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

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

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

There was the bonfire for everyone who thought Maryland in January was a little too cool for their taste, as well as the ~~moddable~~ warm food and drinks, and chairs and tables in the school colors of blue and gold. Some tables were also set a little further away from the crowds.

Because there were always people who preferred the fringes.

[OCD up! This is the FIRST post for general mingling. Please use this post first, if your browser can handle the comment load. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here and there's more room for mingling here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Po gathered a plate of food that was largely unfamiliar to him and found himself a spot near to the bonfire to observe the crowds. He was beginning to earn himself a slight headache, but that was permissible at the moment; the way the very grass of this world hummed beneath everyone's feet was something he'd need to learn to ignore, though for now he wanted to keep his Grace sharp and awake.

Mercy nodded to him from her own spot near the bonfire. "Hi there. Welcome to Fandom. The fire's nice, isn't it?"

"It's an improvement over not being by the fire," Po said with a wry little smile. "I'm used to warmer days."

Mercy smiled at him. "You're lucky we're not back at my home town. This is practically like summer, comparatively."

"Then I do not envy you your home, my lady," Po said shaking his head. "I'm an island boy; we Lienid don't adapt well to being frozen."

She'd never been called that before and it was... kind of cool. Still she blushed a little, shaking her head. "You can just call me Mercy," she said quickly. "I don't, I'm not sure I quite deserve a 'my lady'."

He got a smile, though. "So, you're from a warm island, I'm guessing. Are you from this world?"

"Then you must call me Po, Mercy," he said, dipping his head with a smile. "And no, I don't think I am. It's quite a surprise, not being in the world you thought you were."

"It's nice to meet you, Po," she said with a smile. "I can only imagine how strange that must be. Sometimes I feel like I'm from a different world, but it's not the same. What is your world like? I always love to hear about where other people are from."

Lucrezia stilled at the sight of ... a face. A very familiar face. Heartbreakingly familiar. She had known that face. She had kissed that face ...

Images flashed through her mind, unbidden. Their Eden, under a tree; Narcissus, in the clear waters of the spring. Soft hands teaching her sweetness ...

His body, lying on the ground, cold and still and dead.

It couldn't be. But time was strange here. It could be. It wasn't. He was dressed so fancy, not like the stable boy he had once been. And yet --

"... Paolo?" she asked. Her voice was faint enough to be a whisper. Or a prayer.

"Sorry?"

It was hard to miss that the girl was speaking to him, and that her tide of emotions was meant for him -- but Po had no idea what to do with it.

"...are you speaking to me?" Maybe she was mistaken.

She flinched. He couldn't be Paolo; Paolo was dead. Had she not seen Paolo laid to rest, on a dark night in Rome? And here she was, staring at a stranger who had borrowed his face. His eyes ... she would swear they were the same. Even his voice seemed to be Paolo's own.

"I ... I'm sorry," she managed, pulling herself together with some shred of dignity. "You -- you can't be. You aren't, then. But you --"

One hand had raised itself, slowly, hoping to press against his cheek; she caught herself and stilled it, inches away from touching him.

One couldn't caress the face of a stranger, she chided herself.

(Stranger? He had fathered her child. But that was Paolo. And this ...)

The name, Paolo, echoed around in his brain with her grief, and Po searched this girl's face for any sense of recognition that might help him with her identity. "I'm not your Paolo, my lady," he said, as gently as he could, as he reached up to take her hand. She seemed like one who might need a soft touch or two, at the moment. "I almost wish that I were, for your sake."

Lucrezia tried not to shiver as he said my lady. He didn't know, couldn't know, how she had cajoled Paolo into calling her Lucrezia, only for him to insist upon my lady.

She curled her fingers around his, as she drew a deep breath.

"Do not wish that," she said. "His life was hard, and it ended too soon. I pray you meet no such fate. It was only ... that you seem to have his face."

She was trying, with some difficulty, not to think of how his hands felt much the same, or to wonder about the skin under this boy's shirt.

"Are you certain?" Po asked, mildly surprised. "I've never been mistaken for another before." He drew his hand back -- still gentle -- and adjusted his rings. "But I promise, I'm fully alive, and I'm terribly sorry about this Paolo of yours. My name is Po, which is a bit close, for me."

Toby couldn't say what it was, precisely, that drew his attention to Po. But there he was, flicking his gaze between that selection of food and the boy's face. "Trying a bit of everything?" he asked with a smile.

"There's so much I've never seen before," Po sighed, smiling over at the other boy. "Who knows when I might see such an opportunity again?"

[I AM SO SORRY FOR THE LATE.]

"A very good point," Toby had to admit. "I can relate, anyway. I basically did the same thing my first day."

"Have you been here long, then?" Po asked. "It's my first day. I wasn't sure it showed so very much."

"About a year and a half," Toby confirmed. "It's a small school, though. Even if you don't know everyone, you get to know faces, you know?"

"I can imagine it's easy," Po said, glancing around. "The faces themselves are somewhat distinctive, are they not?"

That was a tactful way of saying "People here look weird."

"That's a good way of putting it," Toby had to admit with a laugh. "The clothing probably doesn't help either." Because judging from the way Po was dressed, he was either from a very different time or a very different world.

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

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