fandomhighdorms | The Deck [Friday afternoon]

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The Deck [Friday afternoon]

It was nice enough out that Rapunzel couldn't bear to be indoors any longer (could you blame her, all things considered?) and had decided to pad down to the outside-sitting-area she'd spotted. She spent awhile brushing her hair before she did so, and set it in a gleaming pile around her as she perched in a chair on the deck with her sketchbook.

Since she'd arrived, she'd been doodling little drawings of things she'd seen around town -- some of the people she'd met, a few of the more interesting foodstuffs (carefully labeled so she wouldn't forget their names), and she really wanted to spend some time out in the park with those pink birds, at some point, since they seemed to hold still long enough that she'd be able to get something nice down on paper.

For right now, though, she pulled her knees up and set her sketchbook on them, and carefully began drawing a much more familiar bird in a nearby tree -- a robin. She'd seen them before, of course, up on her windowsill in her tower, but it was refreshing to do it outside, still.

She'd probably be here for awhile, sketching that robin as long as he held still, along with any doodles that struck her interest.

[open deck is open, omg!]

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Ichabod was out for a walk. He had been doing a lot of it since arriving on the island, in the hope that he would make his thoughts clearer about how to face the strange situation he found himself in. So far it hadn't worked.

Actually he also wanted to be alone. While the good manners his upbringing had taught him made it easy enough to socialize when he had to, he was growing tired of conversations of strange places he had never heard of. Not naturally extroverted, he often seeked solitude at home too, so it wasn't even unusual.

Given this, when he spotted the girl (with very long hair - another strange foreign custom, no doubt) his first thought was to avoid her, but curiosity got the better of him and he tried to sneak a look at her drawing pad.

Rapunzel actually was really easy to sneak up on, since she wasn't used to people being around in the first place. So it took her a moment to actually that she wasn't alone, and then she turned a full-beam smile towards Ichabod.

"Hi!" she said, dropping her sketchbook a little so he could see if better, if he was looking anyway. The drawings were fairly good, if a little childish -- typical of pretty much everything Rapunzel did. "How are you? Isn't it a nice day?"

It was especially nice if you never went outside, normally, so her opinion might have been skewed.

That smile was impossible not to return, and since she showed no objection to showing him what she was drawing, Ichabod did take a closer look.

"Good afternoon, miss," he greeted. "I haven't considered it much yet, but I suppose it could be a good day. It isn't raining."

He added: "I don't believe we have met. My name is Ichabod Crane. Please forgive me for interrupting."

"You're in my awesomeness class!" she remembered, grinning at him. "Hi! I'm Rapunzel. It's nice to meet you, like, for real. And you're not interrupting. I just felt like drawing and figured that since it isn't raining, like you said, it might be a good day to do it outside, you know? Maybe if I get really lucky a butterfly or something'll land and I can sketch it before it flies off!"

Maybe.

"Are you new, too?" she asked excitedly. "Or are you all used to this place already?" She wasn't. She might never be, honestly.

"So I am." Ichabod had been confused enough about the class, which increased by being chosen as TA, so he hadn't really paid attention to his fellow classmates. Her name rang a bell, however.

"You are painting a mural, if I'm not mistaken. I met your roommate the other day." Who was a boy. That was rather scandalous, after all.

"And yes, I am new, and certainly not used to this place."

Oh, don't think she didn't realize that scandalousness. Not that she'd really know what to do with a boy, anyway, but still!

"I kinda started a mural?" she said, looking a little bashful. "I, um, painted all over the walls where I used to live, and...it just makes it a little more like home, you know?" Not that she wasn't thrilled to be out of her tower, but it was comforting to have just a tiny bit of familiarity, all the same. "This place is so crazy, it's nice to have even a little something that reminds me of home, like that."

"That I can understand," Ichabod said wistfully. "I have not yet thought of something that would remind me of my home, but I'm glad you have created a mural for that." He envied her a little.

He sat down next to her. Something about Rapunzel's excited curiousity was just a little contagious.

"Oh, there's plenty you could find to remind yourself of home!" Rapunzel encouraged him. "Did you bring anything with you? I didn't, except for Pascal and the clothes I was wearing when I left, so that's why I had to kinda make stuff." She eyed him thoughtfully. "I'm gonna guess you're not from, um, the here and now, are you? I'm not either. It seems like there's a lot of us who aren't, which is sort of comforting in and of itself, right? We're all from all over, so no one's weird."

"I did bring things," he said. "I was prepared to go to a school, just not one quite like this. I brought practical things, but now all they do is look as out of place as I feel." He smiled a little, mostly at himself. "I have been told that I will get used to this place. And as you say, no one is strange. I believe almost every conversation I've had ends up being about homes in far away places."

He raised an eyebrow. "Pascal?"

"He's my chameleon," she explained helpfully. "I left him upstairs taking a nap, but usually he rides around on my shoulder. I came here by accident, which is how he even ended up tagging along -- neither of us knew what we were getting into, really."

