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

[singthesong]

"Sure! Promise!" he assures her with a smile. It's a casual enough thing to him. Who's he gonna tell, the other kids in the park? He doesn't even know them really. Definitely not enough to run off and tell them about tieflings - they wouldn't believe him anyway.

Now that they're having a normal conversation, he swings his legs back and forth in the air again, testing the branch he's sitting on. He hasn't plucked up the courage yet to try and go up towards her again, but he's kinda thinking about it. "I dunno, I just live around here." He does, right? It kinda just seems like he's been in this park forever.

[biscuit_powered]

"You don't act like the people who live here," she points out dubiously, still clinging to the tree in what is, all told, a fairly uncomfortable position. She looks around for some better way to perch, the one hand she still has on the tree already getting sore. "You're not from..." her voice falls to a hush as she glances around for some adult who might be listening, "the opera house, are you?"

[singthesong]

The boy raises his eyebrows and glances over his shoulder, towards where he can still kinda see the other children playing through the leaves. What does that mean? He thinks he acts about the same as the rest of them, except for maybe coming over here in the first place. Maybe she met some of the not-so-nice kids earlier.

He knows for sure that he's not from an opera house, though, so he shakes his head at that. "I've never been to an opera! That's where they have singing Viking ladies, right?" That isn't the kind of music he likes best, but maybe it could be fun.

[biscuit_powered]

"Ye-es? Yes." That sounds like what opera probably is. She knows there's singing, at least...and it looks like he hardly knows anything about it at all. "I go all the time, and it's full of Viking ladies." Whatever Viking ladies are. She hesitates a moment, then sticks her doll in her mouth so she'll have all five limbs free to pick her way downward and sideways to perch on a thick branch, waiting until she's got her butt on the branch and her tail wrapped around it before she passes the doll back to a hand. "I know all the best places in the city."

[singthesong]

"Yeah?" The boy seems to have bought her story about the opera, at least; he's looking at her with wide-eyed interest. It seems like he ought to know a lot of places in the city himself, but he kinda doesn't. "Like where?"

[biscuit_powered]

"Like --" Like where? She hardly goes anywhere, and never alone, never unsupervised or allowed to really explore. She's seen a few places, though; she's proved she can make herself useful on errands (and only sometimes a nuisance, no matter what Lusana says) and mother and father say someday she'll have to be able to work on her own. Still, she doesn't know any really exciting places, so she'll have to start with the ones she's really been to and make it up from there.

"Like the docks, and the market square," she says, because those are the more exciting of the true ones. "And the...the fancy neighborhoods where all the rich people live, and the warehouse district, and the foreign quarters, all of them, and the hospital where people go when they're dying--"

She trails off, sensing that her list is starting to go off the rails, and fidgets with her doll. "I know all the best places," she says again, like it'll be more convincing if she keeps saying it even if she sounds less convinced this time. "I go anywhere I want."

[singthesong]

If nothing else, the boy doesn't seem skeptical as he listens to the list. That last part isn't entirely convincing, but...

"I don't go so many places," he says, "I think." This is weird, isn't it? But she's weird too, so maybe that's alright. "Mostly just around here. But I bet I'll go to all those places sometime!" Except the hospital. That doesn't sound so fun.

[biscuit_powered]

"You could go all those places," admits Asmodia with far more jealousy than is warranted from someone who just said that she goes to those places all the time herself. "How come you don't know? Did your family just move to Kintargo?"