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

[bigdamnprincipal]

The island was still thankfully, blissfully normal, so fingers were crossed that the picnic would go off without a hitch.

The weather was pleasant enough - sunny, but not so hot that people would melt outside - and all the decorations had been safely pulled out of storage. There were tables and chairs set up with blue and yellow balloons, a table for all the information the new students would need, and enough food to probably feed two islands. It was time to welcome some new folks, everyone!

[OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

Comments

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

Kuroko's smile broadened smugly, then faltered.

She sighed.

"Of course you don't. I'm beginning to suspect that no one else here will have heard of it, either." Which was a shame because it really was impressive!

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

“No one around here’s ever heard of my hometown either,” Mae said, commiserating. “But that’s probably because it’s tiny and slowly dying.”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"But I don't think that, before I got here, I ever met anyone who didn't know about Academy City."

Kuroko sighed again.

"I guess it's not that big a deal." Even if it did mean she had one less thing to low-key brag about.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

“Probably not,” Mae agreed. “... Do you want to tell me about it anyway?”

People from big fancy cities usually wanted to tell her about them. The ones who swung through Possum Springs from Bright City basics never shut up about it.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"Eh, it's not that big a deal, really."

In a lot of ways, Kuroko didn't even like Academy City. It was full of manipulative old bastards with no sense of ethics, so, screw it.

"What about you? You said you were from a town that was... dying?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae shrugged. “Possum Springs, yeah. It used to be a mining town. And then it was a factory town. Now it’s just kind of ... a town. They put in a big highway and now no one really goes there anymore.”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"Oh. That sounds kinda sad."

Kuroko hoped that didn't come across as condescending or something.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

“Yup.” A lot of Mae’s manic energy came from deliberately not looking too hard at the sad. “It’s really pretty in the fall though. I’m going to miss that, this year.”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"No chance to go visit or anything like that?" Kuroko asked.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

“Probably not before Longest Night,” Mae said with a shrug. “But it’s cool. I’m sure it’s really fun here, too.”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"What's Longest Night? Is that, like, a festival or something?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae blinked at that. She’d managed in the last eight months to completely miss the fact that Longest Night wasn’t a thing in most universes.

“Um. Yeah. You know, the longest night of the year? Twinkly lights and decorations and your parents making you go to church?”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"That doesn't sound familiar."

The twinkly lights was kind of Christmas-y, right? But the rest of it sounded different.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

"Really? It's a really old holiday. I think old timey people wanted to make sure the sun came back in the winter."

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"Sounds kinda neat?"

"I mean, parts of it sound like other festivals I know about, but we don't have anything that combines it all like that back home." She frowned thoughtfully. "And I don't think we have anything specifically for the longest night of the year? That's, what, sometime in January?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

"December 21st," Mae said. "So you never heard the story of how Adina Astra had to travel to the Frozen Lake on Longest Night so she could see her dead wife again? It's a classic! How did you learn to appease the Forest God?"

It was possible that that legend wasn't quite as universal as Mae thought even in her own world. Her grandfather was quite the storyteller.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

Kuroko slowly shook her head. None of that sounded familiar.

"Um, which forest god?" Not that there were any traditions about forest gods in Academy City, what with the lack of forests, but she was pretty sure she'd learned about something similar in school at some point.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

". . . There's more than one?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"Well, there are a lot of forests, right?" So it made sense that each one had its own god!

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

"Are there?" Mae asked. "Or are they actually one big forest and we can't see how it's connected together?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

Uh.

"I guess I never thought about that before? So maybe it's possible?"

To be fair, forests weren't really a top-of-mind topic for Kuroko.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

See, that was exactly the sort of attitude that got you eaten by bears.

Mae nodded like she was at all wise (she was not). "Right, so. Um. Do you have any questions about, like. The school or something?"

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"After looking at the class list, I guess I'm wondering where the, um, regular classes are?"

Kuroko wasn't exactly complaining, but it was weird.

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[thishouseishaunted]

“Nowhere!” Mae said, sounding VERY pleased. “I mean. I think you can do independent studies if you want, but you totally don’t have to.”

Re: Meet Your Big/Little Sibling [Fall 2019]

[backstageteleporter]

"That's weird. What kind of universities to people go to after they graduate, then?"