Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [05/24].

[white_oleander]

Well. It was bound to happen eventually.

At some point in the night, or maybe it was early in the morning, she had no idea when these things actually happened, but the ingredients Astrid had gotten last night to make breakfast with this morning had all, somehow, been either transformed or replaced with nothing but boxes of Pop Tarts.

On the bright side, there was absolutely no lack in variety to the Pop Tarts, as it seemed every single flavor was present and accounted for, including the discontinued ones and some that clearly never made it to the market...at least not in this dimension.

Astrid might have been shocked by there being so many absurd varieties if it weren't for the fact that she actually worked in a grocery store and was already well aware of the excess of unnecessary flavor choices in certain brands.

(Looking at you, Oreo).

But...at least this made her job pretty easy today, and the clean-up would be a breeze, and there were even toaster strudels for anyone who wanted to feel a bit fancier about the whole thing, too.

[[ pop tart breakfast is open! ]]

Comments

[bookbeltof_love]

"Goooooooooooood mooooooooooorniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It had been ages since she'd hit up a breakfast and Nina was going to be...

"Pop tarts??????????????????"

... disappointed.

[white_oleander]

It wasn't Astrid's fault, Nina!

Although, gun to her head, she definitely wasn't going to complain about how much easier this made her morning.

She gave Nina a rueful sort of smile.

"Hey," she said. "Morning. I haven't checked any of the other common rooms, but it definitely looks like this one's doing a thing..."

[desertwolfcub]

Oh hey, someone finally realized she could do more than hide in her room in between classes.

Or maybe the coming full moon was making her restless.

Either way, Malia was actually out in a public place without an obligation to be there, and sniffing suspiciously at a pop tart.

". . . Why does this smell like weird meat?"

[white_oleander]

"Probably because it is weird meat," Astrid offered, pushing down the toaster to warm up the icing-less strawberry ones she'd picked out for herself like the monster she truly was. "I'm pretty sure some of these aren't even technically acceptable for human consumption."

And she wasn't even talking about the weird ones, either!

[desertwolfcub]

"Then why do they sell them for humans to consume?" Malia pushed the suspicious meat-smelling ones away. And sniffed cautiously at one that smelled like weird chocolate instead. "Are they trying to poison people?"

[white_oleander]

"I'm not sure anyone did technically sell any of these," Astrid shrugged, shaking her head a little at the few boxes on the counter, knowing how many more lurked in waiting behind the closed cupboard doors. "They just kind of showed up..."

There was a pause, as she remembered that this was one of the new kids, she was pretty sure.

"That happens around here," she added. "Sometimes. There's usually a lot more pancakes and bacon and eggs at breakfast, but all my stuff got switched out with these," she held up a boxes of S'mores flavored ones, "instead."

[desertwolfcub]

Malia wrinkled her nose. "That's dumb. I'm pretty new to all this -- like, being human, not just being in Fandom. But I thought one of the points of being a person and not an animal was that if you get something to eat you get to keep it."

You know, that was why there were stores instead of people fighting over fresh kills!

[white_oleander]

"Generally speaking," Astrid offered, "that is how it goes. Most places, though I guess Fandom isn't the only exception there. It is probably the only exception where the food you planned to make into something else turns into other things, though.

"On the flip side," she then added, "we could just order something from town, and there's a good chance we'll get way more than we need and there will be leftovers to last us the entire week...."

That last part trailed off with a thoughtful tilt of her head at Malia.

"Which...probably doesn't help much with getting used to normal human things." Her own nose wrinkled, but it was an apologetic sort of expression. "Sorry."

[desertwolfcub]

"There are teenage boys living here, right? Doesn't that usually mean there is no such thing as too much food?"

She'd spent just enough time in Beacon Hills before heading to Fandom to figure that part out, at least.

[white_oleander]

"You're clearly underestimating what I mean when I say 'way more than we need,'" Astrid said with a small breath of a laugh, "although maybe if there were more than just five of them, you'd have a good point."

