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

[applesaucemod]

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.]

Comments

[etherthief]

Jeez, someone's grumpy. She doesn't let it daunt her though, just raises her eyebrows in a lofty expression that is purely her mother's. "I'm going to be a physicist," she says. "So it's my job to care."

He's a little older, but he's very small, almost as small as her. He doesn't scare her. (At least she thinks he's a he. Sometimes it's hard to tell.)

[lottawork]

He regards her suspiciously.

"It's my job to care," he fires back, though mirroring her imperious tone does not entirely succeed with the thickness of his accent. "I'm going to get a scholarship. Get th'fook out 'ta the mills when I'm twenty."

Or earlier, possibly. He bets he could do it earlier. He's sure he could, now that he thinks about it.

[etherthief]

She didn't understand all of that but the meaning is clear enough and she smiles broadly. "I feel you," she says. That's not proper grammar and her teacher gets very annoyed when she says it, but that's what English-speaking people say on the internet! "I bet you'll be great at it. What's your name? I'm Iman."

[lottawork]

For a minute he debates the logic of telling her. He knows what the other boys call him. The other name, the wrong name, the one that gets him skelped when he tries to tell them no. But she doesn't look like she's going away, so that means he'll have to go along with it.

"Nick," he says decisively. He thinks maybe he's supposed to stick out a hand, but he never saw the point of doing things like that.

[etherthief]

"Nice to meet you!" she says just as firmly, then slips a little and has to scramble to keep from sliding back down. She grabs hold of the slide's edge and peeks up at him from under the folds of her disarrayed hijab. "Um, can I join you up there maybe? You can show me what you're doing?" She tilts her head hopefully. "I can't learn proper physics until my English is better, all the best teachers do the classes in English."

[lottawork]

"Math isnae English," says Nick with satisfied relish. "It's better." Crisper, clearer, truer than anything else. He got kicked at for liking that too, yelled at when he wouldn't do the older boys' maths just 'cause they were bigger and stupid and thought they could order him so.

She doesn't look like she's about to scud him for anything and she's smart enough to know what he's on about, so he moves away to give her room to scramble up.

[etherthief]

"Yeah!!" she says with unfettered delight, oh boy, Nick gets it. She climbs up and settles in next to him, scarcely able to keep from bouncing. "When I get bigger I'm gonna do alchemy." She learned that word very early, it's one of her favorites. "I dunno what kind yet. What kind of physics do you like best?"

[lottawork]

"Th'fook is an alchemy?" he asks, face scrunching into a disgruntled, confused disarray. "I'm gonnae do all of it. Math, alegebrae, all the really interestin' stuff. An' crypto-graephy." He stretches the word out carefully. Breaking codes, cracking puzzles - he's pure dead brilliant at it, always has been. They say he can do a scholarship, get the fuck out from the shipyards an' steel mills and go to Oxford.

[etherthief]

Her face scrunches up in parallel confusion. How can he not know what alchemy is? It's integral!

"Alchemy's the first kind of science there was!" she says. "There's all different kinds. I wanna do the ones with matter and, um in- information." That's the one. "What's creptograyfee?" she imitates the word with careful precision.

[lottawork]

"S'codes," he says, looking at her with a furrowed face that would suggest that answer is completely obvious. "Breakin' 'em. Never even haerd 'f alchaemy. Dinnae sound very important," he adds dubiously.

That doesn't make any sense. He's still wee but he knows how science works, all the biology and chemistry and maths that go into it. Alchemy's not even a one of them.

[etherthief]

"Oh," she says. "I know about codes. I just never heard that word before. I'm still learning English, you know!" She just explained that, jeez. She folds her arms. "Alchemy is important. Maybe they just don't teach you about it at your school. Or maybe they call it something else." She'd thought that was a English word, but maybe she's wrong.

"I wanna travel to other... hrhm," she grunts in frustration. "What's the word where it's like, there's one of 'em..." She draws an invisible line in the wood with her finger. "And then two of 'em...." Now a square. "And then three?" She gestures at herself and Nick. He knows maths, he has to understand what she means.

[lottawork]

He rolls his eyes and goes back to hacking into the wood with his knife, working out a deeper slash separating the 1 and the 2. They teach important stuff where he comes from. Maybe most of the books are pure shite and they don't have a lot of higher levels, but he's at the top classes for a reason. They told him that. He's brilliant. He'll get a scholarship one day, fuck on off to Oxford.

Maybe one day they'll even call him by his real name.

Nick wrinkles his nose. "Geometry? Or - " There're words for things, like the words that go with cubes. He knows 'em. Geometry's a right pain sometimes, but he knows how it works. "Three-daemensional space?"

[etherthief]

"Dimensions!" she exclaims. "That's it. Gonna go to other dimensions. My dad says it isn't possible yet but it will be soon. I'm gonna be one of the first." She nods decisively. This is her plan and she's stickin to it.

[lottawork]

"Y'mean like taime?" he asks, sounding scornful. "Y'cannae go through taime. Your da's right. S'not physically possible."

He scoffs, and starts etching the beginnings of an uneven F into the wood.

[etherthief]

"It could be," she says with a little pout. "You don't know. Anyway I don't mean time, I mean space. Different dimensions. Worlds, like this one." She waves a hand around them to clarify.

[lottawork]

"You daenno if it's possible either," he points out, but he cannot ignore his own thrill of interest and so he pauses in the middle of a half-completed m. "You gonnae change everything? Go - bigger." He opens a hand, frustrated at his own lack of ability to articulate.

"Better," he says finally with some satisfaction. "Better than anyone before."

[etherthief]

Iman breaks into a big smile at that. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah. I'm gonna change everything."

She lets her legs dangle over the edge of the slide, kicking her feet gently. "You too, I bet," she adds, because it seems the right thing to say.

[lottawork]

"Bang tae rights," he says firmly, finishing the deep cut that forms the downward slash of the a with a scraping finality. "Solve everythin'. Gonnae change th'fookin' world."

His grin is sharp-edged and crooked and toothy, splitting unevenly over his face, but it's vicious and there, no question, as he regards his completed handiwork.
F=ma