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

As the picnic continued, there were tables and chairs arranged on the lawn, the food smelled delicious and inviting, and no one was going to be bitey without explicit consent. Hopefully, everyone would take some time to enjoy themselves!

[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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Lana frowned. Norman off to himself reading wasn't unusual. But Norman with a big cloud of metaphorical darkness around him was. And she liked him, and that darkness didn't seem to be one he was doing well with.

So, have a Sith. She came bearing cookies and set the plate down next to him as she sat. "Another semester starting, then."

"Yeah," Norman agreed, a little noncommittally, barely glancing up from his comic book. "Another semester. A new sibling, a new roomie. Almost a fresh start, I guess."

Not quite. Maybe so far as the new kids went. Until they found out that he was both A) Awful and B) A Freak, and that would be that.

... This week hadn't been great on Norman.

"Oh? What are yours like?" Lana asked. "My sibling doesn't seem to be here yet, and I still have the same roommate."

"Well... My sibling seems nice enough? Her name's Janet?" Norman paused a little. "And my new roommate is Delirium. She's the one with the rainbow hair and the talking dog."

A pause.

"Who is sometimes butterflies."

Fandom.

Lana frowned in confusion. "Her dog is sometimes butterflies?"

"She's sometimes butterflies," Norman clarified. "I'm pretty sure her dog's usually a dog. I don't know if the butterflies talk, though."

"That sounds...definitely interesting," Lana said slowly. She shook her head. "Do you anticipate it being a problem?"

Norman was quiet for a few moments, staring with slightly unfocused eyes at his book.

"... Nah. She seems pretty nice. Genuinely nice. It's... nice."

"That's good." Confusing, but good.

And then, because Lana was lousy at beating around the bush, "So what's got you feeling like a week in a haunted tomb, then?"

"I'd take the haunted tomb," Norman muttered, shoulders bunching a little. "Everywhere's haunted, tombs just have the bones there, too."

That was not an answer, Norman.

"Wrong metaphor for you, I guess," Lana said, smiling. "I've been in some really awful tombs, though. Sith ghosts aren't often happy. But what's wrong?"

Norman was quiet for a long moment.

"... Ever do something that got good people hurt?" He paused. "You don't have to answer that. It was rhetorical."

And kind of personal.

"On Tuesday. When that barrier came down," he said, a little more quietly still. "I was one of the people who did that."

"So I heard," Lana said. "Why?"

Norman's shoulders bunched up a little. Defensively. Not bracing himself for words, really, just...

Just bracing.

"It looked like death. Like there was something about it that had a brush of somewhere beyond life to it. It made my eyes... itch." He frowned a little. Wondered if he could just crawl into his comic and get his brains eaten by zombies in ten-gallon hats. "Death made us a cage."

"I felt that, too," Lana agreed. "So why didn't you stop to get more help first?"

"I had Prompto," Norman muttered, sighing. "And most cages... they're made to keep things in. It didn't seem like the island had put it there in order to keep something else out."

He put down the book and stared at the grass.

"I figured if what was on the outside wanted to get in, there already would have been something in when they put up the shield. They were afraid of something in here."

Lana nodded. "You know you need to be more careful in the future, right?"

"Yeah, pretty sure in the future I'm going to just..." He hiked up a shoulder. The other was kind of stiff today. "... Just wait for someone else to point me in a direction and tell me what to do."

"What if nobody does?" Lana asked.

"Then I guess..."

He frowned a little.

He couldn't just do nothing, either.

He sighed, reached his hands up, and kind of buried them in his hair.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Sitting around being useless isn't an option."

That much, he knew.

"You just have to be more careful," Lana said.

She took a deep breath and blew it out. "I have, you know. Made a decision that hurt - killed - somebody I cared about. But you can't let it stop you from ever doing anything again. You just have to not make the same mistakes again."

"Yeah," Norman replied quietly. "Yeah, I know I can't stop entirely. It's... just a really easy thought to have, right now."

It hadn't been a great week.

He was quiet for a few moments.

"I'm sorry. About your... friend?"

"Kagan," Lana said. She wrapped her arms around her knees. "I let someone live, even though I knew it probably wasn't wise. They killed her."

Norman chewed on his lip for a few moments, and then nodded a little.

"You showed mercy," he murmured. "That's not necessarily bad, either. But... some people don't deserve it."

He was a gentle boy, maybe. But that didn't mean he had any room in his heart to let bullies keep on bullying.

"No," Lana agreed. "I'll think more carefully next time, I suppose. If I even have the time. But I can't let it stop me from acting. And you can't, either."

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