applesaucedream | Here You Are, Stick Figure and a Busted Grin [Open to All]

Current Music: September 14th/15th, 2013

Here You Are, Stick Figure and a Busted Grin [Open to All]

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The first thing that the dreamers of Manhattan might notice is that the ground is a good deal closer than it normally is. The second thing they might notice is that their surroundings are larger than they might expect. The playground looks almost daunting. Of course, there are other ways for the dreamers to occupy themselves on this hot summer day: a charming fountain bubbles away a little distance from the playground. There's an ice cream stand with treats free for the taking. Beyond the paved area is a meadow, covered in wildflowers and dominated by a huge, sprawling tree, perfect for climbing.

It's all prime entertainment for children. So really, it's just as well that 'children' is what the dreamers will find themselves to be - once more, for those who had childhoods, or for the first time, for those who didn't.

Perhaps you'll remember everything: the Rift, Manhattan, the friends (and enemies) you've made since your arrival. Or perhaps you'll only remember who you were when you were young, and find this an opportunity to forge new friendships - or new (and probably pettier) animosities. Run around, get dirty, have a good time. ~~It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.~~

[ooc: usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome, whether they've been apped to the game or not. Characters will remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Mental and emotional regression is optional, but physical regression is mandatory: your character is in the body of a little kid - human, or human-ish - regardless of who or what they are in the waking world.]

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Daine hates wearing skirts, especially in summer. They're too heavy and too hot, and they make climbing trees harder than it ought to be. At least this tree's easy. It's almost like it wants to be climbed. She'd be tempted to ask it, but trees never talk to her. And she can't take the squirrels at their word that of course it wants to be climbed, because squirrels think everything wants to be climbed.

She can hear them giggling at her as she makes her way along a branch, far more slow and clumsy than even a young squirrel. It's a friendly sort of giggle, though, like they're pleased she's trying. They're not jeering, like the children from the village do, sometimes. So it's with a lopsided grin that she tells the nearest one, "You'd be slow, too, if you was wearing these," and gives her skirt a pointed flap with one hand.

[ooc: Daine's about eight and remembers nought of the Rift or Manhattan.]

Oh no. Oh no. Climbing the tree had seemed like such a good idea when it came to her, she'd be able to see everywhere and watch for when the children left and she could go play. It's not until she hears a girl climbing up from below that she remembers that the trouble with climbing up somewhere high is you can't get down again without running into whoever's below.

Asmodia huddles as low as she can in the crook of the big branches, all her limbs curled in tight as she tries very hard to breathe quietly. Maybe the girl won't come up this high, and maybe she won't see Asmodia and yell and bring grown-ups that'll ask questions and want to know whose she is and why she's somewhere that's meant for citizens. Maybe. And maybe Asmodia will suddenly learn how to make herself invisible like she's always wanted. Neither seems very likely.

She shouldn't even move, but she has to see. Quietly, slowly, she peeks over a branch at the girl below. She can't see who the girl is talking to, but she doesn't dare keep her head out in the open long enough to really look, and quickly retreats back into the little hiding place that no longer seems so secure.

There's a flash of something reddish from up above, but Daine doesn't get a good look at it before it's gone. Some kind of bird, maybe? She doesn't hear it, though, and she doesn't think she's seeing things. "Hullo?" she calls softly before pulling herself up onto a higher branch with a quiet grunt of effort. "Is someone up there?" Maybe it's a hawk, and those aren't the sorts of birds you want to surprise.

Asmodia almost wants to say no out loud, but this isn't a time for silliness. She could be in very real trouble if she's caught -- it's not just that Mama and Papa will be angry, but the other parents will be upset she was here and she doesn't know what they'll do about it but she knows it will be bad.

Instead she just curls in tighter, grabbing her tail in her hands to stop it uncurling into view, and tries even harder to be quiet. Be invisible, she says in her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Turn invisible right now.

Odd's bobs. Well, whatever's up there, Daine thinks she has a good idea of where it retreated to, which means she gives the little hollow a good berth as she draws level with it. She doesn't want to be within easy reach of some panicked creature with talons or claws.

But it's not talons or claws she sees. It's horns. For a moment, she's fair a certain a sheep has managed to get stuck up in a tree, but that can't be right. It's not a sheep, or any of the People. It's something she's never seen before, and she clutches tightly onto her branch as she looks at the... the two-legger? That can't be right, either. Even the Gift gone wrong doesn't leave someone looking like that.

"Um," Daine says, wide-eyed.

Stay still, stay quiet. Stay very still, be the quietest. She can still hear the girl climbing, but she doesn't call again and maybe she's climbing up a different branch, maybe she'll go back down to her friends.

