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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~~We all admire Peter's heroic restraint.~~

"You really are," she says. And she means it, even if a touch of surprise sneaks in. Flying had been intuitive for her thanks to the time she spent riding along in bats' minds and the secondhand experiences she'd absorbed. Peter had to learn from scratch, and that's no mean feat. Her surprise is mostly due to her earlier impression of him as being too disagreeable to learn from her, but she doesn't mind being wrong on that front. "Just about as good as a real bat."

~~Hey, he has some standards. Low ones, but standards.~~

"You," he chuckles, swooping a bit closer to her head than he really means to, just narrowly avoiding entanglement, "are bullshitting me. Keep it up."

Would that he would fare so well at new things in the waking world...or that he could manage to get along with new people half so well as he's done with Daine tonight.

That was a bit close, and Daine instinctively smoothes a hand over her hair - as if that will make it less of a target somehow.

"Not really," she insists, because yes, 'as good as a real bat' might have been an overstatement, but he's still doing a good job. "Learning to fly isn't easy even when you're born with wings. You're doing great for a two-legger who's only just turned into a bat."

Her head is like a giant, hairy magnet for bats. She should get that looked at. "What can I say? I'm a natural."

He circles again, thinking of landing on her shoulder, then thinks better of it lest he end up in her hair. Instead, he aims for one of her upper arms, and promptly crashes into it. This time he bounces off when he tries to grab on and goes tumbling, flapping madly to catch himself again and break his fall.

Daine's reflexes are quick enough that she manages to turn and get her hands cupped underneath him in case he doesn't manage to catch himself.

"Maybe your landings could use a little work, is all," she says.

He would have eventually -- probably -- but as it is, Peter lands in her hands. 'Lands' meaning 'crashes.'

"I don't see how I'm supposed to do it," he complains.

"It'll just take some practice," she says, lifting him up so he's more at her eye level. "It'd help if I knew what sort of bat you were, as they don't all land alike. It depends on where they roost."

"They all roost upside-down," says Peter flatly. "How different could it be?"

"Well, the ones that stay in trees grab on with their feet and their thumbs at the same time," she explains patiently, "so it's a hard landing. The ones that roost in caves just use their back feet, so they don't hit the rock as hard."

Meanwhile, Peter's tiny enough that it's hard for her to judge where he might roost. He could fit anywhere. "What sounds nicer to you - a cave or a tree?" Maybe his bat-self has a preference.

"That's what I've been trying to do," ~~whines~~ explains Peter. "Grab on with my bloody thumbs -- you can't expect me to throw my feet at whatever and have it work." Mostly because he can't figure out how he's supposed to turn in midair to do that.

He stares at her for several long moments, fighting the urge to tell her what a stupid question that is. "A cave," he surprises himself by answering.

"I think that's the problem, actually - you're crashing because you're trying to land on things instead of on the underside, which is where a real bat would land."

She pauses after his response, considering. She doesn't doubt it's the right answer, but it does make things a bit more daunting. Either way, it'd be difficult - it wasn't even easy for her when she first took bat shape - but he's good enough with the twig that at least he might be open to the idea of landing upside-down.

"All right... this isn't going to be easy, but I'm sure you can do it with a bit of practice." She walks back over to one of the cat trees, having noticed that even the underside of the platforms are carpeted. If he can just get his feet up there, grabbing hold of the fuzz should be easy - easier than stone. "Instead of aiming for the top of this platform, you're going to aim for the underside, here. And when you get there..." she trails off, wondering how best to explain it. "Maybe it would be easier if I showed you." Except that would involve manhandling him a little, and she's not sure he'd allow that.

"Showed me how?" asks Peter, not grasping the reason she's hesitating. "You said you can't turn into a bat right now." Yep, rubbing it in. He's not even doing it especially on purpose; it just doesn't come into his head that he might not want to bring it up.

Fortunately for Peter (or maybe not-so-fortunately), Daine's too wrapped up in trying to figure out an inoffensive way to explain her idea to be particularly offended that he's pointing out her limitations. It's regrettably true that she can't take bat shape, but honestly, she's not sure how much help her demonstrations would even be. What she could do is carefully move him the way he'd need to move, but she doubts he'd like the idea of her manipulating his little limbs as if he's a toy.

"Well," she says delicately, "I could show you how you need to move by actually moving you. I'd be very careful not to hurt you," she hastens to add. Figuring they could start simply, she suggests, "If you were to lie on your back, say, I could slowly move my hand below the platform, and then you could try nabbing it with your feet as you pass beneath it. You'd only have to focus on grabbing hold instead of trying to do that and fly."

And once he got the hang of grabbing a perch with his feet in that manner, maybe he'd let her help show him the way he has to sort of cartwheel through the air to get his feet in that position while flying. Maybe.

Daine might feel a few little pin-pricks on her hand as Peter tenses his toes and tries to dig in his claws at the mention of her moving him. Has she seen the size of her hands?! "I know how to grab on with my feet, remember?" he asks incredulously. "I've grabbed that stick what, fifteen times now?"

Though that's not his real objection to this plan.

