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

[fucking_ebay]

He sees her hand coming, but he doesn't have any idea what she's about to do with it until it's already been done. Peter lurches forward in surprise, twisting at the same time to face her, and lets out an angry...squeak.

[wildmage_daine]

Success! "That was perfect," she says before Peter can get a word in. "Sorry about the pinch, but that was the sound you need to make." Raising her eyebrows (and unable to keep from grinning), she asks, "Think you could do it again - without help?"

[fucking_ebay]

"Some animal whisperer," grumbles Peter, feeling he has a god-given right to complain this time. "The Humane Association might have something to say about your methods."

Shying away in case she decides to do it again, Peter tries to remember how it went. This time, he's able to squeak voluntarily.

[wildmage_daine]

"You're not exactly an animal," Daine points out, figuring he might take some solace in that. "If you were, this would be a lot easier." If he was, he wouldn't need her help at all, in fact.

She keeps her hands to herself during his second attempt, nodding in approval when he gets it right. "Good. Now all you have to do is aim it at that rock and listen for the echoes."

[fucking_ebay]

But now he's reluctant to turn his back on her. Summoning up his courage, he turns, glances over his shoulder one last time for good measure, and finally squeaks at the rock.

He's not sure what he's expecting to hear -- echoes like shouting into a canyon, perhaps. What comes back is nothing he could describe in human terms, but now that he's really paying attention and listening, he finds that she was right about it forming an image in his mind. "Shit," he breathes.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine grins and leans back against her hands. She can tell by his tone - and the surprise he's unwittingly projecting - that it worked. "Amazing, isn't it?"

[fucking_ebay]

"Can I just keep this part when I turn back?" asks Peter. He turns around and peers up at her, and then squeaks again to 'see' her as well.

[wildmage_daine]

Her grin widens at his enthusiasm. See? Being a bat is marvelous!

"Once your flying improves a little, you could try catching bugs," she says, holding up a hand to forestall any objections he might raise. "I know it sounds nasty, but when you're in bat shape, bugs are delicious. They taste like the sort of things you'd enjoy eating as a human."

[fucking_ebay]

See that little bat mouth hanging open, Daine? That's the closest to a look of horror he can manage with this face. Peter shakes his head in disgust. "I think I'll pass, thanks." This is a man who doesn't even eat sushi, srsly.

[wildmage_daine]

"You're missing out," Daine says. Then again, if he keeps his mouth open like that, maybe he'll end up catching something by accident.

Offering the twig, she suggests, "Why don't we find some other stuff for you to try squeaking at?" He seems to like that bit, anyway.

[fucking_ebay]

A gnat, maybe. What kind of bug would even fit in his mouth? The mental image of biting into an enormous cockroach or something makes him shudder and feel more than a bit ill.

"Oh, alright," he sighs, as if he's doing her a favor when he grabs on.

[wildmage_daine]

Once he's got a good grip on the twig, Daine stands up and looks around. Beyond the boulder, there are a few incredibly tall cat trees interspersed with the regular sort of trees, and she heads in that direction.

"Try squeaking at the boulder as we pass it," she suggests. "That'll give you an idea of what it's like to 'see' that way when you're on the move." Because she's guessing that right now, squeaking at things while flying is a bit too much to ask.

[fucking_ebay]

'Squeaking' is a terrible word and cannot possibly apply to any action undertaken by someone as magnificent as Peter. If he could remember the right word for it, maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad.

He does squeak at the boulder, though -- and then a second and third time as they leave it behind. Carefully turning around on his twig, he squeaks at Daine's legs as well, but that proves to be too much and he falls silent.

[wildmage_daine]

'Squeaking' is a perfectly serviceable term for what he's doing. And don't expect Daine to start throwing out terms like 'echolocation' anytime soon.

Before settling back to let Peter take a look at the cat trees, Daine walks right up to them to get a closer look. They're covered in material that reminds her a bit of the throw rug in her room at the base, only thicker. She prods it thoughtfully, wondering if it's soft enough to be a safe landing site for a wee bat. It could work.

