2025-03-01 - A Hint of Magic: The Dollhouse

"This one new," Aisley says to herself out loud, wandering the old house dragging her finger tips over the wallpaper as she goes from room to room to look around and explore. She'd fallen asleep but with no intention of dreaming of anything in particular, how clever the mind was that she was always winding up in off places.

Going into the kitchen she steps up to the refrigerate and places her hand on the handle, opening it and to her surprise finding nothing inside. Placing her hand inside it to see if it was even working, if it was cold to the touch. "huh..."

Coming to in a kitchen that isn't his own is not an unfamiliar scenario for Cedric. It's like a chef's version of the dream where you realize you're late for an exam you didn't study for, really; he can't find his knives, all of the pans are crap, and he's on the line on his own, frantic as he tries to keep up with tickets.

But this isn't an industrial kitchen at a restaurant he can't quite name. This is, like, someone's house. And that's new. Also, weird. Cedric stops going through the cabinets and turns to find someone else there, at the fridge. That's even more new, and rather than immediately engaging, he leaves the kitchen entirely, poking his head out the doorway to find the giant hole in the ceiling. Now that earns a hard blink and a muttered, "Alright," before he returns back the way he came.

"Sorry," he says, accent thick - he's definitely from somewhere in England - as he approaches Aisley. "Is this your house?"

Arrow takes a couple of steps in heeled boots before she becomes aware this isn't a space she knows. Her heels are doing these floors no favors, rapping sharply with each step. She's dressed in black as usual, a long coat, vest, and trousers. Her platinum hair's pulled back in a tail. She runs her fingertips over the wallpaper, walking though a little hallway into a room. She moves around a piece of furniture too large for the space. "This place is weird. Everything's just a little..." She stops just short of the hole through the house, looking down from the second floor. "Whoa." Hearing voices, she calls, "Hey down there."

It takes Robin a while to wake up. Accustomed to sleeping in odd and uncomfortable places his consciousness comes to as a ray of light pierces the cabinet he's sleeping in when Cedric is rifling through them. Like a chick being hatched from an egg a hand reaches out, flails and then slowly the rest of him emerges; unkempt spiky black hair, a Ramone's t-shirt over a longer sleeve t-shirt, jeans, and mismatched converse.

There's a complaint noise looking up at Cedric before giving the guy's knee a pat to please move as he finished crawling out and standing up with a stretch. How did all of him fit in there? the physics are not important. He looks around the kitchen, waves to Aisley and Cedric and signs to them <<Food around wherever here is?>> He sees if there's a fridge to look before noting the hole and signing with the subtitles hovering in the air in sage green. 'Someone's getting fired'

Movement was heard behind her and Aisley closes the refrigerator door to turn and look. But no one is there, her eyebrows furrow together and then she takes a turn away from the appliance. Dressed in a black t-shirt, a pair of jeans and black/white converse, her feet are quiet on the wood floor as she takes a single step, "Hello?"

Then pops in Cedric, blink blink blink, "Uh, no. Is this your house? Who are you?" The call from upstairs from through the hall has her stepping in that direction, just to have Robin pop out of a cabinet "What the...Why are you in the cabinet?" not even realizing she'd clutched her chest and grabbed her shirt there. Her hand relaxes and she looks up towards the hole in the ceiling again, "Hello up there."

Austin was in bed, and he's still in bed. Except he's 6'4" and the bed is definitely not. It's not the first time he ever woke up on something too short, but usually he's curled up, not half-sitting. Also usually he's under any covers and it feels at least kinda soft, or why not just crash on the floor where there's always room?

Also also for some reason he's in neon green swim trunks with a nearly as bright blue rashguard and flipflops. Which may not be ideal if these floors are as splintery as they look. He hasn't really noticed that yet, because he's busy noticing that he's not alone on the bed, and that whoever's next to him is under the covers. This gets several blinks before he gingerly peels the covers back to peek and see if he recognizes who this is.

Which he doesn't, because they seem to be made of wood.

He's somehow suddenly standing on the floor next to the bed, which might be dream weirdness but is probably just his instinct to jump back from that surprise. He takes another look around, heads out the door, and stops short as he nears the edge of that unexpected hole. "Uh." A step away from it. "This is really weird." The other voices float up, and he moves closer to the edge to try to look down. "Hi?"

Going back to his previous task, which was searching the cabinets for... something, he's not sure what, Cedric doesn't even realize at first that he's found a whole person. He's even about to close the cabinet door on Robin, distracted as he is looking at Aisley, but then he catches movement in his peripheral vision.

And look, he's not ashamed to admit that he jumps a little. Because it's a shock to see a whole person just unfolding themselves right out of a cabinet like that. "Well, that's... something," he says as he scuttles out of the way of Robin emerging, obediently doing so post-knee pat.

