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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What barrier? Yuri pounces on the ball, both forepaws landing triumphantly on top of it. His ears go back and he groans when he lifts them again to find that he's crushed it flat. Crap.

"The one between the mortal realm and the divine realms. It was put in place some centuries ago to keep the immortals out, but now mages are letting them back in so they can harry us."

Daine has to bite back a grin at the plastic ball's cruel fate. "It's all right. I'm sure we can find something else to do; there's all sorts of stuff here."

Why would the mages want to do that? Yuri can't quite get over the loss of the ball, and forlornly flips it over with a claw. It's smashed beyond repair, though, and he finally sighs and pushes it away. Walking over to her, he bumps Daine gently with his head. Like what?

Daine curls her lip distastefully. "So they could cripple Tortall without ever having outright war declared." At least Ozorne's out of the picture, and Carthak's no longer a threat, but there are still enough immortals running around the place to keep the country busy.

She's both surprised and pleased by the head-bump, which she takes as a sign that Yuri's finally accepting the idea of being relatively harmless in that shape. "I don't know," she says, reaching up to pat his shoulder. "We could wander around until we see something interesting."

He feels like he's learning bad habits by doing this -- by interacting as if he's still a person, or a friendly dog, or even just a bear that doesn't currently feel like eating her. Sure, he agrees. Maybe they've got a pool or something.

He takes up a slow pace, going only a few steps before checking to make sure she's coming with him. But why do they want to hurt Tortall?

Does it really count as bad habits if he doesn't intend to let her - or anyone - near him over the full moon in the future? For her part, Daine intends to make the most of this opportunity to interact with bear-Yuri without danger (or much danger, anyway).

"There's a pond not too far off," she supplies, walking at a fairly brisk pace to keep up with his longer bear strides. "Edgar and I found it a little while ago."

As far as the motives of their attackers, Daine isn't so certain there's any excuse for what they did. "Their crops failed, and they decided they'd rather steal food than pay for it - that's the raiders, anyway." Tearing up the barrier had just been an extreme but effective distraction, far as she can tell.

Seriously? They wanted to steal some food, so they sicced a bunch of harpies on the rest of you? Daine, what is this world you come from. Yuri tries to keep it to an easygoing stroll, but it seems his size sets him up to roll along at a faster pace than a human regardless. He just trusts she'll correct him if he's going the wrong way.

Edgar's your friend with the dog, isn't he?

Daine lifts her shoulders in a shrug. She can't say she's a fan of how the immortals were brought back into her realm - or some of the species that came through in the greatest numbers - but they hadn't always been locked away. Part of her wonders if they're meant to live in her realm. Maybe shutting them away in the first place was a mistake.

Yuri's headed in the right direction, so Daine focuses on keeping up. She doesn't quite have to jog, but it's close.

"Yes. He actually is a dog right now." Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned him, given his role in Yuri's breakout... but they are still friends and there's no shame in that.

Do people always go to that kind of extreme in your world? asks Yuri, still incredulous about it. It just seems so...petty. And also really really dangerous.

He snorts in surprise and amusement. I'll try not to eat him if I see him.

"No," Daine replies, frowning. "I expect Carthak wanted the raiders and immortals to do the dirty work, and then swoop in once Tortall was too weakened to put up much of a fight. It's an expanding empire - or it was, anyway."

She arches her eyebrow at him as they wade through the patch of tall grass bordering the pond. "At least you could see Edgar. Some folk here are downright titchy."

And Carthak's...another country near you guys?

He gives her a confused look in return, not catching her meaning for several seconds. Titchy? It dawns on him, and he pauses in his walking. You mean small? How small? Like I'm-going-to-step-on-them small?

"Yes. They're just across the Great Inland Sea, which isn't very wide. It's a bit like..." she pauses as she tries to come up with a comparison that would mean something to him, "that one great lake you have in America - the long oval one that pokes down farther than the rest? The sea between our countries is about as wide as that, I think."

Daine comes to a halt when he does, a bit confused until she realizes he hadn't known what 'titchy' meant. "Well, there's a fellow named Peter who's turned into a very tiny bat, but I'm sure you'd hear him well before you could actually hurt him. Everyone else I've seen ought to be spry enough to get out of your way, though." Giving his shoulder a reassuring pat, she adds, "And as long as I'm keeping you company, I'll help watch out for people."

Yuri nods to show he understands, but refrains from revealing he doesn't know the names of all the Great Lakes. Close neighbors, then, close enough that maybe it isn't so surprising they're at each other's throats, given the kind of period Daine seems to be from. He refrains from saying that, too.

I hope you're right, he says, reluctantly starting again, this time eying the ground as he goes. But they didn't invade?