Or maybe she'll climb right up and see Asmodia. Asmodia's eyes fly open at the sound of the girl's voice and she stares back, equally wide-eyed. "Um," she replies, trying to think how she can possibly explain herself. "I'm s-sorry," she stutters too quickly. "I, um -- I didn't know this was -- I didn't mean to, to, um -- I'll go, I can go, just please don't tell. Please."

It can talk! Good thing Daine has such a good grip on the branch, elsewise she'd probably fall right out of the tree, so great is her surprise. Not only can it talk, but it sounds like it isn't much older than herself - and nervous, to boot. Goddess, what is she supposed to do?

"You've got horns," she breathes, astonished. "What are you?" She doesn't even have the wherewithal to consider that the question might be rude.

"Um?" She doesn't know? How doesn't she know? No two tieflings look alike, it's true, but everyone in Cheliax knows what horns and a tail mean. Maybe this girl's just never seen one before. "'m a tiefling," she admits in a small voice, waiting for the recognition, for the derision. It's the worst thing she could be, and she's already rehearsing the familiar lies in her head, ready to point out the collar around her neck as a mark of ownership, of safety, even though Mama and Papa have always insisted that they'll never file the paperwork to really own her.

She'll get neither of those from Daine. The girl's still staring, wide-eyed, but she knows better than to scream in the presence of something wild and unknown. And whatever this creature is, it seems fair sensible. It can talk and everything. "What's a tiefling?" she asks. Then, in an excited rush, "Are you an immortal?" Immortals aren't supposed to be in this realm anymore, but maybe one got left behind, or snuck through the barrier, or something like that.

This isn't the first time Asmodia's been questioned for being out in public, but it's certainly the first time she's been asked those questions. She lets go of her cramping tail and lets it and her other limbs uncurl a little, shifting to brace up on her elbow and stare questioningly at the girl. "You don't know?" she asks, deeply confused and at a loss to explain the basic concept when all her life everyone around her knew before she was old enough to even know what she was herself.

It occurs to her that she could lie.

It also occurs to her that if this girl tells the wrong person about it and describes her well enough, the watch could come to the inn and demand that her parents punish her for lying. They need people to tell each other good things about the Antarion family and their inn; she knows she makes it hard for them when she acts out and other people see.

"It's when you have fiendish blood," she explains after a moment's shocked silence. "But not like a half-fiend, it's after that, when it's your grandparents or your great-grands."

Daine shifts her grip on the branch and shakes her head. Grandda's told her stories about the immortals that used to roam the world centuries ago, but she doesn't remember any mention of 'tieflings.' Or of 'fiends,' for that matter.

"I don't know what a fiend is, either," she admits, a little sheepishly. "It's been a long, long time since there was anything but humans and animals in this realm. That's what Grandda says. All the immortals are in the realm of the gods."

Asmodia outright gawps. "But that's not true at all!" she blurts, face heating up in that way that makes her glad it's hard for strangers to tell when she's blushing. "There's lots of tieflings in Cheliax, and slips, and -- and gnomes, even!"

As for not knowing what a fiend is...Asmodia's told some whoppers in her day, but that's such a blindingly obvious lie even next to the other part that she doesn't know what to make of it.

"Cheliax?" Daine furrows her brow. "I'm from Snowsdale, in Galla." And she's not sure she likes hearing someone who sounds not much older than her tell her that her Grandda doesn't know what he's talking about. Even if - she? - is some sort of immortal, she can hardly blame folk from a mountain village for not knowing about her. There are no immortals in Snowsdale, and it's only when merchants pass through that they hear anything of what's happening in Corus or the other larger cities.

"Where?" The look Asmodia gives her is one of pure disdain. Wherever this Snowsdale-in-Galla is, it must be a real backwater if it doesn't have anything but humans and animals. "I've never even heard of it."

She should still be polite to any human, no matter what their age, but if this girl's an ignorant foreigner her legal reasons to have to do so just got a lot less important to her. What's a foreigner going to do to her?

...Other than tell her parents not to stay at the inn while they're in town. Drat it.

Daine scowls. Immortal or no, she doesn't appreciate the implied insult. "Well, I've never heard of Cheliax, so it must not be anything special." Elsewise one of the merchants would've mentioned it. She'd've heard tales. "I bet it's nothing compared to Corus."

Not that she has any business taking ownership of Corus; she's never been there, or even set foot in Tortall. But everyone's heard of Corus, she's fair certain of that.

Asmodia hasn't. She scowls and retorts, "If you've never heard of the Infernal Empire of Cheliax, how come you're in it right now?"

The fierce grin she turns on the girl is triumphant even as the feeling that she really, really shouldn't be talking back to a human this way twists inside her. Who goes to a trade city and doesn't even know what country they're in, though? Idiots, that's who.

