dizzy_land | Party in Fantasyland! (Open to All)

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Party in Fantasyland! (Open to All)

The loading area and deck in front of It's a Small World had been transformed. Two large tables had been set up, one bearing the music equipment that Cayce had lugged over from Tomorrowland, the other marked out for food and drink. Another food table was set up at the shop.

Various other places in the vicinity had been marked out as well: a wide space for a dance floor; another wide space with a sign RESERVED FOR STARBUCK posted; a grassy area marked RESERVED FOR M. BEAUFORT; and the loading area was marked RESERVED FOR KIRA AND SETSUNA. Over the walk up to the ride, Cayce had hung a large hand-lettered banner that read:

IT'S A SMALL UNIVERSE (ALL OF THEM)

She'd raided every shop in the park for decorations, and pillars and eaves were festooned with Disneyfied representations of various cultures; there was some Mulan merchandise here, a few items ganked from the Indiana Jones Adventure there. Cayce herself felt, somewhat ruefully, that she wasn't capable of being much more than a representation of early 21st-century urban America, so she wore the dress Crowley had given her. Anyone who was expecting her to do a reprise of the bikini business would be sadly disappointed.

~

After Cayce felt that a critical mass of crowd had been achieved, she went to the music system and turned on the microphone.

"Hi there, everyone. It's good to see you here, and thanks for playing along with my silly party idea. It's kind of a squishy liberal American thing to say—see, I'm representing my culture now—but can I just say that it's great to see the diversity here, and to see everyone taking pride in where they come from. So, thanks. Especially to Psyche, for letting us tromp all over her home and for keeping the music under control; to Crowley as always for the booze; and to everyone who brought something to share." She started to put the mic down, then remembered: "Oh, and thank you to Kira and Setsuna, who will be starting a limbo contest shortly." She grinned. "So if you think you're up for it, see how low you can go." A self-deprecating laugh at the cheesiness of what she'd just said. "Thanks again for coming, and have fun."

((Party time! Talk amongst yourselves, hassle Cayce, get drunk and ride through It's a Small World (not recommended), and otherwise have fun. Feel free to set your post before or after Cayce's little speech.))

((ETA: Here's the limbo thread!))

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She reached up and squeezed his hand, as much to say it's all right.

"If you ever speak to her, keep a wide berth. She's a dab hand with a whip and has a short temper." The mark on her forearm had long since faded, but she rubbed at it absently at the memory. She chuckled. "All right, I have to ask: a war over lederhosen? How?"

"A whip?" the Doctor asked, incredulously. "What is she, a German cowyboy? Ah... cow-woman? Cowhand?"

"Well, I'm a little fuzzy on the details because I'd only been there about an hour and no one seemed interested in teaching me their language- this was before I had the TARDIS- but I was on Bavaria -the planet, not the state in Germany- and there was some disagreement over the official length as measured along the inseam of the national pants. The 2nd representative of the First National People's Republic took offense to the President of the First Federation of Bavaria's suggestion that they take the lenght up an inch and a half, at which point the 1st Representative of the First National People's Republic insulted the President's taste in clothing, and the third Vice-President of the Republic replied that the 1st Representatives's mother was a monkey -I think he said monkey, anyway, I was still learning their language- and then the Emperor of Bavaria asked if they could recess for lunch. The second Vice-President called him a lazy fat drunkard, at which point the 1st and 2nd Representatives declared war on the First Federation of Bavaria and the second Vice-President punched the 3rd Representative in the nose."

Edited 2008-08-18 14:41 (UTC)

"She's a prosecutor. Yes, I know," she said, raising a hand in acknowledgement of his likely ongoing incredulity. "Just like her father before her, and apparently her dear papa was fond of wielding a taser. Her native world must be a very interesting place."

As for the Lederhosen War: "I'm reasonably sure I've heard of wars starting over smaller things than that, but I can't think of any off the top of my head," she laughed. "I gather the war was then restricted to that brawl in the meeting room?"

The Doctor didn't actually seem all that incredulous, but he did cast a a curious glance toward the Germany booth, as though considering whether he ought to go investigate a woman thus armed.

"I think it was one of those things that was a lot more complicated under the surface," he answered. "The whole governmental system was pretty new; they'd only settled on the planet some 80 years before; hence the three different bodies. I'm not sure what would've come of it, if anything, but before anything could get too much more out of hand a certain alien in the room piped up with the question he'd finally figured out how to ask, which was why the hell they wanted to make lederhosen the national trouser anyway."

"Mm. Small conflicts do have a way of being a synecdoche for larger issues," she agreed."And did that make them see reason, or was it a case of uniting in the face of a common enemy?"

((I just spent way, way too much time trying to remember the word synecdoche. Dangerously overeducated, indeed. :P))

"The latter. After the original kerfuffle of each wanting to blame the other group for the horrible traitor to the Bavarian culture they realized I didn't even belong there and exiled me from the planet. They're the Federation of the People's Republic now, with the Emperor enjoying a purely honorary position as descendant of the first founder of Bavaria."

