fandomhigh | BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge

Entry tags:

!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport | Portalocity Lounge | Saturday Morning

Petra was so relieved to find the Portalocity lounge and a banner proclaiming 'Fandom High.' She was pretty sure that meant she was in the right place, even if she did seem to be the first one here, and it meant she could sit down and stop dragging her luggage (two large, new-looking suitcases and an extremely battered green leather overnight case with an Audrey Hepburn decal on top) all over the airport.

She picked out a chair with a good view of the door so she could see new arrivals and sat down with Holly Go-Overnightly in her lap, then pulled her phone out. All her friends were still asleep, no doubt, so texting was out, but surfing the web seemed like a good way to kill some time while she waited for other people to show up. She hoped she wasn't the only new student. That would be awkward.

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"Wow," Petra said when she looked up from her phone and got a good look at the other girl's luggage. "You brought even more stuff than I did. Although I shipped my sewing machine and stuff, so I guess maybe it's about even." And her suitcases had modern conveniences like wheels.

She gave her a big smile and said, "Hi, I'm Petra."

Rosella was going to happily take the other girl's thoughts on her luggage as appraisal, meeting her with a very large grin and the smallest dips of a casual curtsey. "Princess Rosella," she offered in return, "of Daventry. And, yes, I would have hated to forget anything." Then she laughed. "I've no sewing machine, but...goodness, now that you mention it, I thinking I just may have left my embroidery kit at home. Isn't that just awful?"

Rosella did not sound in the least bit heartbroken.

"...Royalty goes to this school?" But the tuition had been so low! Otherwise she would never have been able to afford it! Then again, Petra had never heard of Daventry, and unlike some beauty queens she knew how to find Iran on a map. Maybe it was one of those tiny European principalities, and was, like, broke or something. That would explain it? "I mean, it's very nice to meet you, your highness...do I need to curtsy or something? I'm sorry, it's just that I never met a princess before," she admitted. "But I have a sewing kit in my bag if you need it!"

"Oh, no!" Rosella's eyes went wide for a moment. "Please don't! Rosella is just fine; all those formalities and titles and bowing and curtseying and how-do-you-do's gets so tedious!"

Her grin went a little lopsided. "I think I only do it out of habit. And thank you for the offer, Petra; I intend to have use for a needle quite a bit, for all the scrapes I'm likely to get in my skirts! And I'm not entirely sure how much royalty attends Fandom High; I know my brother did before me, and now I'm quite pleased to attend, but, if I may say so, I hope there aren't many. I was hoping for quite the escape from all of that, to be perfectly honest."

An actual princess. Petra was just going to try, well. Not to feel like a frog. Although she was a beauty queen, she guessed that was something. "Okay, Rosella," she said. And now she was on a first-name basis with a princess, what? What was her life? "Oh, is it a tradition in your family? Going to this school, I mean."

"Perhaps a new one," Rosella smiled, nodding with satisfaction to hear her name coming from someone who wasn't related to her or the stableboys who feared a thwap with a riding crop whenever they slipped into formalities. "It took quite a bit of convincing to get Mother to allow me to attend; she said I didn't need it as much as Alexander, which I suppose she's right, but he had ever so many good things to say about the school that I just had to go! Have you heard much about it yourself? What brings you to Fandom High?"

Did they maybe not hear about the Teen Dream fiasco in Daventry? That was kind of awesome, actually, except for the part where she guessed it meant Rosella still thought the Corporation was only mildly evil instead of totally. "I was in a plane crash, and I was stuck on a deserted island for six weeks," she said carefully, watching Rosella to see if any of this jogged a memory. "When I got home I found the brochure waiting for me, along with a whole lot of crazy. So it seemed like a good way to get away from all that, you know? So I really just know what was in the brochure."

Edited 2011-08-27 00:53 (UTC)

"A...plane crash?" Rosella asked, her brows knitting a little in confusion, as she did not realize that one could manage to crash various planes of existence, the only reasoning she could make for it, but it intrigued her a great deal. But of course one could! Nothing could be perfect between the multiverses, she supposed, and a grin surfaced on her face. "How exciting! I can imagine why one would not wish to stay home after such an adventure. How good that you got out of it safely! And, according to Mother, they leave quite a bit out of that brochure, but thankfully, I have my brother's experiences to help me along. I'm sure he could tell you all sorts of things about the place that the brochure does not mention. I do not believe our parents would be so keen on allowing us to attend if they included everything!"

