+ Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The grounds of the Mansion
When: March 9-16
Rating: PG-13 (warn if you go higher)
Summary: The Red Queen has thrown a carnival for everyone!
The Story:


From Friday, March 9, through Friday, March 16, the gardens and grounds of the Mansion will be a sprawling a carnival. The masked, unspeaking vendors will be selling trinkets and running free game booths. Carnival rides, exhibits, and foods represent all of the various cultures of those currently residing in the Mansion.


Of particular note, and perhaps incongruously, everything is decorated with red hearts.

Use this log for any and all of your carnival needs!

Comments

[postictal]

"Hell if I know," he admits, because honestly, most of how Alabama operates is a mystery to him, and maybe always will be. He'd be just fine if that ends up being the case.

God, he swears he can smell the sugar steaming off the thing, and the weird little "toast" shudders puffs of powdered sugar free, shedded from the mass like flakes of snow. He pinches a fragment of the fried dough free with a tweak of his fingers, and it's precisely as rich as it smells.

"...damn," he says, swallowing. "I feel like I've already gotten a cavity."

But...hell with it. You only live five times.

He's gonna have more.

[deadshapes]

"Haha, I get that."

Some regional foods are just baffling, even to the people who live there. There's scrapple around where Mae lives, and she's pretty sure it's the worst thing ever invented by people.

Mae takes a bite and a blissful smile crosses her face.

"Oh my Goooodddddddd." She absolutely speaks with her mouth full. "I know right? So good."

[postictal]

"Never had shit like this in the hospital," he mumbles around a mouthful of hot dough. Christ, should've taken a smaller bite. His throat feels like it's blistering when he swallows, and he's gotta take a moment to just savor the taste.

His guts are gonna hate him when this is over, he's positive, but right now, he doesn't care. What's it she just said? Problem for Future Tim. Fuck that guy. Tim hates that guy.

He'd laugh at that one, if he were the type.

[deadshapes]

She shakes her head, which just succeeds in her getting powdered sugar all over her whiskers. Right...hospitals.

"Yeah, God, I was, um, in the psych ward for a night after the Whole Thing happened, and it was like, that Salisbury steak that comes in like a microwave dinner thing? Like I'm not sure it was even meat? And jello cups. Like, it's always jello cups, and it's usually lime flavored. They had that when I was in the regular hospital after breaking my arm one time, it's just always jello. i remember that so vividly, lime jello and a Capri Sun."

Breaking her arm is frankly a better memory than the other one.

"It's like they want you to suffer even more or something. Bleah. Heh, Gregg kept telling me he'd smuggle me donuts if they kept me for any longer."

[postictal]

"If I was real good, they'd let me have ice cream," he says, noncommittal, casual, like they're just...discussing something mundane as the weather, and not the fact that they're both certifiable. "All they had was vanilla, but it was a pretty okay pity present."

When Mom never showed. When it was visiting day, and she called to say she was sorry, honey, she really was, but she swears she's going to make it next time, just wait and see, and eventually she stopped calling, and eventually he stopped letting the revelation settle like a leaden weight in his gut.

"Gregg's a...friend of yours?" He's guessing, anyway.

[deadshapes]

This is...surreal. Surreal, but in kind of a good way, the way carnivals are. She kept quiet about all this stuff for so long, and even back home when she finally told Gregg and Bea what happened...there was no judgment. They just listened, and were concerned. Not worried that Mae might go off the deep end or something, but just--concerned for her well-being.

It's gotten only a little easier to talk about it since then, and that event kind of forced her hand, but this is...it's okay. It's not terrible, being able to talk about it, especially with someone who's been there.

From the sounds of it, Tim had it a helluva lot worse.

"It's the little things, I guess. And hey, now you get to have an Oreo funnel cake, so I guess some things must work out, right?"

Or maybe it just puts things into perspective.

"Yeah, he's my best friend back home. He's one of those people who's like, super rambunctious and upbeat pretty much all the time and always coming up with crazy ideas that are like, at least fifty percent illegal."

[postictal]

"So were yours the other fifty percent?" That is - a terrible joke. Terrible, and maybe in some distant alternate reality, Brian is proud of him for making it. Seems like every kid who grew up a little off-kilter has that requisite, innately likable best friend who's about a million times more sociable and optimistic.

Or maybe that's just the two of them.

He twists off another chunk of funnel cake, cavities be damned.

[deadshapes]

She cackles and gives him a fingergun.

"You effing know it."

It's not like she doesn't already have that reputation around here, and it's one she's proud of. But man, crimes just aren't the same without Gregg.

[postictal]

"You'd probably like where I grew up, then." It's - safe for him to talk about that, right? Not getting into specifics. Just mentioning the unrelated shit. "You couldn't go a mile without running into some abandoned building or another. Nobody bothered with security either, so you could basically just roam around."

Like an old hospital, the walls flaked with ash and streaked with years of grime.

Among others.

[deadshapes]

"Oh man, I love that shit. There's something kind of beautiful about that, right? Abandoned buildings and stuff. Like..."

She pauses to chew and parse her thoughts.

"So, my hometown is like...a pretty typical old mining town, right. Abandoned shit everywhere, mine carts rusting on hills, sinkholes. The town's just kinda dying, yanno? But like...it's holding on. Right? There's something beautiful about that. I mean, nature reclaiming stuff and all, but also just...things holding on. People and towns and buildings got that way of holding on for as long as they can, and that's just..."

