Perchance to Dream, (Kelly & Joel, others welcome)

[Orpheus]

It was with some difficulty that Joel finally found himself on the beach. He'd had to convince some snotty, self-righteous kid to tell him where it was, and then had promptly gotten lost on the shabby-at-best directions. But, he was here now, with his silver rental car parked neatly in some sandy, sun-bleached parking lot. He'd left his jacket, tie and shoes there, and now meandered along the sand with the sleeves of his wine-red shirt rolled up past his elbows and his pale feet scuffing through the warm sand. Joel had never been to the beach before, but it was indeed as soothing as he had heard. It was warm enough, though the water, he'd noted with a gingerly test, was quite cool. Beach goers had already commandeered the shoreline north of him, so he turned his back and marched south. The lanky Brit was fairly sure he was alone, and so, as he walked, he managed to allow himself a glimmer of self-pity that he'd been saving for a rainy day. His blue eyes glittered as he went; at times bitter, at times melancholy, but always inward & introspective. His pale hands rested comfortably in the pockets of his pressed black trousers, and though he thought briefly of the possibility of sun or wind burning his pale skin, there was nothing he could've done to prevent it. The man who shuffled along the deserted shore cut a lonely figure against the infinity of blue that stretched westward. There seemed to be nothing about his betrayal that he could shake from his thoughts. Absent-mindedly, his hand ventured to the back of his neck, where his fingers brushed a large pockmark in his skin, the still-healing red result of a terrible mistake. Joel's thoughts were disjointed-- "Pieces of silver indeed. Filthy dogs. What do curs know about any of that, anyway?" He kicked a shell and sent up a spray of sand that the wind caught and, predictably, threw back in his face. Joel scowled as he wiped the stuff out of his eyes. Perhaps the beach setting wasn't as idyllic as his first impressions had led him to believe. But, here he was, (with a resigned sigh) hiding himself away in California. Joel had run away, naturally. There is no honor among thieves, and Mr. Armstrong was a thief of the first water. He'd tried to stay in London, at first-- used every trick he knew, played out his hand in the game of keep-away, but his opponents knew the moves as well as he did. They'd caught him, of course-- he let his hand drop from the weal on his neck and back into his pocket. And while he had plenty of money for now, what would he do later? He didn't know how LA worked. It was a different system, a different game, often a different language, and it was overwhelmingly frustrating. But then there were those...dreams? Visions? Hallucinations? The longer he walked, the more powerful the drive to keep walking seemed to get. He was looking for arches and red banners, that much he knew. It was on the shore-- perhaps here, perhaps the next little coast town down the road. He noticed, as he strolled, that he passed several parking lots with beach access that would've prevented such a long walk...but that was just his luck. Some minutes later found the lithe conman standing beneath the last arch before the Spine led into the sea, staring up the beach and into the hills into which they disappeared. It was majestic, it was profound, etc. But somehow, some part of him had been expecting something to happen, something greater than just a reminder of his smallness and impermanence in the face of these ancient, colossal structures. He wanted to throw something, but there was nothing but that infernal sand. Joel turned to survey the other end of the line of arches, which on this side sank into the sea. He abruptly sat, mystified and frustrated and fairly going out of his mind. The pale foreigner threw his fists into the alien sand, frightening off a lone gull. "Damnit!"

[Ren]

It was a simple equation. Kelly had the day off (hurray for weekends), and the weather was blissfully warm and relatively lacking in its usual humidity. There was even a gentle breeze: one that was cooling, but not too obnoxious. Therefore, the bear-shifter had headed down to the Spine, thrown out a blanket under the comforting and shady height of a stone arch, and settled in for a nap. It hadn’t taken long at all for her to fall asleep, curled up with her jean-clad knees tucked against her modest chest, her bare arms serving as a pillow for her youthful head.

The nap had passed without much incident, and if asked later Kelly would have denied dreaming at all. This fact alone was something to marvel at, because she always had dreams, even before and after the calling. So, to sleep so deeply as to either not dream, or at least not remember dreaming, was something out of the ordinary. Later, she would attribute it to some quality of the Spine’s.

