applesaucedream | Earth Day is upon us!

Current Music: April 22, 2013

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Earth Day is upon us!

To what dark realm will the rift bring the dreamers of Manhattan tonight? Another dark, craggy island? A deathly, abandoned place where they will be forced to confront their deepest, darkest demons?

No, not so much. Tonight the dreamers of Manhattan will find themselves alighting in a beautiful, sunlit zoological park. Well-kept paths wind between spacious enclosures, state of the art habitat design allowing visitors close-up views of the animals without depriving the latter of room to roam. One might wander into the indoor aquarium with its tropical microclimate, or go for a stroll in a shady arboretum. Food stands dot the pathways, each one serving up a variety of oddly themed foodstuffs, free of charge. It's hard not to be happy in such a wondrous place.

No, really, it's hard not to be happy. Feelings of well-being permeate the air and the people and animals breathing it -- one has so much to be thankful for, after all.

Oh, and those animals? Probably not what one would expect to find at a typical, earthly zoo. Creatures of myth and fantasy occupy the many enclosures: sea serpents in the aquarium, winged horses in the aviaries, and everything that flies or crawls or slithers through the imagination of the universe's many cultures in the various enclosures.

[Mod Note: Once again it's time for a shared dream! We're back to optional themes this month, so players are free to choose whether and how much to have the happiness whammy apply to their characters. As always, all players and all characters are welcome, including players who are not members and characters who are not in the game. Memories of this and of all dreaming threads may be retained or forgotten at players' discretion.]

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Yuri thinks, privately, that this thing would probably be able to take him in bear form. He grins and places each of his hands opposite its paws, and only then glances over at her. "That's kind of true of a lot of zoo animals."

Yeah, that's a fair point. She tilts her head in acknowledgment, though she can't resist adding, "A lot of zoo animals would probably leave some kind of trace, though. Not manticores - they're thorough." She swirls her straw around a few times, giving the remains of her smoothie a stir. "I'm Sunshine."

"Dead is dead," shrugs Yuri. "I"m Yuri -- have we met somewhere? Because you seem familiar."

She could point out that there's a bit of a difference between definitely dead and disappeared, particularly for one's relations, but she doesn't want to think about that. Beneath the dream-whammy cheerfulness is the vague conviction that if she starts down that path, she's going to dredge up things she'd rather not. So she lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug, trying to fit his face and his voice and his name and that niggling sense of familiarity into some kind of coherent whole.

"Have you been to Charlie's?" she asks. Obviously he's not a regular, but that doesn't mean he's never stopped by.

"Never heard of i -- whoa!" The manticore doesn't seem to appreciate being ignored, if that sudden swipe at the glass is any indication. Yuri stumbles back, heart pounding...and laughs. "Got me," he admits to it. To Sunshine, he asks, "Maybe I've seen you around the park?" Or under the park, but best not to say that part until he's sure.

Sunshine starts when the manticore lashes out, though she's far enough from the glass that she doesn't feel the need to retreat further. See, this is why you shouldn't tease the things.

"Which park?" she asks. New Arcadia has more than one, after all.

Yuri gives her a blank look. Sure, there are other parks, but he's been in Manhattan long enough that he assumes everyone knows what he means when he talks about the park.

"Central Park," he supplies after a moment.

Central Park? Definitely not New Arcadia…

… Oh, wait. Because she's not in New Arcadia anymore. Her expression is a study in dawning realization followed immediately by deep disappointment. She'd managed to forget about the whole carthaginian rift business, and the dream-whammy can't even begin to compete with her negative feelings about that.

"Right. That one," she says without enthusiasm.

Wow, she must really not like Central Park. "I know the zoo there's not as cool as this one, but it's not that bad," he jokes feebly, unsure why the mood has just soured.

Gods and frigging angels, look at him try to salvage things. Sunshine flaps a hand at him, not wanting him to waste his efforts. "It's not that, it's… I'm new," she says by way of explanation.

"Oh!" Understanding dawns, and his smile melts into a sympathetic look. "Oh. So you did come through the rift?"

"Yeah. It's been…" how long has it been? She's having a hard time pinning it down. "… A couple of days?" she hazards. Less than a week.

