First floor lobby, Wednesday

[intotheout]

Selling dance tickets was probably Tip's least favorite part about being on Student Council on a normal day. On a day where she'd much prefer to be hiding in her room . . . weren't her hormones tired?! The rest of her was! Her arms still ached from smashing metal in class yesterday! Among other things!

But here she was, as a dutiful StuCo representative, sitting at a table with a cash box and a roll of tickets for the prom, trying to distract herself by scrolling through Tumblr.

And kind of wishing her tumblr aesthetic had gone more for "absurdist comedy" than "things I find pretty".

[open!]

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[intotheout]

Tip nodded silently for a moment.

"I hope you get to meet the Chief someday," she said. "Have I told you about him yet?"

[always_someone]

Norman looked at her thoughtfully.

"You might've mentioned," he settled on. "But I don't think you've gone much into detail, if you have."

[intotheout]

"He's a friend I made during the Boov occupation," Tip said. "This really old Native man who ran a junkyard in Roswell. His real name was Frank Jose, but everyone knew him as Chief Shouting Bear." She smiled brighter, just thinking about him. "Because he tended to communicate with white people solely through shouting."

[always_someone]

Norman blinked, and then broke into a little grin.

"To their confusion, I hope?"

He kind of wanted to meet this man, now. Even if it meant he'd get yelled at.

[intotheout]

"To say the least," Tip said. "I only really knew him for maybe six months, all told. He was 94. But he's my favorite adult outside my mom." She shrugged ruefully. "Sometimes including my mom. I like to think he passed on, but he's come back to visit before, so maybe he will again sometime."

[always_someone]

"Come back to visit?" Norman looked at her curiously. "That is something that people mention from time to time. What does that entail, anyway?"

[intotheout]

"I don't really know the specifics," Tip said. "There's this stone out in the woods here, and I guess every so often it gets charged up and sort of invites people's dead loved ones back to hang out for a weekend. Not as ghosts, but as physical people. They know they're dead, they know they're only back for a little while, but they get to come hang out and check up on us and . . . I don't know. Say a proper goodbye, I guess."

[always_someone]

"That..." Norman paused for a moment, trying to imagine what that was like. The dead coming back, but not to stay. Not just to ask a favor, either. "That sounds... nice. And it sounds hard. Getting somebody back only to have to say goodbye again, I mean?"

But he couldn't be sure. He had a very different experience with the dead, after all.

[intotheout]

"It was a roller coaster," Tip agreed. "But it was so good to see him for real again. And I think maybe he's resting a little easier, 'cause he got to see that the invasion isn't the only story I've got, you know?"

[always_someone]

"So... he got to get some closure, too." Norman smiled a little. "I never really thought of this place as the sort that would offer rest to the dead. The ghosts in the graveyard have all been there a while, I mean."

Which was interesting unto itself.

The fact that there was a full graveyard on an island where he'd been told nobody ever died for good, that was. It made him a little less likely to trust people who told him that.

[intotheout]

“Sometimes I feel like Fandom’s like an old pagan deity. Sometimes it’s callous and cruel, but others it’s almost benevolent.”

[always_someone]

"I guess the trick is figuring out what it wants," Norman noted. "Then again, I'm not entirely certain it's a good idea to try to actually understand a god, either."

That kind of sounded like an invitation for trouble.

[intotheout]

“If mythology has taught us anything, it’s that gods can only be weathered. Like storms.”

[always_someone]

Some storms were actually angry spirits that needed talking to, was the thing.

"That sounds a lot like Fandom, yeah." Norman smiled a little. "A lot of waiting, a little bit of storm, and not predictable at all."