"Okay." Daine backs away from the cat tree. "Try 'looking' at that thing." It's more complex than the boulder, but still solid and unmoving.

[fucking_ebay]

He's relieved when she stops moving around so much. Even when she's trying to be gentle, it feels like he's being shaken all over the place. "I can tell you without looking that it's tacky," he informs her, as if his aesthetic judgments are the point of this exercise. He obediently (obediently??) squeaks at it, though, several times, to get a clearer image than he can see with his eyes.

"I was right," he informs her once he's done it.

[wildmage_daine]

If Daine was more familiar with Peter's sense of style, she might have a few things to say about his idea of what constitutes 'tacky.' Not that it matters in this case; the tree is designed for animals, who wouldn't care less how it looked so long as it was fun and interesting.

"Tacky or no, you're going to fly over and land on it," she informs him.

[fucking_ebay]

"What," Peter 'looks again at the cat tree, judging the distance, then glances at Daine. "Seriously? All the way over there?"

And he'll probably crash into it, he decides, if he even makes it there at all.

[wildmage_daine]

"All the way there," Daine confirms. "It's only a little bit farther than the distance you covered before, and you're starting from higher up. Even if you lose height as you go, there are platforms close to the ground you can land on - and," she adds, smirking a little, "you ought to practice landing in something other than hair, don't you think?"

[fucking_ebay]

"It's further for me than you," he grumbles. "I'm the size of a fucking olive."

Turning back toward his apparent target, he gives himself a little shake. "Haha," he intones. "Very funny. Serve you right if I did land in your hair again."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine rolls her eyes. "Still not that far. You'll be there in no time. And as I recall, you found the whole experience of landing in my hair more upsetting than I did."

[fucking_ebay]

"I remained perfectly calm," Peter informs her. He's aware he may be pushing his luck -- part of him wants to push it as far as he can just to test her and prove to himself that everyone really hates him deep down. He takes a deep breath and lets go before he can think better of it, snapping open his wings and flapping toward the cat tree.

[wildmage_daine]

Diane considers telling him that he had help with that, then decides against it. While calming him down might have been a bit manipulative, it hadn't been the least bit invasive... but she remembers how huffy he got when he thought she might be in his head, so she's not about to tell him she might have been improving his mood without his knowledge.

Anyway, it's not as if he hasn't quickly reverted to being his usual, somewhat grating self. It'd take more energy than she'd care to expend to try and coax him into a better frame of mind all the time.

"The next person you crash into might not be," she points out instead. It won't matter how calm he is if his unwitting victim panics - and given what many two-leggers think of bats, they might (even if they're in animal shape).

Once he takes off, she follows him, ready to intervene if things start to go drastically wrong.

[fucking_ebay]

Whether he'll still like Daine once he's no longer an animal remains to be seen, too -- and yes, this is Peter when he likes someone. Lucy gets it. Lucy's the only one who seems to.

He tries for altitude, once again wobbling through the air like a drunk driver. At least he keeps moving in the correct general direction, and even remembers about halfway there to squeak at the cat tree and try to work out where he's going to land. Platform? It has a platform, that looks good. He misses, of course, and smacks into a vertical support instead, where he ends up clinging on with his thumbs.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine might be more understanding if most of her friends weren't of the non-human variety. Animals tend to be more straightforward when it comes to expressing how they feel about someone else. If a wolf growled and snapped at her all the time, she'd have no reason to believe it liked her.

She winces a little when he hits the support, but lets out a breath when she realizes he's managed to grab onto it instead of just bouncing off. "Not bad," she says approvingly. "Want to try flying back?"

[fucking_ebay]

Truth be told, the majority of humans don't see beyond that top layer either, which is exactly why his system of self-isolation works so perfectly.

Daine picked a good practice area. It's easy to hook his little claws into the carpeting, and running into it hurt less than a real tree would have. He waits, expecting her to come pick him up.

"Catch me," he demands, and flips off the cat tree to do exactly what she's suggested.