Welcome to the Winter Wonderworld!

[dray]

⫸ WORLD: A crystalline pocket dimension
⫸ AGENCY: Shared
⫸ LOCATION: See above
⫸ EVENT: The Winter Gather Exchange!
⫸ NOTES: This is a general info post and a place to RP with one another and with the host, the enigmatic Noya Fosse


Part I: Arrival
You find yourself drifting off to sleep, or perhaps merely daydreaming, with the faintest sensation of a cold breeze tickling the back of your neck. Then, as darkness subsumes you, you feel the brush of hundreds of heavy flakes of the most beautiful, crystalline snow. This snow glints in all the colours of a frozen rainbow, prisms of sourceless light that blind you until you push your way forward into... into what, exactly?

The place you arrive is nothing like home: a frozen den of sharp pillars of ice support a mirror-smooth roof. Like the court of a powerful ruler, this place is fit to impress. Treasures of every kind and shape are frozen below the floor and along the walls: look but don't touch, please! The main hall is artfully littered with places to sit for creatures both large and small, and to one side is a never-ending buffet of cold and hot food (and drinks, and of course you know there are marshmallows) attended by little icy creatures not completely unlike flitters.

But what takes your first impressions and blows them away is the owner of this odd little place. A sinuous dragon of crystalline grace rests upon a raised dais on a throne molded of snow. Her scales seem to reflect the globes of light gently shining down on the room, and she is currently in deep conversation with a very furry creature made, it seems, to exist only in the deepest cold.

A chubby little flitter wings over to you (or perhaps it's a small fleet) with a pelt of heavy fur.

::Welcome to the Winter Gather! Noya chose you to partake in her riches and get to know one another. The Nexus is back! The Nexus is back!::

That thought fades from your mind as the flitter scoots off to its next duty, though it sounds like a triumphal cheer.

Welcome to the Winter Gather, it seems. What do you do next?


Part II: The Revelation
(To be posted on December 19th! For now, feel free to post a mingle starter and tag others, get to know them, etc!)

Comments

[thexenoqueen]

He's adorable. Callidei quietly makes this Very Scientific Observation on two bases alone: adoration of her grandfather-figure, Doctor Schroeder, and adoration of her sourpuss of a bond, Cyris'Sitawi. Even his apparently grudging willingness to help her experiment seems to mash the two together!

Evidence towards dreaming, or no? It's the kind of oddity one would expect from a dream.

"It's not about wanting to wake up, it's about finding out if we can or not!" Which is a flaw in her scientific reasoning right there, because how could she wake up someone else in her own dream, but -- her education is mostly based in genetics, after all, and not the analysis of dreams and reality. And she's still very young at heart despite the years that have passed since she and the rest of the Destiny were separated from the Nexus.

She takes his hand between hers, giving it the kind of innocently thorough examination only a young scientist can pull off, but upon identifying a non-plated patch of skin suitable for her needs she briefly hesitates. This leads to her taking a moment to meet the older (though by what timeline?) dragon's eyes.

"I'm sorry in advance if this does hurt," she tells him earnestly before applying the pinch, neither longer nor more forceful than necessary to cause the sensation.

[dray]

One would never expect any theatrics out of Aeni'... and yet, when the young scientist pinches his weathered, somewhat hairy wrist, he lets out a sigh, eyes opening a little wider, and then in a flash of light, he vanishes.

For some time, in fact.

...


It's not until about ten minutes later that the full-furred beast comes padding back into the cavern from its front entrance, heavily snowed over and flapping his wings to try to rid himself of the extra, chilly layer.

Finding Callidei once more, he rumbles, "I suppose your hypothesis needs reworking."

[thexenoqueen]

Aeni vanishes, and Callidei is left staring at the space where he was standing with wide-eyed delight, confusion, and fascination all rolled into one. She looks around, checks the ice beneath her feet, goes through all the steps to make sure that he did indeed vanish and... well, now what? It's completely backwards, she realizes, she can't confirm her dream by making someone else vanish, but can she say she confirmed... his?

When the older dragon returns, it's to Callidei having found herself a more open patch of wall as well as a mug of hot chocolate (with marshmellows!), which she sips at as she traces light scribbles over the ice with her functional magic in place of having a holopad and stylus. It's nothing terribly in depth in formulas or anything like that, but it's definitely her trying to cluster her ideas into a more concrete order. They remain hanging in the air even when she turns away from them at Aeni's return, eyes first brightening with gladness, then sharpening with piqued curiosity.

"What happened to you?" she asks simply, knowing it's better to let him answer in his own terms than sway it with her own.

[dray]

"I should think that nothing happened, really." He very carefully folded himself down to his haunches and forelimbs, crossing his wrists and drawing a very large, very heavy shawl over his wings. "You wanted to see me gone, and so I vanished. It's all a very pat piece of magic that nearly any dragon can do, should they be clever enough to do so."

He buffs his well-trimmed nails on the fluff of one arm. "I don't suppose the joke worked?"