fandomtownies | The Park, Saturday Afternoon (09/22)

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The Park, Saturday Afternoon (09/22)

The weather was too beautiful to spend it indoors, even with the window open. So Beauty took the last of her writing paper, a book, and her new pens out to the park. Finding a nice shady spot under a tree, she worked on finishing up her second batch of letters home.

She was also experimenting a little with her new pens. Grace's letter was written half in blue before it occurred to Beauty that she could switch up and finish it in purple. Hope's letter started out purple, experienced a brief red phase before it was determined that red would make a better color for margin notes than full-out correspondence, and then switched back to purple. Now Beauty was working on the letter for her father, which was being written in nice respectable black.

[OPEN like an open thing is open!]

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After running around campus in the morning, and a long shower and short lunch after that, Cassandra headed out to the park herself. All the open space was nice. She didn't have a lot of memories tied to this sort of greenery, and so she didn't have to keep fighting her past.

She wandered idly around the park, trying to get a feel for it. Eventually she stopped under a tree and leaned back against it to watch Beauty idly. No point in interrupting her letter writing.

Beauty had a decent sense of when she was being watched, or at least that there were others around, and so when she'd reached a point where she had to think on what next to write anyway, she looked up. Seeing the unfamiliar girl leaning by the tree -- okay, all but a handful of people here were still in that 'unfamiliar' category -- she smiled and raised a hand.

"Hello. It's...nice out here, isn't it?"

Beauty? Not so good with the small talk.

Cassandra raised a hand and half-grinned back before nodding, "Yeah." She wasn't really any good at small talk either.

"Um... what are you doing?" While Cassandra is familiar with note-taking, letter-writing is something new.

"Just writing letters home to my family," Beauty explained, tilting the book she was using as a writing desk so that Cassandra could see. "I don't know yet whether or not they'll get there, but I'm writing them anyway."

She tilted her head at the other girl, and it occurred to her to wonder what people did when they weren't taking classes and studying for said classes. It didn't seem practical to fill all of those hours in between with sleeping and eating. "What about you?"

"Just... walking. It's quiet here." There weren't people crowded around everywhere.

"Why don't you just call them or something? Wouldn't that be faster than writing?"

Beauty frowned for a moment until she realized that the girl must be talking about the telephones. Then she shook her head, smiling. "No, I can't, because they don't have telephones and things like that where I come from. They haven't been invented yet. We don't have lamps that work without candles either."

With a grin, she held up her pen. "This is the first pen I've ever owned that had the ink already inside of it."

"Oh," Cassandra tilted her head slightly. "Weird." Said the girl who didn't have the ability to speak until she was fifteen.

Shrugging, Beauty set the pen down. "The way I understand it, I've come into the future. Or from the past, I guess, depending on how you look at it. Which I think under usual circumstances would be extremely strange, but I'm getting the idea that for this town, it isn't that unusual. Or at least not as unusual as some of the other things that happen."

"I'm starting to think that too," Cassandra grinned. "But... I think it's nice? Mostly?"

"Oh, I agree! So far, everyone has been amazingly friendly and helpful." With the possible exception of a couple of her teachers, but Beauty was willing to withhold judgment until she was sure they were crazy.

"I guess you must be new as well?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "I'm learning to read," the smile on her face might have provided a clue to just how exciting she was finding that.

Beauty grinned at how pleased the other girl looked. Reading was a rarer skill in rural Blue Hill than she imagined it must be here, although personally she couldn't imagine having to live without the ability to enjoy the delights of a well-crafted book.

"I think that's wonderful. Are you taking a class at the school in reading, or are you being tutored?"

"Katara is teaching me." That was option two. "And I'm taking some neat classes. Learning a lot of stuff I didn't know yet." Though "how to dress yourself" hadn't really been a needed lesson.

"Oh yes, so am I. Taking some interesting classes, I mean. I've got one that supposed to teach me how to use my wits to get through challenges, which I suspect is going to be a really useful thing to know." Beauty thought about the hints she'd picked up, regarding the unexpected things that happened around Fandom. "And there's one about important famous women, which I like a lot."

