entrancelogs | I'm just doing what comes naturally

Who: Dr. Whale and whoever wants to stop him from doing science experiments on innocent wildlife
Where: around Truffula Valley
When: the 12th
Rating: PG-13 for crimes against nature
Summary: Fish do not hum. Trees do not smell like butterfly milk
The Story: Being transported from Storybrooke to Wonderland really should have been enough. But no, he was taken to yet another world. Luckily Evelyn already told him a little about this, or he would've been very off-footed. Of course Whale still was off-footed. Just less so.

After getting over the bright colors, Whale started really taking a look around. The trees weren't like any he ever saw before. He reached out and felt a tuft between his fingers. Odd, but it was soft as silk. Whale plucked it to examine it closer. He caught the faintest whiff of something. He couldn't place the scent. Whale tucked it into his pocket so he could take it back to his lab.

He continued on his walk and saw three... fish? On land? Whale gaped at them in surprise. The surprise grew to outright shock when they actually waved to him and started humming. Humming. He needed to get his hands on one of those things.

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"So... you're from here," Whale said to change the subject. "What can you tell me about those fish? How is it they're able to move around on land?"

The Lorax looked over at one that was wrestling with a barbaloot for some reason. He looked back.

"With their tailfins."

"But how?" Whale persisted, the scientist in him itching to dig into this strange new world. "Where I come from, fish can't survive out of water. They would suffocate and die if they were on land."

"Oh, that part." The Lorax thought for a moment. "I dunno."

"You don't know." So that still left Whale with the challenge of capturing one of the creatures in order to understand it. "Well, thank you anyway."

"Sorry, I just. That's not really my job, y'know." He's no vet.

"Then what is your job?" Whale wondered.

"I speak for the trees."

He remembered the creature saying this before, but it didn't sound like a job. "What are they saying now?" Whale asked, not bothering to mask his skepticism.

The Lorax exhales, closes his eyes.

"Same stuff as always. But it's distorted. Distant."

That was cryptic. Whale arched an eyebrow. "As I do not speak to trees, I wouldn't know what the 'same stuff' is, distortion or not."

Hmm. Well.

The Lorax closes his eyes, repeats what he hears. "'It's so sunny. It's so nice here. The animals are so happy. We're happy to be thnee--'! Wait, what?"

His eyes snap open and he looks annoyed. This is so Beanpole's version of things.

"Thneeds?" Whale finished for him. He remembered that odd man talking about them, claiming they were the most fantastic invention. "These things are thneeds, then? They really don't look that impressive to me. I admit I was expecting more."

"The trees are Truffulas. He makes thneeds out of them."

Sigh.

This sucks.

"What is a thneed?" Whale wondered. "I asked him, but he couldn't give me a specific answer. He claimed it was some sort of versatile invention, but I've seen what you make out of trees. True there is versatility, but nothing that spectacular."

SIGH.

"It's like a sweater. But with three arms."

A sweater. Really? The way that man built it up, Whale was expecting something a little more interesting. "How exactly is that a revolutionary invention? It's completely impractical. Unless the populous largely consists of three-armed creatures."

"I don't know. He's a little off." Grumblegrumble. "But not altogether a bad guy."

A little off... Well, that was a kind way to put it. People probably thought Victor was "a little off" for his research. Maybe in this world making a three-armed sweater really was revolutionary. Tame, but revolutionary.

"... I see."

"I tried to point out it wouldn't sell, but. Uh. Then it did."

Whale just shook his head in bewilderment. Once again he was questioning the sanity of this world. A place where butterflies produced milk, where fish could walk on land, and where apparently three-armed sweaters were a popular item. It made his head hurt just thinking of it.

The Lorax looks out at the trees, lost in thought as the silence falls between them. It's so peaceful here. Not quite right, but...

"This is from before he cut them all down."

"All of them?" Now Whale at least understood why the creature was so upset when he took a sample of the bark. "That sounds like an act of careless stupidity. Taking away all the trees would deplete the oxygen in the air and force animals to relocate."

"His family was..." The Lorax waves his hand. "He had a lot of walls up. Kept him from listening to that stuff until it was too late."

Whale didn't say anything to that. It rang too true for him. And really, didn't he go to drastic measures in his own world? It really wasn't his place to judge anyone.

"Perhaps this is a chance for him to make a different choice," he suggested idly. "A fresh start."

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