This is Most Assuredly Not Portland (For One Thing, It's Not Raining) [Open]

[scales_and_silence]

"There are places where the layers of reality don’t sit well against each other, like... like wearing a new
pair of shoes. They rub and pull and holes can form." - Jonathan Healy

Central Park, New York City. (And Not the New York City One Would Normally Expect- At Least, Not the One Alex Would.)

Alex stood dazed for a moment, suitcases in hand. A moment ago, he was unpacking them from the car, getting ready to take them into the hotel room for the night. He and his fiance were driving from Ohio to Portland, with his colony of Aeslin Mice and church griffin, ready to start making wedding plans once they got to his family home outside of the city.

But. This was not the hotel parking lot. This. Looked a lot like Central Park. In New York City. The exact opposite direction of the way they were headed. And Shelby was nowhere to be seen. He put the suitcases down, and hushed the cheering from within. "Not now, guys."

"Shelby?" No answer. Not good. Or possibly good, since that meant she wasn't sucked into this, and that she was probably now looking for him on the other end of it. Comforting thought.

"Crow?" A big, black shape flew from one tree to another, squirrel caught in his beak, fuzzy hindquarters disappearing into the leaves. Alex relaxed a little. Okay, he had... some sort of backup with him. Even if he was only... mostly likely to listen to him.

Event: Curses!

[applesaucemod]

The twenty-seventh of August dawns bright and clear, but when your characters wake up, they will immediately notice something wrong. They've woken up the wrong size, or species, or age. Or perhaps everything seems normal until they take a bite of their apple-flavored toaster strudel, or attempt to speak, or wander into the woods, or bump into that old crone in the subway and fail to adequately apologize. However it happens, there's no getting around it: your characters are cursed, like an unfortunate out of a fairy tale.

On the bright side, many curses can be broken. Unfortunately, none of them come with user manuals, so how they might be broken isn't clear. Perhaps true love's kiss will do it, or a heroically sacrificial act, or some serious reflection followed by revelatory insight into your own soul. Or, y'know, whatever. But it's far more likely that your character will just be stuck with whatever it is until sunset, when any and all remaining curses will be broken.

[OOC: Feel free to use this post for initial reactions to whatever curse your character has found themselves suffering. Any additional posts for more specified shenanigans can go up under the 'events: curses' tag. Sunset is a little after 7:30 PM. Backdating and backtagging are the best and you should do both of those things if necessary.]

an unexpected failure to journey [closed]

[johnny_truant]

Usually he wakes up from disorientation in the woods, not to it. But today he's stirred by wind on his cheek, rustling leaves and branches, birds sounding much more present than they would from beyond a hotel window. He feels suspended somehow, no solid support beneath his back. He's upright, but he's not on the ground either. What...?

Full consciousness comes abruptly and painfully when he jerks and flails, or tries to flail, quickly stymied by the thorny tendrils that are tangled all around his limbs and torso, pinning him to the unruly underbrush growing around the trees. The brambles aren't very extensive, but he is definitely in their midst, held him fairly fast a few inches off the ground.

Okay then.

Ordinarily he'd think he was dreaming but he's gotten a little too good at knowing the difference. He's definitely awake. He doesn't remember leaving the hotel, doesn't remember anything happening that could possibly explain this. Even with that he doesn't quite panic. This might as well happen. Rift life is already so goddamn weird. Every day is a gambit of refreshing normalcy and staggering weirdness.

He's not tightly restrained and the branches aren't that thick - he's pretty sure he could escape if he could just...

"Ow!" he snaps as the thorns snag at his clothing and prick him all up and down his arms. God dammit. He lets out a frustrated sigh. "Cool. All right."

He pulls his hands into fists and tries to move his legs. His jeans protect him little, but he really can't get good enough leverage to tear himself free. He tries again, a few different ways, and finds it becoming almost increasingly difficult, every time making the minor pains a little worse. He can't even reach his hand to his pocket, though he can feel his phone in there. Finally he just releases his tension, hangs there, defeated.

So what is he supposed to do, just wait for someone to stumble upon him? Maybe if he can get some animal's attention he could ask it to find Daine? He looks around for squirrels or birds but none are close enough, and if a person does happen along he'd really rather not be entangled in brambles and yelling at random birds.

This is the Ramble, right? It has to be. The TARDIS must be somewhere around here, not close enough that he can feel her, but. Maybe she can see him, send someone to help.

Or he could just pray.

No. Not like this. If they're going to talk again it's not going to be for something like this. It's going to be because Johnny goes back on his own.

Which leaves him with nothing to do but wait.

He settles in as well as he can and definitely does not sulk.

BUT THEN [closed]

[etherthief]

Iman is mostly glad she chose not to move herself to the ROMAC Base. She likes her little ill-gotten Greenwich Village studio and the knowledge that even if Satan drops in on her occasionally, she's not directly under the thumb and possibly well-hidden eye of her sketchy employers. There is not much to be said for the distance, however. It takes her an unacceptably long time to reach the building, where she's SUPPOSED to be anyway for work, but instead she heads straight up to the apartment level, moving right to Greta's door. By this time no amount of frantically checking her stupid traitorous piece of shit little phone has rewarded her with any responses. Greta MUST be up by now, so either she hasn't managed to notice the texts yet, or... Well, she doesn't even want to think about that.

She takes a deep breath and knocks.

She waits, listening. Knocks again.

