I'm just doing what comes naturally

[jolting]

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.

Comments

[nascensibility]

The narration is groaning at Whale's pathetic excuse for subtlety, and he's damned lucky that Evelyn isn't as particular when it comes to noticing these sorts of things.

Evie smiles, but it's still somewhat sad - the first couple of weeks alone in her bed have been...miserable, to say the least.

"I should think so."

It's not a confirmation, but it isn't a negation, either. Whale could take it whatever way he wanted. Evelyn simply isn't in the right mood to talk about a more recent version of home.

[jolting]

Well now, that was a vague response. If she wasn't careful, Whale would just keep hitting on her. Though he did not miss the sad look on her face as she smiled.

"I'm sorry. I broached an uncomfortable subject for you."

[nascensibility]

"No, it- it's fine, really, it's just that-"

Evelyn sighs, because everything recent has left her with agonisingly mixed feelings. She went home for nine years, got married, had a child, came back to Wonderland and...and the man she was dating here, before all that in her own world, before she was committed and madly in love, doesn't speak to her anymore.

It's as though he's forgotten how they were friends before they became romantic, as if the only thing that mattered between them was the physical aspect.

She misses Rick desperately, and the lack of platonic companionship here makes that longing more painful.

"...it's very complicated."

[jolting]

Whale understood complicated. Perhaps not on the same level as Evelyn, but he knew what it was like to struggle against new memories and have to adjust to life again.

"I have two sets of memories in my mind," he mentioned. "Very early on, I wanted to lose those other memories... The ones of the life I had before Storybrooke. My life was so much less complicated there. And the longer they lingered, the more those old memories burdened me. But then my friend Ruby told me something: she said that this life is our chance to make something different of ourselves."

The conversation was still so fresh in his mind. "Maybe being in Wonderland is a chance for you to make something different in yourself. It will be difficult... Believe me, I know how it feels to have that kind of pain. But I'm taking Ruby's advice."

[nascensibility]

Evelyn thinks it's a little more than difficult to try to start anew...again. Especially when people here already know her. When she doesn't have a clean slate, it's just...scribbled upon and left for her to deal with. Like having to translate an absolute mess of Hieratic.

"I'll try," she mumbles, but the words are half-hearted, at best. While it's pleasant to hear Whale contributing, sitting on her own problems won't get them anywhere.

She just has to get out.

[jolting]

Maybe he wasn't as good at encouraging speeches as Ruby, but hopefully he managed to get his point across.

"I'm trying to stay dry," Whale mentioned, "or I would offer to take you out for drinks once we're back in the manor."