TDM 001 ● JUNE 2025

[uruz]

TDM: ONE

Watch on YouTube

ᛗ

PRELUDE

(content warnings: dream horror, loss of autonomy, mild body horror, cult undertones )


You’ve had this dream before.

A moon cracked wide, spilling tendrils from its craters like bleeding silk. A sky starless and slow. And on the horizon: a wave. Massive. Black. Still. It creeps forward every time like sunrise. It hushes before collapse, but every time before this, you wake up just in time.

But not tonight. You can't outrun it even if you tried— it comes crashing down on you at last, swallowing you like a gaping black hole. Saltless, soundless, the water devours. But instead of drowning, you drift, suspended in velvet dark. And in that dark, her voice breathes.

“You don’t have to fall with it.
Let me in.
I can give you everything you’ve ever hungered for.
A place.
A purpose.
Stay.”

She offers. And you— your mouth, your mind— give an answer before you even know you’re speaking. Yes.

The tide recedes. The dark peels away like silk. You awaken beneath a canopy of gold, in a garden that hums with warmth and longing. Soft grass. Strange trees. Fragrant fruits in every color, dripping with light. And a mask upon your face, no straps, no weight, yet it clings to your skin like it was always part of you. You don't want to remove it. You could, maybe . . . But it would feel like tearing your skin away.

She no longer speaks to you, but her orchard breaths a sigh upon your arrival. A force tugs at the edges of your thoughts, beckoning you to contact the web you're now a part of. Welcome, Vessel.

ᛗ

YOU CAN THREAD THE NEEDLE

(content warnings: sensory manipulation )

An orchard stretches around you in impossible directions, the horizon blurred like wet paint. Trees curl and arch with an elegance that feels practiced— like they’re posing for someone watching. Their trunks shimmer faintly. Leaves flutter even when there is no wind.

You are not alone. Others stir nearby, familiar or unfamiliar, though that distinction begins to blur. You may not know them, or perhaps you have the feeling you do even if you've never met them in your life. Either way, you might wish to know them.

From the strange branches within the orchard hang fruits shaped like stars, teardrops, or glass bells. Each one pulses faintly, waiting to be plucked. Their effects are subtle but powerful, crafted to cater to your desire and wonder:

🍎A pearlescent orb, cool and slick to the touch, whose taste floods you with a future that might be: a fleeting vision of joy, belonging, or beauty you didn’t know you craved. Whoever is nearby sees a glimpse of it too.
🍎A silver-veined citrus, fizzing like champagne. When shared between two, it evokes the feeling of a first time— first love, first rebellion, first triumph — even if you’ve never lived it. The emotional residue lingers between you.
🍎A blood-orange fruit with velvet skin, which when bitten into, causes your voice to harmonize with another’s— even if you weren’t speaking. You’ll find yourselves finishing each other’s thoughts, or speaking a secret you both forgot you held.
🍎A waxen, translucent fig, which grants you a small miracle: something you longed for appears beside you, conjured from dream. It might be a lost keepsake. A voice. A scent. A face.
🍎A smooth, silver fruit with a mirrored skin. When bitten, it briefly reflects the dreamer’s true self — not as they are, but as they wish to be. For a moment, others may see it too. The illusion clings for a time, making the character appear more like their ideal self in body, presence, or aura.
🍎A dark plum that glows faintly pink, almost heart-shaped, and warm to the touch. Its juice runs red and sticky, clinging to the lips. To taste it is to be filled with longing— for intimacy, for sensation, for touch. The desire may be gentle or overwhelming, but it lingers, tuned to the presence of someone nearby. It is not mindless. It is focused.

At the center of the orchard is a fountain, still and inviting. Its water tastes like clarity— and for a moment after drinking, your thoughts shape your surroundings. What you create might intertwine with what another dreams beside you.

Sleep does not speak in words. She breathes through the trees, hums through the soil, stares through your mask. Her voice, barely a whisper:

“Thread the needle, My Vessel.
Want.
Want, and see what answers you.”

You feel it,— if you resonate with another, something will change. Maybe the orchard will shift again. Maybe it already has.

