applesaucedream | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

'Oh God, that thing's on fire' Gabriel says, smug and smirking, clearly thinking nothing of it, but Charley can't help the way she blenches slightly. More recent experiences have since taken the R101's place in her nightmares, but that's not a thing one simply shakes off. The blench quickly gives way to a blush when Venia adds her tuppence, and Horatio ruffles himself, taking off to swoop into the stacks of books.

'It's not,' she protests, 'It's-- complicated.' It certainly isn't something she's about to discuss with someone she's just met. 'And I didn't stow away.' At least not the first time. 'The Doctor rescued me. From an airship that was about to be on fire.'

The last bit she adds rather pointedly.

"They tended to do that", he says, utterly failing to suppress a smirk. Hey, she's alive, isn't she? No reason for any fuss.

"I don't like complicated," he adds, edging for a better explanation while trying to get a better handle on her. "Complicated makes things messy."

Venia scoffs at the notion. "You love complicated. You wanna marry complicated." The griffin pushes themselves up and moves closer to Gabriel in order to better shove their head into his lap. He rolls his eyes, but acquiesces to petting the creature nonetheless.

She purses her lips at him in slightly prim annoyance-- though in truth, she is rather taking refuge in irritation. Irritation is easier than the mess of vulnerability and confusion that talking about the Doctor being in love with her brings about.

'It does,' she agrees crisply. 'But I hardly see that there's any reason I should go talking about it to a man I've just met.' In the stacks, Horatio chirrups, and she can, bizarrely, feel what he's thinking; not like telepathy, but in the way she'd feel it as if a thought had just occurred to her naturally. Or man-like thing, Horatio thinks, because Venia, as far as he can tell, doesn't seem to have a gender. Which is interesting, and she files it away in the back of her head, but it's hardly as if she hasn't encountered beings who fall outside the binary of male and female before.

Fluffing his feathers, he swoops back down to land on her shoulder, digging in with his talons and peering with his sharp raptor-eyes at Gabriel and Venia. 'And how did you know, anyway? About-- the Doctor and us. I can't believe he goes around talking about it.'

"I only know what you've told me, cream cake." It takes him a moment, but he retraces the conversation to Venia saying he's in love with her. Then it clicks. Venia was talking about him and the TARDIS but she thought he meant the Doc and her.

"Oh ho. I get it now." He wags a finger at her, pleased with finding out this particular bit of information. "You and the Doc were shacking up. Honestly, I didn't pin you down as his type." He pauses a moment in consideration, then raises his eyebrows at her. "I wasn't sure that he had a type."

Edited 2014-04-17 17:04 (UTC)

It's with some mortification that Charley realises he wasn't talking about her and the Doctor at all, and she can feel her hairline grow tight as her blush deepens. On her shoulder, Horatio fluffs himself up again and hisses, a chirring little sound.

'We were not-- shacking up.' Charley injects every bit of disdain she can muster into the words. 'I told you, it's complicated.' It is. It had been complicated before, but in retrospect, that feels like simplicity itself. And even if she knew her own feelings, who can say about this new Doctor? She knows first hand how wildly different his various incarnations can be. Firmly, she turns away from that subject. 'Anyway, if you didn't mean that, who were you talking about?'

This she directs at Venia, who seems much more inclined to be forthcoming than Gabriel.

"You said the TARDIS. He loves her." Venia speaks nudging their head to the side to indicate Gabriel, then amends, "We love her."

"I could make you disappear, you know,"Gabe says to the Griffin, but the threat doesn't carry any weight. The griffin nuzzles against him and he huffs a frustrated breath before looking back to Charley. "Me an' the TARDIS did do some shacking up. And hoo boy is it complicated. I mean...more than the sex. But the sex too, now that I think about it."

You'll have to forgive Charley, Gabriel, because for a moment, all she can do is stare. Even with a body, she'd always sort of assumed the TARDIS was so immense, so alien, that anything like an ordinary relationship would be-- simply not on her radar. Or she would have assumed, if she'd given any amount of thought to it. She knows the ship can love, of course; the TARDIS loves the Doctor, as the Doctor loves her. And that too is shocking; if she had thought about such a thing, she would hardly have imagined the TARDIS would do anything of the sort with anyone other than the Doctor.

'I'm sorry, you had sex with the TARDIS? That's-- gosh. I mean to say, well. I hardly would have thought it of her.'

"I do have a few traits to recommend me in that department." He grins at Charley's shocked face, only encouraged to continue. "I'm very good at sex, but she's nothing to sneeze at either. If you have not had sex with someone that deeply telepathic you are missing. out."

It's not shock born of prudery, although she can't help her faint blush when Gabriel continues. She's still more than a little hung up on the fact that the TARDIS has had sex-- and apparently has a beau, if Gabriel's in love with her.

'Yes, well.' She tries as hard as she can to will away the blush. It's her misfortune to have been born with a complexion that highlights every flush to its best advantage. 'I'm sure I'll keep that in mind.' And then, after a pause, 'If you don't mind my asking-- how? I don't mean the mechanics of the sex,' she adds hastily, anticipating any number of responses Gabriel might make to that. 'Just, well, she's sort of-- huge, isn't she? Her mind, I mean. Obviously she's sentient, but she's not exactly a... person.'

Possibly that sounds slightly insulting, but Charley doesn't mean it to, really.

"You must have traveled with them before she made her body. She's got a sort of...well, not human, but it looks human."

"She's like me that way." He smirks, anticipating the surprised reaction to this particular news. (Then again, if she traveled with the TARDIS maybe non-humans aren't much of a surprise for her.) "Her mind isn't a problem for me."

'I've seen her in a body,' Charley says, biting back an inappropriate little snort of laughter that wants to sneak out at the image of Gabriel and the Brigadier, 'but not the one she's wearing now, apparently.'

And his smirk just gets a rather arch little look from her. 'I did travel with the Doctor for rather a long time, you know; I know what Oh, I'm a higher being and don't need to explain myself sounds like.'

'And if Venia's your soul,' Horatio chimes in, fluttering back down again through a dusty beam of sunlight, 'What did they say, powerful and mythological? Somehow I can't imagine anyone human having a soul like that. What species are you, then?'

Neither he nor Charley are quite sure how they know this, but somehow they do.

Far Side of the Aurora Borealis

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