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

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

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

When the planning for the new semester had started, no one had really noticed that the welcome picnic would coincide with Cinco de Mayo. When the food arrived and all of it, including the desserts, had somehow ended up as a variety of Mexican food, well, it was a little too late to change anything.

Hopefully, the wandering mariachi band that had shown up wouldn't throw anyone either. It was a festive day of new arrivals, after all.

The blue and gold tables and chairs had been set out, along with nametags and the lists of Big and Little Siblings, and rooms and roommates for the new students. Assuming the shuttle arrived with all of the students and teachers in one piece, everything was set for the picnic to begin!

[OCD is up, have at it! 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. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Simon nodded and tried offering her a smile that he hoped was encouraging. He knew what it was like to be nervous, both upon coming to Fandom and just in general.

"Yes," he said, folding his sign away. "Hello, Sholeh." The pronunciation had actually been what he'd expected, but he'd been a little neurotic beforehand. "Yes. I'm here to... help you get acquainted with the island and the school."

Judging by her clothes, she wasn't from around here and was probably going to need it.

Yeah. Funny how Allone had managed to snag a pamphlet about the school, but hadn't seen anyone to try and give Sholeh and her sisters an idea how how to dress or act.

"I appreciate that," she said, trying to sound like she did this kind of thing everyday. Exactly what 'this thing' was, she didn't know, but she figured it would sound better than sounding as timid and overwhelmed as she was feeling.

Granted, it probably came out as sounding 'timid and overwhelmed, but trying very hard to pretend otherwise,' but at least she was trying?

"They're both a lot bigger than I'd anticipated from the brochure," she offered.

"A lot stranger, too," Simon supplied, but was quick to add, "but –– not in a bad way."

Okay, sometimes in a bad way, but that wasn't the kind of thing to spring on an already overwhelmed newbie. And it really was a good thing he was naturally soft-spoken, wasn't it?

"Where are you from, Sholeh?"

Sholeh was already appreciating that Simon was so quiet. When she met a few other students, she might just come back and thank him again.

"Uhhh..." See Sholeh. See Sholeh be completely unprepared for that question.

=Don't say Tryadnea!= Zeela hissed.

::I'm not!:: Sholeh wailed internally. ::But where should I say I'm from?! I don't even know what landscape this is!::

*Be vague,* Zhahar advised. *Be very vague.*

"From very far away, I think," Sholeh said a moment later. An obvious moment later and if Simon was at all adept at reading expressions, he'd probably noticed the few seconds of panic on her face. "At least, I think so. What is the name of this landscape? It's not like one I've ever heard of."

Simon had noticed (he'd gotten much practice at just observing people over the course of his life, after all) but he didn't draw attention to it. He just nodded.

"The United States," he said. "Of America. Specifically, Fandom island in the state of Maryland." A beat, and he added, "And it's the year 2012."

Sholeh would have jumped on that with gusto if she'd known what any of it meant. "I've never heard of any of those," she said, shaking her head. "Not even in books. I think you must be from a part of Ephemera that is far, far away from ours. Umm, mine. Far from my part of Ephemera, yes."

Sholeh tended to babble when she got nervous. Soon enough, it would switch to endless questions when her curiosity was snagged. It already would have been, except for that whole nervous thing.

But give her time. And the promise of new information.

"E-ephemera?" Simon asked. Yeah, he'd never heard of that. Shock. "I... I think you might have travelled a little bit further than you think."

Or a lot.

Definitely a lot.

How had Simon never heard of Ephemera? It was the name of their whole world.

Unless maybe his people had begun calling it something else? That was possible, right? Maybe this landscape had gotten broken off from everything entirely, and they had to just make everything up as they went along.

"Umm, what do your united people call it?" Sholeh asked, trying to remember all the things he'd said. "You know." She waved an arm around. "The world? Is that what you meant by America? Or Maryland?"

"I... I, uh, I think we just call it 'the world'," Simon offered. "Or Earth. Tellus. America is a country, and Maryland is a... a state, a smaller portion of that country."

"Like a village?" Sholeh asked, trying to parse that into terms she knew. So, Fandom was the name of the school--or maybe the neighborhood?--and Maryland was the town below, and America was the name of the landscape. Okay, she could work with that.

Calling Ephemera 'Earth' made sense, too. It was made up of the ground, after all. They'd probably just gotten confused somewhere in history and went with what they knew.

"I think I get it," she said, nodding. No, Sholeh. No you did not. "But Fandom is the school, right?"

She definitely needed to make sure that one was clear.

Simon bit on his lip. This wasn't the part he'd expected to have trouble with, but he was dealing with it.

