What's Stopping Us From Breathing Easy [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Dreamers of Manhattan, you've lucked out. Rather than finding yourselves in some kind of dystopian nightmare, you'll end up in a series of formal gardens on a lovely day, the air filled with birdsong and a cloud-scattered sky arching overhead. Some of the gardens look a bit wilder than others, in an artful sort of way, but it's clear that all of the gardens are well kept and frequently tended. Aside from each other, dreamers aren't likely to run into any creature larger than a rabbit. True, there are no actual exits - every doorway or arbor leads to another garden - but that's hardly a problem. It's beautiful, it's safe... what could go wrong?

Well, that depends on the dreamer's honesty. No uncomfortable truths will drop unbidden from anyone's mouths like last time, but the dreamers will find that any time they attempt to lie or prevaricate, they'll be beset by a sneezing fit. A tiny lie by omission might only prompt that uncomfortable feeling of an impending sneeze; a larger, more significant (or more stubborn) fib will lead to a sneeze attack so crippling that the dreamer might just need to sit down for a minute.

You could try to pass it off as allergies, if you could get the words out without making everything worse. But while telling the truth is not compulsory, lying is punishable - and pretty well obscured - by sneezes.

[OOC: Usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome to participate regardless of whether they've been apped in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.]

Comments

[peacefulexplorer]

Wow, this is - this is nice. It's sunny, and bright, and he's got to shade his eyes to peer upward but he smiles, a little relieved grin. He's not sure why he's relieved, actually. Everything's still a little fuzzy.

Hang on, how did he get here?

He turns in a small circle on the spot, frown dimpling his forehead. Hmm. That's a little odd, a little worrying, but he can soldier on, can't he? It's like a great labyrinth of greenery. That's not so bad. It's actually rather pleasant.

He can't seem to remember how he got here, though, no matter how he strains to. There's the horrible nagging feeling that he's lost something important and there's something he's got to remember - if only it would occur to him.

But on the other hand, there's a fountain, like, right there. He wanders over to it, leaning close over the water -

Too close.

He's pretty sure he actually goes head over heels in a clamorous splash that leaves him undignified, gasping, and wholly drenched as he tries to unsuccessfully right his mistake in scrambling out of the fountain. He tripped. He must've! Who does that?

His first attempt to rise simply sends his hands skidding across the slick, wet surface of the rock pathway around him, and he plunges unceremoniously in again.

[ooc: so Daniel is still a little scrambled post-Ascension, as seen here. To whatever extent is really up in the air at this point since it IS dreamland, so he's probably got some basic grasps of English again and also more of his memories are starting to trickle back.]

[wildmage_daine]

Hey, Daine knows that face. It's nice to see Daniel looking solid again, and she figured from the Balladeer's texts that he'd stopped being a ghost, too. Seems the rift tired of that particular bit of nastiness. So much the better.

She's swooping down to say hello, in a cheery parrot shape, when he takes a spill. It's quite the tumble, actually; she might have suspected him of doing it on purpose if he didn't look so bewildered when he came back up for air. When she sees how much trouble he's having righting himself, she lands with a clatter of wingbeats on the pathway alongside the fountain.

Daniel? Oh, dear. Down he goes again. Daine quickly shifts into polar bear shape, plunging her forepaws into the water - at least it's not deep - and thrusting her head beneath Daniel's chest until she can lever him upright. Up you get, she says cheerfully, waiting for him to get his feet back under him.

[peacefulexplorer]

At first he's relieved when someone apparently delves in to help him, gratefully accepting the incredibly solid support when it vaults him back to the surface and onto solid ground. Then he shakes the water from his eyes and looks at said help - and yelps.

He doesn't remember the word for what he's looking at. His hands flutter ineffectually for a minute as he tries to grasp the appropriate term - it talked to him, though, and in a language he's starting to vaguely understand, vaguely. It helps that it's in his mind rather than aloud, but how and why is it talking.

"You," he begins rather uselessly, "you're a - "

[wildmage_daine]

Daine steps back a pace or two. She hadn't meant to frighten him - hadn't thought she could, as her shape-changing isn't a secret - but it's clear that she has. Well, bear's a big shape. It's a fair enough response.

Sorry, she says, shrinking down into a less alarming dog shape. I didn't mean to startle you. I just had to get big enough to haul you out of there. She cants her head towards the fountain and gives her tail a hopeful wag. Are you all right?

[peacefulexplorer]

"Uhhhh," he says, scrambling for all the relevant scraps of information he's supposed to be keeping held tight to him at all times. His name, his name. That's meant to be in there somewhere. Unfortunately adrenaline seems to be cutting off all access to it.

"It's, um, it's - okay," he says, slowly, carefully, parsing the words as he goes. They sound wrong coming from him, the stress on all the wrong syllables, the enunciation too cautious and deliberate. "I, uh. It's. Okay."

What else does he say to this? Great. This is great.

[wildmage_daine]

... This isn't right. He's looking at her as if he's never seen her before, and speaking as if he's only a bit more familiar with the words he's speaking.