"Oh yeah?" Cassandra frowned. Her knowledge of historically important people (and things) barely exceeded her literacy.

"So far I haven't recognized any of them," Beauty laughed. "But that's because they've been too 'modern' for me to know about."

She cocked her head at Cassandra. "You don't care for history?"

"Don't know much about it," she shrugged. "It wasn't something I learned before."

"I spent my childhood doing nothing much other than reading. So I know a lot about history and literature, and not so much about more practical things."

Beauty was curious, though, what a person who didn't have a scholarly bent would study, and find interesting. "Which classes are you taking? If you don't mind me asking, that is. If I'm being too nosy, don't be afraid to tell me so."

"I'd tell you," Cass grinned. "Communications, career choices, and interdisc-- um... inter-something."

"Is Communications like giving speeches and such?" Beauty asked. She couldn't even begin to think what Career Choices could possibly be about. "I have a class that's supposed to teach us how to have successful relationships. Except that I'm pretty sure if I were to follow the professor's rules, I'd die an old friendless spinster."

"It's mostly... different ways of talking to people? It's good because I'm not very good at it."

"Neither am I. Maybe I should have signed up for that class." It would be more helpful than knowing how to lie to people you didn't have feelings for.

Over by the pond, Robin was attempting to teach the ducks some traveling songs, to help pass the time as they migrated.

"Okay it goes like this.
Day-o, day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and he wanna go home
Day, he say day, he say day, he say day,
He say day, he say day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and he wanna go home!"

At first, Beauty simply noticed the singing, and smiled absently to herself as she wrote. And then, putting the finishing touches on one letter and setting it aside to begin another, she looked up.

And blinked. Looked around a bit, and then frowned.

It seemed very much as though the frog was the one doing the singing.

He was indeed. The ducks were a little dubious about this. Sure they were open minded and liked music but they didn't know how well a human song would translate into Duck.

"Come Mr. Tally man...or wait, maybe Tally Duck would work better."

Beauty wondered if this was one of those student-turning-into-and-animal things A.J. had warned her about.

"Excuse me...um, are you a student?"

Wow, it felt silly to ask that of a frog.

Robin turned, a little startled because he'd been so caught up in things, he hadn't realized anyone else was here.

"Oh hi! Yep, I'm a freshman."

Beauty nodded, thinking that this was probably not one of the few students she'd met so far. A.J. hadn't said anything about being able to talk under the enchantment, though. "Are you, I mean...are you supposed to be a frog?"

"Yes." Robin nodded. "I played a Prince under an enchantment in a TV special once, but I've always been a Frog. I'm Robin, by the way."

That made Beauty laugh a little, the idea of an actual talking frog -- and that had to be some kind of enchantment -- playing the part of a prince enchanted to be a frog was a delightful sort of irony. "I'm Beauty. And it's nice to meet you, Robin. I've never seen a frog who could talk before."

"Oh what a great name." Robin bounced. "It suits you."

Never met a talking frog before eh? "A surprising number of people haven't. Met talking frogs I mean." Robin said. "Okay well not that surprising, even back home people are often surprised."

Beauty laughed. "Thank you, sir Frog, you're very kind." She pulled up a knee and rested her chin on it. "I've only ever heard of talking frogs in stories. You know, like the princess with the golden ball? Things like that. But I suppose considering all of the unusual places people here seem to be from, it shouldn't be any more surprising that there might be a place where some of the animals talk."

"That's the story I was in!" Robin bounced excitedly. "Or, that's the story we did in the special, they used a christmas tree ornament for when I had to get the ball from the well, cause the real one was too heavy." He wasn't so much bragging as, loving the memory.

"A lot of the animals back home can talk. And a lot of those go into show business."

Beauty laughed at the coincidence, and at the little frog's excitement. "I would imagine a talking animal would be very popular in the performance business," she agreed. "How did you end up at school here?"

"My Uncle Kermit heard about the school, and I've always been interested in expanding my horizons, so, here I am."

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The Park, Saturday Afternoon (09/22)

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