The Tropical Vacation of Your Dreams

[applesaucemod]

The communal dreams of Manhattan have been downright pleasant lately, haven't they? Here's another sunny day for dreamers to enjoy in their sleep, though of course the tropical climate may prove just a little uncomfortable for northerners. The verdant jungle has its own sort of charm, though, teeming as it is with all sorts of exotic animals.

Make that very exotic animals.

Those who arrive close by any of the old buildings or fences will see that it's been a long time since the humans that made them disappeared. Everything here was once sleek, shiny, and state of the art. Now formerly electric fences stand bent and torn, automated SUVs sit rusting on their tracks or lie smashed to pieces where they were thrown by some enormous creature, and the jungle slowly works to reclaim a mildewy hotel and visitors' center.

Whether one finds oneself in the formless jungle that was once paddocks, in the aviary that would have housed a luxury resort, or even in the halls of what should by all rights be the most heavily fortified hotel in the world, one is always in danger here. The barriers that once separated human from dinosaur have long since fallen. Here dinosaurs have eked out a new ecosystem, the carnivores not particularly bothered about eating herbivores from entirely different epochs…or, for that matter, the funny little hairless apes that have appeared here on occasion. Here one is always in danger of running afoul of hungry tyrannosaurs, stampeding triceratops, or cunning deinonychus velociraptors (they're totally velociraptors, yup). Enjoy the eye-searing venom of that strangely undersized dilophosaurus, by the way, as well as the toxic bite of the swarms of compsognathus. Or maybe the dreamers will luck out, and the worst they'll encounter is an indifferent, bumbling brachiosaurus or an unassuming microceratops. Who here is ever that lucky, though?

Welcome to Jurassic Park.



[Mod note: Same drill as always. All players and characters are welcome, current members or no. Characters will remember or forget any and all dream events at players' discretion. Death in the dream does not result in real death.]

Comments

[peeta_mellark]

Peeta is in the jungle again.

There's a familiar hint of salt in the humid air, and both the heat and the shadow of dense vegetation hang heavy about him. He can feel his pulse quickening, his breathing becoming shallow as panic tries to rise. Focusing his swimming mind, he tries to remember the last thing that happened, but his memories are a jumbled mess.

He was in the water, then he was in the trees. Then he was fighting - something? He shakes his head, and a thought clicks into place that erases all others.

Katniss.

He pivots in place, eyes searching the undergrowth, half expecting to find her lying there, bleeding and dying - or dead. He can't fully explain why he expects that, but they're in the Games and she isn't here with him and that's enough to add up to death.

He has no idea where he is, but he picks a path that looks clearest and starts running. He's going full-tilt, glancing back over his shoulder, when he plows into a fence. It isn't an invisible barrier, like in the arena, or electrified, like the District fences. In fact, the wires of the fence are far too widely spaced to have been built with the intention of containing people.

"Muttations," Peeta mutters, and a shudder rolls through him as he looks back over his shoulder again. He hesitates, wondering what side of the fence he is on - the "in" or the "out" - but a closer look through the wires reveals that there is a road not far away from the fence. He frowns at that; there aren't roads in the arena, are there?

Confused, but sure that the road side of the fence is the better side, he easily slips between the fence wires and walks toward the road. There's a track of some kind in the middle of it that reminds him a little of a single railroad rail. Following the track with his eyes, he starts when he spots a car not far away. Even as hurries toward it, he can see the rust that lays heavy across the body. It's sitting on the track, but that all it's doing; it clearly won't be moved. Not that Peeta would have any idea how to move it, but at least he could have tried.

He's staring forlornly at the useless vehicle when a sound unlike anything he's ever heard before rends the air. Head snapping up, he spots - are those birds? - taking flight from trees somewhere much closer to the horizon than he is. A faint tremble ripples through the ground and, without giving the instinct a second thought, Peeta turns in the opposite direction of the noise and, following the road, he bolts.