Library, Monday

[intotheout]

So it was summer. Like, officially and everything. At least as far as Fandom was concerned. It was pretty cool and rainy out right now, but it was still summer, and Tip wanted to be outside doing summer things.

Instead she was in the library, watching the books rearrange themselves into a "summer reading" display.

"Mark Twain's great and all," Tip said, as the books stacked themselves into a pyramid and flung themselves up onto the display table. "But the man apparently never learned how to write a girl in his life."

The books paused, looked at each other, then turned back towards the stacks. In moments, books by Barrie and Baum came trundling out of the shelves. Tip sighed.

"How about some written by girls?"

The books seemed to sigh, then one of the whistled, and a book by L.M. Montgomery came dashing out.

"If I try to ask for some black woman authors, you all are going to go on strike again, aren't you."

The books went back to ignoring her.

[open!]

Comments

[intotheout]

"He turned them down," Tip said. "We had them make a new rule that if the person elected didn't want to serve, they could appoint someone else. Being President is apparently a really terrible job."

The man who'd been President of the US before the invasion had refused to come back when the aliens all left, for instance. That was probably why the only people who really wanted it were awful.

Tip pulled out her phone. Astrid was taking this pretty well, so it seemed like a little showing off was in order. "You want to see a picture? The Boov are pretty funky looking."

[white_oleander]

"Boov?" Astrid's head tilted. The other girl had said her recommendation wrote fantasy, magical realism stuff, hadn't she? So perhaps a well-thought out story about aliens wasn't too far fetched from her. In a way, she had to appreciate the level of imagination that would require, too.

She shrugged, momentarily distracted by the sleek device the girl had in her hand. "Sure."

[intotheout]

Tip pulled up the photo app and found one of her favorite photos of J.Lo, hanging out with a couple koobish back in New Mexico, then offered the phone to Astrid. "Here he is. Those inkblot looking things are called koobish. They're like Boov cows."

[white_oleander]

Astrid had....so many questions. What was that thing? Was it a digital photo album? One of those new Sega video games? It looked way better in person than she thought they would. Obviously, without a even TV, video games were pretty far out for Astrid to begin with, but the boys at Starr's had a Game Boy, but this was a whole new level. Was it a still from a game? Promotional art? How did it look so incredibly real?

And then there were the multitude of questions that went along with a girl who apparently thought she lived in a game and was best friends with one of the characters.

Questions that would, of course, remain unasked.

"He's..." Astrid pushed through all her questions to think of something to say, "kind of cute, actually."

Frogs. It reminded her of digging up frogs with the boys.

[intotheout]

Tip laughed. "I'm going to tell him you said that. And he'll be insufferable. I always thought he looked like a weird, half-smooshed frog."

Astrid was going to lose her shit when she met Sidon, wasn't she. Or Peridot. Or any of the other non-humans, but those two worked well as extremes.

"My name's Tip, by the way. Well, Gratuity, but just about anyone who's not a teacher calls me 'Tip'."

[white_oleander]

Oh, Very Dedicated School Mascot and CooCoo For CoCo Puffs Gem Lady?

Yeah, those had been fun.

"I'm Astrid." She thought she was, anyway. "And a weird, half-smooshed frog isn't too far off, either."

Better half-smooshed than fully-smooshed.

[intotheout]

"They communicate in bubbles."

Bill, Tip's tiny bee-shaped robot friend, took off from his perch on her hair and wrote an excited screed in the air between them.

"This is Bill," Tip said. "He says hi."

[white_oleander]

"....Hi, Bill," Astrid said after a moment, blinking, because, yeah, a little tiny robot thing just flew out of Tip's hair.

Was this girl just totally loaded? Did her parents work for NASA or something? The tech here was just nuts.

[intotheout]

She actually kind of was? The joys of selling a flying car to GE. Not that Tip's mom let her anywhere near the "slush" fund for anything frivolous.

And, no, that wasn't why Tip had a tiny robot. It was why she could afford the smart phone, though.

"He takes some getting used to," Tip said with a small laugh at Astrid's expression. "You know, like the rest of this island. You're taking it all pretty well in stride, though. What's your world like?"

[white_oleander]

Astrid's first impulse was to just say normal, but she had a feeling that word was slowly losing all meaning, and she wasn't about to explain to Tip that she was just incredibly well-versed in compartmentalization.

Too good, really.

She shrugged. "I'm from LA," she offered. "I know people say that it's pretty much like an entirely different world out there, but really it's...not."

From here, maybe, yes. From the rest of normal society, though...

[intotheout]

So, probably 'regular' Earth, then, Tip noted. She was starting to wonder if Astrid was actually adjusting well, or just ignoring the stuff that didn't fit into her worldview.

She almost couldn't even blame her for that, if it was the case.

"LA, huh?" she said. "I haven't made it out that way yet. J.Lo and I did a big roadtrip after we first met," to get to the Boov enforced 'human preserve' but she was trying not to break Astrid's brain too much, just now, "but we only got as far as Arizona. I'm from Pennsylvania, myself."

[white_oleander]

"I've never been to Pennsylvania," Astrid said. "How do you like it there? Do you miss it?"

[intotheout]

Tip shrugged. "It's not that different from here, at least weather-wise. We don't live in the city anymore -- that part I miss. Suburbs are gross. But at least around here Baltimore's right over the causeway when I want to city it up."

Not that she bothered most of the time. Suburbs might be gross, but going downtown took, like, time and money and effort. Staying in and reading the trashy romance novels her mom sent her and texting with J.Lo was basically always easier.