Watch on YouTube

ᛗ

THE DAYLIGHT RECEDES

(content warnings: grief, loss, emotional vulnerability)

The orchard is gone. In its place stretches a landscape of ashen grass, supple and fragrant underfoot, warmed by a pale light that doesn’t seem to come from the sun. All around, a soft breeze stirs the fields— endless, loamy, and quiet. The air smells like soil after rain. It is peaceful here. But not happy.

Scattered across the fields are half-buried remnants: old beds, cracked record players, wilted bouquets, melted candles, notes scrawled on napkins— things lost in the moments between love and loneliness. Everything here feels half-remembered, yet painfully familiar. If a character reaches for one of these objects, they may hear a voice whispering a name they have tried to forget, or one they wish they'd remembered sooner.

In the distance, a shrouded figure walks the fields, unhurried, always just out of reach. Their back is turned, but their presence pulls like gravity. Some may choose to follow. Some may wait. And some may realize they’re walking beside someone else— a stranger who seems to carry a memory they, too, once held.

This is a moment of reflection. Interactions blossom from shared worries, slow confessions, or uncanny synchronicities. Characters might recognize something in another, such as a gesture, a phrase, a scent— and feel that thread begin to tug. Best follow its lead . . . You won't be able to leave unless you do.

Watch on YouTube

ᛗ

EVERYTHING WE LOVE RESETS

(content warnings: body horror, transformation, loss of autonomy, psychological horror, cosmic dread )

You awaken— or perhaps you never truly slept. The orchard is gone. The fields have withered. All is silence now, and the air is soaked in dread.

A still, uncanny plane stretches out before you: rotted soil, stagnant pools, shattered glass trees that hum with an almost-familiar voice. Echoes of what the dream once offered—sweet fruit, blooming things, beauty— remain only as scars on the land. Their pleasures have fermented into menace. The dreamscape is collapsing.

Sleep, ever present, ever watching, does not weep. She has already taken what she wants, and you see her teeth stretched too wide in the shadows. In the reflection that splits back at you. In the soundless breeze with much more bite and possession than the gentle caress of invitation. She whispers, from the shadows between dying stars:

"You said yes. Now let me see what you become."

The mask on your face tightens, no longer decoration. A binding. You are no longer merely dreaming— Your skin may change fluidly, or break down through the bones violently. Your flesh may split, brimming with power, or your blood could burn like lava oozing through your veins. You may even experience it again, and again, and again; a different beast or burst of magic each time. Whether painful or painless, You are now either Token, or Offering. You may not yet know what that means— But your body does.

ᛗ

EVEN WHEN WE RUN WITH DEATH

(content warnings: body horror, fungal infections, parasitism, loss of agency, cosmic horror, violence, death, cult imagery)

Your surroundings bend and break with growing instability: The sky splits open, revealing a bleeding red moon, weeping tendrils like raw nerves. It feels wrong in a way you have no words for. It sees you. And it beckons for blood.

The dream does not want peace now. It wants performance. It wants pain. And above all, Sleep wants you all to herself. She watches from the broken heavens, humming in delight as you run, as you fight, as you fracture under the weight of your becoming. Perhaps you turn on each other, frightened with what you have become or too frazzled to control yourself, or the newfound power you possess.

There are other things to look out for, though. Creatures stalk this unraveling plane: malformed creatures with mutated faces and fungal blooms bursting from their orifices, or tendrils slithering from what were once mouths and eye sockets. Once Vessels. Hosts. They may speak with familiar voices. They may try to barter, or bite. Those with hands and fingers may try and force your eyelids to part, to tilt your gaze to the sky above you, chanting in tongues that drill into your brain stem. Hushing in song. Whispering Look at her. She is Beautiful.

If you are caught, if you gaze up at Her for too long— you too will suffer the same fate. Fungal bursts and tendrils will spurt from your mouth, invade you from the inside and reach out to her in sacred reverence. It's a horrible way to go. If this is an end you find, you too, despite your pain, may begin to smile. You might have even more reason to attack your fellow Vessels. They too, must see Her beauty like you do.