Longer than her first disappearance. Long enough for her family to be worried sick.

"I've been in New York for a couple years now," supplies Yuri. "It probably won't help if I say it gets easier, huh?"

"Years?" Sunshine repeats, incredulous. Shiva wept. So much for her internal pity party. She raises her smoothie cup in an ironic toast to his more justifiable displeasure; clearly this guy has more to complain about than she does, however well he's adjusted. "Sorry," she says.

"It's..." He starts to shrug, but why say it's okay? It's obviously not. And if she only knew what he and his baby brother have been through....

"It is what it is."

Yep, and it's definitely time to change the subject.

"So what have you been doing?" she asks, inclining her head in a silent invitation to keep going down the path - or is it up the path? She's yet to come across any kind of obvious entrance to the place, so it's hard to judge.

She's also still got the coffeehouse routine drilled into her brain, and while she can survive without the four AM mornings, she's pretty sure that staying here for any length of time without working out some kind of job is going to drive her nuts.

Yuri steps away from the glass, leaving a somewhat disappointed-looking manticore behind. "I'm a freelance writer," he replies. "I try to help out with the new rifties, too, so it's good to have work without a set schedule."

Also because he'd have to take sick leave every month, but he's not going to go into that.

"I'm a baker." No point in bringing up her other talents; from what she gathered during her slapdash orientation, magic-handling is the sort of thing you don't mention in New York - not because of any preconceived notions people have about magic-handlers, but because there aren't any. Which is going to be a hell of an adjustment; it's bad enough living in an unwarded apartment without also knowing that you can't go get some wards because no one's making them. And there's not a lot her knife or her necklace can do against anything besides vampires. "Or I was, anyway, back home."

"At least you've got a skill?" suggests Yuri with a hopeful half shrug. He and Erik had arrived not even done with schooling. Of course, he couldn't imagine that it was easy to break into the restaurant scene in New York. "Even if you can't find a job, I'm sure they'd love to have you help around the base."

Hmmm. The base's set-up is a bit more cafeteria than she's used to, but she could probably adjust to that. It'd be spending significant chunks of her day underground that would be an issue. She doesn't just like sunlight - she needs it. Bad enough that she's stuck in some weird alternate dimension; she definitely doesn't want to make herself as sick as she was when she and her mom lived in that godawful little basement apartment.

Nor, from what she's gathered, is NYC the sort of place where she could indulge in some single-minded basking to make up for lost time. Even if the rift is courteous enough to refrain from dropping aliens on her head, there's no shortage of bog-standard humans to, at the very least, distract her.

"I don't know if I could spend that much time underground," she says.

Yuri laughs and shrugs again. "My room's down there. I should probably come up top more often than I do." Though at least his patrols for new rifties provide an excuse to walk around in the sunlight. Otherwise, he really could live and work all underground. That's probably not all that healthy.

No, it probably isn't. Less so than it would be for her, but still. Everyone needs sunlight.

"Last time I lived in a basement apartment, I was sick for months until we moved," she says. "I don't really remember it, but my mom says I spent the following weeks moving from window to window and lying in every spare scrap of sunlight I could find. I even pushed a huge chest of drawers out of the way. Don't ask me how. I was, like, six."

"Man, what were you doing, photosynthesizing?" If he only knew. "I'm guessing they've got you in one of the high rise apartments then, huh?"

"Something like that," she replies with a faint smile. "But yeah, they do. South-facing windows and everything." It had been a lucky break, insofar as anything that happens in this carthaginian mirror-verse counts as 'lucky.' The first thing she'd done was take down the curtains and pull up the blinds so there was nothing stopping as much sunlight as possible from getting in. The brightness had helped to offset - if only temporarily - the discomfort of having no wards, which feels a bit like a persistent draft. If she really does end up stuck here for any length of time, she's going to have to do something about that.

Surely there will be someone around who's familiar with warding. Maybe Cecil can get her some pig's blood. Yuri won't be involved in that, obviously; he's from a science universe.

"So I guess that's a no on working underground," he chuckles. "Is that what you like to do, though? Bake?"

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