ACT NOW! [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Has this ever happened to you?

All you're trying to do is have an uneventful night's sleep, but you find yourself in a sprawling labyrinth of interconnected rooms, each one a transplant from a bland, suburban home. You search and search for an exit, but just can't seem to find one! And even if you could - where did you park your car?

Oh, no! You're trapped in another dream event!

No matter what you do, everything just seems to turn out wrong. Open a cabinet - tupperware avalanche! Attempt to pour yourself a drink - disaster! No bowl of cheetos is safe from your sudden, embarrassing clumsiness! It's as if you can't do any simple task without it going horribly awry! What a mess!

That's right, dreamers: you're stuck in the desaturated Before Times of every terrible infomercial you've ever seen, and life is a sisyphean struggle.



[OOC: Standard dream party rules apply: all are welcome regardless of their membership in the game, and characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Backtag forever.]

Comments

[apidae]

Oh dear, that was not the best reaction, was it? Bee's expression grows solemn and she takes a small step back, nearly tripping again over one of the bowls. She hesitates uncertainly at the strange hissing sound - is that directed at her, or is there someone else here? but resolves to stay on topic for now.

"No, no message," she says, endeavoring to appear gentle and nonthreatening. "I'm just a fellow dreamer. Group dreams, they happen sometimes. Is this your first one?"

[biscuit_powered]

Asmodia is Not Reassured. She'd be embarrassed if she knew how ridiculous she looked with her eyes wide and a set of blinds draped over her face, but in the moment she's just watching the other woman like she expects her to launch into some form of assault. What would a subconscious takeover in a dream even look like from the dreamer's perspective? Might it be like an attack in the waking world?

"As far as I know?" she replies cautiously. "Did you do this?"

[apidae]

"Oh, gosh, no!" says Bee, baffled almost to the point of amusement. "No, I'm just dreaming, just like you. These big group dreams, I think the Rift is in charge of those." She blinks as she realizes this might too be gibberish to the poor girl. "Do you know about the Rift? Wait, here - let me help you."

She reaches forward to take the blinds off Asmodia's horns, but instead she trips a third time while being in this one room and drags several of the blinds down with her.

"Ah!" she cries, struggling to right herself. "I'm so sorry, I - I'm never this clumsy. I think the dream made me clumsy. All of us. For what reason I simply cannot say."

[biscuit_powered]

She flinches away when the young woman more or less falls toward her, scrambling to her feet only to somehow get the bottom of the blinds caught on one of her boots so that she yanks her own head sharply downward when she tries to straighten up. Cursing to herself, Asmodia struggles to free her foot, then flails at the materials stuck to her horns in frustration.

"What rift?" she asks, giving up for the moment. "What kind of rift? Rift to where?"

[apidae]

"Good grief," murmurs Bee at their collective struggle. She manages to step back, thinking perhaps it's better if she doesn't touch anything at all. "Well... it's a rift between worlds," she says, not entirely sure how she should explain. The poor thing must not have come through yet - and maybe she won't at all, that's possible, but just in case it helps to be prepared. "It brings people from all kinds of different worlds into a new one. No one knows why, but... these dreams are something we all share. And sometimes people who haven't come through yet. Like you, maybe?"

Something crashes to the floor behind her, making her jump. She glances back to see a portrait-sized picture frame has fallen to the floor without cause.

"Honestly, this is the silliest dream I've had so far," she says, her hands on her hips.

[biscuit_powered]

Biscuit, tired of being covered in banged grains popcorn, decides to ignore Asmodia's warning and squirm out from under the bowl at last. The other woman doesn't seem threatening to him, and unlike Asmodia, he's noticed that it would be very unlikely for a dream attacker to put him in the same dream as his witch. He makes a low whistling sound in his throat, saying something more or less to that effect to Asmodia, and shakes himself to dislodge the kernels from his fur. He also sends a good deal of shedded fur flying that will no doubt stick to clothing and clog vacuums with astonishing alacrity.

"Biscuit, I told you to --" Asmodia starts, only to stop and listen to the sounds he makes. "You don't know that," she retorts, but when she takes her gaze off her familiar to glance back at Bee she looks embarrassed (she'd be more embarrassed if she realized Bee could understand her half of that exchange). "I don't -- I've never seen anything like you're talking about," she admits, her paranoia finally dying down.

[apidae]

"Oh-" Bee starts slightly when the little creature comes into view and chitters at the girl, who responds as though she can understand it. Her surprise fades quickly, leaving her with a bemused smile.

The smile turns to a half-grimace at the girl's answer, though. "Well - this might just be coincidence, then, or it might be planning to take you soon." She really doesn't want to have to tell her that, but it would be too disingenuous not to. "It happened to me, and... Well, sometimes people have these dreams before it's happened to them. And sometimes it doesn't ever happen. I don't want to frighten you but I don't want to get your hopes up either... do you understand?" She tilts her head nervously.

Eager to move away from that, if possible, she looks again at the little animal, which looks a bit like a rat but also... not. 'Biscuit', apparently - cute!

"Oh!" she blurts. "Where are my manners! I'm sorry, I'm Bee. What's your name?"

[biscuit_powered]

Asmodia's frown deepens -- not an attack, but not exactly encouraging, either. She reaches up to make a slower and more deliberate effort to remove the blinds from her head, and as she replies she succeeds in 1. breaking half the slats and 2. getting the blinds off her horns only to entangle a wrist in the pull string.

"How do I stop it from taking me?" she asks, because if Bee knows about this rift, surely she knows how to deal with it. Belatedly, she realizes she's been asked a question and adds warily, watching for a reaction, "My name's Asmodia."

[apidae]

Bee watches her struggle with the blinds with a vague grimace of sympathy, though she resists the urge to try to help. "I don't know if there's a way," she says softly. "I'm sorry, it's all sort of... luck, or the lack thereof, I guess."

She makes an effort to smile a little more encouragingly. "That's a pretty name," she says. "And your friend, here - Biscuit, right?"

[biscuit_powered]

Keep watching, maybe she'll set it on fire in a minute when it still won't let go of her hand.

Asmodia frowns. Luck? Not something on which she wants to stake her life. Getting back from another plane would be a challenge, to say the least, and she's not sure extraplanar travel is even quite what they're talking about here.

She's jarred from those thoughts by the unexpected--and somewhat worrying--compliment. She utterly misses the fact that Bee somehow picked up on Biscuit's name when she hasn't said it in a way the woman should have comprehended. She's a little too busy making a choking sound in surprise. "Pretty?" she repeats incredulously. "That's, uh...first time someone's called it pretty."

[apidae]

"Well, it is pretty," says Bee matter-of-factly, smiling a little easier. "Do people not think so where you're from?"

An awkward time to get to know someone, she supposes, but what else are they to do, especially when the slightest movement means chaos and disarray? Bee dislikes mess already, it's easier to just try and tune it out in favor of conversation.

[biscuit_powered]

"It's...after Asmodeus?" she ventures, still taken aback and forgetting to fight with the blinds still dangling from her wrist. "The demon? The, uh, uh--prince of darkness?"

Because seriously, who doesn't know that? "...What world are you from?"

[apidae]

"Oh," says Bee politely. "I don't think we have that where I'm from. I'm from Earth? Though there are a lot of different Earths, is what I'm learning, so that's not really helpful I suppose. What's yours called?"

[biscuit_powered]

They don't...have...Asmodeus. Asmodia's still staring blankly, too gobsmacked by the idea to really grasp the fact that Bee just said she was from the planet Dirt. Or Asteroid? Those are the two big uses of the word Earth, really. "Golarion," she says faintly.