The song stutters. The dream recoils when you succumb to the worst of Her parasitism, even though you don't lose consciousness. It is not Sleep who speaks next. In your last few seconds of awareness, you hear in your ears, in your mind, in your soul, snarling and thick with fury:


“What have you done?”

The world begins to scream. You begin to fall.

The dream is over.

ᛗ

NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia’s first TDM! All TDMs will be considered game canon.
➤ You are free (and encouraged!) to experiment with the Tether mechanic as well as Vessel options and the Network to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible.
➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!
➤ Mod invited players may currently extend one invite per player. Interested players who do not have mod invites or a friend to get an invite from may comment to the appropriate top level to solicit one, or, solicit one from the mod here. Please keep in mind that soliciting an invite does not guarantee one.
➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

network ᛗ logs ᛗ ooc ᛗ memes ᛗ navigation

code

Comments

[hongtian]

[ Ruhong is, very much, the kind of person who should have a knife. A knife and at minimum two swords—three, with her usual arsenal, and she's never opposed to more. She only needs one at a time (she can only use one sword at a time with her shield on her left arm), but Ruhong likes the security of having more. Call it the luxury of choice, call it her pride at having won them, call it an intimidation tactic, whatever you will, she loves the array of beautifully crafted sharp steel at her hip.

It's annoying, then, that Ruhong's weapons don't seem to have accompanied her to the orchard. (ooc: when u misread a question before making your top level and retcon yourself) But Ruhong's been without steel before; that doesn't mean she's without options.

The man looks unsteady and slightly pale; while Ruhong decides that food is usually a good first step before she offers any magical assistance, she won't rule that out, either. She lowers her arm with the offered fruit, nestled in her left hand, and lifts up her right palm. Where the leaves in the trees above cast shadows over her hand, those shadows seem to get darker—and then darker—and then darker—coalescing and twisting as Ruhong whispers the words to the shadow blade spell until it settles in her hand.

At least this place hasn't prevented her from doing that much—yet. Calmly, she carves the plum in half and offers the fruit once more. ]

I'm afraid I'm unable to hand this over to you to do it yourself, so this will have to do. Is this good enough?

BEEN THERE lmaoo. cw diabetes stigma!

[faa]

[ That's not a knife!

He's not sure... what the fuck he's just watched, honestly, but it seems to go hand-in-hand with the weirdness of this whole... dreamscape. The orchard, the voices, et cetera. He's a little too taken aback in the moment to comment that no, actually, he was thinking of cutting it into wedges, so that he wouldn't have to just bite into it like an animal eating a carcass in front of her, but that looked like it took a tremendous amount of effort, and Freddie thinks it would be decidedly awkward to be like, No, actually, can you cut it up for me like I'm a little kid?, so he keeps the thoughts to himself and takes the proverbial L of having to debase himself in front of a stranger. Somehow, it would be even more embarrassing to bend over backwards to ask her to cut up dream orchard fruit like it's going in a third grader's lunchbox than to eat that fruit in front of her whole. Funny situation he's in, now. ]

I—thank you, yeah, that's—that's fine. I just— half of should be yours. Fair's fair.

[ What kind of lame-ass excuse is that? It's something, though, so that she doesn't correctly assume he's worried about her having some sort of... disease.

He takes his half from her; there's a faint tremble to his fingers as he does, and he knows he's probably pale. Based on how she's dressed, maybe, hopefully, low blood sugar and You Did It To Yourself Disease are foreign concepts to her. Either way—there's still the shame of her just standing there watching him eat and probably thinking something to the extent of should someone like him be having something like that and it makes his skin crawl just as much as the hypoglycemic chill that periodically interrupts the uncomfortable warmth of his body's bellwether response to low blood sugar.

So he tries to eat it as neatly as he can, taking small bites, careful not to appear too overeager despite the increasingly pressing need for sugar. It's still a feeling of mortification. He pauses, halfway through; that's probably enough to get his glucose levels back to where they should be within like fifteen minutes or so, but it's not like he has his meter here with him, so he'd better finish the full thing so he doesn't end up like that girl in Steel Magnolias or something. ]

Thank you.

i can read i swear

[hongtian]

[ It's tempting, watching him in the moment, to cast another spell to detect his thoughts. As practical as the shadow blade had been without an actual knife, it isn't as though Ruhong had tried to avoid any flourishes. She likes a show and all the attention that comes with it: there's something satisfying about watching the emotions on others' faces when she shows any display of power, no matter how trivial. (And it was trivial, but that doesn't mean she can't enjoy it.)

