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

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

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!]

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"You're not the one who'd be doing the falling," grumbles Peter. "If you drop me, I'll kill you."

He digs his claws in a bit as she goes on the move, then tries to scramble away when she starts poking him with a stick. "Hey -- stop it -- don't goddamn touch me!" he protests. He goes to kick it, but when his foot encounters the stick his toes wrap around it instead.

It's such a ridiculous attempt at a threat, Daine can't help giggling. "And how would you manage that?" she asks, rolling her eyes at his further protests. As soon as she sees his claws wrap around the stick, she gently lifts it - and, by extension, Peter - off her palm, though she keeps her hand out in case he's fool enough to let go. "There you are. Better?"

"Aah!" Peter scrabbles at her palm with his thumbs in a panic as he feels himself get pulled up and off by one foot. He twists in the air for a moment or two before his other grasping foot finds the stick and grabs on tight.

It takes him a moment or two to stop shaking with fear and anger and to realize that actually, yes, he is more comfortable this way. Rather than acknowledge that she did right, though, he chooses to answer her first question. "I'd give you rabies," he tells her, sulking.

"You'd have to catch rabies, first," Daine points out. He'd also have to have a mouth big enough for biting, and she's not so certain he does - he's so tiny. And a good thing, too, because she'd've lost patience with him long ago if he wasn't so wee and helpless.

"If you'd like to try flying, I could teach you," she offers. "I've taken bat shape before, so I know what it's like." Besides, if she could get him flying, she'd feel a bit better about leaving him to his own devices.

Look, he can see the ground from here if he tilts his head up -- no, down. Why doesn't it bother him to see how far away it is? His attention snaps back to Daine and he eyes her upside-down visage uneasily, trying to remember what kind of creature does transform into a bat. Vampires typically don't really, he's fairly sure.

"Who are you?" He must be acquiring manners in his new life, or he would have asked what she was.

Daine sits down carefully, not wanting to jostle Peter too badly. He seems to be doing all right with the stick, but she doesn't want him to have too long a drop if he should let go. Plus, it might be easier to convince him to give flying a go if he doesn't have as far to fall.

When he asks for her name, she hesitates for a moment. From what little she remembers of their last shared dream, she didn't make the best of impressions, either. "I'm Daine," she replies with an accompanying wave of calm reassurance.

He would furrow his brow if bat faces worked like that. He does tilt his head a little as he regards her, trying to remember where he's heard that name.

"And you can turn into a bat." This seems more familiar than he thinks it should.

"Yes," she says. "Well, not now. The rift's messing with my magic, so I'm stuck in my human shape."

"Well, shit. I've heard weirder." Not that that would normally make him feel any easier about it, since he's fairly convinced all the nonhumans of Manhattan would gladly tear his throat out given the slightest provocation. Around Daine, though, he feels...calm. Almost uncharacteristically so, actually.

That's a calmer response than she was expecting, and she wonders if she might have whammied him a little bit too hard. She can't say she entirely regrets it, given that he's almost pleasant company right now, but she does feel a bit guilty for manipulating his emotions.

Back to flying, then. "Try spreading your fingers out as wide as you can," she suggests.

He is awfully small right now -- and small-minded. It might not take much to whammy him.

Digging his toes in hard -- and that's really fucking weird, by the way -- Peter tentatively tries to spread the fingers of one hand. It feels right to straighten his elbow, too, but it doesn't even feel like he hits full extension before he can feel his fingers tugging on each other through the membrane, and tugging on his arm and down his side and his leg and -- alright, that's downright creepy. "God, that's weird," he tells her, folding it back up again. Not that having his hands folded down along his forearms and his thumbs sticking out is any less weird.

She'll refrain from doing it again. Unless he starts to get relentlessly unpleasant before she's taught him how to fly properly, in which case, all bets are off.

"I know," she says with a wry smile. "It takes some getting used to. It looked good, though - your wing opened properly." Maybe he'll try it again without her prompting him. Otherwise, if she gave the stick a little jiggle, he'd probably open his wings instinctively.

Peter shuffles his stance, tentatively opening his arms a little, but not spreading them. He doesn't like this, he decides. Aside from being so small -- and whose idea was that?! -- he doesn't like this shape, not one bit.

