fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday Morning

Celia had had a trying morning, thus far.

She'd boarded a train in New York at the crack of dawn with a large trunk that she was pretending to struggle to carry. Hector had given her a cursory pat on the top of her hat and a tug to one stray curl, accompanied by a stern look that Celia knew meant Don't make me regret this. She'd fallen asleep on the train, and the conductor had awoken her...here. She'd not expected Maryland to be quite so much...brighter, or louder or confusing -- and in fact, Celia had been to Baltimore before, once, and she was very sure that this was unsettlingly different. She'd stumbled off the train, been ushered through a security checkpoint filled with people dressed strangely and giving her even stranger looks and now she was...here.

If not for the glittering sign bearing the name 'Fandom High,' she'd think she was in the wrong place.

Celia slumped gratefully into a chair, dropping her trunk on the floor beside her, and let out a sigh. Then she immediately straightened up. It wouldn't do to have her new classmates think her a lazy slob at first meeting.

[YAY NEWBIE SHUTTLE.]

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"I've only been to the shore once, really, and I wasn't allowed to go swimming," Celia admitted. Hector hadn't even wanted to go at all but she'd begged and he'd made her sculpt sand with her mind, long after it was cold and dark and everyone else had gone home. "But I can imagine. Water blocks so much sound, and light...."

She loved putting her head under the water when she bathed. It felt like another world.

"It gets so dark down there," Eleanor agreed, biting her lip suddenly. Had she said too much? The Little Sisters thought it was safe here. Surely she could at least reveal that one card.

"I ... I grew up there," she said, nervously.

"At the seashore?" Celia asked, misunderstanding. Surely she didn't mean on the bottom of the ocean -- that was impossible.

But so were girls who could conjure teacakes, according to most people.

"No, I mean ..." Eleanor took a steadying breath. "In Rapture."

Andrew Ryan's grand experiment, the nightmare under the sea.

"...it was very beautiful, when I was at the ocean," Celia said, hesitantly. "I don't know that I'd say rapturous, but maybe it becomes something more when you live there long enough."

Eleanor was now giving Celia a curious look. "No, I mean ... Rapture. The Rapture."

Did she not understand?

"Andrew Ryan's colony. In the Atlantic. Have you never ..."

She frowned. "You mean you've never heard of it?"

Edited 2014-01-04 02:09 (UTC)

"No," Celia said slowly, eyes widening. "Colony in the Atlantic? In the Atlantic Ocean?"

Eleanor froze for a long moment, staring -- not at Celia, but at a spot past her, on the wall.

Finally, she laughed. "He lied," she said. "He told us ... he said that we were so important, that every nation cursed us for taking their treasured minds away. I never even thought to question it."

She had had no love for Rapture; odd to think that its propaganda had still done its work.

"...I've never heard of it," Celia said, more apologetic now. "There is truly a city on the bottom of the sea, though? How was it built? Where is it?"

"It's a hundred miles from here, and a few miles deep," she said, still thinking she was near Reykjavik, Iceland. "The logistics of it were lost on me. But I grew up there. It was supposed to be a haven for free-thinkers, a place where they could be free from governmental meddling."

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday Morning

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