applesaucedream | Far Side of the Aurora Borealis

Far Side of the Aurora Borealis

Congratulations, dreamers of Manhattan - you get to go to Oxford! It's probably not the Oxford with which any of the dreamers are familiar, though. This one is a bit… different.

The dreamers will find themselves in Jordan College, the oldest and grandest of all the colleges in this version of Oxford, a rambling structure that includes dining halls, libraries, classrooms, chapels, courtyards, a botanical garden, and an extensive network of cellars and tunnels beneath the ground. There are plenty of places to explore!

Sharp-eyed dreamers might notice some subtle architectural quirks. Doors look larger than they'd need to be for solely human use, and every staircase has a little ramp built in - not large enough for a wheelchair, but large enough for, say, a small, scampering animal.

And speaking of - the dreamers are a bit different here, too. Upon arrival, they will realize that they now possess dæmons: physical manifestations of their souls. Be gentle with them; they're undoubtedly confused by being suddenly made manifest. They come with all the side effects and complications inherent with dæmons. They can't travel more than a few yards from their person without it being painful for both parties… and it probably won't take the dreamers long to realize they shouldn't be touching one another's dæmons, what with the shared sensations and all. Still, it's a rare opportunity for the dreamers to chat with their own souls - and the souls of others.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Mod note: you know the drill. All players and characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're current members or not. Characters will remember or forget any and all dream events at players' discretion.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

'I think it has to do with a representation of certain key traits?' Cosima says, an excited offering of a half-finished theory. 'I mean, it's not like it's my area of study exactly, but I know lemurs are super social, and intelligent, and also matriarchal, I'm pretty sure? And I guess you're-- I don't know, magic?' She flaps a hand in the direction of the girl and her unicorn, and then continues. 'I mean, obviously any system of semiotics is gonna be subjective, in terms of what certain animals represent; you know, you can have the snake that, depending on the culture it's in, means intelligence, or infinity, or Satan, or whatever, but--'

In the midst of her babble, Palinouros wraps himself around her head and covers her mouth with one small, knobbly black hand. Cosima shuts up, and Palinouros gives the girl a dry look-- surprisingly dry, given his huge, golden eyes.

'We're a scientist,' he explains. 'We get kind of excited about these things.'

Cosima gives the girl and the unicorn a slightly abashed grin. 'Sorry, uh, we've been trying to figure things out. And I was... going to ask if I could touch him.'

Even as she's said it, though, she feels slightly uneasy about it. Why she should, she's unsure, but she does, as if there's some line that she's crossed that she wasn't aware of before she'd done so. She pulls an awkward face. 'But-- possibly that's my scientific curiosity getting the better of me? Oh man, and here I haven't introduced myself. I'm Cosima; this is Palinouros.'

Sadie takes the offered hand with a smile as Augustine says, "The real question is whether we ought to just park ourselves down there, or bring the booze back up with us." Glancing between Sadie, Gertrude, and Frank, he adds, "I think we could just about manage a barrel between us, so long as we found a ramp or an elevator or something."

"Capital idea!" says Frank. "We'll do that! Perhaps we could have a liquor picnic out on the lawn! A place like this has to have a lawn. It's been far too long since we had a liquor picnic, my loves!"

"A liquor picnic sounds lovely," Sadie agrees. "Ooh! And we'll need some glasses. Once we've obtained our barrel, we shall have to locate a kitchen!"

"First things first," Augustine says as the winding staircase ends in an arched doorway. And beyond that… "Barrels!" the fox declares triumphantly.

"Well done everyone!" says Frank, stepping into the lush cellar.

"Let's see, now, what have we here..." He stoops to inspect the first set of barrels. A little drop hangs from the spigot of one, and he catches it delicately on his finger and pops it in his mouth.

He reels back with a horrified gasp, and Gertrude immediately begins growling at the treacherous barrels. "WINE!" he cries.

She recalls what happened to the butterflies and it pains her to hear that he had to go through that as well, but the rabbit's insistent reassurance draws her attention and she glances down at it in surprise. These manifestations are probably more likely to be straightforward and truthful, she thinks, having found her own to lack her restraint and all those learned concepts like linear time. When Johnny agrees with his rabbit, she nods a little, trying to take solace in his sincerity.

