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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Oh, yeah, give him something else to worry about. Peter's already thinking better of this. "Yeah, that was reassuring," he grumbles.

Daine considers a sharp rejoinder, then thinks better of it. "It'll be easier if you hold still and hush," she says, taking a few slow, steadying breaths. It won't be that bad, she tells herself. Even if it does make her dizzy, she'll just work through it. It's not as if he's broken anything, so it shouldn't be a hard fix.

Calling up her magic, she focuses on the hurt wing - or tries to. It takes a few moments for her to push aside the vaguely sick feeling in her stomach that comes of looking too closely at someone who isn't entirely one of the People, though she was right about one thing: it's not as bad as looking at Yuri was. With a little effort, she manages to focus on the injury, and it really is a mild sprain. Gritting her teeth, she applies her magic to the inflammation in his finger, soothing the ache.

Once that's done, she all but hurls her consciousness back into her own body. Ugh. Thank the Goddess it was something minor, because anything more complex might have been beyond her. Leaning her head back against the tree and shutting her eyes, she waits for the dizziness to subside before asking, "Better?"

Peter mutters something that sounds like an unflattering parroting of what she just said, but huddles down and waits rather than complain again out loud. For a little while, it doesn't seem like anything's happening beyond Daine making faces at him, and he's about ready to tell her to pack it in if she's not really going to do it.

Just then, the pain ebbs. Peter sits up and tentatively moves the wing as the ache retreats, not quite believing she's really done it until she opens her eyes and he realizes he can stretch and retract the whole wing without any pain at all.

"...Better," he grants, eying her. "Just a little dizzy, huh?"

"A bit," she admits, keeping her eyes shut for a few moments more before opening them and looking down at him. "No pain or anything when you stretch your wing?" She's guessing he would have complained by now if she hadn't completely healed him, but she might as well be certain.

"None." He's still looking at her, trying to judge how much she's lying to him -- that is, how bad that really was for her. He demonstrates, though, stretching the wing.

"Good." Daine's smile is pleased, if a bit unsteady. Her magic is really only meant for the People, so even a simple healing job has taken more out of her than it should have. Maybe if Numair had been here, he could have done one of his shielding tricks so she could work more easily, but he's not.

Shifting a bit, she pulls one leg up so she can transfer Peter to her knee. "Try flying on it - you could go out a ways and then circle back." And she can just... sit. For a minute.

Has she made herself sick? Peter just stares for a moment or two longer, still undecided as to how bad it is -- and, he tells himself, as to whether he cares. She chose to do it; it shouldn't be any problem of his.

"Fine," he says, as if granting her a favor. "But if I fall I still expect you to come help." He turns and clambers to the highest point of her knee and takes off, skimming the grass for a foot or two before he can pull up and start a wide loop.

Daine flaps a hand at him in reply. She doesn't expect a crash landing from him now that he's getting the hang of things, but it also goes without saying, at this point, that she's not going to abandon him until she's certain he can look after himself. It's almost a matter of pride; she's invested enough time and energy in teaching him to be a bat that it'd be a poor reflection on her if he bungles it. So she'll just have to work with him until she's satisfied he won't.

Fortunately, he seems to be holding his own. She sits up a bit straighter as the last bit of nausea ebbs away and nods to herself. "Better and better," she says.

~~It's too bad that after this, he'll go on to nearly get himself killed.~~

"I thought bats were only supposed to come out at night," he calls as he circles back toward her. He means to come in for a landing, but then he loses confidence in his ability to set down without crashing and abruptly veers off to do another broad loop. The next time he comes in, he does it again, taking a shorter circle. The third time, his wings are tiring and he finally commits to a landing, only to crash right into Daine's front.

"For the most part," Daine confirms. "Nighttime's better for catching bugs, and there are less predators to worry about." She watches him circle back around, wondering if he's doing laps a-purpose or just screwing up his courage to try landing properly. "You should be all right so long as you don't stare up at the sun or anything, though."

To her credit, she does try to suppress a laugh when he bonks right into her, but he's pretty well placed to feel her huff of amusement even if he can't hear it (though given his bat ears, he probably can). At least he didn't hit her hard enough to damage anything but his pride. "That wasn't too bad," she says as she offers the twig again. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"Predators?" asks Peter, clinging to her shirt where he managed to grab on after a bit of tumbling. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to him, even as tiny as he is right now. He can hear her sort of huffing at him -- is she laughing? She'd better not be laughing. "I'm alright," he replies, waving it off as he clambers back onto the twig. "But you didn't mention that things were going to try to eat me. I get enough of that already, thanks."

