Between the Roots and Branches [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Don't worry, dreamers of Manhattan. There will be no humiliating episodes of sudden-onset-clumsiness tonight - at least, nothing more severe than what you might experience naturally. Your physical and mental faculties will be left perfectly intact. What a treat! And what luck, because if you do lose your footing, it's a long way down to the forest floor.

But hey, who wants to be on the boring old ground when there are so many wonderful treehouses to explore? There are dozens of them spread throughout the surrounding forest, connected by a series of bridges and catwalks (some, admittedly, a bit more stable than others). It's easy to forget - or fail to notice - that there really is no easy or conventional way down to the ground when you're surrounded by such splendor.

The houses' styles range from charming and rustic to modern and sleek, with many falling somewhere in between. There are viewing platforms for bird-watching or simply taking in the scenery (trees, mostly, though if you venture high enough, you'll be treated the sight of the forest canopy stretched across a valley far below). But the insides of the treehouses are comfortably furnished to varying degrees as well, so there's no need to immerse yourself in nature if you'd really rather not. Some are complete houses in their own right, with all the amenities of a Manhattan apartment and then some.

Go for a climb, or kick back and relax. The only enemies you'll find here are other dreamers... and, potentially, gravity.

Comments

[powerdealer]

Seth is always a little overly wary of physical proximity with people he just met, dream or no dream, so he's just going to take a seat at the couchbed. Considering the small size of the house, they're still not actually that far apart.

"October. Last year. So, nearly eleven months now," he answers, pressing his lips together in a tight smile.

[apidae]

"Oh, gosh!" she exclaims, unable to hold back the reaction. "That's such a long time. I mean, compared to most of the people I've met." She lifts a shoulder, smiling sheepishly. "Sorry, that - I suppose it must be hard." She can't see anyone's patterns in dreams, but she still gets little hints of something now and then, and he seems - troubled, perhaps.

[powerdealer]

Seth's smile broadens a little at her reaction. Perky and sweet. He doesn't meet enough people like that.

"Well, at this point I've sort of settled," he answers with a half-shrug. There are plenty of things that are hard, but at this point not being in his home universe doesn't actually rank that high anymore. "What about you? You settling in okay?"

[apidae]

"Yeah." She smiles and drinks more of her juice. Awfully good, for a dream. "I mean it wasn't so hard for me. I think it's like an adventure. Brought to a new world, get to meet all sorts of people that I would never have met otherwise - and aliens and angels - it's pretty exciting."

[powerdealer]

Well, that's an optimistic way to look at it. Of course, many people feel the same, but more as a single positive side to an otherwise unfortunate situation. Seth being one of them. He unintentionally tends to focus more on the unfortunate sides. Though to be fair, he wasn't quite as bad before his imprisonment. Seth already feels glad that Bee doesn't seem to have gone through anything like that. First impression says she definitely doesn't deserve it.

"Yeah, friend I've had the longest here's an angel," he answers. "Not all that close with any aliens. Space travellers, though, suppose that's something."

[apidae]

"Oh, do you know Aziraphale?" she asks, tilting her head curiously. Or are there other angels? She's heard enough to suggest that there are but she has yet to meet any of them. "I've met space travellers too. Well, just one, Daniel. He was really nice too. We talked about spaceships."

Best not to mention Melanie, she thinks, at least not if Seth doesn't know Aziraphale.

[powerdealer]

"Different angel," he answers, shaking his head. He hasn't even heard of Aziraphale from a biblical point of view, but perhaps it's a different kind of angel. He's not going to elaborate on which angel - though by now he doesn't think it's really much of a secret anymore, but better safe than sorry. He's not keen to get even more on Gabe's bad side than he already is.

At the mention of Daniel though, he lights up a bit. Presumably the same one - how many "really nice" space travelling Daniels are there? The mental image of Daniel and Bee talking together amuses him as well, given how small Bee is and how tall and wide Daniel is.

"Daniel Jackson?" he asks, just to be sure. "He's been staying with me for over a week. Just moved out today, actually." Which has of course worked wonders for Seth trying to get over his crush on him, except for the part where it hasn't.

[apidae]

Bee perks up when Seth does. "Yeah!" she says. "Last I knew he was sort of squatting in the Rebel apartments. I'm glad he has somewhere else now." She smiles, watching Seth closely. Sure, she can't actually read him, but you don't grow up with a power like hers and not get pretty at reading people the natural way. How much he brightened when she mentioned Daniel was hard to miss.

"That was nice of you to give him a place to stay," she says lightly.

[powerdealer]

"Well," he answers, shrugging it off, though he's still smiling a bit. "He's been really nice to me, so it's only fair, really." He's still got quite a few motivational post-its littered around the apartment to prove his point.

"He's got his own apartment now, no more squatting necessary. He was just staying with me until he could move in there." Seth's not gonna mention the fact that he was the one to find the apartment for him, or that he covered the deposit and the first month's rent as well.

[apidae]

"That's good," she says with a little nod. She goes back to sipping her juice, contemplating the idea of living independently, as both Seth and Daniel seem to do - that might be nice, someday, especially as living under a polarized faction grows more and more uncomfortable. She tries to stay out of that business but it always seems so present.