But her magic in this orchard has felt... sluggish. Not quite right. Like it's slipping between her fingers, swirling through the rivers of her body, in a way that's like grasping sand. Ruhong knows she could reach out if she wanted—but, strangely, there's a pull in her mind that's not quite hers that holds her back.

So, for now, she just watches him. ]

...Shall we sit, perhaps?

[ She offers it as a shared decision, noticing but not drawing attention to the tremble in his hand when he takes his half from her. She sits without waiting for an answer: a smooth, singular motion that has her nestled in the grass, her legs crossed beneath her, without hesitation. ]

I can pluck another if you like.

[ She brings her half back to her mouth now, not nearly as careful as Freddie with her bites. Ruhong is always hungry. She wipes her mouth with the back of a hand, the juice sticky and red, and takes a few more bites to finish it off. That pull in her mind is growing stronger, somehow, the more she eats. Stronger, and strangest of all, tugging her attention strongly in the direction of the stranger. ]

oh thank god at least one of us can

[faa]

This should be enough. Thanks.

[ Another isn't a thought he's not having, because that's always the thought that comes with eating, even when he's not hungry, even when he's full. Especially with sweet things, palatable things, like this, although he supposes the plum is probably the least awful-for-him thing he's had in the past week, so there's that, at least. Other than self-regulating his blood sugar with bites of fruit like a lizard moving through a thermocline to control the temperature of its blood, though, he really shouldn't be having this kind of sugar. It's why he's in this situation to begin with, why he's so close to diabetic and having to eat secondhand fruit from strangers in weird dream orchards, Dream COVID be damned.

With each passing minute he sits in the grass, the reality of his new isolation here crystallizes a little further; the weight of it gradually settles over his shoulders like a wool fire blanket. Everyone he knows is gone. He doesn't miss his parents half as much as he should, or feel as much distress or worry as an adult child cut off from his parents should. He wonders what she would think of that, how that would change her perception of him as a person, assuming she comes from a culture in which filial piety means more than just not Putting Mom and Dad In A Home as it does for all of the Irish-Americans and French-Canadians of the world. He shouldn't care about the rhetorical as much as he does. They've just met, and he's sure as shit not in the business of telling strangers all about his family dysfunction.

All of his buddies from the past ten years in the Air Force. His favorite air traffic controllers. Everyone he's made a point of keeping up with is just... gone. Tabula rasa. Blank slate. No connections, no ties—he's adrift in a void here, and it's terrifying. He realizes he hasn't felt this alone since he was a very young child, and even then he'd kept himself company with an imaginary friend until his parents' divorce shattered the illusion.

Might as well introduce himself. ]

I'm Freddie. You're—?

a rare occurrence for me really

[hongtian]

[ Ruhong finishes her half of the plum before responding and licks the juice from her fingertips. She does so as daintily as someone can, lifting her left forearm in front of her face out of habit as though to shield the view. The gesture is meant to be done with wide, long sleeves, however, which Ruhong is not wearing; still, there's some level of modesty there, at least. Fully unaware of Freddie's concerns, she herself has no thought of illness. The divine energy that circulates through her meridians burns away any hint of it to keep her healthy—and eternally immune.

She lowers her arms to study him. The plum finished, the pull in the back of her mind in Freddie's direction continues, the feeling spreading to a warmth in her chest down to her fingertips, which twitch as she settles them on her knees. Ruhong fights back a frown, only years of practice keeping her face smooth and impassive, though perhaps not entirely free of the hint of something not quite right in her expression.

What is that feeling? ]

Yun Ruhong. [ She says the three syllables of her name slowly and takes a deep breath. ] Ruhong.