"We're not in Cheliax," Daine replies scornfully. "The nearest Empire is Carthak, and that's not even close!" So even if this Asmodia person has confused Carthak and Cheliax, she's still off by an awful lot. "You're lost," she concludes. That really is the only explanation.

"No, you're lost!" retorts Asmodia. "I didn't even go anywhere, and I've never heard of Carthak besides!"

She...doesn't think she went anywhere? She's never gone anywhere before. She's met plenty of people from outside Kintargo, but that doesn't mean she ever went anywhere herself.

There's a boy crouched up in the tree several branches above Daine, looking like a small and strangely rock'n'roll monkey-- and indeed, he's nearly as ease in the tree as a monkey might be, bare toes curling to cling to the bark. He's heard her talking to the squirrels, and is frozen listening to her progress, caught between delight and curiosity and apprehension. He's never met a kid before, not a human kid, and he doesn't know what this one's doing here, but he knows he wants to meet it. Or her. Or him. Or whatever. He's not actually entirely sure how you tell with human people; an upbringing whose only human contact has been with glam rockers hasn't given him a very clear idea in that regard.

A leap and a scurry, and a few moments later, a head swings down through the foliage to peer at Daine, wild sandy mullet and eyes that seem to take up a good half his face, and a twitching smile at the corner of his mouth, attached to the body of a six year old Vince Noir, hanging from his knees from a branch. He looks nearly painfully skinny, and his t-shirt has his own name in glittering pink rhinestones across his chest.

'Alright?' he offers hopefully. 'Who're you?'

Despite the improbability of it, his accent is still thoroughly Cockney urchin.

The squirrels in the branches chitter their laughter, wanting to know why she's got all that stuff around her legs, she can't hardly climb in it! and Vince waves a hand at the nearest of them. 'It's clothes, people wear them, you know that.'

Daine starts in surprise as a... boy?... swings into view. It's a little hard to tell, what with him being upside down and wearing such odd things, but he's not mired in skirts like she is, so 'boy' is her best guess. And she's quick enough to forget that question when he talks to the squirrels just as calmly as she does, as if he expects them to understand him. And they do.

"Who are you?" she blurts before remembering she didn't introduce herself. "I'm Daine. Are you really talking to the squirrels?"

Vince feels a momentary quiver of nerves when she startles and stares at him in alarm. He doesn't want to frighten the first kid he's ever met. He recovers quickly, though, swinging himself back and forth a little on his branch by squeezing his knees around it, his shirt crumpling down to bare his skinny belly. Hanging upside-down's fun, Vince likes the way it makes his head spin afterwards.

'I'm Vince!' he says cheerily. That's kind of a weird question, though, and he wrinkles his nose a little. ''Course I am. They're a little silly, but I like that.' Vince is a little silly himself, or so he's told by some of his friends.

'They're right, though; that's a daft thing to wear for climbing trees.'

This is a shock to her, though Vince seems at ease. She braces one hand against the tree trunk and grips a branch with the other, steadying herself. "I've just never met anyone else who could," she admits. "If I told folk in the village that I could really talk to their creatures, they'd think I was mad. They think I've a knack, is all."

She glances down at her skirts with a sigh, nose wrinkling in weary frustration. "Girls aren't allowed to wear breeches, elsewise I'd dress more sensible," she informs both him and the squirrels.

That makes Vince frown in confusion. 'Other people can't?' He's never had cause to think that being able to talk to animals might be something unusual. Bryan can, and when his bandmates come 'round, they're all busy talking band stuff and don't bother with the animals, so Vince always just assumed they could too.

Good to know that she's a girl, though, and Vince nods judiciously, even though the idea that girls aren't allowed to wear breeches doesn't make much sense. He curls up to grab onto the branch with his hands as well, flipping backwards to drop down to the branch below him, landing with his knees bent and a steadying hand in front of him. With his other hand, he reaches out to pluck at the fabric of her skirt curiously. It's rough, heavy fabric of some sort he's never encountered before. 'Why can't girls wear breeches? That's stupid.'

Daine shakes her head. "Never met anyone else who could. Not in Snowsdale, anyhow." What sort of place does Vince come from, if everyone can talk to the People? She's never seen clothes like he's wearing, and there are jewels sewn into his shirt. She might think him some sort of prince if he wasn't up a tree and acting silly.

She frowns a little when he starts to poke at her skirt, and smoothes a palm over the fabric self-consciously. "I don't know," she says, frown turning into a pout of general dissatisfaction. "The Lioness gets to wear them, but she's a Lady Knight. Ma said I wasn't allowed 'less I was trying for knighthood, and then she said 'don't you dare.'" Daine wrinkles her nose. Truth be told, she doesn't want to be a knight. She just wants to wear breeches. Seems like they'd make life easier.

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Here You Are, Stick Figure and a Busted Grin [Open to All]

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