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

[peacefulexplorer]

Historically, Daniel hasn't been fond of heights.

He is especially not fond of them now.

There's a house, solidly situated several feet from him and supported by several gracefully arching branches, indisputably well-constructed and ordinary-looking, if only he could take the steps necessary to shift himself along the thick bough he's found himself on and propel himself to that relative safety.

The sole thing separating him from a terrifyingly steep drop is this gently creaking, swaying limb, and this is not a good thought for Daniel to be having right now. His grip tightens on the wood. He's going to scoot along his branch and get into that house and everything is going to be okay.

Any minute now.

[powerdealer]

Oh, great. Because Seth's just had the best of luck with unconventional city locations. The last time led to his brutal death by falling, and now the Dreaming is putting him dozens of feet above ground? Fan-fucking-tastic.

At least he can appreciate the openness of the location - no oppressive, enclosing structures that feel like they're about to suffocate him. And fear of heights doesn't rank very high on his list of phobias, though one could argue it's a bit too airy.

Still. He finds himself in a decently sturdy structure, so for right now he's not going to tempt fate. He's just going to wait here in this tiny semi-open cottage of a treehouse, and hope someone will come to him first, before he gets too bored.

[biscuit_powered]

This would be a lot less unnerving if she could just fly. Asmodia is never going to stop being angry over the loss of so many of her spells -- as if it wasn't enough that she had to be thrown into a whole new world by some supernatural thing the name of which she's too superstitious to curse out loud, it had to leave her all but helpless, too. Experimentation in the couple of days since her arrival has revealed that she didn't lose everything, but she doesn't have anything useful for this.

Neither, apparently, does the man she sees clinging to a tree ahead of her as she comes around the corner of a platform. She comes to a standstill, Biscuit at her heels, and frowns at him in mild concern.

"You alright?"

[postictal]

No. Nope. No.

Cozy little cabins are okay. Weird houses where everything keeps breaking? Less okay, but doable. This? Not okay. Not in any way okay. At all.

It's not the houses that bother him. It's not the fact that they are so very, very high off the ground and one look out the window is a bit vertigo-inducing, but that's fine because Tim has a stomach for that sort of thing and it's never bothered him before, that's perfectly fine and all right and normal.

No, that's fine. He's okay with that. He is. That's not what's got him worried. Not the houses or the heights or any of it.

It's the goddamn trees.

Tim doesn't dare smoke in any of these obviously wooden houses, not even outside on the viewing decks - however subtly and darkly and unthinkably he's tempted to drop his lighter down off one of the bridges and watch the whole thing go up in flames, and that's an instinct that rings a little too unnervingly Kralie-esque for him to be set on examining and being altogether comfortable with, like, at all - so instead he settles for ducking into an orblike little house that makes him feel intensely, claustrophobically, uncomfortably like some sort of Christmas ornament or a piece of particularly overripe low-hanging fruit.

It's not a pleasant sensation.

The interior creaks and rattles with every step. The boards are ashen. But no one else seems to be around, and that's usually a good sign. Usually. In Tim's case, anyway. He sits down carefully in the center of the floor, crosses his legs, hopes the floorboards won't give way, and, with a trembling, dread-saturated instinct - pulls out his lighter and fixes it with a wondering look.

The thoughts urging him to flick it on don't feel entirely his own.

[peacefulexplorer]

Movement seems very much not in his general wheelhouse right now, so Daniel's settled for clinging onto his branch like a limpet. Yep. This is fine. This is absolutely fine. He is doing okay.

He glances up, suitably startled at the voice and only slightly more so at its owner, who seems to belong to some fascinating species he can't put a name to.

"Oh, yeah," he says airily. "I'm, er. Well. I appear to be stuck, actually, but that happens to be entirely my fault." The smile he offers is far too bright and far too concentrated. "I'm, ah, not good. With heights."

[biscuit_powered]

"Can you see anything?" That'll be a tiefling shouting up into the branches from the porch of a sizable (and surprisingly luxurious) treehouse. Something is scuttling about on the roof, sending leaves and twigs raining down over the edge, and a shrill whistle echoes in reply. "Hey, I didn't tell you to go up there!" protests Asmodia, attention still focused upward.