"No, Fandom is the name of the town and the island," he explained. "The school is called Fandom High. But, we do call it Fandom for short, sometimes."

He hoped that wasn't even more confusing.

...But wasn't the town called Maryland? Sholeh opened her mouth to ask Simon yet more questions about the geography of the whole thing, but Zhahar interrupted.

*Let it go, Sholeh,* her eldest sister said in the resigned tones of someone who had had to say that sort of things many, many times in the past. *You can ask more later, but I don't think they've paired you together to talk about geography.*

Which had Sholeh shutting her mouth with an audible snap and blushing.

=You do need to say something.= Zeela just mostly sounded amused.

"So...umm...Fandom. Okay." That was something, right? "What do siblings here usually talk about? I have sisters but they're usually bratty and make snarky remarks." So there, both of you. "I don't think you were assigned to me because the teachers thought I'd miss that."

"No," Simon agreed, with a shake of his head and a brief smile that was a little on the tight side. "Fandom can be a little... strange. Unusual things happen. Often. And it can be a lot to get used to."

"Strange?" Sholeh asked. "Like what? I mean, it's already very different from anything I'm used to."

Filled entirely by one-faces, for example. What more could she possibly have to get used to?

Oh, Sholeh.

"Sometimes people turn into animals," Simon offered, a little cautiously. "Or... other people. Or they think they're other people, but look the same."

It was the last thing that caught her attention, actually. "People who look the same, but aren't?" she asked. "Not people who look different, but are the same person? Sorta? I mean, not the same person, but share the same body?"

She was trying not to sound all excited, but if the Fandom-Marylanders didn't know about Ephemera, maybe they didn't know about the Tryad, either! Or, well, they did, but knew them by a different name or something!

...Wait. Had he said people turned into animals?

Indeed he had! But that was getting buried under that other stuff for the moment.

Simon frowned a little. "No, I mean, they... They think they're someone else, for a day, or a weekend. Then they turn back into themselves."

Sorry, Simon. Sholeh could blitz through a hundred questions, hear an answer, and come up with about a hundred more.

"Oh," she said, sounding a little disappointed. No long-lost Tryads here, apparently.

But the disappointment couldn't last forever--or even more than a few seconds. Not when there were more questions to ask!

"But, wait, how does that work? Everyone just starts to think they're someone else for a little while? That doesn't make any sense at all! And did you say people turned into animals before? You didn't really, did you? Or does that mean something else and I'm just not getting it?"

Simon blinked a little, trying to parse that into something he could answer. He was sure some of the skills he was using there came from having been around Kelly. A difficult accent was on the same level as a barrage of questions.

"Turning into an animal... means what it sounds like," he said, grabbing that first since it had been the last thing. "Turning into an animal for a while. It's not dangerous or permanent, but it... happens."

"How?!?"

Only one question. She was shocked, Simon. Shocked.

"I don't know," Simon admitted. He'd put some thought into it previously, too. And he still had nothing. Except magic. "It –– it just happens."

"It happened to you?" Sholeh asked. "Will it happen to me? What kind of animal? When? Is it something that happens often? Is it scary? Dangerous? No, you said it wasn't dangerous. You meant that, right? Does it hurt? I'm kind of a baby about pain. At least my sister Zee says so."

At the last moment, Sholeh remembered that they were using her sisters' names, too. Having a sister with her name might be weird.

"Is it preventable? Will I have to miss class? Will I get in trouble for that? Will they tell my mothers?"

"Uh."

So Simon had actually leaned back a bit without realizing. That was a lot of questions! And he was still just barely used to people talking to him, let alone asking him so many questions.

"It's –– it's not preventable, but, but it doesn't hurt, either. And you might miss class unless someone takes you there, but the teachers don't punish you for, um, being an animal." A pause. "I was a monkey once."

Sholeh's sisters would be apologizing for her right now if they could talk to you Simon. They really would. They were kind of used doing that.

"A monkey? How long were you a monkey for? Was it fun? What did you eat? I've read about monkeys before, but I've never seen one! How did you--"

=Relax, kiddo,= Zeela said. =Let him do some of the talking.=

::But--so many questions--::

*We'll be here long enough to answer some of them,* Zhahar chided, leaving off the 'I hope.' *Breathe. Stop haranguing this new brother of...ours.*

=Who wants to tell Morragen she's related to a one-face now?= Zeela snickered.

Sholeh hunched a little at the rebuke, gentle as it was. "I think I'm talking too much," she mumbled at him. "Sorry. I do that."

"It's okay," Simon assured her with another quick, wry smile. "It's... Curiosity happens a lot, here. And there's a lot I can't really explain. Fandom is..."

He had to search for a way to put it, for a moment.

"It –– it's something you have to experience to believe."

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

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