applesaucedream | It's a Waste of Time, Chasing in the Dark

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It's a Waste of Time, Chasing in the Dark

Tonight, the dreamers will find themselves in a forest. Or an office. Or a suburban living room. Or a castle tower. Or a grocery store. The dream is a patchwork of assorted settings, each one blurring inelegantly into the next, most of them only claiming half an acre or so. The hodgepodge makes for quite a sight.

Or it would, if the dreamers could see anything. Natural light is in short supply. In fact, there isn't any light at all, not even a faint twinkle of starlight; you might as well be deep inside a cave. No matter how good their eyes might be, the dreamers won't be able to see their own hands in front of their faces - not unless they can fashion some sort of light source out of whatever they might manage to find. The dream isn't inclined to make things easy; any appliances or electrical light sources the dreamers stumble over won't be plugged in, and any walls, however solid they might seem, won't contain any wiring. A small fire might be the best bet - presuming you can find any means of lighting one.

But there's good news. Each of the dreamers will find themselves with a second set of ~~dubiously useful~~ eyes, because they'll be joined - again, or for the first time - by their dæmons. Granted, said dæmons won't have much more luck seeing in the total darkness than anyone else, but at least no one will have to feel alone.

Just… move carefully. You wouldn't want to trip over someone else's dæmon by mistake. Imagine how awkward that would be.

[ooc: y'all know the drill. Characters don't have to be apped or in the game to show up, and dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the player's discretion. This particular dream isn't a power nerf - a character with the ability to create light could still do so - but the range will be extremely localized, as if the darkness is a solid thing that doesn't want to be pushed back.]

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"Well, damn," Beth mutters into his hair as the two feel their way out of a door. The Balladeer doesn't need to respond, because that sure is Steven with a fire-breathing dragon.

He hadn't realized daemons could be mythical creatures too, but he's only met a few. Why not? He breaks into a jog towards them, stumbling a little as the terrain abruptly alters from pavement to dirt. Beth flaps her wings, but doesn't take off. It's still too dark; she might just fly right into a tree or something. "Steven!" he calls out, lifting a hand to wave. "Hey, you - "

Woah, did that dragon just turn into a lion?

Steven and Allirea both turn towards the shout. Silhouetted against the firelight, their expressions aren't easy to read, but it's a safe bet that Steven's grinning. "Balladeer!" he shouts back, lifting a hand in turn. "We made a fire!" It's obvious, but Steven's proud of their achievement, and he figures it bears repeating. At least now people can see.

Maybe they can build a few more, spread them out a little so more people can enjoy them. Steven and Allirea don't have that clear a picture of their surroundings on a wider scale, but the area immediately around the blaze is nothing but flat, cracked mud, like a dried-out lakebed. If they can find other spots where there's no real danger of things spreading, they could easily add another little fire or two, Steven thinks.

"Hello!" Allirea says, taking the shape of a golden retriever and wagging her tail. Turning her gaze to the parrot, she asks, "Can you talk, too? What's your name? Mine's Allirea."

"I see!" It's a real relief to see light again. Beth takes advantage of it, hopping back to the Balladeer's shoulder and then crawling her way down his arm, claws clutching at the fabric. The ground beneath them shifts again before they finally reach Steven's side. This dream is weird.

Once she's at a good height, she tilts her head down at Allirea. "Sure, I can talk! I'm Beth." It's not her name the same way other daemons have one - she hasn't entirely forgotten that. But never mind. "How did you turn into a dog like that?"

Allirea cants her head to one side, tail still waving as she considers the question. Is it weird, being able to change shapes? They'd thought it might be a Gem thing - but if so, it's still sort of weird that she can only seem to manage animal shapes, not anything she wants. "I don't know," she admits. "I just thought about it, and it happened."

Steven punctuates that with a cheerful shrug. He's too used to magic to question it that thoroughly. "Gems can change shape if they want to, so we figured it was something like that. She can only do animals, though." Which isn't to say that's a shortcoming, and Steven gives Allirea a proud pat. She's really good at animal shapes! She even managed to breathe fire as a dragon; arguably, that was more useful than she would have been as a flashlight. Now they have a fire going, and she doesn't have to keep working at it.

"It's cool that you have a talking animal, too," Steven adds. "Do we all have talking animals, now?"

"Just for this dream," the Balladeer replies, glancing around. They'll like as not have company soon; the others will probably see this fire. He doesn't hear anyone coming yet. Hopefully he'll notice if anyone...unpleasant heads this way. "They happen like this sometimes. We've only gone through one ourselves."

"One with daemons. That's us." Beth shifts a wing to indicate herself and Allirea. She doesn't bother to elaborate how she knows. "The other one was on a bunch of islands. I liked it much better than this, this is - "

Well. Obviously.

Glancing back to her human, she says in a faintly plaintive voice, "I can't turn into anything else."

"I don't think anyone else's could, either." The Balladeer shrugs. He's only seen human daemons before, so why not? "Must be a Gem thing. Lucky - we could all use the light."

"We're dreaming?" Steven says as Allirea blurts out, "I'm a daemon?" They turn to give each other looks of mutual appreciation and surprise, then look back to the Balladeer and Beth.

"How do you know this is a dream?" Steven asks. "It feels real."

"And what's a daemon?" Allirea tacks on. She changes shape again, clambering up onto Steven's head as a ring-tailed lemur. "Aren't demons bad?"

