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

Current Music: February 20

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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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Yuri, laughing, resists the urge to cannonball in after her. Ears perked, he crouches at the edge of the dock, nose nearly poking the water as he waits for her to bob up again.

Daine comes to rest on the weedy bottom with a gentle bump. She's a confident enough swimmer even in her human shape that she's in no particular rush to resurface... and a spiteful part of her doesn't mind if Yuri starts to worry a little. He knows she's stuck being human - does he know she can swim, too? What if she couldn't, hmm?

So, as long as she's down here, might as well take stock. She brushes her hair out of her face and looks around as best she can with her stubbornly human vision. A few fish are darting curiously around her, but as far as she can tell, she and Yuri are the only mammals in the immediate vicinity. She thinks she can hear a few turtles farther off, but all things considered, the pond feels rather empty. Strange, that.

Deciding that she's been down long enough for Yuri to start feeling a bit nervous, Daine impishly releases the air still in her lungs before kicking herself back up to the surface.

...Daine? Okay, it's been a while now. Yuri hops up, paces a few steps, then crouches down again and pokes his face into the water. Opening his eyes underwater doesn't help much -- he can see her shape at the bottom, but he can't make out details. Pulling his head back out, he grunts worriedly, glances around for help, and then jams his head in the water again. Daine, are you alri--

Her bubbles collide with his face, startling him into rearing back out of the water again.

Once Daine's scraped a few wayward curls out of her face, she takes in Yuri's startled expression and smirks up at him. "I can swim," she reassures him, treading water. "Not that you knew that before you shoved me in." Rolling onto her back, she lazily kicks away from the dock. At least her clothes are lightweight enough that they don't drag on her too much.

He puts his ears back, a little annoyed at her for worrying him. I would've come in after you, he says, scooping a pawful of water at her.

Hey, she's a little annoyed with him for shoving her into the pond in the first place. Now, they're even.

Daine wrinkles her nose as Yuri splashes her, then kicks some water back at him. She has her doubts regarding the sort of 'rescue' he'd be capable of, especially when all he has to work with are those giant paddy paws and a mouthful of teeth. "My hero," she deadpans. Then, "Are you coming in, or not?" Because if he's shoved her in just so he can sit on the dock and sulk at her, that's just silly.

Yuri clambers back to his feet and paces a step or two back. But I'll get wet, he mock-complains, before lumbering forward and leaping off the end of the dock.

Daine has just enough time to shut her eyes before he hits the surface, so at least she's braced for the splash - and the resulting wave that rolls over her. Once the water has settled a little, she wipes her face with one hand and opens her eyes. "You were wet to begin with," she points out, swimming a bit closer to him.

He spins on the spot to see how far he went, and is only a little disappointed to find that he barely got any air at all. Dog-paddling further out (and closer to Daine), he asks, Isn't this better than sitting on a dock?

"I suppose," she replies with an overblown parody of reluctance. True, it would be better if she could shift, but it's not so bad as is. It's being out of the water that won't be pleasant, and she lifts an arm up so she can sigh at her poor, sodden shirt sleeve. She doesn't suppose she'll be lucky enough to find a towel anywhere.

The damage is done, Yuri points out, having the decency to feel a little bad about it. Maybe he'll actually apologize when it comes time to deal with her not having any dry clothes.

"Well," Daine says, swimming over to him until she can lean against his shoulders, "I think this means you owe me a ride around the pond."

He treads water, trying to be careful to keep his paws away from her. Turning his head to look at Daine causes him to paddle slowly in a circle. I'm not a horse, he points out.

"Doesn't matter," Daine says dismissively, half lying on his back and half floating above him. "Anyway, in the water like this, you're not that different from how a horse would be." ~~So giddy-up!~~

Yuri tosses his head and snorts into the water, but what's he going to do? Refuse her? With an air of much-abused patience, he lets out a little sigh and gets to paddling. I'd ask if you're planning to return the favor, but....

Technically, isn't he returning her favor?

"Even if I could take a shape, I'm not sure what'd be big enough to haul you around when you're like this," Daine says, giving the occasional, idle kick to make sure she doesn't slip right off his shoulders. "Elephant, maybe?"

Which favor would that be? He has so many to return.

Sounds like something you'd see in a circus, he chuckles. Like when they have monkeys riding goats. Or goats riding horses.

Well, she's already given him a ride. Not that she'd be keen to bring it up.

"There's one way to earn some extra coin," she deadpans. "Convince the park animals to prance around and entertain folk." Not that she'd really do such a thing. Setting aside the question of whether she could convince her friends to behave that way, it's well beneath everyone's collective dignity. Besides, she doesn't really want to draw that kind of attention to herself, especially after what happened at Romac.

Hey, everybody's gotta make a living, says Yuri, taking a wide circuit around the pond, as near the edge as he can get without it getting too shallow to swim instead of walk. Haven't you seen the buskers yet?

"True." Though the need to make a living is precisely why she wouldn't want to distract any of her friends from foraging. "And I've seen some. Musicians, mostly." She'd even given money to a few, either because they impressed her or because it was especially cold and she felt a bit sorry for them. "I expect there will be more when it warms up, right?" And she'll probably still be here, at the rate things are going."

Usually, he agrees. It's just the ones who can't get out of town who do it in winter. Some of the rifties busk, actually.

"Really?" Daine can't imagine busking for coin, though she can see the appeal of having more money than the allowance she's given - if nothing else, she'd be able to feed more strays. Trouble is, the only leg-up she has in this largely unfamiliar realm is her magic, and it'd be dangerous to show it off. "What do they do?"

Music, mostly. I think there's one guy who does magic shows, but you have to be careful. You can't be good enough that they start thinking it's real magic. He blows water out of his nose and resists the urge to turn and look at Daine while he's talking to her.

He must be referring to Peter, then. "I can't imagine anyone with proper magic would really use it for busking," she muses. "Too risky." Then again, how else could she use her magic to make extra money? She can't advertise her healing abilities (much as she might want to), but there must be some other way...

Edgar's face pops into her head, and she blinks as an idea strikes her. "There are so many strays in the park. What if we took 'em in, got them healthy, and then trained them? It's be fair easy to teach them a bunch of commands, and then maybe folk would buy them." She used to help train dogs and falcons in Snowsdale; much as some of the people had feared her, some of the men had caught on to how much better their animals performed if she'd had a hand in teaching them. And Edgar knows plenty about it, too. He might have a better idea of what sort of things to teach dogs in this realm as opposed to hers.

And most importantly: they'd be helping get the strays out of the park and into good homes.

Yuri blinks. Daine's exact attitude toward animals is something of a mystery to him. He keeps assuming she's going to think of them being exactly like people, and wanting them treated like people -- she does call them 'the People,' doesn't she?

Do you think they'd want to get bought and sold? he asks cautiously.

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