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

[aly_brighteyes]

"No, I'm a fair bit younger than her. Or I would be if our timelines matched up." Aly gives a wing-shrug that's more a lifting of her shoulder blades rather than her actual shoulders.

"But i do know her. We wrote letters."

[stronglikebear]

"Oh." Well, it's pretty good that Daine even has someone from her world now, let alone someone she already knew -- so it's not like there's any cause to be disappointed. "Did you just get here?"

Never mind that today's the first time he and Daine have spoken since their argument over the rebuilding of the cage. Surely the reason Daine hasn't mentioned Aly is because Aly only just arrived.

[aly_brighteyes]

"A few days ago. In time, apparently, to wake up as a crow." She twists just so, examining her glossy black feathers.

"Good thing I already like them."

[stronglikebear]

"This doesn't normally happen." Yuri sounds like he's apologizing for the rift's behavior. He doesn't comment on his own shape, hoping she'll assume it's just as unusual for him as a crow is for her.

[aly_brighteyes]

"I've gathered. The rift is a funny place."

If he won't bring it up, then Aly is happy to keep her observations to herself.

[stronglikebear]

Yuri pauses, scenting the air rather than really eying her. "Where are you staying?" he asks cautiously, meaning to verify that she's with the rebels. A friend of Daine's must be, but....

[aly_brighteyes]

"Oh. With Daine," Aly replies casually, playing the same game. If he knew where Daine lived, then he'd understand Aly's meaning.

[stronglikebear]

He relaxes slightly, but still doesn't say it directly. "In that little place? You have to be sleeping on top of each other."

[aly_brighteyes]

"I kept tighter quarters when I was a slave," Aly explains, as if it's not even a point worth fussing on. "So I'll be all right."

[stronglikebear]

That makes him sit up, quite literally. "You were a slave?" asks Yuri, sounding horrified. "That happens in your world?"

It happens in his own world, sure, but not visibly. Not in his country, at least not right out where everyone can see it.

[aly_brighteyes]

"Was," Aly repeats. "I've been free for longer than I've been a slave now."

And even then, she may as well have been little more than one in name only.

[stronglikebear]

"How'd you get away?" Yuri's imagining some Underground Railroad type of thing here. His mental image of slavery is the brand of slavery from American history.

[aly_brighteyes]

"I defended the family after an ill-plannned attack," Aly explains, feeling terrible still for the loss of Duke Mequen.

"For that, I was granted my freedom but they'd long had my loyalty."

[stronglikebear]

He...did not expect that. "The family that owned you?" he clarifies. "You like them?"

[aly_brighteyes]

"They were kind to me." Even as a crow, Aly fixes a sharp eye on him.

"I don't expect it to make sense. But they were."

[stronglikebear]

"But they bought you. People can't just own other people." He's seriously got a problem with this.

[aly_brighteyes]

"They didn't buy me—it's a long story," Aly sighs, unable to tell the whole of it in its entirety.

"There's a lot of folk who would do worse to a teenage girl than take her in, give her work, food, and healing and then set her free. Especially to slaves."

[stronglikebear]

Yuri sucks in a breath, his mind having refused to even go there. He wags his head slowly from side to side. "I guess."

[aly_brighteyes]

"They were given my person, but I gave them my loyalty."

Aly flutters her wings and then reels back a little. She can't let this get personal. She has to be Aly Homewood, grateful serving girl, not Alianne of Pirate's Swoop, spymaster determined to thank the Balitangs by making their daughter queen.

[stronglikebear]

"We don't have slavery in my country," Yuri explains. "Not legally. Not for like a hundred and fifty years." That goes for both countries that could be considered his, actually, though he's always felt more American than Russian.