"Thank you, and I am glad to hear it. I have been... recovering." At least from the physical damage; the painful ruination of her hope to leave this universe as well as her future fate still weigh heavily on her.

The Unicorn, finding linear time far less serviceable than the TARDIS does, is beginning to get distracted from this conversation and brings its head to eye-level with Johnny, regarding him with timelessly old dark eyes. "You are quite broken, aren't you?" it declares in its melodious voice that is neither discernibly male nor female. "Set her down. I will be looking at her," it adds, motioning demandingly at the rabbit with its flexible lips.

Johnny blinks at the Unicorn, not entirely certain just how affronted he is. "Excuse me?" he says, but Nova is already squirming in his arms.

"Put me down!" she whispers, and Johnny does so, though he doesn't keep from giving the Unicorn a serious side-eye.

"So," he says, looking back to the TARDIS. "Nice to, uh, meet you. Properly." He gestures vaguely at their new attachments. "How about this, huh?"

The TARDIS isn't even aware that the Unicorn has said anything particularly rude, though it was perhaps a little off topic. At Johnny's gesturing, she watches the animals for a moment. "They are reflections of the basic structures of our minds, though I am not certain how they came to manifest here," she tells him helpfully, in case he hadn't figured that out yet. All in all, she can offer regrettably little information on the matter, but there is something she is more interested in anyway, and she raises her eyes to his again. "You mentioned having a few guesses as to your reaction to me. Would you share them?"

Meanwhile, the Unicorn lowers its head close to Novatiana, but it can't even get down far enough to get a proper look. With a loud snort it heaves its heavy body onto the floor, folding its legs until the feathering around its ankles pools together like a bed of spun gold. Then it moves its snout towards the rabbit again, waiting for her to come closer. "How small you are," it says in something like wonder.

"Sounds about right," murmurs Johnny, and jumps as the Unicorn drops down heavily. Nova jerks back a bit, but she inches forward again, sniffing at the Unicorn's snout.

"I am quite small," she agrees. "You're very... big." She gazes up. "And beautiful." She gives the feathering hair around his hooves a little nudge with her nose.

"Um," says Johnny, watching this ordeal with bemusement. "Well..." He looks levelly at the TARDIS, wondering how much he should say. "It's only a theory... and a pretty uneducated one... but..." He hesitates, not wanting to say something too forward, not knowing what the threshold of "forward" is with this woman/ship/entity.

"I sort of have a bad history," he says, not knowing how else to begin, "with... I guess you'd call it architectural inconsistency." He casts a glance around as though suddenly afraid some such anomoly is about to make itself known. "You... I mean, the ship part of you... I think there's a lot more than just what I saw outside. Right? Like when I was dreaming... I was inside you, right? The tree, the library, the butterflies... that was all in you. In the box."

A lot of this was just an intrinsic sense that he managed to file out of a mess of reactionary feelings after the fact - and some of it was gleaned from the dream. He has no idea why he should know any of this about her, but her entire structural existence, if he's right about what it is, is pure anathema to him. Why that's causing him a physical reaction in the real world is another matter entirely, but it seems like a logical place to start.

Zagreus and the chimaera have struck up a strange and armoured sort of friendship, not that either would know to call it that or be comfortable doing so. Plurality of self is unsettling, and what's the point of any of his usual displays if the audience is a rather mysteriously acquired spiritual manifestation. Not that that stops Zagreus from talking, naturally. And not that it had stopped Alecto ignoring him for a spell after he'd asked for riddles. Turns out that's sphinxes, he'd known it was of course, but he had to ask.

He's almost too busy looking for more book titles to mock to notice the little animal scurrying around the corner. But the chimaera is emphatically not, and he feels the creature's prey drive surge joyously. The rabbit, naturally enough, freezes in fear, while the chimaera pounces, snake-tail feinting and one lion forepaw caging the rabbit underneath. It's a savage display, but rather playful as well. With no feline tail to wave, the snake's head resorts to making abortive little strikes periodically instead, as both the rest sniff at the rabbit rather indelicately. Clearly this is a creature that can no more ignore vulnerability than its counterpart.

"What have you got now, you unruly thing?" he asks, giving the monster's shoulder an affectionate shove as he moves in to inspect. He hauls Alecto's heads away from the trapped rabbit by the goat's horns, though she seems agreeable enough to let him see. Before the rabbit can dart away, he scoops it up by the ears.

