The Big Applesauce Moderators (
applesaucemod) wrote in
applesaucedream2015-03-31 06:55 pm
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Entry tags:
- character: asmodia antarion,
- character: daine sarrasri,
- character: eliot waugh,
- character: greta baker,
- character: iman asadi,
- character: johnny truant,
- character: peeta mellark,
- character: rashad durant,
- character: sunshine,
- character: the balladeer,
- dropped: daniel jackson,
- dropped: jay merrick,
- dropped: mako mori,
- dropped: seth,
- dropped: tara maclay,
- dropped: tim wright,
- party post,
- retired: bee,
- retired: melanie,
- retired: peter vincent,
- retired: yuri kostoglodov
Between the Roots and Branches [Open to All]

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.
no subject
He scans the canopy again, but it looks like she was definitely alone. That's no great surprise; the Rift doesn't seem to bring people in groups. "I'm the Balladeer," he says, turning a smile on the girl. "Nice dream, isn't it?"
no subject
Still, she doesn't want to lie to him. He seems nice. "I can't tell you my name," she states plainly. "But this is a nice dream." Pressing onward before he can get too curious about her, she adds, "'Balladeer' sounds more like a title than a name. What does it mean?"
no subject
...ah, but she's just a kid. He's not going to pry, though he's certain he could glean her name from about three seconds of tuning into her song. It just doesn't seem right to do that to someone so young. "It's both," he replies instead with a shrug. "It means I travel around, write and play ballads." For, you know, a given value of write. He can write music, but he never did before; when would he have played it?
He's not sure what he can assume of her knowledge, so he adds, "Ballads are like...story-songs."
no subject
"I've never heard a ballad before," she says. "Well, I've heard of them, but never actually heard one. What sort of stories do you tell?" That was always her favorite part of class; she loved it when Miss Justineau would sideline whatever the lesson was supposed to be and tell stories, instead. "I like the Greek myths best so far, but I'm sure there are lots of stories I've missed."
no subject
"Lots of ballads are about history," he continues, "or folk stories. That kind of thing. I bet there's some about Greek myths, too!"
no subject
Of course, when she and the other hungry children attended classes, they were never just learning for the sake of it. They were always being tested, Dr. Caldwell and the others wanting to know just how much they could learn, how close to human they could be under just the right conditions. But Melanie likes learning, and while Aziraphale, Bee, and Daniel are happy to teach her things, she wouldn't say no to another teacher. If it's safe - which it is, here. And he knows history ballads.
"Could you sing something now?" she asks a bit shyly. Maybe it's not a polite request; maybe he just wants to enjoy the dream without having to do his job on top of it. But she can't not ask. "One of the history ones?"
no subject
He walks to the edge of the roof - the one over the porch, not out above thin air - and crouches down to get a good grip on the edge before dropping himself over. "I saw an instrument in here!" he calls merrily from inside the house a second later. "I was going to come back and have a better look anyway."
A minute later he ascends again, hoisting himself up through a few nearby branches. He's always been pretty good at climbing; sometimes when they get the weird abandoned fairground, he just ditches everyone else and scales the Ferris wheel. You can sort of pretend there's a sun from up there! There's a guitar on his back now, strap tightened against the climb, but it's a short enough climb that it isn't much of a hindrance.
"Ooookay..." He plays a few chords, adjusts a few knobs, but it's already pretty much in tune. Fair enough; it's a dream instrument. The Balladeer nods to himself, then launches into one of his more upbeat ballads. It's a little funny performing it for an audience of one, all by himself, but he just does a few different voices where the locals would ordinarily chime in. He thinks it works!
Well, except for the usual gunshot and bells. But that's a dramatic touch that - while effective - he's fine with leaving out.
no subject
An instrument. And he's going to play it for her. That's a whole different kind of lesson - she's never seen or heard live music before - and as he tunes it, she sits down on top of the roof and wraps her arms around her knees, watching him with rapt attention.