[wildmage_daine]

Well, this is different. Daine's never seen dwellings like these, and she can't quite decide if she loves the fact that they're up in the trees or worries over the fact that they're attached to the trees in ways that might not be the healthiest thing in the world for the trees in question.

Regardless, she wants to see everything, and she's not going to let her two-legger shape slow her down or confine her to the bridges of dubious strength. Sometimes she flutters between the branches in the small, speckled form of a starling, or her heavier crow shape. Sometimes she's an ermine or a cat, scampering along a wooden railing or poking her whiskers into a cushion-strewn interior loft. But she's far more interested in covering ground than being stealthy, and she won't be difficult to spot.

[insectreflection]

Tara probably doesn't know just how lucky she is to have her first dream party be this nice.

She's sitting in the middle of a sturdy rope bridge, her legs dangling over the edge, arms leaning one of the lower rungs of rope. There's enough ropes that she's not in danger of falling off, and the bridge itself seems to be proper craftsmanship, as safe as can be. She's far enough down that it's almost dark, most of the sunlight blocked by the leaves above her.

The setting makes it impossible to resist doing some magic, and for some reason it feels safe enough to do so here. So she makes several little tinkerbell lights in various colours, then sits there watching them dance around the foliage, smiling to herself.

[driftseeker]

The sprawl of greenery is jarring and unfamiliar, so incredibly isolated from the industrial grays and browns and oxidized coppers of the Shatterdome. The branches remind Mako fleetingly of the snaking pipes that chased the corridors with their flecked, alloyed steel, but the careful brush of a fingertip rewards her with something inherently, gratifyingly organic.

She smiles, ensnared in silent rapture.

Free of the toxic, vibrant Kaiju blues and the dour gray-black cast that always hung perpetually over the city, Mako climbs. She shoots up one of the great trunks with whip-like precision, hand over hand, darting nimbly from bough to limb as she tests each sturdy, supple handhold, and it takes no time at all to reach the top of one mammoth of a tree where she crouches, triumphant, to stare at the wind-rustled treetops with a hungry curiosity. She sears the memory of the colors and textures into her mind, so different and disparate they are from what she's come to expect of her life; the brilliant spectrum of greens and browns, the clear air, and the thick, roughened bark beneath her fingers are all surveyed with melancholy-tinged reverence.

A breeze hisses through the upper leaves, tossing up her hair. She drinks it in with a deep, slow breath - and laughs.

[omnomnom_feels]

You know who doesn't appreciate the gorgeous views? This asshole. He's also not the slightest bit afraid; he knows the exact extent of his own reflexes and balance and exactly where he is capable of walking without facing an unacceptable risk of a fall. With no particular reason to go anywhere and no particular way to feel about any of this, though, Rashad is just wandering slowly from one platform to another, idly keeping an eye out for living things.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie knows this is a dream, and that she's therefore safe to be around. But it might not be safe to be seen, not with ROMAC sending people after her in the waking world. It would be best, she decides, to try and just stay out of everyone's way.

She doesn't have that much experience climbing trees, but she's light and strong and not afraid of falling. Besides, she doesn't think anyone else will be inclined to take to the trees, which makes them that much safer. They're an avenue for birds and animals and her, not humans who might want to catch her.

That being said, it's hard to completely vanish when you're a pale, blonde child wearing pastel hues, and it's hard to hide from trafficked areas when they're everywhere. So she's settled for heading upwards, into branches so thin that even her weight is enough to make them bend. And there she perches, thirty feet above an observation deck, her arms wrapped around the trunk of a shaggy hemlock and her feet braced against its branches. It's a nice view from here, and she guesses most of the people on the observation deck will be looking out, not up.

[andhiswife]

To a casual observer, Greta appears to just be taking in the view from the broad porch that encircles the little, pod-shaped treehouse. One hand is wrapped around an elbowed branch - anyone could be forgiven for wanting to steady themselves, with the railing so low and the drop so considerable - but it's a nice view, well worth some contemplation, provided you don't look down.

Greta looked down three minutes ago, and she's been standing stock-still ever since. Her hand is starting to cramp from gripping the branch with white-knuckled desperation, but she can't let go. Not again. Each subtle shift of the planking below her feet seems to reverberate with the intensity of a giant's footfall, threatening to send her over the edge of the inconsequential railing and tumbling into the void. Leaves are already showing her the way, little brown-gold fluttering things, and it's only a matter of time, this is what happens, this is what always happens.