As the girl goes on, a somewhat bemused half-smile appears on the TARDIS' face. It's not every day that she meets a human who is quite this excited about scientific discoveries, though she finds it quite a treat. She approves of her inquisitive and sharp mind, enough so even to forgive the girl's very unscientific suggestion of magic. When the girl finally stops for breath, the TARDIS allows herself a politely amused smile.

"I am called the TARDIS," she replies, and the Unicorn interjects, "We like scientists. They make the best pilots, and curiosity the best adventures." It's a fair assessment, though not something the TARDIS would have felt the need to mention. "I am not 'magic'," she continues, "but I have taken the shape of a unicorn before, so perhaps it was simply convenient for my manifestation to do the same. And for the sake of learning more about this phenomenon, you may touch it." The Unicorn, also eager to try this, flicks its ears expectantly.

It only takes seconds for Johnny to feel Novatiana's terror surge through him, and he staggers against the shelf from the shock of it. He can't see what she's seeing, she's not even sure what she's seeing, but it's definitely not good. He shoves himself back off the bookshelves and cuts into a run after her. "Nova?" he calls frantically, feeling her terror reach a higher pitch as her grotesque assailant toys with her like a mouse on a string.

And, then, just as he's rounding the corner, it gets so, so much worse.

"Johnny-!" she cries, flailing helplessly in midair.

It's so, so wrong. It's not just that it's Zagreus - that doesn't help of course - it's that anyone but Johnny should touch her. He understands that in an instant. She's not to be touched. It's like someone has just reached into him and clenched a hand around his heart. He stumbles and falls to his knees, clutching uselessly at his chest.

"Oh god, no," he gasps, forcing himself to look up at Zagreus and his horrific creature-self. "Put her down," he growls through his teeth. "Put her the fuck down."

Edited 2014-03-30 01:41 (UTC)

'I didn't--' a faint blush has appeared in the apples of Cosima's cheeks, awkward in the wake of her rambling, and in the face of the girl's little smile, 'I don't actually believe in magic. Just, y'know, well. A unicorn.' She can't help grinning at the creature-- who is apparently an it, rather than a he. But fair enough, magic is a logical association with unicorns. The only other two that immediately come to mind are power, and virginity, and the latter she immediately dismisses as nonsense.

Despite the fact that the girl-- the TARDIS-- has given her permission, Cosima doesn't go right ahead and touch. She's in the middle of a step closer, hand lifted, but her words, and the unicorn's, give Cosima pause, and she cocks her head at them, eyes narrowed. 'Pilots? And you've-- manifested as a unicorn before?'

Normally, she might remind herself that this is hardly the oddest thing to happen to her today, but just at the moment, Palinouros does it for her, tugging at one of her dreadlocks. 'Talking unicorns; it can hardly get weirder than that.'

The hand that had been outstretched to touch the unicorn gives Palinouros a little cuff instead, and she turns an avid gaze on the TARDIS. 'What are you? If that's not terribly rude, sorry. But I mean, you're obviously not human.'

"I'm a size you can't imagine," the Unicorn replies, sounding rather satisfied with itself, and then gently brushes its lips over Nova's ears. "And you are beautiful too, in your very small way. The universe needs all you small things, you know."

Contrary to what Johnny might believe, this all sounds fairly reasonable to the TARDIS. She has, after all, had the bad fortune of becoming familiar with malicious structures herself, and she nods. "I am infinite and restructure myself as I please, and yes, you saw my interior, though in... disastrous shape." She hesitates, recalling his shocking words choked out at the edge of unconsciousness, how he'd called her wrong. "But, you already knew this when we first met, didn't you? Have you reacted like that to other dimensionally transcendental structures, then?"

"Oh," says Nova stammeringly and huddles down under the Unicorn. "Well. Thank you." She peeks over at Johnny, as if to say did you hear what the Unicorn said??

Johnny's distracted. He throws her a half-smile, and looks quickly back at the TARDIS. "I sort of... intuited it, I guess," he says. "I don't know how. It's like... I could feel there was something, and I wanted to know what, but as soon as I got close I realized you were... uh. Dimensionally transcendental." Sure. That's as good a way to put it as any. Certainly better than how he'd put it before.

