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

Over on this part of the school lawn... yeah, it was still chilly. Stupid winter, doing its winter thing. But there were plenty of chairs and tables for people watching, feasting on warm foods and drinks, and generally attempting to meet the new folks!

[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 know what color it--oh."

Huh. Would you look at that. Uma grabbed another orange and tried to peel it herself. It took her longer and the results were nowhere near as neat, but eventually she had the soft insides in her hand. "Oh!" she gasped, taking a bite the way she would an apple--those, she was familiar with. "It's sweet! And juicy!"

"It is," Norman replied, smiling a little. It was hard not to, with a reaction like that. "Just be careful not to bite into the seeds, okay? They aren't quite as tasty."

He picked one out of his own orange to show it to her.

"Not all of them have seeds in them, but it doesn't hurt to know they can be there. And the other neat thing about oranges is that they can be pulled apart into segments. They're way easier to eat that way."

Once again, he was demonstrating.

"Huh." Uma made a face; she wasn't a huge fan of showing off her ignorance. But this kid was right, it was a lot easier to eat this way. Uma wasn't an overall fan of neatness, but nobody wanted to go around sticky. "Thanks."

Normally she wouldn't care about how ungracious she sounded, but this kid had been friendly and she was reasonably certain she could pound him into the ground if he decided that being ignorant also meant that she was stupid. So she awkwardly added, "You're from somewhere that has buffets and picnics and oranges and..." she pointed at a platter of cookies. "...Brown baked discs?"

"Cookies," Norman offered, not about to make any snap judgments, here. She seemed to be picking up on things quickly, and willing to learn. What was there to judge about that. "But yeah, I'm from Massachusetts."

There were definitely cookies in Massachusetts, thank goodness.

"I'm not usually much of a picnic-goer, myself. But I've been to a few."

"From where?"

"Uh," Norman shrugged his shoulders. "Blithe Hollow. It's not really far from here."

He paused, and then ventured, "Do you know where here is?"

"...No?" Uma admitted. "I washed up on the beach."

She was, in fact, carrying roughly a third of the beach with her in sand and salt.

"I knew where I was when I fell asleep!" she added defensively, because falling asleep stranded in the ocean was sure to make that a less embarrassing story.

Norman held up the hand that wasn't currently holding an orange in quiet surrender.

"I wasn't going to ask," he replied. "Apparently, this place just kind of grabs people? I meant to be here, but a few of the conversations I've had so far kind of made it sound like a lot of people don't end up here intentionally at all."

"I wouldn't even know how to get here," Uma said. "This place doesn't seem to be part of Auradon."

That, or everyone was a really convincing liar.

"I don't know what a Massaschusett is, never mind where it is."

"I've, uh, never heard of Auradon," Norman admitted, "but I guess that's normal here, too. Somebody said something about a 'multiverse,' which... I think mostly just means pretty much anything can happen, here."

Weird was the new normal. He'd gotten that part.

"You're in America," he added. "That's the country. And the state is Maryland, and the island is called Fandom."

Uma nodded; that made sense in her worldview. Auradon was set up much the same way; King Beast and Queen Belle ruled over the whole country, but the smaller states were kingdoms in their own right. Triton ruled Atlantica, Jasmine and Aladdin ruled Agrabah, and then the Isle was a small chunk nobody wanted.

"So you came here to go to school?" she asked. "Up at the castle?" She gave him a distinctly unimpressed look. "You a prince or something?"

Norman almost laughed at that. Almost.

"Not even remotely a prince," he replied. "I've almost been burned at the stake by an angry mob, before. I'm not really what anyone would consider royalty."

Stupid angry mobs, anyway.

"Burned at the stake, huh?" Uma sounded intrigued, but not like she was entirely buying it. She'd grown up listening to the wild tales that villains liked to spin about their old glory days and what they'd do if the spell surrounding the island fell. "Why?"

What kind of place was this 'Massachusetts' if it tried to burn people--especially kids--alive?

That's right, Norman. Uma was judging your culture.

Norman briefly considered a reply about how it all started when he'd failed to read a little girl a bedtime story, but figured that probably wouldn't go over well here, either.

"They were afraid," he replied, instead, simply. "Why else would they want to?"

"Because sometimes people have to turn around and find someone weaker than them to make them suffer so they can feel strong," Uma said, lip curling.

She didn't realize how much she'd given away with that single sentence. It was a fact of life that every kid on the Isle grew up with.

That was quite a lot, wasn't it? Norman nodded a little, chewing on his lip for a second before coming up with a reply.

"That, too," he agreed. "Not everybody does cruel things because they're afraid."

Sometimes they did cruel things because they were hurt, or jealous, or because they wanted to stop feeling small. And sometimes, the cruel just enjoyed being cruel.

"Not that I'm anything to be afraid of, anyway," Norman added. "Angry mobs can also be pretty stupid."

Angry mobs were fantastic at being stupid.

She studied him frankly. "Yeah," she agreed. "You don't look like you need a whole mob to take you out." Again, sorry kid, but you kinda looked like a stiff wind would knock you over. "So what were they afraid of?"

Eh, Norman wasn't about to take it personally. She wasn't exactly wrong, after all. And he'd even grown some since he was eleven.

"Zombies, curses, witches," he replied. "Things they didn't understand, mostly."

"So why take it out on you?" Uma asked. "Are you a witch?"

She was actually eager to know the answer to that. She was the daughter of a sea-witch somewhere that didn't block all magic. If there were witches around who could teach her some stuff, that would be really cool.

"Not me, no," Norman replied. "And the one they thought was a witch wasn't really, either. Not until after they hurt her."

And there was a long and depressing story, right there.

"I was the one who was telling them not to hurt the zombies, I guess."

"Zombies?" Uma asked.

Sorry, wrong kind of fantasy canon.

"Um..." Norman shrugged a little. "Dead bodies, standing up and walking around again. Movies and stuff always have them eating people's brains, but these ones weren't interested in that at all. They just wanted to make amends for something horrible they did before they died."

"That sounds like some proper magic," Uma said. No wonder she'd never heard of them. There was no magic on the Isle and very little any more in Auradon. "So these other folks saw you talking to the zombies and decided you needed to be burned for it? Like that might maybe make the zombies go away?"

People were so stupid.

"... More or less, yeah," Norman sighed. "It didn't happen, obviously. But it was way too close for comfort."

And he probably would have been angry about it, afterwards. Blithe Hollow really couldn't have handled him and Aggie freaking out like horror-show poltergeists, tearing apart the town from the afterlife.

...But would that have been so bad? Kinda sounded like it'd had it coming.

"What happened?" Uma asked. "Instead?"

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