An audience of one she might be, but she is exceptionally attentive. Her open little face displays delight at the upbeat music, amusement at his putting on of different voices, and general intrigue at the actual story, which is challenging to place without context. If she doesn't clap when the final chord fades away, it's only because she doesn't know about applause. Instead, she shows her appreciation by clutching her own knees and crowing, "That was beautiful! But what happened to Big Bill and Czolgosz? Did Bill die?" She is invested.
no subject
It feels strange having a conversation while towering quite this much over Melanie, so he sits as well, removing the guitar and laying it across his lap. "Bill did die. About a week later." It was a lingering death, but still nowhere near as bad as Garfield. Poor old Garfield. "They didn't have the kind of medical practices then that they do now - there was an early X-ray machine on display at the fair, but they didn't use it." Not that he necessarily would have survived if they tried to remove the bullets, either. The Balladeer isn't entirely sure if Garfield's death actually taught them the importance of hand-washing by then.
"Czolgosz almost died right there - the rest of the fairgoers attacked him. Big mob. But McKinley called them off, so he got arrested instead. He ended up getting the electric chair," he concludes matter-of-factly. "And then sulfuric acid!"
You know - for kids!
no subject
But it would have been before the Breakdown. They wouldn't have been used to needing to kill people, either.
"Sulfuric acid?" she repeats, brow furrowing. If was executed, what was the acid for?
no subject
"To dissolve the body," he explains. Melanie is going to give him a very wrong impression of what he can and cannot tell children he meets while busking. "I'm not really sure why they thought they had to do that. Might've just got in the habit after the previous assassin, or it was spite!" He does feel vaguely sorry for Leon's brother, but...well, that grave wouldn't have been left unmolested anyway.
no subject
But if it was only one body, only one little body...
She knows what her eventual future will be. She's seen it. And if there was a way to make sure her remains were safe, a way to just get rid of the body entirely, all of it gone, so she couldn't hurt anyone, ever, not even when the best part of her is no longer alive to see it... she'd have to make sure people knew.
"Does that really work? Does it dissolve the body completely?" she asks.
no subject
"I think the point was more that there wouldn't be a gravesite to visit, or a body to honor," he theorizes, looking back at her. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't; as long as nobody in the South got to throw some kind of lavish funeral for Booth everything was fine.
He's not really sure that anybody would have done that for Czolgosz. But it's the principle of the thing.
It's only now, after all of this, that he thinks to ask, still casually, "Why do you ask?"
no subject
The Balladeer probably wouldn't want to hear her talk about that, either.
"I've just never heard of someone doing that before," she says, lifting her gaze and trying to look innocuous. In her experience, bodies were left where they fell - human or hungry. There was no time for burials, and they all knew it. "It was different, where I was from."
no subject
He hasn't had to actually explain much of anything about this dimension to people of different ones. Most of them, after all, have been here longer than he has. But funerary practices aren't really a topic of everyday conversation, he guesses. At least, they aren't in ordinary worlds. Back home they were still a pretty sore subject, particularly among the Acid Club, but it came up a lot more than normal.
"What's it like where you come from?" Melanie can feel free to interpret that as a question about her world in general, or just its usual way of disposing of bodies. He meant the first, but either's interesting!
no subject
She can't just leave it at that, though. He'll ask questions. "There was a sort of... disease. It killed a lot of people. Almost everyone. The worst of it happened before I was born, so there wasn't much left by the time I..." What, finished everyone off? She can't tell him that. "By the time I came along."
no subject
That's probably better.
God, though. That's enough to stop his flow of questions, curious as he still is about how such a world must function. Surely it is functioning to some degree; he never would have known she was from a post-apocalypse if she hadn't told him, or maybe he'd listened to a little bit of her song. She even knows Greek mythology! But he doesn't need to know. She's not one of his, and while her refusal to give her name is a little odd, he doubts she's dangerous to anybody.
"How long have you been here?" he asks, in a completely unsubtle bid to change the subject. It's not that he's uncomfortable talking about death and disaster - clearly not - but for God's sake, it's such a nice dream tonight. "I just showed up at the beginning of the month."
no subject
But the change in subject is welcome. "A few months," she says. "But I have someone very nice taking care of me." It hadn't always been that way, but that's how it is, now, and that's all that matters. "It's not so bad if you meet good people."
no subject
Most people are at least ambivalent, he knows. No matter how good things get here, it'll never be their home. But that's exactly why he enjoys it! He's not going to bother going into detail about all that, though, not right now. "And these dream things are interesting too. The ones I've seen have mostly been fine." That thing in the kitchen was the worst of it, and he can sorta see what it was going for. Slapstick comedy is just not his genre.