"But I don't know why I got the migraine," he adds. "To be honest, the whole, um... concept kind of scares me. A lot. But it's never been physical like that before." He fidgets uneasily, wanting to steer away from this. "I've never had... up close and personal experience before that. It's all been sort of..." He hesitates. He doesn't want to get too far into this. It's not that he doesn't trust her - he does, in fact, much more than he has ever been able to trust anyone upon meeting them, and he's grateful that they are able to talk like this, but at the same time he's not too eager to get into all the fucked-up details of his recent past.

"...Theoretical," he says eventually.

"Not again!" Sadie edges away from the wine barrel as if she expects it to start spewing its revolting contents into her eyes like some sort of pudgy, wooden cobra. Her legs soon collide with Augustine, who has crouched behind her, fur bristling and muzzle wrinkled in a snarl of distaste. "Oh, Frank, what if that's all there is?" she cries, still haunted by that horrible incident with Bacchus.

"Fret not, Sadie, my love!" Frank cries, reaching out to steady her. "These cellars are massive! There's got to be more options. Trudy?"

"On it!" woofs Gertrude, immediately turning to explore the dark passages further.

"Hmm," says Frank, peering about at the dusty stone walls. "We could do with a torch."

"That's it - complete," Peeta echoes, half to himself. He gives Nilakshi's shoulder a rub and leans into her a little when she wraps her trunk around him in the semblance of a hug. Whatever she may be, she feels right.

"Do you know where we are?" he asks, mind turning to other questions. He squints at the nearest building. "None of this looks familiar."

She takes a deep, steadying breath, then nods. Frank's right, of course. If this was their cellar, it would be mercifully wine-free, but there's no accounting for the shamefully horrid tastes of others.

Still, though. Wine. Disgusting.

Augustine had moved away once Sadie had regained her equilibrium, and now he pipes up, "I think I've found a lantern." His pale fur stands out in the shadows on the other side of the doorway, and beside him, Sadie can just make out a little table with what appears to be an charmingly quaint oil lamp sitting on top of it.

"Well spotted, Augustine!" Sadie crosses to the little table and manages to light the lamp with only a minimal amount of fumbling. Hmm. It appears her previous buzz is beginning to wear off a little. Still, it's with a little smile of triumph that she offers the lamp to Frank. "Here we are, darling."

"Well done!" Frank takes the lantern with a satisfied cluck of the tongue and follows Gertrude into the looming shadows. She's stopped alongside a different rack of barrels and is sniffing them all studiously.

"Well, dear Gertrude?" asks Frank cautiously, afraid of another disappointment.

Gertrude hesitates for a breathless instant, then turns, gives them a big dog smile, and says, "GIN!"

Edgar blinks in surprise. /Oh, hello./ He didn't notice the other animal at first, but it does look an awful lot like Merewenna - except for the fact that it's staring him down with an imperious gaze. Merewenna shifts beside him, her tail rhythmically hitting against Edgar's arm as it twitches, and he gets the feeling that she's a little irritated.

/I'm Edgar,/ he offers the girl and not-cat. He looks at Merewenna, who pauses before giving her own name to the pair.

/You had actual dragons,/ Edgar says slowly. It has never occurred to him that dragons could be real, though he supposes that if he had ever stopped to think about it the idea wouldn't have been a stretch. After all, he is living in another world during another time with people and creatures and all things in between.

/What are they like?/

"GIN!" echoes Sadie, her face splitting into a grin. Augustine dances up to Gertrude, tail waving like a fluffy banner, and darts up to lick her chin.

"Well," Sadie continues, "shall we try and roll one of these barrels out of here?"

Daine shakes her head. "It reminds me of the royal palace, a little, but this isn't Tortall. And it's obviously not New York." Not that the city is entirely lacking in grand old buildings, but there's nary a skyscraper on the horizon.

Coromotto leans against her leg. "Perhaps we're dreaming," he suggests.

"Have," Astyanax corrects, sounding just a trifle defensive. "They're still there." Of course, there's no way of knowing that for certain, but the alternative is to horrible for either of them to contemplate.

Jennifer runs a finger down Astyanax's spine. "Bookish," she says in response to Edgar's question, offering him a wry (and apologetic) smile. "They're very intelligent… and peaceable." She feels compelled to add that last part due to the unfortunately common misconceptions that used to run rampant back home.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 5 of 17

Far Side of the Aurora Borealis

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject