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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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.

"New York!" Arietty said, now smiling. "Lots of movies happen there."

"Yes!" Frank agreed. "That's where I'm from. Well, upstate, but it still counts." You just keep telling yourself that, Frank. "I've always wanted to go to London, though. I'm kind of jealous of you."

"I've only seen a very little bit of it," Arietty admitted. "But some of that was even from an airplane."

A remote control toy airplane.

"Even more jealous," he said excitedly. "I love planes. I've only ever been on one once, though. It was... kind of one of the main reasons I decided to come to school here."

"Oh? Do they teach you how to fly one, here?" Arietty spun in place on Frank's shoulder, looking up at the sky as though she might spot a student flight right now.

"Oh! No, unfortunately," he said sheepishly. "I got to fly from home to here, though. But man, how awesome would a pilot class be?"

Doooork.

"That would be wonderful!" Arietty agreed. "I've already gotten to drive, but I didn't get to fly the plane, I had to let James do that!"

"You live in London and your friend's a pilot?" Oh god, Arietty. He was never going to shut up about this now. "You have the coolest life."

That . . . never happened to Arietty. "My other friend, Spiller, has a motorbike. He almost ran me over with it when we first met."

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