fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

If anyone had hoped for good weather for the picnic, their wish had been granted as the day turned out to be sunny and warm. Everything had been cleaned up, spiffed up and ~~bedazzled~~ ~~dazzled~~ made as perfect as possible for the new arrivals. They deserved at least a few moments of pleasantness before the weirdness started to sink in.

May whatever deity they believed in help them now.

As usual, there were long tables set up with food and drinks, a table of nametags, and two signs: one listing the Big Sibling/Little Sibling pairings, and one listing rooms and roommates for the new students. With everything in place, the picnic was ready to begin.

[OCD is up!! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible.]

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Tahiri headed down to the picnic and found her nametag, a little surprised to realize she'd been here an entire term already. It was kind of neat to be helping out the newbies instead of being one of them.

. . . she kind of thought "Sookie Stackhouse" was a little bit of a strange name. Her standards were a little skewed that way.

Between the flight, the bus, and meeting all the other new people, Sookie's head was already getting a bit crowded. As such, when she went looking for her school-appointed big sister, she decided to do it the old-fashioned way.

So when she found the girl with the 'Tahiri' nametag, rather than poking out into people's heads to find her, she greeted the other girl with a nervous smile and a wave. "You have to tell me how to say your name, because I'm never gonna get it right on my own, but hi! I'm Sookie."

Which wasn't quite the way Tahiri had imagined her name's pronunciation, so it was fair, really. "Hi, Sookie," she said, careful to pronounce it the way she'd just heard it; oh, look, she'd paid attention to that ballad of Master Tionne's about a Jedi negotiation attempt that had turned to disaster when a padawan's mispronunciation of a diplomat's name ended up being a criminal-level offense. "I'm Tahiri, your not-so-big sister."

Not without sympathy, she added, "Did you take the shuttle over?"

She nodded, making a little bit of a face. "I feel like I haven't stopped traveling since I left Bon Temps this morning."

"Long way?" asked Tahiri, having no idea where Bon Temps was but not wanting to freak Sookie out right away by asking if it was on this planet. "Was the shuttle trip insane?"

"There were just lots of people," she said carefully. "I'm not really one for crowds. But," she continued, looking around at the assembled group on the lawn, "I guess I'm gonna have to get used to them."

"It's not always this bad," Tahiri said reassuringly. "Most of the time you don't see everyone all in one place like this. Just when there's new students or a dance or some big event."

"Oh, good," Sookie breathed. She could deal with that. "Have you been going to school here long?"

"Just a semester, so I'm still pretty far down on the veteran scale." Tahiri smiled at Sookie's relief. "It's a little bit of an interesting place to get used to at first, but you might've gotten a hint of that on the trip over already."

"A bit," Sookie agreed, nodding, lowering her mental shields a little to just poke out and see if there was anything Tahiri might not be telling her. It was habit more than a natural mistrust. "Lots of, um, diversity."

As a general rule, Tahiri didn't maintain her mental shielding as well as she probably should have in Fandom; she trusted Ben, Jaina, and Anakin, and it had never occurred to her that there might be other telepathic types (nor had it occurred to her to ask). She was a little thoughtless that way.

"Yeah," she said, pondering whether to mention the multiple-worlds subject yet, "you get a lot of people fr . . ."

She picked up on a sensation of mental probing, different from what she was used to but close enough to be recognizable, and blinked, eyes narrowing the slightest bit.

Sookie could tell she'd done something wrong. She immediately retreated back into her own head, looking apologetic. She wasn't going to say anything if she wasn't actually called on it, though. There were enough people who thought she was crazy already, thank you very much.

"Sorry," Tahiri said, equally apologetic. "Wasn't expecting that. It's okay."

She was probably going to get in trouble for being too trusting someday.

"But you could tell?" she asked, wide-eyed. "That I did something?"

Two people so far in one day. She almost loved it, but was so used to hiding her disability that she couldn't appreciate it just yet.

Tahiri nodded. "I keep forgetting other people can," she said, still really not looking like it was a big deal at all. She could tell Sookie was pretty thrown by her reaction, and said again, "No, really, it's okay."

"I -- are you sure? I mean, no one's been able to tell before...today. I met a boy on the shuttle who could tell, too," she said, looking distinctly confused. "Are you a -- um, I forgot what he called them. A...monk warrior thingie? I wanna say it starts with a J."

Tahiri's left eyebrow shot up with the kind of piloting skill she only wished she had. "A Jedi?" It would make sense.

"Yes, that!" she said excitedly. "He could tell I was doing it, too! Um, can you...um, do me a favor and not tell anyone, though? 'Cause I...try not to use it, as much as I can, 'cause at home people kinda think I'm crazy."

"Yeah, right about now Jedi aren't exactly the galaxy's favorite people back home either," Tahiri said wryly, though the whole war was a long story Sookie probably wasn't ready to hear about. Poor girl probably had enough to deal with as it was. "Nobody'll think you're crazy for it here, promise, but I won't tell. Sometimes there's stuff you don't want people knowing, I get that."

Boy, did she ever. Yay for implanted personalities from freaky alien cultures.

Sookie nodded gratefully, then paused. "No one'll think I'm crazy here? How're you so sure?"

"That guy you met and me aren't the only Jedi around, for one," Tahiri explained, keeping the explanation somewhat vague since she'd promised not to tell. "And there's all kinds of people from different places who can do different things. If your world's anything like my roommate's most people there would think all of us are crazy."

"Noooo kidding," Sookie said, wincing. "Yeah, we don't have, you know, people from space and all that. But everyone I talked to who said they were from other worlds or whatever was real sincere. I checked." She tapped her temple. "So this place is kinda...weird."

"Weird, definitely," agreed Tahiri. "Good weird, though. You're from Earth, then? Some version of it anyway?"

She laughed briefly. "I guess that means I don't have to break the other worlds thing to you, then. I was wondering if I should hold off on it."

"This country and everything," she said, smiling slightly. "Louisiana, actually. Thank goodness. I'm not sure how I'd do if I found out I was in a whole other world."

She hadn't discovered the whole time travel thing just yet.

"Good thing you didn't end up in my galaxy then," Tahiri said with an answering smile. "There's thousands of worlds there ~~no srsly, the Wookieepedia entry is scary~~. The one I grew up on is nothing but desert."

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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