applesaucedream | This is My Island in the Sun [Open to All]

The Rift wouldn't say it's sorry for the fit it threw the other day, because the Rift never needs to apologize. It is (mostly) perfect, and all of its decisions are well reasoned and just. Obviously. But perhaps it has fallen into a bit of a post-tantrum sulk, because this dream is milder than one might expect. In fact, it's downright nice.

The dreamers will find themselves in an archipelago of small islands - most only a few acres in size - connected by narrow strips of sand or pebbles. The surrounding waters are calm. Little waves lap against the shorelines, and no rising tide will cut the islands off from one another. The islands themselves seem to have been lifted from every climate zone on Earth and several from beyond. Some are tropical, some colder and home to hardy conifers, some mossy and boulder-strewn, some covered in multicolored sand and odd, coral-like trees.

Most of the islands boast some kind of manmade or otherwise non-native structure, be it as small as a bench or as large as a pavilion, though there are no houses or shops to be seen. It's more like parkland, just civilized enough for a nice picnic. Some of the islands even have little grills, and a sufficiently motivated dreamer might be able to rustle up some hot dog or burger fixings if they poke around a bit.

And they'll have an extra pair of eyes to help with their searching, because their beloved dæmons have returned… again. Or perhaps they're being introduced for the first time. Regardless, it's the bi-annual dæmon dream party!

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"I'm Yhohm as much as you're Asmodia," huffs the raven. "I never said I was a yhohm, just like you're not --"

Asmodia grimaces and decides a quick return to subject is in order. "In that Manhattan place, right?" she asks hurriedly. "Is that where you are right now? Manhattan?"

Edited 2015-05-04 00:32 (UTC)

Greta and Angus exchange a perplexed look as the other two argue names, all of it sailing cleanly over their heads. But Asmodia's question is much easier to follow, and Greta nods, perhaps overeager. "Yes! We came through the Rift." She pauses a moment, a little surprised at her own pronoun choice. Well, no matter.

"Did you come through as well?" Angus asks, lying on the ground to put himself more on the Yhohm's level.

"No," says Asmodia, just as Yhohm says, "Yes."

"Maybe," she admits after a moment's staring contest against her not-familiar while the guinea pig on her shoulder quietly chews on the seam of her shirt. "It was -- I dreamed I was there, like I'm dreaming I'm with you people now."

Yhohm steps around Angus's great head, investigating his floppy ears and shaggy fur. It's bothering him how he can't see the dog's eyes, so he carefully stretches up to try rearranging the fur of his brow. "We thought it was a dream, at least," he says. "Once we came home. But if it's happening again...."

Greta glances down, wondering if she ought to be nervous about that great black beak poking around so close to Angus's eyes, but he doesn't seem concerned, so she looks back up at Asmodia and shrugs again. She's hardly the expert on these things. "I think... I think sometimes you have weird dreams before the Rift takes you. That happened to me." That odd giant tree, and those cats. That had been before she actually came though.

"Maybe you just haven't come through yet," Angus hazards.

There's way too much fur over here. Yhohm tries lifting the hair of Angus's brow to lay back along his skull, but there's just...fluff. Everywhere. "How can you see?" he mutters, rocking back and fluffing his feathers in objection.

"That's what someone said to me before," admits Asmodia. "But I must not have, because I'm home -- maybe it's not really going to get me at all."

"Magic," Angus says mildly, stretching his head forward to nose at the bird. "How can you hear? I don't see ears anywhere."

Greta keeps half an ear on the animals' exchange as she considers Asmodia. Aside from just not knowing how things work, she's also not too eager to say anything that might upset someone with unknown capabilities and an odd retinue of creatures. "Perhaps not," she says bracingly. She knows little about Asmodia, but she doesn't get the impression that she'd welcome a trip to another universe the way the Balladeer had.

Then again, she also doesn't get the impression that the Rift would toy with someone like this twice, only to leave them alone when all was said and done.

"You caught me," croaks Yhohm, "I'm really deaf. I'm only pretending I can hear you."

Asmodia's tail twitches back and forth uneasily, standing in for the fidgeting the rest of her body wants to do right now. That other person -- he'd been more insistent that it did mean she was going to be taken to Manhattan. And it wasn't only the one dream now; when she casts her mind back to it she can remember different and strange places in her dreams, all associated with this Rift. "I don't think we know any dreamweavers..." she mutters to herself, but even that thought is familiar, linked with foggy memories.

No. No, she believes that whatever this is, it really does come from outside her own world. "Other worlds," she says, focusing back in on Greta. "Does that mean you were brought in from another world as well? Are you from that -- what was it -- Earth?"

Greta glances down at their two animals. The conversation they're carrying on is fairly ridiculous, but, strangely, it puts her at ease. If the raven isn't so bad, Asmodia must not be, either. Which is an odd conclusion in and of itself, but for the moment, Greta's inclined to trust it.

"I was, yes," she replies. "It was still Earth, I think, but another country, and a... a very different time period." It's hard not to wince at the thought of just how displaced she was. Then again, she doesn't have a tail, so perhaps she's farther ahead of the curve than she'd realized. "I take it you're not from Earth, then?"

Asmodia's eyebrows shoot up. "Time travel, too? It must be quite the gate. Or, er -- rift." Except a gate is usually here to there, not here and then and there to there. She should remember this when she wakes up, she decides. A trip to the Pathfinder library in Absalom is in order if this Rift has designs on her.

"Golarion," she confirms. "It's a, um...different planet, I guess. I've heard of Earth, but I never really thought of it being still -- being real."

"It is that," Greta says with a faint wince. She'd hesitate to describe the Rift as 'impressive' or anything else with positive connotations, but she supposes it would technically be fair for someone else to do so (especially someone who hasn't actually been subjected to it, as it seems Asmodia hasn't - yet).

Angus lifts his head curiously at 'different planet,' and Greta raises her eyebrows. "Oh! Well, there are things in my universe that aren't real in the one I've landed in, so... I suppose that's not so unusual."

Hey, it took a lot of time and money to find someone who could gate a t-rex from a celestial plane. Making a gate that could pull people in from multiple planets and time periods at will would be amazing. The worst idea ever, but still amazing.

"You don't look like an alien," says Asmodia, pointing out one of the things that has really, really bugged her about these dreams. "I'm not an expert on the Dark Tapestry or anything, but I always thought people from other planets would be more..." she shrugs and settles on, "eldritch."

This is My Island in the Sun [Open to All]

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