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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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?"

Her eyes narrow a little at the question. Maybe it's the vague implication that Manhattan is… what, an opportunity for her to spread her (entirely metaphorical) wings and chase her dreams? That is entirely too much optimism for this stage of the game.

Or maybe it's the vague implication that Charlie's was just a job and not a pretty significant chunk of her life.

"Yes," she says, sounding just a bit defensive. "I'm good at it, too. You haven't lived until you've had one of my cinnamon rolls."

If he didn't pretend it's okay and they can just go around living their lives like it doesn't matter that they'll never see home again, there's no way Yuri would get by from day to day. Anyway, he'd found a way to make himself useful. A couple ways, even.

"Whole new world full of people who haven't lived, then," he points out, still grinning.

Look at that grin. Gods and angels, it's like trying to stay annoyed with a puppy. Sunshine very deliberately does not smile back at him.

"There must be some above-ground bakeries that could use the help," she says. "I could just borrow the base's facilities to get a resume going." They wouldn't mind that, right? Hey, she's going to end up with more than she needs of any one thing, which means the rebels can snack on the excess. Everyone wins.

"Well, yeah," he admits. "You don't have to work for the rebels. You don't even have to go down in the base if you really don't like it down there." See? He didn't mean anything by it, and now she's the rude one for rejecting the possibility.

Oh, no need to get huffy. It's not personal; she's not leery of the base because she 'doesn't like it' so much as because it would be physically unhealthy for her to spend a lot of time there. (Although yeah, to be perfectly honest, 'underground bunker' isn't really her style.)

She gives Yuri a sidelong glance, trying to gauge just how hard she's unwittingly yanked his proverbial chain, when she realizes why he looks familiar. It's his shadows - they remind her of Mrs. Bialosky's. Oh, damn, does this mean he's a Were? Because if so, he's just shot right to the top of the list of people whose proverbial chains she definitely shouldn't be yanking.

"Sorry," she says. "Nothing against the place. I just need my sunlight."

Yuri gives her a funny look, suddenly piecing together all that stuff she said about getting sick in the basement apartment and coming up with something beyond her just getting seasonal affective disorder or whatever. "Are you some kind of reverse vampire?" he asks. A second later he realizes that question was a.) really rude and b.) pretty stupid sounding, and gives an awkward cough. "Sorry, I guess it's not really any of my business if you are. And I don't know what that would even be, so. Um."

Sunshine's eyebrows shoot up at the question, not so much because it's rude (although yeah, it kind of is - or it would be back home) as because it's pretty close to the mark for someone who only has 'I need sunlight' to go on. Technically speaking, the same could be said of any human and the vast majority of partbloods, though there are some demon crosses who can cope better than most without it. Even Yuri the were-something probably isn't doing himself any favors by living all moleman. (Unless he's a weremole. Then it actually might make sense.)

She's kind of tempted to ask him if he's some kind of Were, but one rude turn doesn't necessarily deserve another. Instead, she shrugs. "Something like that. I have an affinity for sunlight."

Which translates to a counteraffinity for vampires, but she doesn't much want to address that aspect of it all. It's not like it's even all that relevant here, if Spike is an accurate representation of the sort of suckers the rift picks up. She hopes so, and not just for her own safety. The thought of the rift dumping Con in broad daylight, only to have him immediately go up in flames while she's twenty blocks away and oblivious, has been tainting her dreams, lately.

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