He could make up a name and Daine would be none the wiser. She only has a vague impression of what the rest of the country looks like. Given that she's stuck on the island, there isn't much point in learning any more than the basics: just enough to keep her from looking like a complete fool if someone name-drops another state or something.

"Tortall sent over a delegation for peace talks," she explains, conveniently neglecting to mention that she was part of said delegation. "The talks stalled, but it turned out the gods were angry with Carthak - mostly with Emperor Ozorne. Things got a bit... messy." Understatement. "But now Ozorne's nephew is Emperor, and Kaddar's a lot more sensible than his uncle ever was." She'd liked Kaddar, and had even written to him once before the rift got her. She wonders if he's had the time to write her back, busy as he is.

Anyway. "There's still the occasional raider ship, and the immortals that have already come through are still around, but at least no one's mucking with the barrier anymore. Things are calming down."

And a good thing, too. She still worries about how everyone is going back home, but at least she can say with some confidence that things are better than they were. Being stuck in Manhattan would be even more frustrating if the situation back home was dire.

Yuri, on the other hand, has no excuse whatsoever. He listens, ears perked, and does his best to remember the names. It's not like the information will ever come in useful, but it's important to Daine.

The gods, he repeats, disbelieving. He's sure she's mentioned something about gods before, but they must not have talked about it much. How could you tell they even cared about it?

Daine shoots him an incredulous look, forgetting that other realms don't have such meddlesome gods as hers. "Well, first there was the drought and poor harvests. Then there was a statue that came to life just to utter some grim portents, and a few other statues of Ozorne were struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky."

And then there was the part where the Graveyard Hag gave her the ability to raise the dead, and kept Daine from telling anyone who'd given it to her by throttling her whenever she so much as considered trying to mention the goddess's name.

But she doesn't really want to talk about that. Sighing, Daine shakes her head. "Ozorne was an idiot. He allowed the temples to fall to ruin, and forbade his people from worshipping properly. He said that since he could change folk's lives more quickly than the gods ever bothered to, his subjects ought to worry more about keeping him happy. Of course the gods were angry."

Yuri's about to comment that droughts and bad harvests happen all the time without the overthrow of emperors or anyone (sane) taking credit for it, but talking statues are a different matter. He sniffs, thinking about it. Do they help people? he asks. It seems to him it's a bit rotten to only show up when it's time to throw people down for not worshiping.

"The gods? Of course," Daine says, brow furrowed. "Getting rid of Ozorne helped plenty of people."

And here's the pond. Daine walks to the end of the dock and plops down, rolling up the cuffs of her breeches. "What's strange is being in a realm where the gods - or god, whatever - don't seem to do anything."

He works in mysterious ways, shrugs Yuri -- or he tries to, but mostly he just makes himself stumble on his front feet. While Daine does whatever with her pants, Yuri crouches down and dips a paw in the water, unsurprised to find that it's a comfortable temperature -- or at least, that it's comfortable through his fur.

That's a nice way of saying he doesn't work at all, as far as Daine is concerned, but she doesn't want to openly scorn the gods of this realm. If they are real, they're awfully elusive... but given that there's at least one angel wandering around, perhaps it'd be prudent to keep an open mind.

Still. "Wish my gods were here. They'd do something about this rift business."

Once she has her breeches secured above her knees, she lowers her feet off the edge of the dock and dangles them in the water. Ahhh... the temperature's perfect, and she swirls her legs around a bit before looking back over her shoulder at Yuri. "Are you going all the way in?"

Hey, maybe the rift will drag one of them through, jokes Yuri. The idea of gods like hers -- who frankly sound a little petty, if they spend so much time meddling -- is still weird to him. By now he's got half an arm dipped into the water, and when he looks up at her he grins. It looks a lot like his earlier grimace, but hopefully she'll get the right idea from it.

Aren't you? he asks, right before rolling off the dock and into the water.

And sploosh. Daine grimaces a little as pond water sloshes over the dock and soaks into her breeches. Lovely.

"What, in these?" She gestures to her outfit, then leans back, bracing her hands against the sun-warmed (if newly dampened) wooden planks. If Yuri was actually a grizzly bear, she wouldn't be shy about stripping to her underthings and diving in, but as it is... no. "I'd rather not spend the rest of the afternoon in sopping clothes."

He surfaces after a moment and paddles to the end of the dock. Look to me like you already will, he points out, sloshing more water at her just by dint of his efforts to tread water.

"Damp isn't so bad as sodden," she replies, tsking at him when he sends more water her way. "And you're not helping!" Daine kicks at the surface of the pond, splashing him right back.

Yuri turns his face away and shuts his eyes against the water. A moment later, though, he's throwing two sopping wet paws up on the dock and laboriously pulling himself back out. Not so incidentally, that'll put her right next to a dripping wet bear. They'll dry, he promises, wondering if she's realized yet that he's going to push her in.

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