Aisley gets a head shake no as answer to her first question, and then "Cedric," to the second. Her third question, though, is one he'd like an answer to as well, but now people are calling down from above, and the siren call of that weird hole in the house drags Cedric away, back towards it.

"Do any of you own or otherwise occupy this house? I don't mean to trespass but I also don't know how I'm here. In my pyjamas." Which he is. Exactly what he went to bed in, in fact: sweatpants and a thin t-shirt.

It takes a moment for Arrow to notice the ticking, but then she can't un-notice it. "Ticking's worse than a dripping faucet," she says, turning to totter away from the hole. "Going up!" She calls downstairs. Why would she go up? This house is weird, and the blonde is into weird things, so of course she's looking to see if there's a top floor or an attic and what might be in it. Her footsteps are easy to track through the house, hard heels on those wood floors, though they may echo around and be hard to pinpoint. "Not a murderous ghost!" She keeps talking, heading up the steps to floor three.

The ticking may continue, but when she's on the move it is less noticeable. Arrow wanders over to one of the beds. She has no idea it's the one Austin's just got out of. "Hey, sorry to—" She wanders in in time to see Austin call down the hole through the house. "Hey, so," she starts to say, before she looks over at the bed with the peeled back covers. "This isn't the weirdest place I've come to, but definitely..." She looks down at the wooden doll in the bed in doll clothes. "The most full of oddly sized items." She pauses. "Unless you count this one estate sale I went to when I was doing the online resale shop thing. My advice? Don't look under the bed."

She does a turn, turning her back on the doll. "Oh. Okay." She looks at Austin. "Spellbound?"

Signing back to Cedric Robin signs his name to him using his name sign only, but spelling it in the subtitles anyways. 'Robin. hi.' He then blinks at Aisley and thinks about her question and answers 'More important, why is there no cereal?' he signs back to her leaving the letters hanging in the air to translate. He curiously wonders pointing a finger from one to the other and back. 'time to look around and find out.'

Looking to the 'hole' he hears his roommate and gestures to the others and points that way. He lets out a short whistle in response to Arrow's declaration which is not different from the waking world. He heads to the middle to look around to see if he can make out the structure any better. 'okay why is this?' not really where, but why. There's a up-going hole that's not exactly comforting here.

Austin looks immediately relieved to see Arrow, in all her Actual Human-ness. "Hey," he replies, and the relief clearly lessens as he looks over to the bed again as well, "...why? What's under the bed?" He hadn't thought about looking under it, but now he can barely think about anything else.

Arrow's question gets another half-relieved breath though, and a nod. "Spellbound. Wait, you too? How did we end up here then?" He moves back toward the doll, and pulls the covers back a bit farther, just to be sure. Still a wooden figure. No attempt is made to lift it, though he does gingerly pat it on the shoulder. And then fail to resist the compulsion to crouch down to try to look under the bed. "I'm Oz. Austin. Either one. Why do we have wooden people and a hole in the everything?"

Cedric doesn't know sign but he at least knows he's being talked to, so he tells Robin, "I'd say nice to meet you, but I'm too confused for that right now," which is at least honest, if not particularly polite. He does take what Robin's subtitles said to heart, though, and starts up the staircase, very careful of the edge, to the next floor up.

On his way, though, he pauses. "Is that..." he begins to question, hearing the voices in the distance, but something about it spurs him onwards, up the rest of the stairs. He goes in the first door he sees, and upon finding the lifesized doll that Austin had uncovered, he stops. "Right creepy that is," he says, and then immediately decides to get closer to inspect the thing, giving Arrow and Austin a nod as he does so. "Alright," he tells them both, in greeting.

For some reason his first idea after that is to reach for the doll's wrist to check for a pulse.

Forgetting that some people are not used to slipping into weird places in dreams like this, the fact that they come somewhere else in their dream and meet people was still shocking. "I'm pretty sure we're in a dream, Cedric. We could be in anyone's house right now or one that doesn't even exist and we're here for some reason." Aisley tells him.

Which means only one thing... Time to explore.

Footsteps and voices tell her that the others that are upstairs are moving further up at the faint sound of their footsteps fading, "I'm going to go up." telling Cedric and Robin as he climbs out of the cabinet. Taking a step towards the hole in the ceiling she looks up, "This is so weird, "It's like as if it's been cut out on purpose. All the cuts are even." Walking towards the stairs, Aisley pauses her movements, hears the ticking and canes her head, stepping closer and trying to detect which way it's coming from.

Robin looks to Aisley with a nod and points up still letting the letters translate 'Sounds like roommate Arrow. She's groovy.' He crosses the- is it a living room? He moves across what might be considered the living room and pulls back the curtains to try to get a look outside of where they may be.

His look is concern, and it may be for the lack of snacks or for not knowing where they are. Curious. Do the windows open? He's trying them.