But for right now, she had to deal with being interrupted. The exclamation of ‘dammit’ stabbed into her unconscious, bringing the bear-shifter back around to awareness; she opened her brown-hazel eyes as the lone gull flew off, squawking in surprise and indignation. Or, such was Kelly’s impression of its noises; gulls always sounded indignant. She didn’t see anyone in front of her, so Kelly rolled over enough to look behind her. There she spotted a fairly young man sitting in the sand, frustration written across his face and posture. A welcoming smile crinkled the corners of her eyes, and with as much of a rush as she could muster without giving way to clumsiness, Kelly got to her feet.

“Hello there!” She called out, stooping to scoop her blanket into a relatively square shape that wasn’t likely to be carried off by the wind. Then, toes gripping the beautiful white grains of earth that graced the beach, the bear-shifter offered the stranger a jaunty wave and started toward him. Normally, she wouldn’t be approaching someone like this, even if she knew him – which she didn’t. But this had to be a new shifter, and they were an entirely special case. Tugging her light blue tanktop in a slightly nervous gesture, Kelly managed to traverse the distance of sand between them without stumbling more than once.

“Hi,” Kelly said again, speaking through her constant grin. She offered her right hand toward him. “I’m Kelly. Are you just exploring?”

[Orpheus]

(( I shouldn't make you read through my midnight ramblings. Sorry! x___x; I may come back and edit this if it's very horrific in the daylight. )) Joel jumped at the sudden intrusion of a woman's greeting behind him. He turned abruptly, spied the person, and let out a sigh. Just some sunbather, surely, wgo had somehow eluded his notice. She seemed oddly happy to see him, which put the wary man on the alert. What was she doing way out here, anyway? Ah, but there was no time for speculation-- she had folded up her blanket into a shape less suited for air travel and was now headed in his direction, waving airily. Joel was positively terror-stricken as he turned his head back around and stood. Ye gods! It was a loony, and he was alone. Ah, well. He'd just have to puut on his 'nice face' and try to figure out what the hell was going on. The somewhat overdressed wanderer brushed off those expensive pants and attempted to remove as much sand as he could from his thankfully dry hands as he turned to face the oncoming girl. As she neared, he could see that she was a pretty creature, with kind eyes and healthy skin. The thief forced an amiable smile (which he was far better at than any healthy person should be) at her second greeting, shook her hand politely, and proceeded with the chatter. Hell, maybe she could tell him something about the place...and then, hopefully, leave. "I'm Joel. It's nice to meet you, Kelly. I was, actually, just exploring." He gave a little 'heh' and continued with that out-of-place accent of his. "You surprised me, I hadn't thought anyone else was here. It's a far-out sort of place, isn't it? Real secluded and strange."

[Ren]

((Tsh, your post is fine. Sorry for the delay.))

The man’s accent made more of an impression on Kelly than anything in his appearance or startled reaction; he was British! Instantly the grin on her youthful face got a little wider. She’d always wanted to go to England, and according to her father some of her cousins had studied abroad there during college. But not Kelly; Kelly didn’t even get college. She was fine with that, of course, because she wasn’t lacking for anything in her life; but it would have been nice to go to England, if simply because it was someplace foreign and yet familiar. There were connections between Americans and English people (Britains, then?) like language, food, and such…more connections than between America and the other western European places, or so she figured. Therefore, it ought to be familiar while being different. Such a paradox intrigued her.

And besides: it was England! It didn’t need another reason. And this man was from there, according to his accent. Therefore, Kelly felt an instant liking toward him.

She nodded amiably to agree with his description of the Spine, and glanced back toward the arching stones with more than a little fondness. “Stranger than you probably know,” Kelly answered quietly as her brown eyes drifted back to Joel’s bright blue gaze. “People don’t generally come here just exploring,” she went on, with a bouncy sort of inflection to her voice that suited someone about fifteen years younger than she was. But the overload of ‘new British shapeshifter’ was really getting to be too much for her and so, at the risk of sounding like a loony if this man really was just exploring, Kelly carried right on.