"It's not the same as grabbing something while you're on the move," she points out, frowning a little as he tenses in her hand. Perhaps she should mention that she's handled more bats than she cares to count without them coming to any harm. If anything, animals tend to leave her happier than they were when they arrived, but Peter's not entirely an animal... thus the problem.

Has she handled bats his size, though? Clearly the answer is no, since she already admitted she's never seen one as small as him. "The fact that I can grab on to anything with my bloody toes tells me I've pretty much got it down," he argues back. More quietly, he adds, "That's not the part that's a problem."

Daine takes a slow breath, tamping down her frustration. Never mind that she just healed his wing not two minute ago; obviously she's out to hurt him.

"All right, then," she says, her tone deceptively mild as she takes a few steps away from the cat tree. "All you have to do is a little cartwheel in the air as soon as you're under the platform. If you'd rather I didn't help you, I suppose you'll just have to figure it out on your own." Raising her eyebrows, she prompts, "Off you go."

Everyone is out to hurt him.

...Shit. Peter stares at the platform, then turns to look up at Daine, nose twitching. Then he resolutely stares at the platform again. He can't do that. Does she know he can't do that? She has to know there's no way that's going to work.

"...Alright, fine." He's hardly going to go back on it and ask for help, though. She wants him to figure it out on his own, fine. Just watch him. With more than a few misgivings, Peter launches himself at the cat tree. He has no idea when to start flipping or how or what direction -- as he nears the cat tree, he throws himself backward, stalls out, and hits the edge of the platform before tumbling toward the ground.

Daine starts forward instinctively the moment he hits the platform (surprise, surprise), but she stops herself from trying to catch him. He's so lightweight that hitting the grass shouldn't hurt him, but if she doesn't catch him just so, she might.

Instead, she drops into a crouch and sighs down at him. There's no point in a snide, 'Not so easy, is it?' given that it was clearly never easy for him in the first place. Then again, all the more reason for him to be accepting of her help instead of acting as if she means to work against him, somehow.

"Are you all right?" she asks, brow furrowing as she tries to figure out if he's hurt himself again.

In a way, it seems better to hurt himself than to let someone else hurt him. At least then he has some control over it, twisted as that may be.

Peter half expects to be scooped out of the air again. Instead, he plummets right down to the earth and bounces off the grass, getting the wind knocked out of him. As Daine crouches over him, Peter stretches out a wing and awkwardly tries to right himself and got off his back. "Shit," he says. "Yeah, I'm fine, thanks."

Since he seems to be physically undamaged - and since he also seems grumpy - she doesn't try to pick him up. Instead, she rubs her forehead and tries to figure out a way to make this easier. Even after his crash landing, she doubts he'd be keen on letting her show him the way he needs to move through the air. She's not entirely sure it would be that effective, either, to be honest. What'd help most is if he'd been in a bat's mind like she had.

Frowning down at him, she wonders if there could be an indirect way of making that happen. She was able to calm him down before, so he can pick up on her feelings when she sends them his way on purpose. Could he do the same thing with more specific memories? She'd once helped soothe a bunch of frightened bats by thinking of caves, and the safety of huddling in the cool darkness with the rest of your colony. What if she thought of exactly how to land properly? Would Peter be bat enough to 'hear' her and understand?

"There is something else we could try." 'Try' being the operative word. "It'd involve mind-stuff, though. Not me going into your head so much as you being in mine. I could try to share a memory of what it feels like to land properly."

Peter finally turns himself over, which means he has to crane his little neck around to look up at her. On the plus side, though, he no longer feels like an overturned turtle.

Watch her he does, sort of wishing she'd pick him up and get him off the ground. "What, like some kind of Vulcan mind-meld?" he scoffs, to cover up his genuine concerns. Those come out anyway, though, when he asks cautiously, "You wouldn't be able to see my memories?"

"I don't know what a Vulcan is," she says, placing her hand on the ground so he can crawl into it if he likes. "But since you're not really an animal, I don't think I could see into your mind, even if I tried - which I wouldn't," she's quick to add. "I'd just be trying to send some memories your way. I'm not certain it'll even work."

Moving around on the ground is still awkward with his arm-skin tugging on his legs and his limbs just not wanting to move the way he expects them to. Peter crawls up without comment, saving face by simply taking it as his due that he should be carried around.

He sucks in a deep breath. Once again, he's made uneasy by being reminded what Daine is capable of -- what she could have done to him already many times over if she'd wanted. But she hasn't hurt him, at least not deliberately. "Alright," he consents at last, not sure if this is really any better than having her manhandle him would have been.

"All right," she echoes. "I'll start with something simple. Just let me go if you're getting anything on your end."

Shutting her eyes, she takes a few deep breaths and remembers what it was like to be a bat. It's the way she'd change shape, if the rift hadn't taken that aspect of her magic away. She narrows her focus, calling up a memory of clinging to a cool, stone wall, the cave filled with a faint whisper of wind and hollow drip of water. Holding on to the memory, she opens her mind and tries to send it out - not to Peter, specifically, but to anyone who might be within a short distance of where she's sitting.

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