She nervously played with a lock of her hair, adding, "I hope I get used to it. Everything here is so, so different from what I left behind. I feel dumb every time I have to ask what something is."

"A chameleon! Named after the scientist Pascal?" Ichabod said. He added, after a moment of hesitation: "You are not alone in having that feeling. But if you came here by accident, what about your family? Won't they be worried?" At least his expected him to be at a school.

"My mother is probably worried sick," she said, her face dropping into her hands in an expression of total and immediate regret. "I don't even know how to get a letter to her."

She had a sudden thought that she might go back and Mother wouldn't even be alive anymore, without her hair to help her, but Rapunzel banished that quickly. She'd end up in a puddle of tears here if she wasn't careful.

She looked up, and added, "But...I'm making the best of it. Maybe she'll figure out where I am soon?" And make her come home, she was sure, so...Rapunzel's feelings on that were mixed, at best. "Can you write to your family, at least? That's got to help with homesickness."

"I have considered it, but I'm not sure letters could be delivered that far in space and time. Perhaps we both should inquire at the post office."

The changes in her mood had happened rapidly, and Ichabod hadn't even had time to become concerned that she would burst into tears.

"I have to confess I am a little curious about the new inventions called computers. Have you come across them yet?"

"Nuh uh!" she said, eyes wide. And she was back to curious again, her worries about her mother firmly out of her mind. "Are they like those things people keep holding up to their face and talking into?"

She hadn't figured out what those were called yet, either. Rapunzel had much to learn, it seemed.

"I'm not sure, but I've been told they can be small enough to keep in your pocket and at the same time you can access all the knowledge in the world. And appearantly people use them to look at images of cats." They shared the excitement over this, it seemed. Ichabod reminded himself that he had to find one.

"Miss Bowen mentioned that they are to be found in the library."

"Like the Wikipedia!" Rapunzel exclaimed with a nod. "A boy showed me that on my first day, using one of those...pocket computers? It's a thing that will tell you the answer to any question you ask it." She frowned, and confessed, "I thought it was magic."

"I prefer to think that there is another explanation than magic," Ichabod said, "But this Wikipedia sounds like the same thing. Did he tell you where he had found his 'pocket computer'?"

She shook her head. "But I want one, too! Or at least to spend some time looking at it," she said eagerly.

Rapunzel paused briefly, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I'm sure it's not magic, now that I'm thinking about it?" she offered. "But I don't see why it couldn't be. I mean, I'm betting it's science, and I just don't know all the pieces to put the puzzle together yet, but...I've seen stranger things than a magic pocket device that tells you all the answers."

Ichabod had had an interesting conversation with miss Bowen on the subject of magic, so he had thought about it more in the past few days than he ever had before.

"I don't deny that there are mysteries in this universe that we don't understand, but I prefer to think the mystery in most cases can be solved by further scientific study." He looked at Rapunzel, noting her expression. "There are many different kinds of strange, and I would certainly not to claim to have every answer."

"I think," Rapunzel decided, "that most of the magic I've seen probably has a scientific explanation." Like genetics, in her case. She had her thoughts about it, anyway. "But my mother's a witch, so I probably have more exposure to magic than most people, and...it's not science, what she does. At least, she would be reeeeeeally insulted if I tried to call it that. But I like the idea that everything does have an explanation -- I think that saying something's magic and leaving it there is really lazy, you know?"

Which was why when she felt more comfortable here, she'd be doing research to try to figure out her hair. Mother had limited that area of study, and redirected every conversation that would have led to an answer about why it did what it did.

"I think that was what I wanted to say too," he replied, smiling a little. "So, your mother is a witch? Have you inherited her talents, or is that something that you need to learn for yourself?"

Miss Bowen had told him that she had been born with her magic but that she also had had to study to develop it.

"Oh, no, I'm boring," she said, self-consciously tucking her hair behind an ear. "I don't do magic at all." She just was magical, inherently. See, it wasn't a lie. "I stick to studying and painting and cooking and other normal stuff like that. I'm gonna guess magic isn't a thing where you're from?" It was a hunch.

Her response surprised him a little, but Ichabod just answered her question: "Not a thing, no." He added: "But I wouldn't call studying or painting boring. I confess to being quite fond of studying myself."

[bedtime!]

"Me too! I just mean it's more boring than, you know, being a witch." Or so she'd been told, repeatedly. "I...there's so much to learn here, you know? I feel like I need to spend a whole week in that library and I still won't have learned how everything here works, really."

[your bedtime coincided perfectly with when i left work! sleep well!]

It seemed silly to Jalian to stay inside when the weather was so pleasant, so after class she'd come outside to finish cleaning her knives and make sure they hadn't been damaged by the odd creatures the teacher had had them fighting.

She'd seen this girl around, and wondered how she ever managed to walk, let alone fight, with all that hair. Actually, she didn't look much like a fighter at all. Maybe this was another of those strange pre-Armageddon things.

