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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She smirks at that. "Yeah, well," she says, shifting her weight some. "You know how I roll."

She pivots back gently and resumes walking, a little slower this time. "I sure as hell never took your advice before about what I should or should not be doing 'on your account'," she adds over her shoulder, "and I don't regret that for anything. Maybe except you being a huge asshole about it. But that just comes with the territory, I suppose."

He smiles faintly, an uncertain, vaguely mystified twisting of his expression. He returns to walking beside her, hand sliding away to drop to his side in an abrupt release of that slow build of unbearable, inescapable pressure.

"Yes, I've learned that is to be expected," he answers wryly. "Between us both and our proclivities for isolationist decision-making, we do make quite the destructive vector."

He refuses to examine whatever unendurable, immaterial point he had been formerly building toward. Asadi diverted its course, whether unknowingly or otherwise.

Not to be forgotten in the ensuing quiet, Arista speaks again.

"Do be careful," she says in a tone of bizarrely matter-of-fact, withering concern. "We would hate to lose someone with which we can hold a decent conversation."

That pulls her up short. She's ready to sass them right back but there's something weirdly earnest in Arista's tone, or if not earnest (she doubts Rush capable of true earnestness), just straight-up. She casts a look at the cat, and then up at Rush.

"I won't agree to that unless you give me some kind of equanimity," she says. "We're not fucking colleagues, Rush, and you know it, we're partners now. You look out for me and I look out for you. Don't ever tell me to leave you behind again."

He blinks at her, alarmed, perplexed, paralyzed in uncertainty by the confusion that sentiment evokes. He does not know, entirely, how to interpret the point of escalation she has escalated towards, nor is he quite sure he can accurately deconstruct the ethos behind it.

The implication buried there is not so much buried as it is bladed and bared, something bright and fierce and difficult to look at.

Rush looks away.

He cannot look at the water.

"I very much doubt it will be an issue again," he says, evasive and unworried in the absence of finding anything remotely adequate to say in response to that. "ROMAC is unlikely to be an obstacle in the future."

Idiot. She didn't expect anything else, though, not really. She rolls her eyes and nods, contenting herself with that bullshit response. It's not that he doesn't get it, it's that he doesn't know what to say, probably because everyone he's ever known has treated him like shit. She can sense that easy enough, the way he acts around people, expects the punches when they're thrown. That evident sick pleasure he got out of being a fucking prick after they pulled him out. She sees all of it without knowing what made him that way. Well, they've only known each other for a month. It's been a really eventful month, but still.

"Yeah, yeah," she says, forcing her tone to be light.

It's not even ROMAC she meant. If they do break through the Rift, leaving him here would be leaving him behind, probably to pay consequences. That's not happening either.

She doesn't have a fucking clue what to do to avert it, but, that's for later.

"Let's get somewhere out of the sun," she says finally, angling toward a nearby island with plentiful tree cover. "I'm startin' to cook."

"I'm amenable to that."

He gladly turns away from the unforgiving blaze overhead. The smell of the sea, though welcome, is laced with a wistfulness he has no desire to prolong for any significant duration, and the clustered trees will be a welcome distance. It is fortunate, also, that Asadi redirected the trajectory of their discussion, as the implications of her previous statements have left him - conflicted.

It is not an optimal state of mind in which one should exist.

He attempts to summon a point of mutual interest unattached to that brand of uncertainty, but can find nothing.

"Greta," he says abruptly, frowning, devoid of context, expression one of faint bemusement. "She is - she will be - all right."

His perception of that subject shift is that it was utterly graceless, which in all likelihood means that it was. Fuck.

Iman startles slightly at the subject shift, looking at him with raised eyebrows, what on earth is he about to ask - but it's just checking in, that's... that's adorable, if ineptly accomplished.

"Yeah," she says with a soft chuckle. "She's fine. Everything's leveling back out."

She turns forward again, smiling to herself. "Thanks for asking."

"Good," he says, with a slight recovery of his former brusque equilibrium. "It is - necessary to ensure that the expenditure of resources to retrieve her were not utilized in waste."

"We were worried, and now we're not," Arista translates, flicking her tail, her tone equally dry in parallel with his.

He narrows his eyes at her.

"Unhelpful," he says.

"Good lord," she laughs, shaking her head at his typical overwrought vocabulary. "Yeah, she's fine. We're all fine."

She reaches the island and heads for the trees, dropping down to stretch out her legs in the shady sand. Much better. She never really pegged Rush for the sitting-and-gazing type but that's what she wants to do - he can do it or he can bumble around being agitated if he prefers. Makes no difference to her.

The relief of the shade beneath the trees' canopy dulls the edge of his nascent headache immediately. Asadi seems content to simply deposit herself on the coolness of the ground, but Rush is less willing to surrender to the lack of logic in abandoning himself to gravity's unrelenting pull while dreaming for fuck's sake. He settles against the knobbed bark of one of the trees while Arista nimbly scales its trunk to perch precariously on the branch directly above his head, raining him with entirely too much arboreal debris and dislodged twigs for it to be wholly unintentional. He glares at her. She blinks slowly back, unrepentant and smug.

Rush sighs.

He would be far less restless were he awake and productive, possibly re-evaluating Jones's data prior to sending it. His fingers twitch as he crosses his arms. He aches for the rattling, reassuring tap of a keyboard, the sliding click of a drive into its appropriate port.

He will simply have to wait until waking.

Asadi does not seem to mind it.

For the time being, neither will he.

Arista shifts fractionally on her branch, again showering him with fragments of bark as she whispers in a nearly soundless hiss of teeth, "liar."

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

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