Arrow nods to Austin. "Yes, I work in a shop. This has happened before, the whole... weird location suddenly thing." She glances down the hole, waves, and says, "Always people from the park, always super weird, but last time it wasn't in a house. Even one strangely proportioned as this one. It's kinda giving..." She pauses. "Well, it's kinda giving... dollhouse. I would have killed for this dream as a kid."

"Robin, is that your whistle? Last time I was in one of these, it was with Mac." Maybe that's why she makes the connection so fast. She pauses, then looks to Austin again. "Oz. I'm Arrow. Oh, yeah. What was under the beds was trauma inducing, because sometimes estate sales have fun surprises, but here it's probably fine." No, she doesn't look.

She pauses at the sound of voices, and makes her way over to the window to look out from the third floor, pushing the curtain back.

Cedric's whole expression is reading very much 'I don't know what I was expecting,' when he checks for the doll's pulse. The doll. It's a doll. He lets go and takes a step back, and since there's talk of looking under beds, well...

Yeah, that's what he does next, going down on his hands and knees to peer under the bed. Which is where he is when the voice from outside sounds, and his head pops up. "Oi, why are my dreams going posh all of a sudden?" he asks, suspicious. His accent is notably different from whoever that was trying to rush, well, presumably someone else out there along.

The ticking was overshadowed by the sound of the voices, hearing the British male voice, turned around in a circle once to listen to which direction its coming from from outside of the house. "That does not sound like a good sign." Having noticed Robin going over to a window, she changes course, instead of going up the stairs she goes over to the window with Robin, "Did you hear that? Was it coming from outside the window?"

"I'm a Prince," Austin replies, straightening as nothing beneath the bed leaps out at him either figuratively or literally. "Um, at the park, I mean." Glancing down at his clothing, he adds, "I don't know why I'm dressed for a beach?" 'Dollhouse' gets a blink, then another look around, more thoughtful. "Yeah. Yeah, kinda. My sister's opened up in the front and there was more plastic but..."

He eyes the wooden figure again, and Cedric checking the pulse, who gets a, "Hey," then looks to Arrow, following her to the window. "So are we dolls? What was under those beds?" Peering out the window over her shoulder, he tilts his head at the voice. "That sounds... kinda not good."

When Robin sticks his head out the window it's a shock to him. His expression of WTF worn openly on his face. Looking back to Aisley he nods. Something's very off. There's the SOS call he whistles which is 'warning' for all general purposes he uses at home in the apartment.

To Aisley in range he signs with subs, 'The world outside is like some living room. Huge. big big. Giants or we are tiny. Doll tiny.' Looking around it's coming together: the strange but uniform wall paper, the hard furniture and the lack of snacks. This is back home again, or a doll house. Looking back out the window he waits to see if anyone comes or what the situation even is precisely. 'why so fast?'

With the window open and a description of what Robin is seeing, Aisley moves in next to Robin and peers out the best she can.

Sorry Robin!

Aisley is crowding him just a little so that she can see outside the window. Looking at the large room, swallowing hard, they were dolls or in a dollhouse, but it is the attire of the people she sees and the frantic sound in the British voices. "Oh my gah, I'm back in the 1800's... I wonder if this is the same night as the Fires? The night the ship went down? There has to be a connection!" Pushing her head out the window a little more she canes her neck to see if she can see a window in the large room outside the dollhouse, see any red/orange glows.

There's nothing under the bed, which is something of a relief to Cedric, all told. He stands back up and responds to Austin's greeting with a nod. Then the reality of the situation begins to unfold, first from Robin and then confirmed by Aisley. Looks like Arrow was spot-on.

"What do you think is, like, the psychological implication of all this? Dreaming we're wee little dolls in a wee little house?" he asks.

Then Aisley talks about connections and the Fires and a ship, and Cedric boggles at her, giving a shake of his head as he looks over at her, wide-eyed. "Feels like I'm missing something, yeah?"

Arrow peers through the window and when her suspicion is confirmed, she blinks, and says, "Okay, we're tiny people in a dollhouse." Voices travel through the house, but she can't hear everything from the first floor even so. The talking of those outside. "That definitely sounds not good," she agrees with Austin. And then at the repeat of the question about the beds, she mutters, "Trauma inducing." And she takes a couple steps back because a huge little girl is running toward the house they're all in. Arrow looks for something to hold onto, just in case the house goes all topsy turvy. "Crap."

Being a floor up from Aisley and Robin, Austin misses the bit about fires. This is probably good for his current state of mind. "They look like they're from the park too," he says, brow wrinkling as he takes in the clothing. "I mean except for being really really big. I'm pretty sure if anyone got that big yet we'd've seen them." It'd be hard to miss.

"If we are dolls is she going to take us somewhere? Or just the wood ones..." He's going to have to hold on to the windowsill if it comes to that, because it hasn't yet occurred to him that the house itself might move. "I dunno about psychological implications but it's weird."