He delays a bit too long in getting to it on his own. The stick gives what feels like a massive lurch and his wings snap open, ready to catch him. "Careful!" he squawks.

"It's all right." She'd probably feel bad if his wings hadn't opened, but they did. Even if they hadn't and he'd lost his grip on the stick, he would have had a short drop onto soft grass. "You're perfectly safe. And now your wings are open properly. Try flapping 'em.'

"It's not alright!" What is it with people who can clearly hurt him insisting that it's alright? "None of this is alright!"

He moves his arms a little, though whether it could be called 'flapping' them is debatable. "I'm going to fall," he complains.

Daine sighs, resisting the urge to whammy him again. She did jiggle the stick, after all, so his indignation is justified.

"Fine, it's not all right," she says with a shrug, "but it'll be better for you if you can do more than crawl. Elsewise, someone's going to step on you by accident." Or maybe not by accident.

Switching back into Teacher Mode, she says, "Hold tight to the stick and try flapping a bit harder. Look, if you fall, I'll catch you." She puts her other hand a few inches beneath him, palm up.

"Or on purpose," mutters Peter to himself. Look, he's totally aware of the effect he has on people. It's not even entirely accidental.

Twisting his toes tight around the stick, he lets out a little sigh and does what he's told. Dealing with flying has to be better than being stuck wherever she happens to put him down after this. It doesn't take much effort before his flapping has set him swinging. He fancies he can sort of feel how this is supposed to work, now -- though he can also feel that he's going to lose his grip if he doesn't stop.

The corners of Daine's mouth quirk upwards, but she manages not to laugh. Of course, she doesn't attempt to argue the point, either.

"Good," she says as he flaps vigorously enough to just about take off. "If you do that again just a bit harder, you could let go of the branch and fly properly."

For once, Peter doesn't argue. He takes a deep breath and holds it, then lets it out when he realizes that's not going to work too well. The view of the ground beneath him isn't too reassuring, but he screws his courage to a sticking-place and flaps as hard as he can. As soon as he lets go with his feet he thinks better of it and really wishes he hadn't, but then it's too late and there's nothing to do but flap hard and hope. He doesn't exactly move through the air with grace or purpose, but he does at least flutter his way to the ground without falling like a stone. He crouches among the blades of grass, panting and feeling a bit proud of himself.

"Well done," Daine says approvingly, leaning over to look down at him. "Here comes the stick again, okay?" She threads the stick through the grass behind Peter so he can grab hold.

"Want to give it another try? I bet you could get farther next time."

~~Someone is paying attention to him!~~ Daine is helpful, isn't she? Peter's not so sure he does want to give it another try, but he grabs the stick, reasoning that he definitely doesn't want to be where someone could step on him.

"I bet I can't," he replies gruffly, fishing for reassurances and praise.

She can tell he's fishing for compliments, but she doesn't mind. Good behavior should be praised, and from what (admittedly little) she knows about Peter, this seems like unusually good behavior. He hasn't even sworn at her in at least a minute.

"Of course you could," she says, slowly lifting him back into the air once she's sure of his grip. "Flying's never easy the first time you try it, and you did very well. Honestly, you're a natural at it."

Is she laying it on too thick? Quite possibly.

"It doesn't feel natural," he complains. "Feet should not have...fingers, or whatever the hell these are. And I want my hands back."

He eyes her uneasily, wondering if she's making fun of him. Well, he'll show her if she is. Without warning, he lets go again, flapping in a lopsided spiral this time.

"Could've been worse," she points out, mentally resetting her swear timer to zero. "You could've just dropped straight down."

And hey, he was the one fishing for compliments. Daine just delivered.

His second attempt takes her by surprise, and she jerks her head back a little as he flaps past her face. It's more successful than the first attempt, in the sense that it takes him longer to inevitably reach the ground. "That was better," she observes as she pokes the stick at his hinders again. "I think you were in the air at least twice as long as last time."

~~Watch out, he'll get in her hair!~~ If 'hell' counts as a swear with Daine, she's setting the bar awfully high for him. Peter takes some satisfaction in making her flinch, at least.

"I don't see how I'm supposed to get any higher," he fusses, grabbing on again. "Or stop...going down. Are you sure this kind of bat even flies?"

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