“Usually, it’s because they feel they have to. A pull, dreams, a bunch of sequential coincidences that really ought not to be happening, whatever. But they come here.”

[Orpheus]

When he'd spoken, the woman seemed to get even more excited. He supposed, quite correctly, that it was his accent that'd gotten her attention. There had been a few people in town who'd had a similar reaction, one or two accompanying it with a painfully obvious, 'oh, you're British!' With an accent like his, he was bloody hard pressed to be anything but, wasn't he? But the Kelly thankfully spared him the reflections on his homeland and responded instead to what he'd been talking about in a way that was very much unexpected. At her first remark, his pale brow pulled into a concerned quasi-frown, though his mouth remained impassively neutral. “People don’t generally come here just exploring,” He opened his mouth to utter some half-formed train of protest, but she continued, and his jaw hung still. For a moment, he could only stare at her with his lips parted as if about to speak and look incredibly incredulous. How did she know? It had been exactly that, to a bloody t-- the pull, the wandering, the dreams, the fact that tickets to LA had been cheaper than tickets to Lyon, Barcelona or New York. It wasn't something people just said. It wasn't something she could've figured out from his appearance. Mind reading was impossible, so it must've been something she'd been through herself, and probably, by the way she talked of it, had seen multiple times before. Then, after such moments of rational though, his burst of rapid, clipped English: "Kelly, is it? I've come a long way, Kelly. Tell me what's going on here." Joel's stare was as icy a one as ever, though his affable charade hadn't been completely abandoned.

[Ren]

The change in Joel’s attitude was completely lost on her, so certain was she that ‘British = friendly and nice.’ So instead of backing off and breathing caution at the cool shift in his voice and face, Kelly merely took his sudden intensity as a peaked interest which reassured her in her assumption: he was a new shifter. “It’s hard to explain,” she answered with a shrug and took a step away from him and toward the arching Spine. “Mostly because we don’t know why it happens. Without knowing the why, you can’t really know the what.” That’s what one of the science-inclined shifters had told her, at any rate. Kelly wasn’t certain that she believed it, but most people seemed to.

“I can show you, though, and maybe you can figure it out. All you have to do is touch the rocks,” Kelly revealed, smiling, and spun on her heel. She took off across the sand, yelling, “They won’t bite!” over her shoulder as her clumsily large feet kicked up the loose soil; and after throwing out that last bit of guidance, she focused on the shift. In mid-run, the shifter’s body altered. Her legs and arms put on more muscle than their slim build should, her skin loosening around a thin and lithe frame that was swiftly gaining bulk. As her head broadened and her nose and jaws extended into a muzzle, Kelly dropped to all fours; and in a lush motion reminiscent of the waves that broke over the lowest stones of the Spine, a coat of thick brown fur cascaded, rippling in the gentle breezes, across the galloping body. Not more than a second had passed.

The brown bear slowed her run to a shamble as she returned to where she had left her blanket. She padded around the base of one of the arches, rearing up to her hind limbs as she came back to the side that faced Joel. To steady this stance, Kelly placed a forepaw against the sun-warmed rock, her pads sensitive to the rough texture of the wind-worn stone. Blinking to make out the form of the man through the murky near-sighted vision that her bear shift owned, she extended her senses to catch his reaction.

