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

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.]

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"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?

"... 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.

"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.

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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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

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