[ She tilts her head. ]

Have you always been here, Freddie? Or are you as out of place as I am?

cw assumptions based on (assumed) ethnicity

[faa]

[ Freddie's lips move silently as he traces the sound in his mind, in no mood to make an ass out of himself by mispronouncing it a matter of minutes after hearing her spell it out not once but twice. He's pretty sure Yun is a Chinese surname; the introduction cements the idea that she'd probably think a lot less of him if she knew how little he was thinking of the parents he now presumes himself permanently separated from.

She's just as out-of-place as he is. That's comforting, at least. They're in this together, like he was in it together with all of the other idiots who willingly signed up for OCS and all of the Air Force donkeys in Iraq.

Based on her clothing, she's probably not from modern China (or Hong Kong). And he's not positive if Yun Ruhong is a two-word first name or her full name, but the inflection made it sound like her full name, so he figures he should append to his introduction: ]

My family name is, uh, Lavoie. And I just got here. [ He holds up both hands. ] If there was an orientation, I missed it.

[hongtian]

[ He's both right and wrong in some of his assumptions, but not in a way in which Ruhong could possibly explain. China does not exist, and while the concept of filial piety does, its application in Ruhong's life has been—well—not quite so clear-cut.

Perhaps she should have simply given her Common surname. She's always been reluctant to share it. Habits die hard even when there's no possible way the man before her would know the significance of a kalshtar's name—if he even knows what that is at all.

She smiles at him with one corner of her mouth, the look rather wry. ]

No darkness, no disembodied voice that pulled you under and urged you to stay?

cw internalized fatphobia/disordered thoughts

[faa]

Well, yes— [ A self-effacing chuckle. ] Some creepy woman, and all of that.

[ It goes deeper than that, but even feeling more inclined to learn more about this woman than he perhaps did prior to imbibing the offered fruit, Freddie doesn't offer that information up. It's deep, private, a festering wound at his very core he refuses to lance. All he does is want. Attention, closeness, the thrill of the air, hands on his body, eyes watching him and approving of what they see. Food, beyond what he should; an escape from his own hunger; to carve down his body into something acceptable, something he can live with, something that looks like a man and a pilot at the height of his career. Something other than what he is.

An escape.

But Freddie doesn't say any of that. He keeps it light and unhideous in the stranger's presence. ]

But if we got the same amount of information, I think I know about as much as you do.

[hongtian]

Yes. The creepy woman.

[ All humor drains from Ruhong's voice, suddenly flat as her mouth twists downward. She'd never wondered what the Dreaming Dark would sound like; if anything, Ruhong hadn't imagined it would sound like anything. It would be an endless, roiling void, something that sucked the light of everything it touched, that warped it in its image. She hadn't imagined it—or even one of its agents—would be like...

This.

A golden, shining orchard.

A woman who pleaded for her to stay.

As the golden light swirls with the green grass beneath her, Ruhong pictures something else, golden-haired and green-eyed, and regrets eating her plum now, for she wishes she could crush it in her fist. And if Freddie sees the flash of sudden—something—fury, sorrow, helplessness—she can't find a moment to care. ]

Then we are both unsuspecting visitors. [ In the end, that's all it is: a flash, and Ruhong pulls herself back together, her face and voice utterly pleasant as she turns her attention back on him. But that pent-up energy is still within her, and she find herself suddenly, inexplicably, wanting to keep all her energy on him, for him to draw close enough for her to feel whether something else here is real. ] How lucky for us. Where are you from, Freddie? Ebora? Solamnia? Russia?

[faa]

[ Initially, Freddie's fairly sure that she's referring to bounds of countries or states or provinces that no longer exist by 2025— or maybe he's just that ignorant as to the smaller subdivisions of China. It's a huge country and he's never been, so it's entirely possible—but those names don't seem to follow the pattern hers does, or the pattern of names like Guangdong and Tienanmen and Wuhan. But then she throws out Russia, and it throws him for one hell of a loop. ]

No, I'm American. Well— I'm American, my dad's Québécois. And you? ...And—what year is it for you?

