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

[bigdamnprincipal]

Good weather had fallen over Fandom this morning, so the picnic conditions were looking fantastic. The bonfire was there for good measure, along with the makings of s'mores, because it was almost truly summer, right?

There was plenty of food, and there were tables and chairs set up all across the lawn with varying degrees of glitter stuck to them. Everything was ready for another welcome picnic!

[OCD-free! Welcome the new folks gently! Or not!]

Comments

[even_bigger_teeth]

"...hi," Luma echoed back, blinking, trying not to look startled or surprised that people would actually talk to her. For a moment, her eyes darted around for Eleanor, as if her sister might be able to swoop in and save her at the last minute. No such luck, but no surprise there. Nothing good ever came from Eleanor Zarrin trying to save anything, anyway.

So her eyes settled back on this new person and she smiled, a soft, pretty smile, without showing her teeth.

Not yet, anyway.

"And thank you. I'm...glad to be here."

Well. That she was starting to doubt a little.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Rude to Eleanors. Accurate, sure! But rude.

"Oh, so you're one of the folks that meant to come!" Arden said, which surely made Luma feel so much better. "It's always a toss up whether someone applied to be here, or if circumstances randomly tossed them here."

Somehow, both groups usually ended up wearing the same shellshocked expression.

"I'm Arden," she added, extending a hand.

[even_bigger_teeth]

"Luma," she said, half tempted to meet that hand with a big hairy paw, but it was a warm human one that met Arden's. Her chin lifted a bit in a moment of assessment before she added, "Zarrin. Maybe you know my sister Eleanor? She goes here already."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Giving into that temptation would just have been funny.

"Oh!" Arden's smile grew. "Yeah! Ellie's a great friend of mine! And she's dating my best friend! She didn't tell me you'd be joining her here at Fandom, that's awesome!"

...Arden might need to take a few minutes and remember some of what Eleanor had told her about her family.

[even_bigger_teeth]

A reaction like that definitely made Luma think that maybe Eleanor hadn't told any of her friends about her family at all. Her smile sort of twitched a little.

"Oh," she said, trying to make it sound casual and blithe, "she doesn't know yet. It's going to be a surprise."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Oh, Arden might not remember much about Luma, specifically, but she knew enough that the mention of it being a surprise had her enthusiasm dimming, just a bit. "One hell of a surprise, that's for sure," she said, eyeing Luma a little more now.

They'd talked about Eleanor's grandmere, and about how much it hurt to be twisted and used by the people who were supposed to trust and care for you...

"Hey, you wouldn't be coming here to fuck with Ellie, would you?" she asked, keeping her tone light and conversational.

[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma wanted to say that there was nothing she could do to fuck with Eleanor even half as badly as Eleanor had fucked with Luma. She wanted to say that any fuckery going on here was just a taste of her own medicine.

But of course she wasn't going to say that. Especially not to one of Eleanor's friends. And, besides, it wasn't even all that true. Yes, the surprise of it all, she genuinely did want to sort of rattle her sister a little bit, but overall?

She didn't want to give Eleanor a taste of her own medicine so much as she just wanted a taste of everything that Eleanor had always taken for granted.

And she missed her. She shouldn't be here, she should be home, with her family, and if Eleanor wasn't going to come to her, then what choice did that really give Luma but to go to her?

The smile faltered, very, very slightly. "That wouldn't be a very sisterly thing to do, now, would it?" she asked. And then her head tilted a little, her sharp eyes considering Arden carefully.

"I've never been to a real school before," she found herself admitting. "This place seems like it might be the only chance I'll ever get. And Eleanor seems to have really gotten on well here..."

She let it trail off, lifting a shoulder in a shrug, not sure she wanted to really say much more on it than that.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden nodded, and the breeze that had just kicked up for a second there, settled. What a weird meteorological quirk!

"She did," Arden said, her smile returning. "And you will, too, I'm sure. It's not really a regular school, but it is a real one. And hey, if you wanna surprise the hell outta your sister--" Arden mimes zipping her lips and throwing away the key. "I don't know much about family, but I'm pretty sure giving each other shit is an important part of the bonding process."

[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma nodded a little, still a little skeptical about trusting Arden, but even if she did go rushing off to spill the news to Eleanor after this, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. A hunter who had to rely on the element of surprise really had nothing else going for them, after all.

