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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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."

"I got lucky," Norman replied, nodding a tiny bit, reaching up and rubbing at his sore shoulder. "People got better, the damage didn't stay. I know death well enough to understand that that's the exception and not at all the rule. I'll be more careful, yeah."

Terrified to act, maybe.

But that had never stopped him before.

"That's all you can do," Lana said. "And however it happened, you did get lucky. That's nothing to dismiss."

"I'm really not dismissing it," Norman replied, smiling wryly. "I'm thankful for it. I just... I know I can't bank on that ever happening again, either."

Lana nodded. "That's good to keep in mind, too. But mostly just please be careful." She gave him a wry smile. "And maybe come eat something and meet people, since that's what this thing is for?"

Honestly, Norman, Lana appreciated books as much as anyone, but people were good, too.

Norman gave a small, halfhearted laugh. "Meeting my new roommate and my new sibling wasn't enough, huh?"

Because where he was standing, wow, that sure felt like plenty...

"You can meet old people, too," Lana said. "But I'm always up for intelligence gathering. What are your new roommate and sibling like?"

"Pretty much polar opposites, as far as I can tell," Norman offered. "My new sibling is Janet, and she was worried about things like what day the cafeteria has the best food. My new roommate... roommates, I guess... are Delirium and her talking service dog Barnabas, and... Delirium is sometimes tiny fishes, I think."

Delirium was a lot of things, really.

"And sometimes butterflies? I've heard about her," Lana said. "She seems interesting, at any rate. Which one is Janet?"

Norman looked around the crowd, and then pointed her out.

"Janet seems pretty nice," he offered. "Just... normal. I don't know how she's going to take to Fandom yet. Not really sure if taking it easy or just ripping off the band-aid is the thing to do with the kind of weirdness we have here..."

"I tend to favour the sudden approach myself," Lana confessed, "but she's your sibling. I haven't met mine yet."

"I'm kind of afraid of scaring her off," Norman confessed. "And... I really don't want to just throw anything big around right now, you know?"

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