It's Saturday night and you're hallucinating in your sleep!

[applesaucemod]

It's that time again! The rift has caught the good little dreamers of New York (and beyond) in its currents and washed them ashore on a desert island in a dream wonderland. This time, however, quite a noticeable change has come over each of the attendees of this nocturnal party.

All the people who arrive in this shared mindspace will find that they have been transformed into some sort of animal they find familiar or that resembles them. They will find that they can still communicate with one another and that they still have all their mental faculties, but might be a little…well…influenced by the forms they have taken on.

They will also find that they have been deposited in the middle of the largest, most elaborate playground they have ever seen. Climbing equipment and slides of the sort meant for human children are in evidence, but so are cat trees, meadows, tunnels, pools and ponds, aerial obstacle courses, and anything else the mind can imagine, for as far as the eye can see.



[OOC: The usual dream party rules apply: players apply the party's theme (in this case, transformation) to their characters according to their own discretion, and both members and non-members are more than welcome to use this post to try out characters not yet in the game. Usual dreaming rules also apply, in that players can choose whether or not their characters will remember this in the morning. Have at!]

Comments

[edgar_sawtelle]

Edgar's running - no, bounding - through tall grass. He feels odd, and it takes him a minute to realize why: he's happy, purely, incandescently happy. It's a state he hasn't experienced in some time, but he gives himself over to it without a pause.

He jumps over a small rivulet of water - a minuscule tributary of some unseen larger body, gurgling away to his right. When he lands on the other side, something feels different about his gait. He stumbles through a few more steps before he stops and sits back on his haunches. The grass is higher than his head, whereas just a minute before it was only to his wais--

Haunches? Edgar jumps up in shock and turns in a circle looking at himself. As he turns, all he can see is the bushy tail of a dog - similar to the Sawtelle dogs - and it takes a minute before the pieces fall into place.

When they do, he sits down again with a startled, doggy oof.

I'm a dog.

[ginormotron]

In his dream, Sam doesn't feel weak for the first time in weeks. He's not dizzy or feverish, there's nothing bursting to get out of his skin. His skin, in fact, is not his skin at all, but in dream-fashion, it doesn't occur to him that this is something odd until quite a while into it. He's padding through high grass, snuffling, basking in the cool green smells, the earth underpaw, the chitinous scent of insects lurking, when he suddenly stops, legs splaying.

There's a dog, jumping in circles, chasing its own tail, and it looks so like Bones, the stray he'd had at Stanford, that it only makes sense to call to him. Sam lifts his voice to shout, but instead of a shout, it comes out a resonant roar-bark. And that's when it occurs to him that this is odd.

He can feel a tail flicking, bristling up, feel not two feet but four, and when he bends his head to lick one foreleg, it's covered in rough black fur. He must be dreaming, he thinks. What a wonderfully, impossibly innocuous dream. His sigh of relief comes out in a canine whuffle, and, feeling buoyed, he decides to trot over to the dog anyway.

((OOC: Sam has turned into a maned wolf. Which is to say, he looks like this.))

[edgar_sawtelle]

Edgar turns at the bark, part of his brain registering that he hears both the bark and the thought behind it. He cocks his head, not knowing how much he resembles Almondine in doing so, and wonders what (or who) is meant by "Bones."

Another dog is trotting toward him, and Edgar stands to greet it. As it gets closer, Edgar realizes it's the strangest dog he's ever seen, perhaps not even a dog at all. The way it moves is almost wolflike, but it has a foxish face and long, spindly legs.

The dog's body language seems friendly enough, but Edgar still feels himself tense slightly, prepared to fight or flight if necessary. He sniffs the air, amazed by all the scents he can not only smell, but also name and place. That includes the other dog's scent, which is slightly wild, but not unpleasant.

Edgar makes a last-minute decision to go for a friendly welcome and smiles at the approaching canine. He's only slightly surprised to feel his tongue roll out of his mouth when he does so, and finds himself mentally laughing at the fact the he is no doubt sporting the typical, open-mouthed doggy grin.

[ginormotron]

Sam isn't sure what kind of animal he is, but as he lopes up to the dog, he realises that it must be tall, whatever it is. In the dream, in this mood, it strikes him as unexpectedly funny; of course it's tall; even when he's an animal, he's huge. Some kind of big wolf, maybe.

The dog greets him with a dopey, tongue-lolling grin, and if Sam were in his usual body, he'd ruffle his ears up and scruff up his fur and roll him onto his belly. He's still tempted to jump at him in play, until, suddenly, along with the doggy smile, he gets the mental impression of laughter, of a greeting. It sounds as if he's hearing it from a few rooms away, but he knows that voice as well as his own. It brings him up short and his eyes go wide; a high, caught whine snags in his throat, the lupine equivalent of a gasp.

'Dean?'

[edgar_sawtelle]

For a split second Edgar is extremely confused by the other dog's reaction. But he's had enough experience by now of people "hearing" his voice to quickly register what's happening.

His ears drop and he looks as apologetic as a dog can.

No, he thinks. I'm Edgar. I'm sorry if I sound like someone you know.