "You do… you do know the Woods." She can't bring herself to give it a questioning inflection. Everyone knows the Woods, surely?

"I know of woods," replies Andrew, eyebrows raised in his patented I-am-giving-you-the-benefit-of-the-doubt look. "Is that the name of the village?"

Well, that's something. "The Woods, yes," she says. "And next to the Woods, there's the Village." Honestly, it shouldn't be that difficult to grasp. Struck with sudden inspiration, she adds, "It's part of the Kingdom." That will ring a few bells. The Village might not be very large, but the Kingdom--everyone knows the Kingdom.

Andrew opens his mouth to say something, squints at her, then closes it again. This happens once or twice more as he tries to decide whether she's making fun of him.

"You're taking the mickey," he concludes. "Alright, I'll bite: which kingdom?"

What on earth is that look for? Her eyes narrow in turn at the incomprehensible turn of phrase - taking the mickey? - and she jerks back ever so slightly, as if he's shoved an insect under her nose. Is he teasing her?

"The Kingdom," she says, a clear undercurrent of frustration in her tone. "The Princes' Kingd--everyone knows it!" she finally snaps, exasperated. "Where are you from?"

"G-- Earth. Chiswick." Did he just change his mind twice while answering? That can't be a good sign for his veracity. It's a hard question to answer, alright? At least he has a reason for having a hard time answering.

Greta plants her hands on her hips and frowns up at him. "Well, I've never heard of this 'Chiswick,'" she says, which means it's a far more nonsensical answer than the perfectly clear ones she's been giving.

"It's in a kingdom," Andrew points out, not backing down in the face of her logic. "A kingdom."

"Which one?" she fires right back, narrowing her eyes. Two can play the name-your-Kingdom game.

"The United Kingdom," Andrew shoots back. "What's yours called?"

"The United Kingdom?" she repeats, in what may be the most dubious tone that anyone with an ostensibly English accent could ever produce for that particular phrase. She has never heard of such a place. Granted, she isn't as well traveled as some, and after a few moments of staring Andrew down to see if he's going to admit to any fibs, she decides to give him just the tiniest benefit of the doubt.

"You might know it as a Far-Away Kingdom," she begrudgingly allows. She's heard that those from distant lands refer to it that way.

Andrew just stares for a few moments. She seems so earnest. A nameless kingdom everyone knows about, a village that apparently requires no specific name, ditto woods, and all that talk earlier about Jacks and beanstalks and giants. It all paints a surprisingly clear picture, but...well, the rift has pulled people from ostensibly fictional worlds before, but not ones that clearly fictional.

"You ought to at least have names for things," he says a bit helplessly. "What kind of world actually calls everything by its general description? Next you'll be telling me you grew up there once upon a time."

"Names like 'Chiswick'?" Greta arches an eyebrow at him. 'Chiswick' sounds like the sort of noise an insect might make. It's certainly not something you'd call a village.

"And 'once upon a time' is a--a fine turn of phrase," she adds, a touch defensively. "How else would you start a story about where you came from? With the specific date?" She huffs out a humorless laugh. "Maybe that's how things are done in the United Kingdom," she says, barely resisting the urge to throw in a wiggly-fingered aren't-you-fancy hand gesture, "but not in ours."

Edited 2015-01-06 15:08 (UTC)

"Are there other kingdoms?" asks Andrew, still not willing to let it go. "Don't they have names? Or other villages, even, you can't have just the one village and call it Village and be done with it!"

What an absurd question. "Well, obviously there are other kingdoms; you're from one of them!" She glares up at him, cheeks flushing in mingled indignation and embarrassment. 'Noble,' he'd called himself. A royal-sounding name. While she can't quite believe him to be a prince, she can believe he comes from a higher-born family than she does. Only those rich enough to travel widely can afford to take such an interest in geography.

(There are, of course, other reasons to keep on the move, but despite his bizarre condition, he doesn't strike her as a desperate wanderer so much as a smug know-it-all.)

"One village has to be enough when you don't own a horse," she snipes at him. "We can't all visit every corner of the kingdom and then go traipsing off beyond its borders. Some of us have to work."

For all that she's got the scope woefully, almost hilariously wrong, she's really not that far off in terms of the sort of life he's led. "I work!" he lies, but he amends it a second later. "I have worked. At times. I just wanted to know what you called them. And, well, if they existed, because if you're going to go about talking about Jack and the beanstalk and a kingdom that's just called The Kingdom," the capitalization is audible, "people are going to wonder whether you're from a proper world at all!"

Forgetting any previous concerns about offending someone socially above her, Greta scoffs at Andrew in open contempt. "'A proper world'? Who are you to say what's proper or not?!"

"Alright, alright," says Andrew not so placatingly, holding up his hands. "I'm the one who's traipsed all over the kingdoms on horseback, remember? Geographically gifted, that's me."

This isn't a helpful line of discussion. He knows this isn't helpful to either of them. Somehow, that isn't stopping him.

"Not so gifted when it comes to manners," Greta fires back. "Speaking of 'proper.'"

There's something inherently surreal about this argument, but she's too busy feeling insulted to actually step back and think about it.

"I asked a simple question!" protests Andrew. He's the victim here, clearly. "It's not my fault your entire civilization skipped the part where you learn to name things. Are you human? You look human."

Greta stiffens, thunderstruck by the question. Are you human is not the sort of thing you just ask someone. In part, that's because it's usually not difficult to tell at a glance. But the real reason any kind of blunt scrutiny is avoided is because any non-human capable of carrying on a conversation is also probably capable of doing something very nasty to you. As such, they're treated with the wary respect they deserve.

But his question was hardly delivered in a respectful manner, and she can't decide which is worse: the thought of him being human and scorning her for being - whatever he thinks she is, a witch or something - or the thought of him being something else and lording it over her comparatively feeble humanity (which admittedly seems more likely, given how he phrased it). Either way, it is really just... astonishingly offensive, and she fists her hands in her apron for fear of what she might do with them otherwise.

Unfortunately, her physical self-restraint doesn't coincide with verbal self-restraint. Whatever he is, she isn't threatened by him. "You're lucky I am," she says, glaring at him. "If I was a witch, I'd have--" she gropes for a suitably witchy-sounding threat, "I'd have turned you into a chair by now!" An overstuffed one.

Edited 2015-01-09 22:46 (UTC)

"It's just a question!" huffs Andrew, getting offended himself, now. "Blimey you're testy. I just wanted to know and now you're on about non-consensual transformations. Non-consensual transformations of minors, no less."

Why yes, he did just play the pregnancy card. "Look," he says, "I have traveled. It's just...unusual, what you're describing, at least for human cultures."

… All right, so she's been rude, as well. Greta visibly reins herself in, releasing her fistfuls of apron and smoothing her palms out over the cloth. "Well," she says with as much harried dignity as she can muster, "you must not have traveled anywhere near where I'm from. Everyone just calls the Village 'the Village' and calls the Woods 'the Woods.' It's not unusual for us."

Edited 2015-01-10 21:27 (UTC)

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bluesuit_handy - 2015-01-12 05:12 (UTC) - Expand

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