fandomtownies | Post office, Thursday

So the school had them all living in huts for a bit. Huts shaped like bubbles.

It was all just a little too Boovian for Tip. Except J.Lo would probably take one look at the huts -- and the fact that they didn't have the privacy layer that frosted up and prevented people from looking in the way actual Boov homes did -- oh, and the lack of anti-gravity showers, which were basically the only thing on New Boovworld Tip missed -- Right. So the bubblehuts were extremely poor imitations of Boov architecture.

Either way, living in them was weird. Tip had never been happier to have to go off to work. Not that she'd been working that long. Still. She got herself an ice cream on the way in -- she had money, now, and no one to tell her she couldn't eat ice cream for lunch and she didn't have to worry about the fate of the Earth, this was the kind of independence countries were founded on -- and sat doodling at the counter and snacking on Americone Dream between customers.

Going away to school had definitely been her best plan ever. Even if they did make them live in bubbles for three weeks out of the year.

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Steven wandered into the post office strumming his ukelele.

"She was trapped in a mirror
And it couldn't be clearer
She wanted to leave this place
And get herself back in space", he sang, though the song didn't have as much punch without the electric guitar.

He stopped when he saw Tip, and waved at her. "Oh hi, Tip!" he said, practically skipping over. "I've got a letter to mail, if I could."

He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and set it on the counter. It was addressed to Connie Maheswaran.

"Hey Steven," Tip answered, quickly wiping her mouth on her hand in case she'd managed to give herself an ice cream mustache. "Pretty sure we can handle a letter. We've had people try to ship a literal ton of towels, before. What was that you were singing?"

"Oh, just a song my dad and I came up with," Steven said with a nod. "It's about another gem back home, and the really sad story about how she was stuck on earth in a mirror. She did something kinda big and scary but it wasn't like she wanted to hurt anyone, she was just scared and confused."

He smiled. "Dad wanted it to be all about how scary she was, but I knew she deserved the full truth be told, you know?"

"Yeah," Tip said. She was all for characters in stories being fully complex and interesting, rather than just scary.

Except the Gorg. They were literally just scary.

". . . She was stuck in a mirror?"

Was that something that might end up happening accidentally? Should she be warning Peridot?

"When I found her, yeah," Steven said. "Nobody knew she was an actual gem until she started talking to me. I'm glad I was able to get her out of there, it must have been awful being in there so long. I don't know how she ended up there, but her gem had been damaged so I think that must've been part of it."

He shrugged. "I'd really like to ask her, but she kinda... ran off. Kinda."

That part was complicated.

Sooooo, that was a yes, then. On it maybe managing to accidentally happen to Peridot.

Good to know.

"You started talking to a mirror? Like a fairy tale character?"

"What else do you do with magic mirrors that are supposed to be able to show you the past?" Steven genuinely asked.

"I don't know," Tip admitted. "I've never encountered one before."

She would totally have talked to it. She'd bonded with a robot billboard and when she was little had worried about her clothing's feelings.

"Well imagine it," Steven said, setting his ukulele down to gesture with both hands. "Like, you're in Snow White and you have a magic mirror. You totally talk to it, right? I mean it's rude otherwise."

"I'm pretty sure if I have a magic mirror in Snow White I'm the evil queen," Tip pointed out, smiling. "Who didn't seem totally into not being rude."

"Oh, heheh," Steven laughed. "I guess that's a pretty good point. Though I bet if she tried to be less rude she might have gotten along with people better, and then it all would've worked out even better!"

Steven, the eternal optimist.

"Yeeeeeah. I'm not sure getting along with people was really one of her goals," Tip said. "She was pretty self-involved."

Asking a mirror to tell her she was pretty all the time, and all.

Post office, Thursday

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