The beach- Monday afternoon/evening

[throughaphase]

Okay, so the weather on the unofficial first day of summer could have definitely been more summery. It wasn't cold or raining, though, just not as warm as Kitty would like for a Memorial Day party. And really, at this point, the weather just needed to stop messing with her plans. It was a shorts-and-bikini-top-under-a-hoodie type of day.

But the posters had been around town for days, there were drinks and snacks set up and music playing, and there was a little portable grill set up that someone else might have to take care of because Kitty didn't really want to. Everything was set up, so hopefully people showed up.


[Woo, no RL plans on a day off! Open beach! Come play!]

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[throughaphase]

"Well, the holiday unofficially marks the start of summer," Kitty explained. "So usually the weather's warmer, and people throw parties and barbecues and you can go swimming and everything. It's not quite swimming weather, but we can still do the other stuff."

[filleauloup]

Éponine looked up toward the sky and made a vaguely scolding tsk noise. "Just as well I can't swim then," she decided. "Oh, God, what is summer like here? Is it awfully unbearable?"

Not that she'd go hungry this summer, which would be a welcome change.

[throughaphase]

"This is only my second summer here, but I don't think it's really unbearable. It can get hot, but we're right on the ocean and just about everyplace has air conditioning, so we all deal," Kitty said. "But I come from a land of insane humidity so I might be biased."

[filleauloup]

"Paris isn't so bad in the summertime. Warm, but never really dreadful, I don't think. But where are you from, then?" asked Éponine, making a mental note to find out if the warehouse had air conditioning. "It's such a common question, I know, but I don't think I can think of anyone who's mentioned actually being from here in the first place."

[throughaphase]

"I'm from Chicago, originally. Right in the middle of the country," she said, and paused. "You know, I don't think anyone actually is from here. Maybe the little kids around here. Huh."

[filleauloup]

"Well, I've hardly asked everyone," Éponine amended. "No one I speak to regularly, though. That is interesting, isn't it?"

She sighed, though there wasn't any real exasperation there. "I suppose I'll have to get around to learning the geography here sooner or later."

[throughaphase]

"It might get helpful," Kitty said. "I think I've got some maps you can have if you want."

[filleauloup]

Her eyes lit up at that, and she blurted out, "That's good, I'd like that, yes. There are so many things I'd like to learn and I hardly know where to start, but that's as good a place as any. I never know, when I'm delivering mail, where all these letters and things are coming from. 'Is that a country here on Earth, or some other world entirely?' I'm always asking myself. Sometimes one can tell from the postmarks."

She might have kept babbling on, except luckily she had to stop for breath.

[throughaphase]

"I never really thought about how confusing that might be," Kitty said. "I don't think I can help with the multiversal places, though. I don't even know most of those."

[filleauloup]

"Oh, well!" Éponine waved a hand dismissively. "Who has time to learn all that anyhow, if one doesn't have any need of it? Me, I don't much care where all the mail is coming from so long's it arrives. It's rather different when I live here now, though. I don't know much at all about America. My sister and I didn't quite get that far along in our lessons."

Probably just as well. It would have changed drastically since, anyhow.

She hummed a few bars of something that was so tuneless as to be unrecognizable. "Well, this is all grand, this party," she declared, sweeping an arm around to indicate . . . everything, really, in a rapid change of subject. "Good job thinking it up."

[throughaphase]

"Thanks," Kitty grinned. "Though I keep thinking if I'd thought harder, there'd be a volleyball net."

[filleauloup]

Éponine laughed briefly. "And then have to explain that to me too, likely as not!"

[throughaphase]

"It's okay, we'd just make Clint and Derek play it and you'd get the gist of why it's fun."

Oh god, it'd be the most competitive volleyball game ever.

[filleauloup]

But pretty. Which, for the record, would not be a cause of objection.

"Make them," she repeated, amused if a bit incredulous. "Do you make them do things whenever you feel like it, then?" Look, first the grilling and then this. It was a legitimate question.

[throughaphase]

"Well... I don't know that I make them do things as much as I just ask nicely," Kitty admitted, thinking about it.

[filleauloup]

"And it works? Hell." Éponine sounded pretty impressed. "Without even having some awful secret to hold over their heads!"

It was sad how much she was actually surprised by that.

[throughaphase]

"That's probably why it works," Kitty said with a smile.