Earth Day is upon us!

[applesaucemod]

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.]

Comments

[rae_of_sun]

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."

[stronglikebear]

"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?"

[rae_of_sun]

"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.

[stronglikebear]

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?"

[rae_of_sun]

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."

[stronglikebear]

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.

[rae_of_sun]

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.

[stronglikebear]

"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.

[rae_of_sun]

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."

[stronglikebear]

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."

[rae_of_sun]

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.

[stronglikebear]

Bears live in caves, right? And he meant it pretty sarcastically; it only occurred to him after he said it that there might be such a thing as a reverse vampire and that she might be it. Even if she isn't, it was a dumb thing to say. What a person is isn't really a thing to ask unless you're the one working out housing arrangements and need to know to put someone in a high apartment so they can commune with the sky, or keep them away from the base kitchen in case of garlic, or whatever.

"...Oh." So he...did guess something. Great. Now he feels like even more of a heel than if it had turned out she was just a regular human he'd teased for no reason. "I guess...that makes sense? I mean, we get all kinds of people here, you know?"

[rae_of_sun]

Would it make him feel better if she told him she knew he was a Were? Or, okay, 'strongly suspected,' but still. Probably not. Which is why she's not going to mention it.

She's not above a dry, "Yeah, you really do," though. The shadows back home had plenty of variation, but it was a variation she was starting to slowly categorize. Now, she's had to start over from scratch, and she's still trying to sort out the difference between New Universe Weird and Foreign To The New Universe Weird and P.S. Also I'm Some Kind Of Alien/Partblood/Odin-Only-Knows-What Weird. It's going to take some getting used to. It would take some getting used to even if she was inclined to really throw herself into it… which is why she tells herself it really doesn't matter if she isn't so inclined. You could say her nose is still out of joint regarding the whole rift-aided displacement.

[stronglikebear]

"I hope you don't have a problem with that." Since, you know, they all have to live with each other if they don't want to get themselves killed or scooped up by ROMAC But there he goes again, being more blunt than he really means to.

"Is this your first time sharing a dream?" he asks, abruptly changing the topic.

[rae_of_sun]

Oh, no you don't. Sunshine presses her lips together, suddenly and irrationally irritated. Or maybe it's not so irrational, because a) her extended coffeehouse family is lousy with partbloods and peris and at least one Were, and oh, by the way, she's friends with a vampire, so there are several places he's welcome to shove his concern that she's some kind of bigot. And b) the last few days have been pretty godsbloodyawful and she reserves the right to be as grumpy about it as she pleases.

"I don't have a problem with Weres, if that's what you're worried about." There. Two can play the blunt game.

[stronglikebear]

Yuri makes a little choking sound, unable to hide his surprise. He recovers as best he can, though he abruptly stops walking. "Well, good, because you might meet some."

Seriously, though, what the hell? Why would she pick out that one thing? He didn't say anything about it, did he?

[rae_of_sun]

Well, that confirms her guess just as well as a direct admission would. She stops as well, planting her slushie-free hand on her hip. "Some?" she repeats, eyebrows raised. "How many of you are there?"

She is distantly aware that she might end up really regretting blowing his cover, but she's still too grumpy to care. Besides, if she's cheesing off a local Were community, she might as well know just what she's gotten herself into.

[stronglikebear]

As if Yuri has a community. As far as he knows the answer is a big, fat 'one,' but for all he knows there are others who aren't with the rebels, or who are from universes where the rules are different and they don't need locking up. He bristles and ignores the question, which is a really freaking rude one anyway. "I didn't say anything about being a were," he reminds her tersely. "So what the hell?"

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine heaves a sigh and cards a hand through her hair. "Mrs. Bialosky," she says, her tone a bit gentler than it was a moment ago. "She's one of our regulars, back at the coffeehouse where I work." Used to work? Ugh. "She's a Were - I don't know were-what. You've got similar sorts of…" she makes a vague gesture toward her own face, "shadows. It's… kind of hard to describe."

She's read studies about how if you speak a language with more precise and varied terms for, say, different shades of blue, you end up actually better at distinguishing between subtle variations in the color blue. Maybe she needs to start making up words for shadow weirdness. Not that they'd be any help for people who don't see things the way she does, a.k.a. everyone else. Speaking of being sole members of miserable clubs.

"I don't have a problem with Weres," she says, fully one-hundred-percent sarcasm free. "But I shouldn't have called you out like that. Sorry." There, see? If he turns out to be a wereskunk, there is no need for him to make her life a living hell.

[stronglikebear]

"Shadows?" Now he's just confused. What do shadows have to do with anything? Yuri starts to lift a hand to touch his face to make sure there's nothing on it, but lowers it again and awkwardly stuffs both hands in his pockets instead. He frowns and gives his head a little shake. "You can't tell anyone," he says gruffly, trying to sound stern instead of scared. "Not even the other rebels."

[rae_of_sun]

"I wasn't planning on it," she assures him. Whatever universe he's from, it's enough like hers that she can't help but feel a little sense of solidarity, here. She wanders a step closer, figuring she owes him a good answer about the shadows, since frankly, being a Were is a more dire secret than having an affinity for sunlight. "I can, um, see in the dark. Any dark. Sometimes I can learn stuff about people by looking at their shadows. Like… if they're lying. Or if they're not entirely human." She lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. "It sounds more impressive than it is. In practice, it's mostly just a pain in the ass."

[stronglikebear]

"But it's not dark here." It's so sunny and nice, actually. Sunny and nice and helping Yuri feel at least a little bit like he doesn't have his deepest, darkest secrets out on display for some stranger to see. He glances down at the shadow he's casting on the ground, but that's not what she was looking at, was it?

"Blythe can tell if people are lying," he comments. "I don't think it's shadows with her, though."

[rae_of_sun]

"Shadows count. Even little, faint ones." Maybe if she had any carthaginian idea how it technically worked, she could give him a more detailed explanation. As far as she can tell, all the shadow stuff is an unpleasant side effect of having her Sucker Specs turned on during broad daylight, when no vampire would ever be out and about. Total darkness is the only time she's allowed to just see things normally, anymore, and it's skegging obnoxious.

"Anyway, I didn't always have it. It was a… gift." And how rude of Con to not include a receipt so she could return it for something that actually fits. Well… she can't be mad at Con. He wasn't trying to give her dark vision, he was trying to save her life - and it worked. Weird vision was a price worth paying.

[stronglikebear]

Normal's all relative, as certain scientifically-minded rifties would be glad to inform her. Her normal has just changed, that's all.

"But not one you got from the rift? I'm pretty sure most of the people with powers got them from coming through." And why couldn't it give him the power to control his cycle? Or just any power at all, really. Of course, getting a power didn't work out so great for Erik, or for a few other people he could name.

[rae_of_sun]

If certain scientifically-minded rifties try to sell her that line, certain scientifically-minded rifties are going to get the verbal reaming of a lifetime. It's going to be a long damn time before her dark vision graduates from 'obnoxious pain she tolerates because she has to' to 'normal.'

"No." The rift hasn't given her anything, as far as she can tell. Which is fine with her. Bringing her here in the first place was enough damage, thanks. "I got it from a friend a few months ago."