[ He has to know, and in hindsight, it's kind of weird that he didn't think to ask that sooner, because it's probably informing a great many things about how she's reacting to this situation, how she's perceiving the environment they've fallen into—and he finds he wants to know these things, finds himself desperately, uncharacteristically curious in a way he wouldn't be when chatting up an analogous woman on Tinder (or Hinge, or Bumble, or OKCupid). Something about this place. ]

[hongtian]

[ She doesn't know these places. Never heard of them, and it's not as though her education skimped on geography. Though, to be fair, she reasons, the monastery kept itself secluded, and she hadn't paid the most attention to her studies. Towns and villages on other continents, especially if they had popped up over the last century of the Divine Veil, would escape her knowledge. And if he were from Krynn, well, she'd have even less of an idea.

She doesn't react any further than the tiniest furrow of her brow. The year, however, is a much more relevant question—and unfortunately an all-too-familiar one. ]

1596. [ She can hardly keep the bitterness out of her voice. ] Nearly a century after the Desolation.

[faa]

1596, [ Freddie repeats with a small degree of disbelief, maybe even awe, because the other half of what she says is lost on him, though no doubt of huge meaning and importance to someone from her time and culture. The numerical year, though—it lines up with the clothing he'd expect from that time period, and it follows the system of naming the years that he's used to, which points to them hailing from the same world and his lack of familiarity coming largely from ignorance.

So he asks the natural question, because his curiosity is piqued, even if it makes him seem every bit the clueless westerner he's acutely aware that he is in this conversation. ]

What's the Desolation? Or was the Desolation, I guess. I never learned about that in school.

[hongtian]

[ Ruhong isn't sure what to make of Freddie's reaction. Clearly the date meant something to him, but she isn't sure if it's earlier or later than what he expected. She knows how it feels to hear a date that should be far too late, but his clothing and manner of speech is so unfamiliar to her she can't even hazard a guess as to the places he outright named for her.

She sits upright at the question and narrows her eyes at him in thought. Surely the Desolation can't have sunk so far into history that it wouldn't ring a bell for him; the ripples of it were felt even on Bataan, and the Scar near the city of Elthriel enduring a century later. ]

The Desolation. [ She repeats it, slowly. ] When the Demon Lords clashed on the mortal plane, tearing a Desolate Scar upon the earth where they ripped there way through. Waves of their armies swept across the continent of Ebora while they warred with each other with little care for mortals who lived there. The one prophesied by one of the Twelve, the god Intellos. You never learned of that one?

[faa]

[ No, not particularly!

Freddie listens acutely, taking it all in with growing disbelief, as though this is the first person he's encountered here from a world wildly different from his own—or at least a timeline different from his own, because she does know Russia and she does know Earth and the same method of keeping time as someone from his world.

He's not sure what to make of any of this; it all sounds very Lord of the rings or Dante's Inferno. But he does have to say something in response. ]

Wow, that sounds... horrible. I didn't learn about any of that in school, no. And I come from a time after you. Hundreds of years after you. I think we're from two very different places. Universes, maybe. Or timelines. What do you call the country you're from? Not the town or province, the nation.

[hongtian]

[ If Freddie has come to the same conclusion as the one Ruhong was beginning to suspect, she supposes it must be the correct one. A heavy sigh escapes from her at that: less for her own misfortune of being flung into another realm for the third—no, fourth time, if one were to count the Feywild—and more for the realization that the Plane of Dreams must then be bleeding its way into countless realities.

The realization that if she cannot stop it, she and her people will be on their way to losing for good.

She leans back a little, her back still straight and her legs still crossed beneath her, and studies Freddie more closely. It's an intense sort of stare, her ruby-red eyes almost glassy in quality despite the acuteness with which she studies him. What sort of world is his? she wonders. His manner of dress is like nothing she recognizes, and she finds herself wanting to inspect it, piece by piece, for any hint of its origin. The urge to reach out and demand to do so is almost overwhelming. ]

I'm afraid I agree with your theory. [ She's almost too calm about this. ] Though not with the basis of your question. I was born on the continent of Bataan, west of Ebora. Russia is one of the few proper nations; most regions on both continents are independent city-states. The islands of Sina Una in western Bataan are like Russia in this regard, I suppose, as is Leonia to the south. The central area of Bataan is populated mostly by cultivation clans who guard their own territories. I am from—

[ She hesitates, accustomed to keeping this part secret. ] —a smaller clan. [ The Yun Clan of Huashan. Isolated. Secret. Even from strangers from other worlds where the concept of Westphalian states exists. ]

And what of you, then? Tell me about this "America."