"I guess it was pretty exciting." Also terrifying, horrifying, tedious, and...Taylor. All in turns. "I really just wanted to get home, but...yeah, things were weird." She was a little worried now. "What kind of things do they leave out of the brochure?"

Rosella tapped her finger on her chin a moment, looking thoughtful and devious as she tried to think of which one of Alexander's stories had been her favorite. And which had been the most embarrassing for him....

And then she had to laugh. "There's a great deal of strange and peculiar magic about the island," she offered. "One of my favorite tales from Alexander involves the incident surrounding a fun holiday called Halloween. Thinking they would be funny, he and his best friend, Maladicta, decided to dress up as each other, he as a vampire and she has a prince...and then they actually turned into their costumes! I imagine he was quite pleased he didn't decide to dress as a frog or a toad!"

Magic. Right. Humor the crazy girl, as she is royalty. Or thinks she is. But, "You guys don't do Halloween in Daventry?"

Rosella shook her head, giving a slight shrug. "The closest we have is a harvest festival, and, according to Alexander, even that is not very similar. It does sound like an awful lot of fun, though; do you celebrate it where you're from, Petra?"

"Yeah, I think pretty much everywhere in the States they do Halloween, unless you're in some crazy fundie area where it's a holiday of Satan," she said. "It's a lot of fun, you get to dress up in costumes--well, you got that part already--and pretend you're someone else for a night, and you get a ton of candy." Because you were never too old for trick-or-treating, dammit.

Fundie. Satan. There were two words Rosella figured she'd file away and try to find out what they mean later; she did not want to express her ignorance quite at this moment, though, not when meeting a new friend. "Oh, I don't believe Alexander mentioned the candy part of it," she noted instead, with a slight giggle. "I suppose he was far to concerned with trying to suck people's blaaahd."

Yes, it had to be said like that.

"But the candy's the most important part!" Petra exclaimed. "Although getting to pretend you're something like a vampire or a princess--no offense--for a night is a lot of fun, too."

"None taken," Rosella assured Petra with a smile. "Being a princess for more than a night is pretty fun, too, although sometimes it can be terribly boring and tedious, as well. I doubt that, in a mere night, you wouldn't have to listen to nearly as much nagging about marriage and princes and having to settle down. Luckily, all the talk of one day being ruler makes up for all that a bit."

"I always wanted to be a princess when I was little," Petra admitted. "But they never tell you about the nagging about marriage and duty in the fairy tales for some reason."

"And wouldn't you know," Rosella said with a wry grin, "that's most of what it is after a while. Father wasn't married when he rose to power and ruled the kingdom; why should I be?"

"Double standards. Such a pain in the ass," Petra agreed.

Rosella's head quirked a bit curiously.

"What have donkeys got to do with anything?" she asked.

Oh, great, she was already corrupting the royal. "It's a colloquialism? For, uh. The posterior?"

Rosella considered this new information carefully; eventually, she laughed, showing her approval. "A pain in the ass!" she repeated, delighted. "And, in this case, I suppose one could easy say it's even a royal pain in the ass! Oh, I do like that; it seems to have quite a bit more sharpness to it than say, rear or bum or even rump. And I'm sorry, Petra, where was it you said you were from?"

"Rhode Island," Petra said, and, knowing Europeans' grasp of American geography was frequently on par with Americans' grasp of European geography, she added, "It's north of here, the really, uh, tiny state? And it's not actually an island.

"I kind of like 'bum,' though. My boyfriend--well, we're on a break, but anyway, he's English, so he says 'bum.'"

Rosella pondered the logic in naming a place that wasn't an island after an island, before sighing slightly and hearing her mother's voice in her head about how all the girls her age were already married. Granted, she suspected Petra was a little younger than she was, which was probably why it was only a boyfriend.

"Mother would positively die if she caught me saying bum," she said, since she wanted to avoid any topic dealing with boys if she could. "So excuse me a moment while I do this."

Rosella took a deep breath, and, when she let it out, she gave off a chorus of "Bum bum bum. Bum bum bum. Bum. Bum. Bum."

"There. Much better."

Petra had to laugh a little at that, but she politely covered her mouth. "Do you feel better now?" she asked Rosella? "I hope that helped.

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