She realizes she's been staring silently into the middle distance and looks up abruptly, feeling a bit awkward. "Sorry," she says, though she still has no idea what else to say to him. Conversations are so hard sometimes. She chews her lip. "My mind was wandering."

[powerdealer]

Seth smiles and gives a shrug at her apology. He doesn't mind. He's not great at conversations either, so it's not like he's going to judge anyone for awkwardness. He's not that hypocritical.

"So when and whereabouts are you from? Before the Rift, I mean," he asks - she sounds American, but at this point that doesn't actually seem to mean much. He finally takes a sip of his own juice, which he'd gotten it mostly to have something to do really, and now that he has company it's not as necessary.

[apidae]

"Oh, um - Alabama," she says. "Present day, I guess? My world is a lot like this one. Well, I mean the one when we're awake." She smiles sheepishly. "What about you? You're... English?" It's a very thick accent, she's not sure where to place it precisely.

[powerdealer]

Seth nods. "London previously, Manchester originally. Same for me, similar universe and time. Though our superpowers didn't come from a rift, it came from a weird supernatural storm." He shrugs. He knows even less about the science of the storm than he does about the rift. If there was any research done on it, he's not been privy to it. He was always a lot more interested in the results anyway, the actual powers that people got.

[apidae]

"Superpowers?" Her face lights up at that. "What kind of superpowers? Did a lot of people have them?"

She doesn't quite want to reveal her own power just yet, even though that's such a good opening, and she'd love to talk to someone who had their power before the Rift, but... explaining it is never a conversation she looks forward to.

[powerdealer]

"Yeah, hundreds if not thousands of people," he answers with a nod. He assumes that even the ones he heard about - which were a lot, given his work - were still really just a fraction. "All kinds, really, ranging from really impressive to kind a rubbish. Like, you've got time travel and invisibility and telepathy, and then you've got the ones who can caffeinate beverages or manipulate dairy."

[apidae]

"What?" She giggles at the last couple. "That's so silly!" She wonders if it was anything like the Rift seems to be - making informed decisions, or if it was just random. That seems more like chaos to her, and she doesn't entirely like the sound of it. "What's yours?" she asks sheepishly.

[powerdealer]

Seth hesitates at that. Usually he just goes for the phasing power as an introduction, and then works himself up to the dealing if it becomes relevant. But now he's actually been talking about the storm, and he feels like it would be lying to show the phasing power instead - even if it's not technically a lie give the parameters of the question.

But it's also not the biggest secret, and Bee doesn't exactly strike him as untrustworthy. The main thing he's worried about is putting her off, really, or making her wary of him. As far as powers go, it tends to make people a little uncomfortable. That, or threaten him not to use it on them, though he doubts he'll get that reaction from Bee.

"I, uh, I can give and take powers from other people," he answers with a half-shrug. "Not, uh, create them or anything, just transfer existing powers between people..."

[apidae]

"Oh," she says, sobering immediately. "I see."

That is... alarming. That he could reach into someone and take something out, something so visceral and part of them - and this was a gift granted by the same cosmic force that gave everyone else their powers, it doesn't seem fair, to grant one person such dominion over the others.

But Seth doesn't seem like someone who'd use that cruelly. His hesitation makes it clear that it's something he's not certain about sharing. And she knows that feeling all too well.

Besides, she's not one to judge over powers that give unfair advantage.

"I have a power too," she says eventually. "I've had it all my life. Nothing gave it to me as far as I can tell, it's just... me." She wonders if he'd be able to take something like that away from her. The thought scares her, and she shivers a little, involuntary, and focuses for a moment on sipping her juice.

[powerdealer]

Well, Bee seems to easily see the significance, but isn't too threatened by it, so that's good. If she were, she probably wouldn't immediately follow it up with the admission she has a power of her own.

He waits for her to finish, but then she falls quiet, now seeming a little uncomfortable. "Can I ask what it is?" he asks after a moment, as gently as he can.

He can't quite imagine the thought of having something that could be classified as a 'power' for his entire life - growing up with it and everything. Most of the powers he's familiar with at ones that have been shaped by the person, rather than the other way around.

[apidae]

She nods softly and pulls her legs up, folding them beneath her. She sets the juice down with import and takes a moment to get the words straight, staring at the floor.

"I can see people's lives in my head," she says, as always, there's no way to succinctly explain this, no way to start without making it sound like something other than it is. "Not like visions, not like mindreading or anything like that. I can't even really see anything, it's more like I just know when I meet them. While we're awake, that is. I can't see anything here." That ought to make him feel a little better, if only a little. "I can't see any specifics unless I dig really hard and do a lot of interpreting, which I don't do, as a rule, I try really hard not to look too close, cause I know people don't like it. But I can't really shut it off, either. When I meet someone I see how long they've lived and what kind of life they've had, all the little loops of causality, stuff like that. I call it their patterns."

Finally, tentatively, she looks back up at him, trying to gauge his reaction.