applesaucedream | A Day Late and a Dollar Short

As far as dreams go, this seems surprisingly...normal. True, the dreamers of Manhattan and beyond will find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean on a fairly deserted rocky island, but it's nothing so unusual as the labyrinth from last time, and no one appears to have become an animal or reverted to an insane past (or future) version of themself. Besides, well, rocks and grass, there's nothing here but an abandoned lighthouse, the doors and windows broken, and the spare furniture worn by the weather. You can go up the spiral staircase to look at the view, but there's nothing to see but the endless ocean. One might almost think tonight was a night for simple socializing via the telepathic current.

As if anything to do with the rift is ever that simple, you silly bumpkin. How quickly each person realizes what is unusual about tonight's dream will depend in large part on their personality. Some might go the entire night without noticing (except from the distress of others, naturally), but some will find out the instant they open their mouths to converse with another dreamer. You see, each and every dreamer will be completely unable to tell a lie for as long as the dream lasts. The truth might be evaded by omission, but any attempt to say that which is untrue will result in the corresponding truth emerging instead.

Good thing it's just a dream and everyone's going to forget in the morning, right? Right??

[Mod note: As usual, players can choose to have their characters remember or forget anything that happens in the Dreaming. As per usual party rules, both members and non-members are welcome to play any character in this post, regardless of whether that character is currently in the game. Unlike usual, tonight's theme is not optional; all characters will be subject to the enforced truth-telling. Have fun!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Horse lords, he what?! Daine gapes up at Sam, hoping he's lying - but if his reaction is anything to go by, he isn't. And he's not the first to blurt out a truth without meaning to in this conversation. Still, she decides to test his guess about what the rift is doing before she responds to anything else.

I haven't given him any pets, she tries to say. "I gave him a dog," is what comes out, and she frowns. "Odd's bobs. I think you're right about the truth-telling."

Which makes his comment about Gabriel all the more disturbing. Granted, Daine doesn't know all that much about the angel - except that he is one, and that he's sneaky, and that he's good with animals - but she wouldn't have pegged him as being that nasty. She wonders, rather uneasily, what kind of lesson Gabriel was trying to teach... and, rather uncharitably, whether Sam might have deserved it. Little as she knows Gabriel, she knows Sam even less so, and since she never got to meet that hellhound, the fact that he was after it didn't raise him much in her esteem.

"And as far as the rift is concerned, probably not," she says dryly, dropping her gaze to the ground. Her magic is still working, right? Has the rift mucked with that again? Given that Sam's so tall, she guesses he won't notice if she tries something subtle with her eyes. Taking in a breath, she sharpens her vision to that of a hawk's. It works. She lets out the breath, relieved, and shifts her eyes back to normal. Good. She can make a hasty getaway if she needs to.

'Typical,' Sam mutters bitterly, shaking his head and shoving his hair back off his forehead. As he looks up, he briefly catches some kind of shift in her eyes, a flicker that he can't categorise. It's not a change to black, but he's met enough monsters that you can only tell through the eyes that it gives him pause. He tucks the information away in his head, but doesn't pursue it for now; she is a mage, and not from his universe. He's probably gonna have to get used to the fact that the usual rules don't apply here.

There are more pressing things on his mind at the moment, though, namely, Gabriel. 'What's he been doing around here for a couple months? Gabriel, I mean. No-one's been dying any... ironically gruesome deaths, have they?'

Daine looks up at that, her brows knit together. Gruesome deaths? Dream rules aside, she has a hard time believing that Gabriel would go in for that sort of thing.

"Not so far as I've heard," she says flatly. And she'd like to think she would have heard. She shrugs, her expression softening into something a bit more quizzical. "I imagine he's just surviving like the rest of us. He doesn't exactly confide in me."

'Yeah, no, sorry, why would you know?' Sam doesn't imagine Gabriel's in the habit of confiding in anybody. It's difficult even to go as far as imagining him having friends.

The flatness of Daine's voice and the tilt to her brows as she looks up at him are not unfamiliar, and Sam snorts a laugh at himself, nearly subvocal. 'You think I'm nuts, don't you?' His tone is somewhere between sardonic and resigned. 'Can't lie here, but I might just be paranoid and delusional?'

That hits so close to home that she feels her cheeks reddening. "I hardly know you," she points out, both to excuse her suspicions and to deprive them of any real weight. Whatever she thinks of him, she's not out to offend him a-purpose or make any enemies, here.

'That would be a yes, then.' Sam hooks his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and offers a crooked little smile. Her obvious embarrassment is weirdly kind of reassuring; she might think he's crazy, but at least she has the decency to want to keep that to herself. Possibly Sam should be offended that that's the impression he's left to begin with, but, 'It's not the first time. People-- most people-- don't believe in the supernatural, in my world. Coming off like a head case is kind of a hazard of the job.'

He's half afraid that, under the compulsion of the truth spell, he might come out with something about that time he hallucinated Lucifer for months, or the fact that his upbringing's screwed him up so bad probably any psychiatrist would have a field day with him, but blessedly, nothing does.

"It's an 'I don't know,'" she insists, and it even comes out the way she means it to. At least he doesn't seem upset with her. She's still a bit flushed, though, not least of all because it's only his ideas about Gabriel - and hellhounds - that give her pause. She's far more comfortable with the idea of monsters than plenty of other people in the city, so she'd rather he didn't think she was dubious about that.

"We've got some nasty immortals in my realm, but it'd only sound mad if you didn't think they were real. I expect just about everyone has seen at least one immortal since they started coming through." Maybe even one of the nicer ones, if they were lucky.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

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