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]

"It was," she agrees, pleasantly surprised that it worked so well. "Well, it was for bats. Want to try some flying memories?"

[fucking_ebay]

Peter hesitates, trying to decide whether to confess that the memory wasn't so crystal clear he's confident he could have taken instructions off it. He decides no.

"If you insist," he says with a cheerful little wave of his thumb.

[wildmage_daine]

For whatever it's worth, he wasn't really meant to get much from it other than the sense of being there. The fact that it seems to have relaxed him a bit is a not-entirely-unforseen bonus.

"Okay." She'll have to be extra specific for this one, elsewise he might not get anything useful from it. Deciding just to focus on steady flight instead of the more complicated task of landing, she shuts her eyes again.

What she calls up is a mix of memory and imagination. She's a tiny pipistrelle, not much larger than Peter's bat shape, and she's on the wing above a glassy-smooth lake. Her wings scoop at the air, and she focuses on the sensation, on the exact way her muscles must flex to flap her wings and move her where she needs to go.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter lets out his breath in a sigh and shuts his eyes as the new feeling comes to him. It's difficult for him to just let it come; he wants to focus on it and pinpoint what she's showing him, but it's only when he relaxes and lets his mind drift that he's caught up in it. The muscles in his arms flex in minute imitation of the feelings she's showing him. "Got that part," he mutters, not even realizing he's moving his wings at all.

[wildmage_daine]

Good, Daine replies, forgetting for the moment that she's been talking to Peter aloud until now. Instead, she shifts her mind to landing, the pond giving way to a cave. She approaches the roof of the cave, sharpening her focus as she reaches her landing site. At the last moment, she flips in the air, her feet finding purchase against the rock. Once she's settled, she lets go and flaps a few feet before repeating the process, giving him another chance to experience it secondhand.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter's feet twitch, one or two claws digging into Daine's palm as he tries to grasp the imaginary rock. It seems so simple, but so beyond anything he's tried or is likely to be able to do.

[wildmage_daine]

She half-remembers, half-imagines landing on the rock once more. Then, she switches things up again and pictures the cat tree, instead. She's got a good enough look with her human eyes to imagine how it would look to a bat. After flapping up to the underside of the platform, she flips in the air, claws snagging in the carpeting. It's a bit less crisp than the partial memories, but not by too much.

Daine blinks her eyes open. "How was that?" Judging by the way his claws pricked her hand, he must have gotten something. She just doesn't know if he got enough to help him land.

[fucking_ebay]

Maybe it's the feeling that's most important anyway. Peter tries to pay attention to when to flip, what it feels like to scoop the air the way he needs to in order to make it happen, and when to stretch out his feet and latch on.

This latest sequence is harder to make out. The image is vague, less well defined. He doesn't recognize the cat tree until they're upon it, but then there's the reassuring repetition, the ease of snagging the carpet.

He's still submerged in reverie when she asks him a question. Blinking and looking around, he eyes the cat tree with somewhat less trepidation than he might have. "Alright, I guess. It's different to do than to watch." But hey, he mastered sleight of hand -- what's a little aerial acrobatics?

[wildmage_daine]

"True," she agrees, leaning back on the hand that isn't occupied. "But did you get a sense of how landing ought to feel?" If so, maybe he'll be willing to try again - and less likely to hurt himself in the attempt.

[fucking_ebay]

He sniffs dramatically. "Yeah," he acknowledges. "Yeah, that was -- the feeling of it really came through."

Turning to face his target, he creeps up to the tips of Daine's fingers, thumbs hooked over the edge. He pauses there a moment or two, psyching himself up, before launching himself into the air.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine nods, pleased that it worked as well as it did. "Good luck," she says as he launches himself off of her hand. Holding her breath, she watches him approach the cat tree.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter nears the platform, but realizes he's come in too high -- or at least, it feels like it. There's a moment where it looks like he'll stall out again when he turns, but then the air fills his wings and he goes flapping off in a circle before coming round to it again. This time, he comes up below the platform, flips...

And misses. His toes clutch at empty air, and it's all he can do to spiral to the ground instead of plummeting like a small, hairy rock.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine tuts as Peter misses his grip, but he's still definitely improving. Five minutes ago, he might not have been able to recover himself so well.

"That was close," she says as she leans forward and offers her hand again. "You nearly had it. And you recovered pretty well."

[fucking_ebay]

"Couldn't see where it was when I flipped," explains Peter, needing to justify his performance despite her reassurances. He clambers onto her hand, ready to be lifted up for another go -- now that he knows how not to fall (usually), practicing isn't so intimidating.

[wildmage_daine]

Once he's on her hand, Daine backs up a few paces so he'll have a slightly longer approach. Hopefully that'll lessen the chances of him needing to circle back around.

"It's tricky," she says with a nod. "You can't really see what your feet are doing, so you just have to make sure you're close enough to grab hold when you flip."

[fucking_ebay]

Peter nods, thinking of how he's learned the timing for countless tricks and stunts. This is a bit different, of course, especially from the sleight of hand he's doing these days...but it boils down to the same instinct. "Timing, yeah."

He takes off again, this time swooping in low so he can take it on his first pass, before he gets himself worked up about it. This time when he flips, one claw catches and he dangles awkwardly for a few seconds, swinging wildly from a single toe before he loses his hold. It's long enough, though, that he can orient himself to open his wings and fly again when he drops, circling back around Daine for another shot at it.

[wildmage_daine]

"Exactly." She watches him approach the cat tree, and sits up a bit straighter when he manages to snag it - but then he drops. He recovers quickly, though, and circles back for another go.

"This time, I bet," she says encouragingly, because he really did almost have it before.

[fucking_ebay]

Remembering to use his echolocation this time, Peter comes in for the third time, swooping upward just so, throwing himself back at what he thinks is just the right moment -- and there!

"Fuck yeah!" he exults as his toes dig deep into the carpeting and hold. There's still a good deal of awkward swinging and wing-fluttering, but his grip is good enough that he can adjust himself for comfort without falling, and he does so.

[wildmage_daine]

"Yes!" Daine leans forward, beaming. "That was perfect!" She gets up so she can crouch next to the cat tree. "Well done."

[fucking_ebay]

He'd preen if he were a bird. He could lick himself, maybe, but it wouldn't have the desired effect.

"I thought so," he agrees, cheerful again now that he's been successful.

[wildmage_daine]

"So you can fly, you can see with your ears, and you can land. Not sure there's much more I can teach you - unless you're sure you don't want to try catching bugs." She grins playfully at him, guessing the answer to that one will be 'no.'

[fucking_ebay]

"Very sure," says Peter firmly. He hasn't actually seen any bugs, so it seems unlikely to come up even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't. "Are you saying you've stopped feeling obligated to spend time with me?"

[wildmage_daine]

"Obligated, yes," she says, because it's no insult to admit at much. "But I'm not saying I'd rather not." She's not trying to chase him away, but she doesn't want him to feel obligated to spend time with her, either.

[fucking_ebay]

"Why is it always teenagers?" Peter wonders suddenly, squinting up at her. Really, though, apart from Lucy and Ginger, it seems like the only people he's befriended in recent history have been teens. "You'd think I'd meet other people. It's not like I set out to do it."

[wildmage_daine]

"Well, there are a few of us around," Daine says with a shrug, assuming he's referring to Luke or Edgar. And she imagines there are plenty of rifties around her age who, like her, can't attend school for various reasons and are at loose ends more often than not.