"Thank you," she said. "I don't know how much she talks about her family here, but she's always been away for school. We kind of have a lot of catching up to do."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden paused a little bit. Considered. "We've mostly talked about your grandmere," she said quietly. "Some other things, here and there, but mostly her."

She'd let Luma make of that what she would.

[even_bigger_teeth]

"Oh."

Luma's face was the sort of blank expression of someone who wasn't very good at blank expressions, and, to make it even more obvious that she wasn't particularly good at them, her lip curled back in a sneer, like a dog about to growl. The sharp canines were undeniable, and she felt nearly every hair on the back of her neck lifting.

"Her."

And then Luma breathed out slowly in an effort to get her hackles lowered again, and then she lifted her chin with an air of disinterested nonchalance, giving her hair a toss over her shoulders as she tried to pass off her initial reaction. Poorly.

"I didn't much care for her at all. Let's talk about something else. Where are you from, Arden? Have you known Eleanor for long? What about Kamala, you said you were her best friend, is that right?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"She definitely sounds like somebody improved by being dead," Arden agreed. "But anyway, I'm from North Carolina, and Ellie is actually one of the first people I met when I showed up. She was in my first class, though I didn't really get to know her for awhile after that. And Kams...well, best friend is kinda understating it. Her family is adopting me."

Legally, as opposed to Gray's family who had adopted her spiritually.

"They're really great people."

[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma was quiet for a moment, this conversation having led her into emotions that she was prepared to be feeling, and it was also settling into her that she wasn't home, she couldn't just run away to hide in her room or just go tearing through the woods to let it all out as a wolf, either.

Her eyes didn't shift around for Eleanor this time, but just for perhaps a broader, more accessible escape.

"She seemed really...nice," Luma offered, "when I met her."

Too nice, honestly, in Luma's opinion, smelling of desperation so much that she almost wanted to gag. But, again, she wasn't about to tell Arden that.

And she couldn't help but wonder how much Kamala actually knew about Eleanor. What she could. What she'd done. Did anyone here really know her Would they still like her so much, if they did?

"But that's...good." Right? "That they're...adopting you? Family is...important. Even if it's also...complicated."

And, really, if Eleanor was serious in her relationship with Kamala, then that made Kamala family, too, and then by extension Arden, too...

But outsiders were dangerous for family...

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

You had no idea how much Arden agreed with that last sentiment. Or, at least, had been raised to do so.

"It's good," she said. "But it's hard. Which is one of the things Ellie and I talked about when we were talking about that grandmother." As opposed to the other one, who also sounded pretty awful, but mostly in a generational-trauma-fucks-us-all kind of way. "Family is...very complicated."

Unconsciously, the fingers of her left hand came down and brushed over her inner right elbow, where there were three odd-looking scars descending from the crease, and when she realized they had, they slid to touch something tucked into her tanktop before her hand fell back to her side again.

"Manages to be complicated even when you don't have a family to begin with," she said with dry humor.

[even_bigger_teeth]

Luma might have felt inclined to defend her grandmother, and fiercely, were it not for the knowledge of the purloined letters. All those years of thinking Eleanor hated her and wanted nothing to do with her, because their grandmother had kept all their letters to each other from them?

World-shattering.

And if Luma ever found out the real truth about her beloved Arthur...

Luma noted the movement of Arden's hand with a curious headtilt not unlike that of a puppy, but she didn't say anything about it. Instead, what she said, a bit too eagerly, perhaps, was:

"So you're an orphan?"

Luma knew all about those from her books! Scrappy, scrabbly little urchins with empty bellies but plenty of spirit.

Not much meat to orphans, Rhys would grin, snapping his jaws at her and loftily acting as though he'd encountered them nearly every day.

And no one would notice when they suddenly went missing, while licking his chops and she'd laugh and they'd wrestle until they howled and her father would shoo them to go play outside.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Well, Arden had never really had an empty belly. Or much spirit, really, not till she'd come to the island.

"Yup," Arden said. "My parents died when I was a baby. Car crash. I bounced around from foster home to foster home till I ended up with my legal guardian. Then I came here."

Very dry, bare bones recitation. Nothing of interest here!