Her hand slips over the bark, no more than a hair's-breadth, but she still lets out a tiny squeak of alarm.

[rae_of_sun]

Gods, she needs to get to higher ground. Or higher platform. She's missing all the nice sunlight, and it's dark enough down here that her light-web twinkles reassuringly obnoxiously whenever she passes through a particularly shaded bit. And she's never really learned to talk to the light-web, or at the light-web, like it's still too young to compete with the necklace-scar's comparative abundance of personality. Which means she doesn't know how to tell it to tone it down in a way it'll understand.

Well, whatever. Once she's higher in the canopy of this interminable Ewok village she's been consigned to, it won't be an issue.

She's about to step onto a rope bridge that looks a hell of a lot sturdier than the last one she picked her way across, when she notices it's already occupied. Someone's sitting right in the middle of it, legs dangling like a kid in a swing, and she's... magic-handling. Huh. Either that, or consorting with something that feels like taking the form of a little cluster of rogue solstice lights, but magic-handling seems more likely.

For a few seconds, she just stands there, wondering how in the hell to talk to a fellow magic-handler on potentially equal footing. Her only previous experiences consisted of pretending utter normalcy when other kids showed off on the playground, and being desperately outclassed by her landlady.

Well, she can announce her presence in a way that doesn't involve tromping on the bridge and jostling the woman. "Hey," she says, lifting her hand in a wave.

[wildmage_daine]

Someone climbs quickly for a two-legger! Daine follows her progress with interest from her perch in a neighboring tree, then takes off to follow her up into the canopy itself, intrigued. There's no trace of wild magic about the woman, but Daine can't help but feel a sort of kinship with anyone who'd scale a tree for no reason but the joy of it - who'd perch in the highest places and laugh.

She can't help herself. She flits onto a branch a few arms' lengths away from the woman and joins in, her starling song a liquid run of chirps and burbles and clicks.

[fucking_ebay]

"Fuck." The tree supporting this little crow's nest is nowhere near as thick as Peter thinks a tree with any kind of structure ought to be -- not that he's spent a lot of time thinking about how to build a really good treehouse, but someone should have been thinking about it before they tacked some boards in a circle around the titchiest fucking tree in the forest and then stuck Peter on there. The railing doesn't even go all the way around, and he' not about to climb down the 'ladder' of boards nailed to the trunk when the whole damn thing sways every time he moves. A rope bridge to a sturdier refuge is only about eight feet below him, but it might as well be at the depths of the ocean for all the good it does him.

[driftseeker]

The wind picks up deliciously at the same time a bird touches down beside her. Mako pauses to stare at it, delighted. Everything is so living and real, not sealed in layers of dull, uniform gray. She listens with rapt attention at the sleek, shining thing warbling brightly skyward, careful not to stir and frighten it off.

She can't remember ever seeing a bird up close. It's gorgeous, a beautiful compilation of feather and bone, and Mako can visualize the ridges and joints beneath glossy feathers, the mechanics of what it is.

"Hello," she whispers.

[biscuit_powered]

"...Then why are you out there?" And is her life just going to be a series of encounters with strangers weird enough to make her suspect a trap each and every time? She steps closer to the edge of the platform, tail twitching back and forth in sympathetic agitation, and glances down at the fall he stands to suffer should he let go. "Um," she says. "Okay, I...don't have a way to fix this. Shit."

[wildmage_daine]

Whoever this is, she knows how to respectfully admire a bird. Daine turns her head from one side to the other, letting the breeze ruffle her neck feathers (and showing off, perhaps just a little, their iridescent sheen).

And then she's greeted, soft and polite and probably without expectation. So it's with a rather mischievous glint in her eye that Daine cheerfully replies, Hullo yourself.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Good question," he answers cheerfully, frown beetling into his forehead as his head goes to one side. "It wasn't intentional, I assure you."

The answer snaps into place with a familiar alacrity both reassuring and disturbing in its reassurance, and he makes a small noise of subdued revelation. Not remembering where he was before plus not knowing how he ended up here, specifically, well - those are signs he knows only too well.