The Balladeer and Beth exchange a glance in turn, before he nods to her. That's a shorter explanation, given that it barely exists at all. "I don't know about all that," she replies, flicking her wings and rather conspicuously leaning down to smooth out the feathers on her breast. They're hardly evil, for all that some other people's daemons might be. "But that's what we're called. The animals like us. Everybody's got one, in these dreams."

"They do feel real," the Balladeer continues, picking up after her as if they'd scripted it. He can feel the heat of the fire, and the dirt beneath his feet. "They always do. But dreams like this happen a lot here. We think it's the Rift." He can't imagine what else it would be. Nasty, capricious sort of thing. "It can be hard to tell, but you'll get a sense for them eventually. It's usually every couple of weeks."

"Huh," Steven says, sounding impressed. He can't even begin to guess how the Rift might be drawing them all together while they sleep, but it sure is interesting, and it doesn't seem to be harmful. How could it be, if it happens all the time and no one seems any worse off because of it? His face lights up as another thought occurs to him: if everyone's in this dream, that would make it even easier to meet other ~~Stupendous Spacefriends~~ Rifties! Right? "Does that mean everyone's here?" he asks. "Everyone the Rift has brought to Manhattan?"

Allirea eyes Beth for a moment with evident interest, then changes into a vaguely similar parrot shape. Then, without any apparent concern for social mores, she launches herself off of Steven's head so she can land on the Balladeer's, instead. The Balladeer's cool; he won't mind, right? "You said, 'in these dreams,'" she repeats, tilting her head to peer down at Beth. "Does that mean we aren't in all the dreams?"

Steven's smile slips a notch. This feels weird. Not painful-weird, more like... like a combination of that heady jolt that happens right before Fusion, and how he feels when Connie mentions some normal-kid thing and he doesn't know what she's talking about. "Should... should you be up there?" he asks Allirea, brow furrowing.

"Um." She looks from Beth to Steven, then down at the Balladeer. "Shouldn't I?" she says uncertainly.

"They ought to be." The Balladeer shrugs, mentally casting around again for a moment. The area's as silent as it is dark, except for Steven. He's got a real bright tune - a few sad-sounding portions, sure, but who hasn't got those? "No one else is around here, but I'm sure they'll come this way if they can see the fire. Or we can just go out looking!"

That sounds like a good way to spend a dream! The Balladeer doesn't flinch as Allirea flaps in his direction. It seems natural enough. But as she lands, his enthusiasm falters. That - it takes him a moment to even begin to place the sensation. It's like Steven's song has suddenly become manifest, a sound vibrating through the soles of his feet or the crown of his head as surely as he would feel a guitar string humming. It's never been like that before.

"Um." Beth swivels to face him again, and there seems to be a moment of silent communication between them. Are they okay with this? What is this? It doesn't hurt, but they're not entirely sure it's a thing that should happen.

Beth is the one who answers, still holding eye contact with her human. "I don't know..." She glances quickly between the three of them. "Let me try..."

Taking off from the Balladeer's shoulder, she glides down to Steven's head. Let it never be said that the two of them are over-cautious. If anything, the effect only seems to intensify when her claws meet his hair.

"Huh." The Balladeer frowns thoughtfully. "We've...honestly never done that before." He doesn't recall making a conscious decision not to, but he didn't touch anyone else's daemon last time, nor did Beth land on any other humans. It still doesn't hurt, but the feeling's making them more uneasy now; Beth flies back to him and it quiets down again. "I - we don't know what that is."

Steven blinks when Beth lands on his head. It's a little weird, but not as weird as having Allirea on the Balladeer. When Beth returns to the Balladeer, Allirea launches herself off of the Balladeer and lands on Steven's head as a sugar glider, burrowing into his curls in embarrassment.

"It felt a little like Fusion," Steven says, reaching up to give Allirea a reassuring pat with one of his fingers. "But... also not."

"I'm sorry," Allirea pipes up from his hair. It wasn't much like Fusion, but even if it's only a little like it, that still probably means they should have asked, at least.

"It's, uh...it's fine." There's not a lot of things that can really fluster the Balladeer, but that was a strange experience. Beth fluffs up a little and flicks her wings as the after-sense of it drains away from beneath their skin. "It was just weird," he says, not wanting Steven to think it was worse than it really was. Nothing terrible about it.

"Is that what Fusion feels like?" Beth ponders aloud, and then wonders why she said it. She's thinking about Garnet. Something like that, all the time? She flaps her wings again, hopping down to the Balladeer's shoulder as he tilts his head for her. "Maybe we should go set some more fires."

"Not really," Steven emphasizes, shaking his head. "Fusion is supposed to feel... right."

"At least it's supposed to," Allirea adds in an undertone. They're both thinking of Malachite. Steven can't imagine what that must feel like, and he isn't sure he wants to. It can't be good.

The suggestion that they get more fires going is a welcome distraction. Steven gives himself a little shake (though not enough to unseat Allirea), then nods. "Good idea. I don't know how far the light goes, but it has to go farther if there's more of it, right?"

Beth makes a low chirping noise in the back of her throat, but they elect to ignore that little aside. Conversations between human and daemon seem like they shouldn't be barged in on...anyway, it doesn't sound like a happy subject. Best to just let it go.

"Sure!" the Balladeer agrees readily. "It's so dark, you should be able to see it for miles. But who knows how big this place is?" Dreams vary. "Besides, it feels like there's a ton of different places all mashed together here - it might be dangerous to go running around blind."

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It's a Waste of Time, Chasing in the Dark

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