[faa]

[ What he's getting from this sounds like it runs approximately parallel to the fragmented borders of the late 1500s in his own world—there weren't many nations then, at least not like he knows them now. That would come with more advanced weaponry, better systems of communication. It's strange, and he hasn't entirely ruled out that maybe the two worlds they come from share a common ancestor, forked out some time before 1596. Even the clan system sounds like something one would hear in the annals of Chinese or Japanese history.

His turn to try and explain... Everything that is 2025 America. It would be much easier if there was something for him to draw on, not that he's a particularly talented artist. After going K through 12 in the United States, though, he'd wager most American education system grads can draw a pretty decent rendition of the country's silhouette, self included. ]

America is... It's a proper nation. A very, very large one. It's the third largest country in the world, and it has... pretty much every climate you could imagine. Deserts, snowy mountains, arctic, huge grasslands that stretch miles and miles in every direction—

[ Shit, she probably doesn't know what miles are. Presumably, she uses some sort of unit of measure decided by an imperial court, one he hasn't the slightest idea of how to convert to. But hopefully the way he said it is enough for the idea to carry. ]

Huge grasslands. So big some other countries could fit into them. Most of our provinces are the size of someone else's nation.

[ Wait, shit, an idea, though this banks on her using the same units of measuring the progression of time as himself, though that seems more likely given that her people recognize and number years. ]

It would take months on end to cross from one end of America to the other on a horse. If not more than a year. I'm from a province called New York. It's in the north—mountains, forests. It's cold in the winter and snows. Hot in the summer. I grew up in a smallish city, then I moved to the biggest one in the whole nation. It's... impossible to describe. Bigger than anything you would have seen. This is going to sound fake, but... The floors of the buildings are stacked on top of each other. Dozens and dozens of them. We call those skyscrapers because they extend so far into the air. And everywhere you look, you see skyscrapers on the horizon. There are millions of people living there. You could walk for days without reaching the end of the city. [ A little exhale. ] I love it, though. I've lived there for a year, and it's everything I ever wanted.

[hongtian]

[ They're on fully different wavelengths now, not that Ruhong would know it. She's quite confident that she and Freddie are both on the same page about their being from different worlds. Ruhong listens politely, curious enough about this place he describes, sure, but more interested in the man himself.

Perhaps he knows something. Perhaps he has something she can use. Perhaps he can do something for her. Ruhong isn't sure, but ever since she's eaten that fruit she's felt like it would be a mistake to turn her back on him. (We won't be examining that further.) She just has to figure out what it is, and keep him interested enough to want to give it. ]

Forgive my saying this, but cities tend to have too many people and too many buildings for my liking. [ And crime. By the gods, Elthriel had a lot of crime, which was one reason Ruhong even stayed as long as she did. ] I'd be more interested in those mountains and forests, I'm afraid.

[ She smiles at him. ]

What is it that you love so much about it?

[faa]

[ What she says comes as a surprise—Ruhong seems exciting, and interesting, and sophisticated in a way that very much makes him want to learn more about her, and that sort of person tends to do exceedingly well in metropolises like New York and Atlanta. Freddie shrugs and breaks eye contact at the question, flattered by the attention—maybe more than he usually would be, although he's always craved the eyes of others, even since childhood. ]

I like how much life there is. How much is going on at one time, no matter where you go. And it's anonymous, so if you don't like someone [ or ghost someone and block them after two hookups ] there's a million more people to meet. You should see it from a bird's eye view at night. We have electricity, it's a sort of way of... generating light without fire. And these giant skyscrapers and thousands of buildings and houses are all lit up, every window, with golden light against a black backdrop. Like a cloud of millions of fireflies beneath you. The first time I saw it, it took my breath away.