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

Well.

It was raining popsicles and suntan lotion today. Because Fandom liked to make the newbies cry sometimes. Yes, the island had a sense of humor about these things.

We've all learned to accept that and move on with our lives. Well, all of us except for Britta. But she's the worst.

[~~Please wait for~~ 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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Frank paused. "That's kind of mean," he pointed out. "But I'm actually looking for someone named Arietty right now, so if you want to maybe jump onto one of the picnic tables or something so I can go find her..."

And there went another tiny dart into Frank's head. "How do you know my name?!"

Later, she would realize that this would have been a fantastic opportunity to lie. Ah well.

"You're Arietty?" Oh. "I'm supposed to, you know, mentor you," Frank explained. "Sort of guide you, get used to the school, make sure you find your roommate okay, that sort of thing. And -- I guess the popsicle and lemonade I got you won't really work since you're smallish, but maybe if you took really small sips?"

Beat.

"And also if you weren't on my head?"

He was so earnest. Arietty started to think maybe this bean might be more like James than Professor Mildeye.

"Well, I might be a tiny bit . . . stuck. If you give me a moment, I can probably climb down onto your shoulder."

"Yeah, go for it," Frank encouraged, briefly wondering what this must sound like to casual spectators who maybe might not notice the tiny person on his head. Oh well. It was Fandom. Meanwhile, he did his best to make conversation. "So... does being all little like that mean you haven't gone to school before?"

"No!" Arietty said, as she took off her backpack to pull out the embroidery floss she was currently using as climbing rope. She secured it to a strand of his hair and gave it a gentle tug. "I mean, I haven't, but it's not because I'm a Borrower! It's because my father worried about me and wanted to keep me home. Sorry, this may hurt a little," she warned. "I had to tie my rope on your hair."

"A what now? --Ow." It was safe to say he'd never had someone rappel down his head with embroidery floss before. Weird, right? "So does that mean you didn't mean to come here? Because that happens sometimes. It's a pretty cool place, though. Pretty weird compared to what I'm used to, but really fun, in case you're not sure whether you want to stick around."

"I was exploring some pipes and fell through a hole," Arietty explained, once she was balanced on Frank's shoulder. "I'm not sure where 'here' is."

"Oh! Right. It's Fandom High School," Frank supplied. "In 2012, which surprised me when I got here. Apparently people come here from all sorts of different worlds and timelines, so there are actual superheroes and aliens and I think a couple people who can fly and stuff around here, and then people like me who are from a whole different time period. So we all take classes and live in the dorms and occasionally have weird weekends when it rains ice cream or we all turn into ponies, but on the whole it's really fun."

Arietty peered at him suspiciously -- not that he could likely tell, since she was still on his shoulder. "Just because my dad kept me under the floorboards until I was sixteen doesn't mean I'm going to believe that beans sometimes turn into ponies."

Someone would have mentioned it if they did, surely.

"Oh, there are pictures," Frank assured her. "In fact..."

He took his phone out of his pocket, clearly intending to whip out a photo to use as evidence, but it took him kind of a long time to figure out how to get to his pictures.

Finally -- "There. That was me (http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/117361271/46583237) a few weeks ago."

Arietty had to admit, it was an interesting picture.

"That could just be a pony you found. . . ." she said, still a little suspicious.

"Trust me, I wouldn't have taken a picture of one," Frank assured her. "These cell phone things are still way too hard to figure out."

Arietty rolled her eyes. "They're not that hard. My friend James can use one, and he's just a kid."

"Do you have one?" he countered, meaning to point out some especially difficult-to-navigate aspect of his own phone. Then he remembered that she was a tiny person. "...Okay, you probably don't."

"They don't make them very small. Most Borrowers don't bother with phones at all."

"Lucky," Frank said vigorously. "Back home they're manageable, since they're still big and, you know, attached to walls, but here they're so tiny and they don't even really have buttons for the numbers."

Beat.

"...Oh, right. Back home for me it's 1959." That should explain some things. And, you know, cause a lot of other questions.

"I'm pretty sure James never mentioned beans learning how to time travel." The Underground had movies about it, sometimes, but she'd been lead to believe they were just stories. . . .

"We can't. Yet. I don't know. We can't back at home, anyway," Frank said. "Not in time machines or anything. But what I'm trying to say is that this place is sort of a... nexus, I guess? For people from lots of different worlds. I'm not sure how it works exactly. But for me it's 1959 at home, and for other people it's, like, outer space, and for you I guess... you're from now?"

"Assuming it's July and 2012, I am." Professor Mildeye would have had a stroke at this place, if what Frank was saying was true. "That would explain the underground hole into the sky."

"Oh! Those are called portals," Frank filled in helpfully. "I didn't know they existed either. They take people places. Like in sci-fi books, except real." Dork. "But yeah, it's July 2012, this is Fandom Island, just off the coast of Maryland, and this place is pretty weird." He shrugged. "Any questions?"

"Maryland!" It sounded like some mystical fantasy land. "Where's that?"

"Oh," Frank said, blinking a bit in surprise. Her being four inches tall was one thing; not having heard of Maryland was another. "It's a state? Where are you from, anyway?"

"Underneath a grandfather clock in a house in Hackney. That's in London," she continued, striving to prove that she wasn't a completely floorboards-bumpkin. "In England, which is in Europe."

"Oh! Okay, that makes sense." Because for a moment he'd worried he had been dealing with an alien or something. "Yeah, this is America. We're not far from Baltimore, if you've ever heard of it? It's sort of close to Washington DC and New York."

...Ish.

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