"Greta?" she says softly, nervously. "It's me. Can... can I come in? Can we talk?"

Nothing. Not even movement. Iman's frown tightens. This doesn't seem normal. Greta doesn't seem the type of avoid a problem like this, anyway.

She weighs her options. Should she check inside? She doesn't like the idea of just walking away, especially when she's not sure where Greta is.

Slowly she reaches out and puts her hand on the knob.

She really, really, really hopes Greta isn't in there. If she breaks in while Greta's in there, she - she doesn't even know.

Whatever. She breathes out and-

-the door is... open? No casual transmutaion required. That's... weird.

She steps inside and looks around. Everything looks fine. Clean. The bed looks slept in and unmade, which is unusual, Greta is so incredibly tidy all the time, and...

Oh thank FUCKING FUCK her phone is on the bedside table.

"Ohhhmygodyes," she whispers to the divine mercy of whatever coincidence allowed this to happen. She grabs Greta's phone, which prompts her for a passcode, good, so someone showed her how to do that.

Unfortunately Iman is really good at breaking passcodes. That's kind of her thing.

"Sorry, Greta," she murmurs under her breath, hacks the code, slides open the phone. Greta has an absurd number of horrifying notifications, ugh ugh ugh. She feverishly opens up her text and deletes the entire record.

Okay. That's done. She is officially the luckiest bastard ever.

She sets the phone aside gingerly and breathes out. With that distress averted, she now takes the time to look around. Where is Greta? Why would she have left the bed unmade - her phone her - her door unlocked? Iman can see her keys hanging on a little hook by the door, chews her lip looking at them. Perhaps she's doing laundry? Shit, that would be incredibly awkward, if she came back up to find Iman here. But no, there's the hamper there with a few things in it.

Shit. Iman stands up sharply. Shit, shit. Where is she? What happened to her?

Is she gone? Was she sent home? Did something happen?

She thinks about Rashad essentially breaking into Rush's apartment the other day - and she thinks about how fucking weird this morning is, Daniel floating, Seth a cat, her phone... Something definitely could have happened, maybe something bad, and she has no idea how to track Greta down.

She paces in a tight circle, not sure what she should do. Well, okay, she knows she should probably calm down, but this morning has been TOO EVENTFUL by half for that to happen. That ship has gone to sea. She is full tilt frantic right now. She has to do something but she has no idea where to even start.

Well. There are plenty of people who might.

Shit.

She pulls out her phone. She really, really doesn't want to do this.

She sends a text.

cat got your tongue? [closed]

[peacefulexplorer]

Today has been...interesting.

That's certainly a word for it.

Fortunately, Daniel has experience with "interesting." He does not, however, have a whole lot of experience with handling felines, particularly of the roommates-turned-felines-who-may-or-may-not-be-incapable-of-digesting-normal-food variety, so figuring out what Seth could eat in his somewhat furrier form has been an exercise in exasperation and barely bit-back amusement. It certainly was a trial attempting to cook while inexplicably hovering two feet above the ground, though cautious experimentation proved that Daniel could pull himself down to regular ground-level, in a manner of speaking, if he clung to a table leg or even the edge of the couch. But as soon as he let go, he would simply float back up again, perfectly suspended two feet over the apartment floor with next to no explanation as to how.

Hopefully this won't last long.

Daniel's phone has been buzzing intermittently all day, which has been both rewarding and frustrating. He's been able to tell a few things - for one, it's not just them. For another, everyone's being affected very differently, from being forced to spill out a slew of secrets to being practically forced to tell lies. Whatever Rift thing this is, the initial amusement at dealing with Seth's feline shape had faded very quickly.

Speaking of which.

Daniel glances up from his phone after punching out the last message to favor the curled-up ball of brown fur with a look of concern. He seems pretty much asleep from his position next to him - well, sort of next to him. Daniel is, for all intents and purposes, sitting cross-legged, though he's still levitating a good foot or so above the bed.

"Someone's coming," he says cautiously, unable to keep the note of apology from his voice. "He's, ah - bringing cat food." Wince. "Sorry."

Tar baby from hell [closed for now...?]

[fucking_ebay]

Something is definitely not right when Peter wakes up late in the morning. Since when does he pull his legs up into a fetal position when he sleeps on his back? He groans and stretches out his legs, reaching up to rub his eyes and --

And that's not the way legs and arms work -- nothing's moving right, it's like his joints are in the wrong places or stuck moving in weird ways and THOSE ARE FEATHERS --!!!

Peter goes from zero to feathery tornado in three seconds flat, honking and squawking his head off as he kicks and beats at the sheets with the wings he suddenly has today. Beds are not made for geese, nor geese for beds, and for a solid minute he mostly succeeds in making things worse until he finally squirms free and fights his way upright, panting and still as he catches his breath.

Well, shit. Could this be a dream? Maybe it's just a dream. It wouldn't be the first time he dreamed he was an animal. Biting himself, however, results in pain, which either means it's not a dream or that's just a stupid way of testing because maybe he can feel pain in dreams here. He wouldn't put it past the Rift. Right, so he's got to do something about it. He just needs to -- if he can just -- maybe if he --

HE'S A FUCKING GOOSE. Peter scrambles off the bed, crashing to the floor and clambering back to his feet to make a mad run to where he left his phone on the couch. Except he can't use it when he gets there because he's a FUCKING GOOSE and all he manages to do is drag it onto the floor and peck uselessly at the screen.