fandomtownies | The Park, Saturday Afternoon

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The Park, Saturday Afternoon

Around noon, Gregorith had finally felt put together enough to venture forth. So after masking his appearance (he suspected he was being overly cautious in that regard but ~~the mun had made such a fuss about it~~ this place reminded him enough of the Mortal Realm he felt more comfortable this way) he'd headed out for a bout of exploration.

And now he found himself in the park, pondering the troll statues.

(tis a park, so tis open and stuff)

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Every now and again, Issa demanded park time, so here Jon was walking the cat. Well, going into the park to watch the cat climb trees and chase bugs.

"Oh. Um." He nodded politely to the other person there. "Hello."

Greg had a very quick imaginary conversation with his friend Angel, where she reminded him not to glare, despite his protestation that he wasn't glaring.

Ooh! A cat! That helped.

"Hello." he said.

Who's idea had it been to send the introvert to be the one to have to meet people, without their extrovert friend? Should he introduce himself? He might as well.

"I'm Gregorith."

They could be awkward introverts next to each other!

"Oh, um. Jonathan Sims. Jon. And this is Issa."

Jon waved awkwardly. Issa gave them both a condescending look and turned her very fluffy tail to go after a cricket.

"You're new."

"Pleased to meet you." he said to Jon, and nodded at the cat. "And you." Just in case it was sentient. This was only the second cat he'd ever seen in real life but Lily's cat Max had seemed deceptively intelligent.

"I am new, yes. I just arrived yesterday."

"Right, I...I heard radio," Jon said. "It said you're a demon."

...was that rude?

"And that you know about the squirrels."

Okay. Thing he understood completely first. "I am a demon, yes. I hadn't realized that had made the local news." Tuning in was on his to do list but clearly it should have been closer to the top.

"I..." What precisely had Remy said about the squirrels? Something about another version of Lucifer? "I know that there are squirrels."

"And, um. You may or may not know that they are reporters, which is how the radio people know things."

He looked around and pointed at one. "They're mostly harmless, although Leroy is a little...odd."

"Oh. I hadn't realized that, no." Maybe they were like Ratatosk. He did like to gossip. He didn't want to say that he probably wouldn't be able to tell one squirrel from another, but he did feel compelled to ask;

"What's considered odd for a squirrel? To be honest, in my limited experience them being reporters shouldn't be surprising."

"Oh. Well, um. Well, generally in most worlds I'm aware of, squirrels aren't...they're not actually sapient. But these are. But they're...um. They're mostly pretty nice. Leroy is just...well, he's a bit, um. obsessed with...well, with certain things and people. He's...I'm fairly certain he's harmless, he's just...well, Leroy."

Well Greg wasn't one to judge someone's...obsessions, as long as they didn't cause harm. Sometimes they could be endearing.

"I see. Thank you for clearing that up, the squirrel thing."

He didn't want to pry, he didn't want to seem like he was prying. But he was here to learn, and the conversation was going...not horribly so far. "Is there anything else that springs to mind that a newcomer might need to know? I've already heard that this is kind of a universal nexus."

"Yes," Jon agreed with a nod. "People here are from a lot of different worlds. Um. If your world doesn't have mobiles, you'll want one." He pulled his phone from his pocket to demonstrate. "They're highly useful. And if you don't have a place to stay yet, there are two flat blocks and a boarding house."

As quickly as technology may have seemed to develop for the mortal world, in the afterlife it had arrived in an eyeblink. When Greg was a teenager, typewriters were the height of word processing, and phonographs were still in use.

Fortunately the universe adapted quickly and interfaces in the afterlife were very intuitive and user friendly.

"We do have them." he pulled his out of his pocket. "They're a relatively new invention, by our reckoning. And I've got a place, but thank you for the information."

He frowned thoughtfully (he hoped it came across that way). "Is the radio available as a podcast?"

"It is," Jon agreed. He smiled a little. "Good, you'll have a much easier time here if you're familiar with modern technology." Then he wondered if a demon having a good time was a good thing.

"I, um. That is. I hope you're not here to cause any trouble. I...demons don't, well. They don't exactly have the best reputation many places. I...I apologise if that's rude."

"No, we don't. Not even in my universe where we genuinely aren't out to cause trouble." He wouldn't say they weren't interested in hurting anyone because... "There's a lot of misunderstandings back home that we've been combatting since...well before my time."

He should practice his "ambassadorship" maybe.

"I'm here to learn about Fandom, and hopefully..." how could he put this without sounding like he was proselytizing or something? "Let people know about my universe in return."

"That sounds...good." Jon would always be a little dubious about people he didn't know, but it did sound good. "I, um. Well, I hope that goes well for you, then."

He shrugged. "We don't...well, I'm fairly certain there were no actual demons in my world, only stories. Christianity and such."

Perfectly reasonable, that had been his Universe's response to Fandom after all. The uncertainty about the existence of demons struck him as interesting though. Maybe other universes' afterlives kept the various realms more cut off from each other.

"We have Christianity in my universe as well. Unfortunately some its adherents are responsible for a lot of the misunderstandings about the afterlife. God does what he can to do damage control but his access to the mortal realm, like all of ours is limited. The people ~~spreading lies~~ misusing his and Christ's message can do a lot of damage to a lot of people in a very short amount of time."

Wow he had not expected or meant to go on a mini-rant there.

"I'm sorry, that was a lot wasn't it."

Edited 2025-10-12 01:37 (UTC)

Just a little.

"No, no, th-that...that was fine." Jon nodded. "I imagine it must be nice to have a God that cares about things, even if his worshipers aren't always the best."

It saddened Greg that other universes were not as kind as his was. Part of why he was here was because their last contact with another universe had been with just such a one. And it frightened him to contemplate the possibility that his was in the minority.

It also amused him to remember Beleth's tale of Lily telling God off. Not even many other deities had had the nerve to take him to task.

"He does, and it is. We all hold out hope that understanding will win out in the end. In the meantime, we all do what we can for the souls that come into our care."

That wasn't exactly Greg's purview, though he had worked on every level, even the therapy ones before settling down on level 9.

"That sounds...well, surprisingly nice," Jon admitted.

"May I ask, what's it like where you're from?"

Jon huffed in rueful laughter. "It's...well, i-it's not nice." He shrugged awkwardly. "O-or it wasn't. I don't know what it's like now."

That's kind of what he was afraid of.

The flyers had made this place sound like it perhaps strove to be a kind of refuge and given what Greg had heard from the locals so far, it did seem possible.

"I'm sorry to hear that. But at least you found this place?"

"I suppose. Yes. Yes, it was...was better than what I was expecting to happen."

He'd mostly been expecting to die.

"This is a very nice place," he admitted. "Everyone here has been wonderful. And I even have a cat now."

Who was watching the flamingos with her tail twitching.

Greg understood that many souls in his universe expressed similar sentiments.

Journalistic squirrels and...whatever those pink things were (he'd never seen a flamingo before) weren't the most remarkable thing about this place in his opinion. Not even the nexus-ey nature of Fandom.

The most remarkable thing, if this place wasn't too good to be true, was a universe, even a small one, that took in refugees from other universes.

He wasn't sure what else to say, and found himself thinking of the joke Asmodeus had told him that in an uncomfortable silence at least one of the people involved would be thinking of the Roman Empire.

Well, it wasn't Jon!

"So, um. If demons' reputations aren't accurate, I'm curious what they're really like," Jon carefully didn't ask.

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