Jalian sat not too far away and pulled out her knives, cloth, oil, and whetstone. "Hello."

"Hi!" Rapunzel looked up from her sketchpad, and her eyes widened as she took in the other girl and her activity of choice. "Are those knives?"

She didn't sound frightened so much as impressed. She'd only ever used knives to cook, and never carried them around with her to clean. That was impressive in a way that she hadn't encountered in a girl yet.

She'd get to remarking on the hair, too, in a second -- she'd only seen white hair on old people, and she could tell this girl was right around her own age.

"Yes?" Jalian answered, amused. She eyed the other girl, then grinned and took out the rest of them from various places - when she was done, there were six knives of various lengths laid out on the cloth. "You don't use knives?"

"Only if I'm chopping up apples or something," Rapunzel said, eagerly going over and leaving a trail of hair behind her. She clutched her hands behind her back -- if anything said 'look but don't touch,' it was knives.

"These look awful sharp for what I'm used to, though," she added, already knowing the answer. These were clearly weapons. Whoa.

"They have to be; you never know what you might have to stab them through," Jalian answered with a shrug.

She eyed the other girl's eagerness and body language, then turned one of the knives - not the smallest, but the easiest to handle - hilt-first toward her and held it out. "If you can cut, that's a start."

Rapunzel looked from the knife to Jalian, then back again to the knife before carefully, tentatively reaching a hand out to take it gently by the hilt. "What sorts of things do you stab with knives like these?" she asked carefully, turning the knife over in her hands hesitantly.

"Today, 'husks' the instructor called them. Mostly, anything that attacks me." She eyed Rapunzel curiously. "Jalian." She stuck out her hand. "Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren in the long form. Jalian of the Fires of the clan of the people with silver eyes."

Rapunzel shifted the knife to one hand (carefully! Soooooo carefully) and eagerly gripped the other girl's offered one. "I only have one name -- Rapunzel," she admitted with a smile. "It's nice to meet you. Can I just call you Jalian? Your eyes are beautiful. I've never seen someone with silver eyes before. Or, um, silver hair, who wasn't...a little older than us."

A lot older than them, let's be honest. And only a time or two in person -- Mother usually got to her faster than that.

Jalian shook her hand. "Of course. It's good to meet you, too, Rapunzel. And thank you, I suppose." She smiled and shrugged. "My hair turned white when I ... well, when I came here. It was brown before that."

She cocked her head at Rapunzel. "I've never someone with that much hair before. How do you manage it?"

"Wow. That's gotta be weird -- as if this place wasn't enough to take in, you got a makeover to go with it!" She giggled, tucking a lock of her own hair behind one ear. "Um, I've just always had really long hair. It's never been cut, so I've always been sort of used to it. I just brush it a lot and -- it comes in handy, actually. I never need a ladder for anything!"

Plus, you know, it was magic and all. That was nice, too. "Where were you from before you got here?" That naming scheme was something else, so Rapunzel was all kinds of curious.

"This place is no stranger than I was expecting." So far. "I read as much as I could about this time before I came. And the neg-entropy timeline could have killed me, so white hair isn't so bad." The pain had been worse, but it was past now. Or actually, future.

"I found a map in the library; if I was reading it right, I was from California, although many years into the future. And possibly along a different spoke of the Great Wheel," she added with a sigh.

Then she shook her head, realizing that probably made no sense to Rapunzel. "What about you, where are you from? Someplace without many dangers or tree branches," she guessed with a smile.

"I don't know where California is," Rapunzel admitted, looking a little embarrassed. "But you probably won't know where I'm from, either -- Corona? The only person I've met so far who's heard of it is from a neighboring kingdom." She sighed, shaking her head, and added, "But we have plenty of tree branches! I just...don't get out much."

To put it lightly.

"Is California very dangerous?" she guessed, hesitantly, as she looked down at the knife she was still holding.

"I don't know," Jalian answered honestly. "In my time, there are other clans, and some large animals when you go into the forests. I haven't been there now, though. And I don't know Corona," she added, "but I didn't even know California until I found a map! Do you have a map for Corona?"

"I wish," Rapunzel sighed. "The other girl, from our neighboring kingdom? She said she couldn't find it in the library at all, so I doubt I'll be able to find Corona, if she couldn't find Arendelle." She shook her head doubtfully, plying a lock of her hair absently. "Other clans, huh? And animals? That's...wow, that sounds really scary. I'd probably have to climb a tree or something. I wouldn't know what to with a knife if someone showed up trying to hurt me. I'd probably hurt myself by accident."

...aaand that was when she decided it was time to hand the knife back, yes.

"Climbing trees is a good idea, if you can't fight," Jalian said. She took the knife back from Rapunzel, then offered, "I could teach you knifework, if you like." Honestly, did no people in this time learn the basics?

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The Deck [Friday afternoon]

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