She trails off and shrugs, realizing she's getting a bit too philosophical. Touching too closely to all those big fancy ideas she used to finally shut the voice up.

"It's just cool as hell."

[postictal]

He watches the spark of enthusiasm flicker and then...die, as though she's censoring herself down. Kinda like how Jay only answers questions in short little bursts, barely letting on anything about himself, save for the one time Tim pushed.

Like he didn't expect anyone to be interested. Like he'd never had anyone ask him about his own interests before in his life.

"Guess I'd have to see it to believe it," he says, noncommittal. "Bet it feels like this...whole other world. Like time's frozen, maybe."

Or maybe that's stupid of him, to assume.

[deadshapes]

He doesn't want to hear about cults that worship holes in the ground with weird elder gods at the bottom. No one wants to hear about that stuff.

She's kind of worried that talking about it might bring it here.

"No, yeah. I know what you mean, that's exactly it. You see that stuff and like...it's easy to feel like it's a thousand years later and there's no people left or something. Or like it's a thousand years in the past or something."

[postictal]

Boy, that's a Mood(tm).

"Maybe we'll get to see it someday," he says, which is...probably equal parts comforting and not, considering that it's just as liable to backfire on Mae as it is to backfire on damn near everyone else. You lose a word when an event crops up from your world. That's just the name of the game.

Maybe it's cruel to wish that upon her - and, by extension, Wonderland.

[deadshapes]

She actually snorts, which blows a puff of powdered sugar into the air.

"I mean, I hope that if an event of mine happens, it's just like...'hey everyone, welcome to my hometown, it's a shithole but it's still pretty cool!' And not like...worse stuff."

Everyone's got worse stuff, so she figures there's no point in hiding it.

[postictal]

"It's been known to happen," he says, dismissive. "There was this one time - I think it was Shepard's world. We just kinda ended up in space for a few days, in this place called the Citadel. I'm pretty sure no one died. People just...played laser tag and looked at stars and stuff."

Nice events do happen, albeit few and far between. There was the whole shit with the ski resort, not that it was an especially pleasant time in the wake of Jay's disappearance. Jay Number One, anyway.

[deadshapes]

"Aw mannnn. I heard about that one. I'm still so mad that I missed it. There was that like...ski resort one too. That was how I met Turing. Good times."

Why can't there be more nice events like that? Come on now, Wonderland. Does everything really have to be awful all the time?

[postictal]

"Turing? The little...that robot?" There are multiple robots around, he knows full well, but not very many of them are tiny and round and blue. Save for Turing's Mirror, presumably, but he's not going to make that assumption either until he meets them for real.

Assuming he ever does.

"I mean, one of the many robots I guess we have around here?"

[deadshapes]

"Yeah, Turing's the small one with the spherical head. Jeez, we've got a lot of robots in Wonderland, have you noticed? That one with the, like, flashlight head...that Mettaton guy... I always liked mixing up genres like that."

What were they talking about? Oh, right.

"Anyway, yeah, me and them had a snowball fight and that's how we met."

[postictal]

"Flashlight head?" He's not well-versed on his robot mythology, or on who's who outside of the circle of people he interacts with regularly. Despite him making active attempts to be less of a shut-in, he's still woefully under-socialized, and it's starting to show.

Especially considering Mae hasn't been here nearly as long as he has, and yet has managed to meet more people than him in a much shorter span of time.

[deadshapes]

"Yeah, uh, I see them on the network sometimes? They're...I think they're from Shepard's world?"

He must know Shepard at least. Everyone knows Shepard.

[postictal]

...right, yeah. He's - he thinks he's met them, actually. Not that he was in the right mind at the time. He was stomping through a painfully humid jungle and halfway out of his mind and on the verge of a catastrophic relapse, so he wasn't exactly in a stunning state to be taking notes.

It takes him a minute to recall their name.

"Legion?" he ventures finally. "I think that's it."

[deadshapes]

She snaps her fingers and almost drops the rest of her funnel cake.

"Yeah, that's it. I knew it was something creepy-sounding like that. Man. We really got all kinds here, huh?"

She loves it. Even if it means everyone and their mother thinks she's a cat.

[postictal]

"I dunno about 'creepy,' but yeah, I think they've been here for - maybe longer than I have." His conceptualization of time isn't great, but what else is new? "We've got someone calling himself 'Lucifer' who owns a club. Jury's out on whether or not he's actually Satan."

Does he care? Not particularly. It doesn't really concern him one way or the other.

[deadshapes]

"God, I keep forgetting that that's a thing. I don't think I've ever talked to him. Just like, oh yeah, Satan's here. Which makes you realize there must be versions of Satan, right? Which is surreal as eff."

If there's different universes and timelines and dimensions then there must be variations on everyone. Wonderland is so damn weird.

But at least it has funnel cakes.

[postictal]

Maybe he should ask Satan if he had a hand in Tim's creation, he almost jokes aloud, before remembering who he's talking to. As much as morbid humor is well and good between the two of them, he shouldn't go blurting shit like that to just anyone.

"I dunno. I think most people don't go outta their way to talk to the literal Devil." Assuming he is the actual Devil. He goes around proclaiming himself Lucifer Morningstar, so that probably counts for something.