[Orpheus]

[[ this took forever. ;_; I'm a bad person, and I'm so very sorry. :'( ]] Joel was about to speak when Kelly took off, her feet pounding against hot sand and her hair in the wind-- until, suddenly, the feet were gargantuan paws, and her hair was short and dark and thick. And that harmless, light-hearted face had changed, radically, so that it was no longer reminiscent of a saint but of a beast. But, no-- Joel stared into the eyes of the bear that now attempted with short-sighted eyes to catch his reaction. It was certainly still Kelly that stood before him, and no dumb beast; that effusion of kindness and of peace was unmistakable even with fur and a mouth full of teeth that could rip him to shreds. He was still standing, somehow, though his ears rang and his mind moved slow as though each thought had to wade through custard before it became apparent to his conscious. "You just-- you turned into a...bear." said the formerly-suave conman dumbly, his eyes wide as saucers and his jaw still somewhat slack. Even his words were slow as a wholly logical, rational, criminal mind attempted to process the wonder and magic of what had happened. Was happening. Would happen, according to her, if he touched the stone. "And this is...is like in movies, special effects. Cameras and mirrors and smoke. It's marvelous, but how?" He looked around him, obviously in something of a panic, knowing before he searched that'd he'd find no mirrors, no lights. It felt like a sinister joke. It felt like just realizing that everything he'd ever known had been false, a lie, a cover-up of some grotesque and fantastic thing that the world didn't want him to see. And no matter if it was real or just a dream, Joel knew that if he so much as set a finger on that arch, there would be no returning to the world of his former life.

[Ren]

((I wasn’t even here, so no worries. ))

She snorted in response to his skepticism, and flashed the Brit a toothy grin that probably would have looked fierce if not for the lolling tongue that draped out over her lower eyeteeth. Smoke and mirrors? Hardly. It was nature at her cleverest, and to show him that this was no trick Kelly let go of the wind-worn stone. She leaned back, purposefully throwing herself off balance into a fall. A muffled thump reverberated through the sand of the beach when the hefty bear impacted the loose soil.

Like an oversized and far-too-shaggy dog, Kelly rolled a few times in the sand, wriggling and squirming as she turned and using every once of muscle that the bear possessed to maneuver awkwardly around so that her head was toward Joel. When she’d ground a fair amount of sand into her coat and had kicked a pound or so of the stuff into the air, the falconer, sprawled out on her back, tilted her muzzle down until the top of her broad head was buried in the warm sand. Extremely comfortable, she scratched at a sand-inspired itch on her throat with the blunt claws of a forepaw and studied Joel through an upside-down world.

It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to approach him, Kelly figured; he had seemed alright with her shift and he didn’t smell scared, just hesitant. Good for him, then, because most of the first-timers that she had guided had freaked out. But however composed he might be, seeing a brown bear lumbering toward him might discourage him from coming closer to the Spine and finding the truth. So instead, Kelly remained where she lay. She uttered a quiet, calling sort of bear-noise as she lifted her other forepaw out toward him, pads up and inviting him to touch.

[Orpheus]

The longer Joel watched, the more his heart shrank, He needed to fly far from here, disappear, to hide behind something with unquestioned stability and reality that would comfort him in his utter bewilderment. How was this happening, and why was she showing him? She offered a paw, and he absolutely had to know; the man stepped forward a few wary feet, his heart beating a rapid tattoo in his throat. Gingerly, and against the overwhelming instinct to not touch bears because they could *kill* him, Joel bent and with one hand lightly brushed the brown bear's giant paw. It was real, and he was beginning to feel faint. He had a powerful urge to run and to sit and cry at the same time, and instead just stumbled backwards, muttering something about impossibilities and the sun playing tricks on him. "This is...this is madness. There's no such thing as--" Joel's words died abruptly as he backed himself right into the nearest arch. The world spun and then grew; his vision of the bear blurred for a moment, then expanded. Something was very off; it was as though he was viewing the world through a wide-angle lens, and his depth perception was nearly non-existent. He opened his mouth to cry out, but all that came out was a hoarse, bird-like kraaaa! The raven shut his beak with a click, started at the sound, and turned his head instinctively, since his eyes no longer swiveled, to see the bear better. Joel unfurled his wings and seemed to shrug them in the universal "What the hell is this!?" gesture, fear now settling in his stomach like a very unwelcome houseguest. He didn't want to be a bird, or a man talking to a bear, or an Englishman in America. He wanted very much to be back home in his flat in London, waking up from a terrifying dream.