"Another dream." He eyes slip shut. "Great."

[driftseeker]

Mako startles, grip tightening on the branch that is her lifeline. There's a voice in her head, and it's not Raleigh's, it's not the Drift, and to her general knowledge, birds wouldn't be capable of drifting in any case.

These various threads do not add up to any sort of answer. She shifts away from the bird in tiny, edging movements, unquestionably alarmed and bewildered but not quite ready to admit fear. There's no distinct threat here, simply a bird that isn't behaving as birds should. It just isn't correct.

"How did you do that?" she asks, and there is little point in attempting to keep the trepidation from her voice.

[stronglikebear]

This place is kind of fun, but it's really the kind of thing that's more fun with other people. What's cool isn't just that there's a whole lot of tree houses, but that there are so many different kinds, even ones that remind Yuri of being a kid and wanting to live in a tree house. Some of them you could live in, if you didn't mind the damp outdoor air coming in through glassless windows.

Not this one, though. It's just a little pod thing, and Yuri means to just pass on around to the other side to go on exploring, except when he goes clomping onto the deck at the entryway it turns out he's disturbing someone's peace. "Oh!" he says, surprised to see anyone else. "Uh, sorry. I didn't know this place belonged to anyone." Which is dumb, because how else would it get here?

[postictal]

The dull groan of wood should have snapped Tim into awareness long before he actually does, only jerking his chin up when the explanation cuts across his focus. His mouth tightens and he jolts to his feet, hand closing in a tight fist around the lighter.

How long was he sitting there, just staring at it, lifeless and stricken by some whispered, sourceless urge? That's not him, that's not what he does. Things are different here, dream or not.

They have to be.

He works to form words for a minute, process what's just been said, cleave through the fog separating him from the sense that any of this is real. Is it, if it's a dream? Does that count?

"I dunno who it belongs to either," Tim answers gruffly, having located his voice at last. "Just found it like this." He swings his hand up in a gesture that might have been demonstrative but terminates in something abortive when he realizes he's about to wave his closed fist. It falls back rigidly to his side.

[wildmage_daine]

Magic. Sort of. Should she explain that they're dreaming? She's never met this woman before, and it's hard to judge, with newer arrivals, whether such an explanation would put them at ease or make them really nervous. Daine flattens her feathers, glad that she's in one of her smaller, less intimidating bird shapes. Starlings might be imposing in a flock, but by themselves, there's not much to fear.

I won't hurt you, she adds for good measure. She hasn't missed that subtle shifting away. My name is Daine.

[driftseeker]

The situational absurdity is not especially easy to process on top of the unfamiliar environment with its overabundance of new stimuli. Magic adds a brand new, unconsidered component that Mako only chooses to grapple with briefly before shaking her head, slow and unnerved. She doesn't have the words to voice the plethora of rational arguments that spring up following that declaration, and each is obvious in its own right. The alternative to the explanation offered is, quite simply, not possible.

The wind-stirred branches and leaves below her suddenly seem much less exciting, much less inviting or worth the oddity standing before her.

"That's not possible," she finally offers quietly, regretting her inability to fill the void with sensibility and words and logic. Hermann would have already elucidated half a dozen well-researched arguments, and Mako can't remember what any of them might be short of the flat, the simple, the waveringly defiant: not possible.

Didn't they say alien life was not possible? They must have.

Lost on that tangent, Mako doesn't hear the bizarre insistence that the bird will not hurt her, nor does she catch the introduction. Her fingers worry the branch she clutches in restless, searching concern.

[etherthief]

Iman is quicker to realize she's dreaming this time than she has been in previous community experiences, which somewhat lessens her capacity to enjoy it. She moves across the bridges and platforms as quick as she can, hiking up her skirts as she goes. She's already passed several dreamers who appear to be enjoying themselves or relaxing - so far she's about the only one who's behaved with such anxiety. She's drawn some bewildered looks as she crosses feverishly through the rustic network. She doesn't care. Rush might be here and if he is she has to find him.

She ends up nearly colliding with someone seems to be admiring, but turns out to be clinging in white-knuckled desperation. Pretty much the only person she'd pause her search for.

"Greta!" She reaches out to steady her, a hand to each arm. "Are you okay?"