The size of Wayne's breakfasts in the previous years and how there rarely seemed to be leftover with those were suddenly put into perspective for her, though.

[desertwolfcub]

Malia nodded. That was fair, she probably was underestimating it.

"Is it weird? Having more girls than guys at a school?"

[white_oleander]

"All the other schools I've ever been to besides this one," Astrid said, as her Pop Tarts popped up from the toaster and she carefully plucked them out to put on a plate, which was probably way fancier than they deserved, "have been pretty big, so it's kind of hard to tell if it's common at smaller ones like this. I'm kind of inclined to say that there's really nothing normal about Fandom High, though."

Adjusting to going back to a full day of classes, five days a week, in classrooms almost too filled with kids, when she attended Fairfax last year was an experience.

[desertwolfcub]

"There were plenty at Eichen House, but that wasn't actually a school at all." Malia shrugged. "And I guess there were a lot at Beacon Hills High, but I didn't really count them. I was just trying to get my sister's doll back."

[white_oleander]

There were a few things about that response that Astrid felt was worthy of being explored...especially in a round-about way of getting to that whole new to human thing, but what sort of stood out to her the most was:

"Some high schoolers took your sister's doll?"

Although, really, considering how low her opinion had been of the kids she went to Fairfax with, she could honestly see something that stupid or childish

[desertwolfcub]

"They were trying to use it to track me down in the woods."

That didn't answer anything for you, did it, Astrid.

[white_oleander]

Nope!

Astrid nibbled on the edge of her Pop Tart.

The most obvious question here was why.

But what Astrid went with was:

"And instead, you tracked them down to the school."

[desertwolfcub]

"Tracked the doll, yeah. Almost got killed doing it."

Oddly enough, people didn't react well to a large coyote breaking into a high school during the day.

[white_oleander]

"Almost," said Astrid, "but didn't."

Although she supposed she could be wrong there. She could be talking a ghost right now. A really well-done reanimated corpse. A figment of her imagination.

"Did you get the doll back?"

[desertwolfcub]

"Yes, that's what I said," Malia said. Was she not speaking clearly? "And yeah. When one of the guys realized why I wanted it, they gave it back."

[white_oleander]

Well, as far as Astrid could tell, what Malia had said was that she'd tracked it, not necessarily that she'd gotten it back, but that wasn't the only unclear thing in the narrative as a whole, and Astrid wasn't about to point that out.

"Why would they need it anymore, anyway?" she wondered. "If the whole reason they took it was to track you, and then there you were?"

[desertwolfcub]

Well, she'd said she'd almost died. Which implied that she didn't.

"I don't know, boys are weird."

[white_oleander]

Well. Astrid didn't think she could really argue that point.

Especially when it came to boys who stole people's sister's dolls to track them down.

The question of why itched at the back of her brain again as she took another bite of her Pop Tart, a bite that, by the time it was ready to be swallowed, lead her to go ahead and scratch that itch, anyway, because why not?

"So why did they want to track you down in the first place?"

Although half the reason Astrid asked at this point was just to see if Malia's answer would be just as vague as the rest of it had been.

[desertwolfcub]

"To help the sheriff close an old cold case."

Somehow, this was the longest conversation Malia had had yet without directly mentioning she was a coyote for half her life.

[white_oleander]

Did Malia just not realize that answers could contain more than one or two sentences at a time, maybe?

"A case you were involved with, somehow?" Astrid prompted. "Maybe?"

Although, at this point, her interest was starting to wane. If she knew she was going to be doing this much digging this morning, she'd have tought to bring a shovel.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was still judging the entire situation though.

And was possibly going to text Katy later complaining about what breakfast had turned into without Wayne about.

"I'm not hungry anymore," Nina said with a dismal sort of sigh as she collapsed, dramatically, upon a couch.