Daniel? she says again, more slowly this time. It's Daine. He hasn't seen these exact shapes before, she supposes, but who else could she be? She looks around a bit helplessly, as if their surroundings might carry some sort of explanation, but there's nothing but pleasant - if formal - gardens. Nothing grand as this in Manhattan, or nothing this big, anyway. When she was on the wing, she didn't see any end to the place.

Is he confused because they're dreaming?

Daine considers him for a moment, then lapses back into her two-legger shape. "It's me," she says. Surely he'll recognize her now.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Daniel!" he blurts triumphantly, snapping his fingers when it rushes back in conjunction with her nonverbal reminder. "That was it!"

She keeps changing. Is this supposed to happen? He massages the side of his head with one hand and holds up the other, palm out. Give him a minute. It doesn't help that he's still sopping wet on top of it. At least the sun's out; he shouldn't be for long.

"Okay. Um," he says, frowning intently. "I'm not - all the way, uhm." He grinds out a little frustrated noise between clenched teeth, tilting his head back. "I don't remember everything. Yet."

Nick had said he would. He said everything would come back. He's better at speaking and understanding the right language already, and that's got to be a good sign, right?

[wildmage_daine]

"... Oooooh," Daine says softly as realization dawns. It's followed shortly after by a flare of irritation on Daniel's behalf. Of course the rift couldn't make things simple, couldn't just give him his body back and have done with it. It had to take something, too.

And if he's having a hard time keeping ahold of his own name, no wonder he's looking at her as if she's a complete stranger.

"Well," she continues, her tone briskly reassuring, "we do know each other. If I'd known you'd forgotten everything, I wouldn't have taken bear shape. Sorry," she says again with a brief shrug.

[peacefulexplorer]

"It's okay," he says, and it comes a little easier, a little more fluid and natural. "Sorry." He rubs the back of his neck, his expression sheepish. "Nick said it'd all come back. That I've, non sum commotus est, I've done it before?"

He looks at her beseechingly, both a request for patience and confirmation. Does everyone here know him? Is he, ironically, the only one who doesn't? The fact that everyone keeps calling him the same name helps some, reminding him that he was someone before whatever happened happened to him, before he mounted another plane of existence, which doesn't even sound plausible but it's the only explanation he's gotten that makes any sense.

[wildmage_daine]

She's a little bewildered by 'Nick,' and a lot bewildered by what sounds like another language, but she follows the rest easily enough. "You did say something like that before," she says with an encouraging nod. "Back when you were all ghost-y. You said you'd, um," she pauses, trying to recall the specific term. Something fancy-sounding. "... Ascended?" she guesses.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Uh. Yeah. That." 'Ascended'. That was the word he used. He hadn't explained it very well at all, at least not in any terms Daniel could understand, but maybe he'd justified it in believing he didn't really need to, if it would all come back. Which it would. Which it had to.

"I guess I'm back now," he says. "Whatever, um. Whatever that means? I'm not really sure."

He wraps his arms around himself for a moment, shivering, then belatedly remembers that he is actually kind of soaked. He peels off his jacket and begins wringing it out.

[wildmage_daine]

"Well," Daine says, "it's good that you're back." Even if it does take all of his memories a while to catch up with the rest of him, at least he's in his body again.

His rather soaked body, now that she's paying attention. "Do you want some help?" she hazards, not entirely sure what she can offer. It's a dream - can he just think himself dry? She supposes she could grow herself some fur and wipe him off a bit, if he wouldn't find it too unsettling. It's not as if she hasn't gotten him a bit damp before, when she was in cat shape and fell into that enormous tree planter. Looked at that way, she probably owes him.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Think I'm good, actually." He stretches his hands out in front of them, gazing at them speculatively. "It's sunny. And it's - a dream, right?" He wrinkles his nose as he says it, as though trying the feel of the word on his tongue. "Guess in that case it wouldn't really matter."

He's not even all that cold, considering. It was more just the humiliation of the thing, though he's not sure if he has dignity or self-consciousness to spare to really be that up in arms about it.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine nods, a bit relieved. It's warm enough, anyway; he should dry off quickly.

"What sort of things are you remembering?" she asks. She's curious, and it'll be easier to talk to him if she has a better idea of what might throw him completely (aside from her shape-changing; it's too late to avoid that). If his memory is only starting to come back in pieces, maybe it'll help if she can confirm things for him.

[peacefulexplorer]

"The language, mostly," he says, somewhat ruefully. "I, uh, couldn't really speak English. Or I didn't recognize it. One of the two. Really not that clear. Still having some, um," he blanks out for a moment, struggling to find the word before, relieved, he reclaims it, "difficulties."

It's coming back, though, trickle by trickle, and the natural rate at which he seems to be remembering words and grammatical constraints would imply that English is either his first language or something very close to it.

"Everything else is just pieces for now. Not sure what goes where yet." It's all little bursts and flashes - some place that looks an awful lot like Egypt, except he's pretty sure Egypt never had two suns; a stone ring filled with shimmering water; incredible pain and bright white light; the awful creak of something horrible enfolding a man in ashen wood and brick and mortar as he looks back, eyes dangerous and wild.