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

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!event: welcome picnic

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

There were chairs and tables set up all across the lawn; some were by the bonfire, for the people who wanted to be warm and central to everything else at the picnic, and some were set farther away from the action, for the people who wanted more peace and quiet.

There was no escaping the glitter though. Sorry, but not really.

[OCD is up! This is the picnic post for general mingling. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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"I just wish they'd give money to help take care of the children at the Foundling hall," Kaylin said. "No one will let me ask people to give money. They say I'm not very tactful."

"Which," she admitted, "is probably a good idea. I'd most likely end up insulting them and threatening them and getting myself and Marrin in lots of trouble."

Tact and Kaylin usually lived on different continents.

Sparkle just laughed at that.

"Yeah, when people like us start asking for money, they expect us to keep our heads down and our hands out while sitting in a gutter waiting for handouts. Not my style, either."

He much preferred the more direct route, with the pickpocketing and so on.

"I've done that, too," Kaylin admitted. "When I was a kid. We didn't have an adult to help so, we learned how to beg. It's a skill. Like picking pockets - not that many people had much to steal in the fiefs."

At least not the unarmed ones.

"Trick then is finding enough people to steal from without getting caught," Sparkle shrugged. "Really not a problem around here, since food is frigging everywhere. But like hell I'm going to let myself get rusty before graduation."

"You practice still?" Kaylin asked, more than a little jealous. "I would but... going to be part of the police, so it would be a bad thing now."

Well, that got her a side-eye.

"Yeah, I'm not seeing myself ever getting along with the cops back home. Might as well keep up on what I know gets me by."

"There weren't any in the fiefs. I hated them for that." She looked down at the ground. "I envied the people in Elantra who had people to protect them. Even if they would have been protected from people like me."

That... sounded familiar enough. Sparkle pursed his lips a little and nodded.

"That's the trouble, isn't it? The cops serve the people with the money, and the rest of us are the undesirables. We're the not-in-my-backyard crowd that lowers property values and smokes out behind the shed and they get scared, so scared, that just breathing our air means their kids are going to drop out of school and start doing drugs and stealing and it's all bullshit, isn't it? We're them, we're just smarter and hungrier and we fucking hate them for thinking they're better than we are."

"The fiefs are outside the Emperor's rule," Kaylin said bitterly. "The fieflords have all the power there. And they don't give a tinker's damn about us. They figure we'll all either starve to death or kill each other soon enough. The Hawks would love to go in and help, but they can't. I didn't understand that when I was little."

"So, these Hawks. They're what you want to be, are they?"

They sounded... cop-like. Or something. The ones who were supposed to do things about stuff, but only where the people with money told them to do it.

Kaylin nodded. "Because they take care of everyone, not just the 'important' people. Even... even street kids, Sparkle. Kids that most people think are nothing. They ever take care of them."

She should know. It had been the first thing she'd done with the Hawks. They'd even been willing to listen to her - a less than nothing attempted assassin - to save them.

"Nobody gave a damn where I grew up. I thought it was true in Elantra, too, but it wasn't."

"Huh..." Sparkle actually kind of sounded impressed, there. A little. He was trying not to be too taken with the idea, though. He'd learned to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt. "Sounds like one hell of a place."

A place where people cared? Really? Almost too good to be true.

"Some of the Hawks are stupid, just like anywhere else, but.." she tried to think carefully of how to say it. "The Emperor is a dragon and... and Elantra is his horde. All of it. Every last person and thing. And he doesn't like anyone messing with his things. So the three Halls of Law protect them."

Totally lacking explanation of 'horde' and one which might just get her eaten if she ever expressed it that way to a dragon, but still.

"Uh. An actual, literal dragon? Like... scales and big teeth?"

Sometimes, Sparkle needed to clarify these things.

"Uh huh. When he's not in human form anyway."

Oh, she should explain. "Not that I've seen him. Everyone's afraid that I wouldn't be polite enough and he'd eat me."

"... You know, one of these days I'll get used to shit like that," Sparkle declared. "Probably not any time soon. But eventually."

"No kidding," Kaylin said, nodding her head in agreement. "Like all the hot water here just waiting in the pipes without even any magic. Who'd believe that back home?"

"Probably the same sort of people where you're from as the kind who actually believe in magic, where I do," Sparkle mused. "Takes a special sort of person, I guess."

"Mostly they just think I'm telling crazy stories. Nobody believed me when I said there was a girl here who could make herself have wings if she wanted." She grinned. "It confuses them, 'cause I'm a realy bad liar, so they don't know what to think."

"And see," Sparkle grinned, "I'm a really good liar, telling them things that should be impossible, but they're the truth. God, the looks on their faces are priceless, though."

Sparkle kind of lived to screw with people.

"They do look funny," Kaylin admitted. "Though Marcus usually just roars at me and tells me that if I don't have anything useful to do he'll find me something and then I have to show him my neck so he knows I'm taking him seriously."

".... Okay, silly question, but... roars? And your neck?"

This was the same place that had dragons, so, Sparkle was going to check, again.

"He's a Leontine." Kaylin tried to think how to explain about him.

"Oh, I know. He's like your lions - except a person. He has a mane and large teeth and hands, or paws like a lions, and when he's angry or, well, enraged or whatever, you need to sort of tip your neck like this..."

She demonstrated, baring her neck. "It's a dominance sort of thing, offering him your neck so that he can bite it or, well slash it out or whatever and hoping that he doesn't - which he never has, at least not in the Halls of Law or anything."

All of this was serving to make Sparkle thankful that, when Lewis got angry, all he did was yell and then lock himself in his office to smoke Export As.

"... Do me a favour and never let me piss off a dude with claws, okay?"

"I try, but I never quite seem to succeed myself. But if you ever come to Elantra or he ever comes here, I'll try to keep you out of Marcus' way."

No matter what Sparkle did there, Marcus would undoubtedly blame it on Kaylin anyway, so he was pretty safe.

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

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