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

[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.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine's not sure what's more surprising: the readiness with which he follows her suggestion, or his request that she catch him. She doubts that there's really a safe way for her to just nab him right out of the air, so she puts her flattened hands together in an impromptu platform and does her best to put herself in his flightpath. Given how erratic said flightpath is, it's not an easy task - but even if he misses her hands and ends up on her arms or shirt, it shouldn't be that hard a landing for him.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter does his best to 'look' with his ears and to actually aim for Daine's hands, but it seems like even the slightest current of air throws him off course. It's distracting trying to do everything at once, too, so it should come as no surprise to either of them that he misses. It's a near miss, though, as he lands partway up her forearm in a jumble of claws and leathery wings.

[wildmage_daine]

"Well done," Daine says, impressed. It was a nearer miss than she would have predicted. She's careful not to move the arm he's perched on, but she makes sure her free hand is ready to catch him if he loses his grip while he unjumbles himself. "You're getting pretty good at this for someone who's never been a bat before."

[fucking_ebay]

"I've got all sorts of natural talents," agrees Peter cheerfully. "I might show you a few more of them sometime."

Unjumbling takes a good bit of effort, as he's managed to half-somersault and then get stuck like that. Peter kicks and rolls and struggles to get on his front...and slides right off Daine's arm.

[wildmage_daine]

"Such as?" Daine prompts, hovering between curiosity and suspicion. But then she's distracted by the topple he takes off of her arm. Fortunately, she'd already prepared for it, so he lands on her palm instead of tumbling all the way to the ground. "Whoops - all right, there?" Now that her arm is free, she cups her hands together so he won't immediately roll off into the empty air.

[fucking_ebay]

"Takes more than that," he replies. flailing a bit as he tries to sort himself out and get on his front again. He turns to grin up at her, but then suddenly has A Thought.

"...Just how old are you?"

[wildmage_daine]

"Sixteen," she replies, baffled by the apparent non-sequitur. "What's that got to do with anything?"

[fucking_ebay]

"Magic tricks," says Peter firmly. "I would show you magic tricks. I've got tons of natural talent at that."

[wildmage_daine]

... Uh huh. Was that really where he'd been planning on steering the conversation? Not that it matters; she's very interested in where it's wound up. "Proper magic, or sleight-of-hand?"

[fucking_ebay]

Yeahno.

"Illusions," he clarifies. "Grade A bullshit -- really good bullshit, none better."

[wildmage_daine]

"Huh." Numair had been good at sleight-of-hand, in addition to being a powerful mage. "I wouldn't mind seeing that."

[fucking_ebay]

Somehow, he'd had the nagging feeling she would mind seeing that. It's like how Daine seems oddly familiar, like they've met before once upon a dream. "Keeps me in midori," he quips. "Or cheap knockoffs, anyway."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine considers asking what 'midori' is, then decides against it. "Where do you perform?" she asks instead. If he's a rifty, she's guessing he's not packing any of the theaters. "The park?"