"Well, you are bite-sized," she points out, fighting back a grin. "But I can't imagine anyone here would try to eat you. They're all two-leggers stuck in animal shape, far as I can tell."

Something he said belatedly strikes her as a bit odd. "You've got creatures in your realm that eat humans?" There are immortals that would gladly eat humans in her realm, but most of the others she's met come from places that are very different.

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure some of them wouldn't be interested in the opportunity," grouses Peter. He's probably overestimating how much the people he's met hate him. Probably. Tucking his wings in close and getting comfortable, he gazes at her upside-down visage and considers how much truth to tell her.

"For a given value of 'eat,'" he admits. Then he clarifies, expecting her to know what he means, "Vampires. Same end result, more or less."

It's been a few years since Daine's been disabused of the notion that humans don't (or shouldn't) have predators, but vampires are new to her. She's heard the name mentioned in passing, but she doesn't know the details. "I've heard the word before, but I don't know anything about them," she admits. "What are they, exactly?"

Peter stares. "What, seriously? Everyone knows about vampires." He pauses, then corrects himself. "Everyone thinks they know about vampires. Either you're bullshitting me, or I want to move to your world when I retire."

She really means it, doesn't she? He flounders for a moment, not really prepared for someone who doesn't know anything about vampires.

"They're living dead," he explains after a moment. "Bloodsuckers, only come out at night."

Daine snorts at Peter's retirement plan. Whatever vampires are, she's willing to bet that spidrens, hurrocks, and the other nastier immortals in her realm more than make up for the absence of vampires.

His explanation isn't terribly enlightening, either. "What do they look like?" she asks, imagining some monstrous version of one of the bloodsuckers found in nature, like a leech or a tick or something. "In my realm, we've got spidrens: they're giant spiders with human heads that can snare an entire rider group - horses included - in their webs. I suppose they'd be the closest thing to vampires we've got."

Peter opens his mouth to answer...and leaves it hanging open. Giant spider. Human head. Eating horses, apparently.

"Fuck," he comments feelingly. "People. They look like people with sharp teeth." And since when does he think that's the less terrifying option?

"Goddess," Daine breathes, taken aback. "So you wouldn't even know if someone was a vampire until they showed their fangs?" Because at least a spidren can't masquerade as a regular two-legger.

"Exactly!" And now he's back on track, reassured that his world's horrors are plenty horrible. "And they live probably forever if they're not killed, and they're sneaky fuckers -- they've got most people to stop believing they even exist." Aided by people like Peter, who has spent most of his career using vampires as shorthand for sex.

"That sounds like the immortals in my realm," Daine says with a commiserating nod. "They live forever unless someone kills them. But it's only in the past few years that they started getting back through the barrier that used to keep them out. I think a lot of folk just thought they were legends, but there's no denying the truth of them anymore - especially the spidrens and stormwings." She wrinkles her nose. "They can be fair sneaky when they want to be, but at least they can't pass themselves off as regular folk."

"There are ways to tell," Peter acknowledges, "But who the fuck is going to believe you? I thought it was a load of shit for years." After one had killed his family, no less. Thus is the power of human denial.

"How?" Daine asks, far more fascinated than she would have previously thought possible. Who knew she'd ever find common ground with Peter that wasn't just a result of him being turned into an animal? Granted, being plagued by nasty immortals isn't much to celebrate, but still.

"No reflection, that's the big one. They don't show up on video or photos, either, and they can't -- they can't enter a home uninvited."

He looks away, wishing he hadn't brought that up. Pursued, that tidbit would lead to a confession he hasn't admitted even to Lucy. "There are other signs, ways you can tell different kinds of vampire. Symbols, eating habits."

"Huh." It's fair strange the way monsters (or so-called monsters) in other realms behave. The part about needing an invitation strikes her as particularly creepy, though she guesses it's no less random than the way folk back home can't lie around griffins. "And I suppose you wouldn't know not to invite them in til it was too late," she muses, as much to herself as Peter. Brr. His realm can keep vampires, far as she's concerned. Tortall has enough on its plate already.

"No," confirms Peter, surprising himself by keeping his voice fairly even. "You wouldn't."

If she brought up that bit about griffins, Peter might say her realm can keep its monsters as well. He swallows, wanting to get off the subject. "I'm going to take another lap," he informs her, just a moment or two before letting go to do just that.

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