((In an awesome way!))

Edited 2008-08-18 16:24 (UTC)

"All's well that ends well, eh?" she said with a grin. "It never ceases to amaze me, how often tolerance and enlightened governance seem to happen by accidents of history so much more often than by design." It was also a depressing thought, if she let it be, but she wasn't going to.

((^_^))

"Sort of marvelous, isn't it?" the Doctor agreed. "Nice to know that sometimes things can work out even when we don't have the faintest idea what we're doing."

"It gives one hope, especially when you're flailing about and feeling your most helpless." She smiled.

Something he'd said earlier caught up with her. "You said you didn't have the TARDIS at the time?"

"Uh..." he paused to scratch behind one ear. "Yeah. I was just a kid back then; I uh, I didn't like my job, so I took some time off to go see the Universe." He smiled, remembering. "Oh, I had some grand adventures."

"Ran off to join the circus, as it were? I can relate to that." At least she was pretty sure she could; that was something like how she'd ended up in theatre. Wasn't it? "Big universe out there. Seems like a shame to just watch it all and not really see it properly."

"That's pretty much exactly what it was," he agreed, smiling. "I didn't want to watch, I wanted to live, you know? " It felt good to have her say it, almost like an -validation- affirmation. He wondered when exactly he'd started needing that.

Digging into his pocket he came up with a slightly squashed bag of peppermint bark he'd gotten yesterday -he thinks it was yesterday, but he supposes it could have been tomorrow- at the Candy Palace. He broke off a piece and then offered the bag to Una.

"I know exactly what you mean," she said. When she turned to look at him, there was something strange and slightly unearthly in her smile; something in it, perhaps, of her own peculiar life and travels on the moonbeam roads.

Then the moment passed; she took the bag of peppermint bark and snapped off a bit for herself.

For a moment, looking at her face, he felt strange; a bit as if he were the human and she the ancient alien from a faraway place. It was almost disorienting.

"I love this stuff," he told her. "Although on the whole I don't think the Americans do candy as well as you lot."

Una laughed. "That's one of the sillier things I've missed here. Peppermint humbugs, sherbet lemons, Smarties, Turkish Delight. God, I even miss wine gums sometimes. Jelly babies, now—" She stopped. Because that was one classic English candy for which there was a source here, wasn't it?

A bit hurriedly, she shoved the piece of peppermint bark into her mouth. Which immediately struck her as the sort of thing the Doctor would do, and she almost laughed again.

"Oh, sherbet lemons," the Doctor groaned. "Don't get me started. I don't know how I managed to get so ridiculously understocked with candy on the TARDIS before I got here."

He huffed. "The Master probably stole it all while we were stuck at the End of the Universe; he gets that from me, you know, the Jelly baby thing. Had a fondness for them back in my fourth body."

Edited 2008-08-20 19:39 (UTC)

There was a bit of a silence while Una dealt with her mouthful of peppermint bark and considered the implications of the Master appropriating the Doctor's taste for jelly babies. What was that he'd said the once (http://community.livejournal.com/dizzy_land/210906.html?thread=12761562#t12761562)—something about what was on one's mind at the moment of regeneration?

"Gets that from you—you mean from being around you, or ...?"

The Doctor shrugged.

"I think he did it on purpose," he said. "To be annoying, or as a taunt maybe. But then, I've noticed recently that I have a tendency to be suspicious of him for the wrong things, and not suspicious enough of the things I should." He shrugged. "But yeah, could've been. We did see a lot of each other during that time; around my third, forth, and fifth incarnations." He shrugged and ate a piece of the peppermint bark himself, licking his fingers afterward. "Who knows."

Una felt her ears grow warm, and she wasn't entirely sure why. No, she was sure; she just wasn't going to dwell on it. A sidelong glance just as he licked his fingers only made her ears warmer.

She reached for the bag of peppermint bark. "You could spend all day guessing at a person's motivations and never get anywhere," she said. Especially his did not, she felt, need to be said.

"Boy is that ever true," he agreed, of both the spoken and the unspoken, and moved the bag to where she could reach it more easily, not seeming to notice her discomfiture.

"'S like the Second Vice President of the First Federation insulting the Emperor and punching him in the nose just because he suggested it was time for lunch. I kept trying to figure that out." He had another bite of peppermint bark and added, out of the side of his mouth, "Now I'm guessing a fling. Broken hearts, that sort of thing."

She took a piece of peppermint bark from the bag. "Ah, the personal and the political. Like the time Arabia almost went to war with Albion over a rejected marriage proposal. Well, no, that was actually more political than personal. You know the routine: the marriage to cement the alliance, et cetera. Only Gloriana was having none of it. Too dangerous, in the end. And everything else going on at the time..." She trailed off, lost for a moment in the memory of that strange and wonderful parallel. There'd been rumours that after Gloriana's rejection of him, the prince of Arabia had consoled himself with Una—your figure's boyish enough for his taste, Gloriana had said—but apart from a few tense dinners and tête-a-têtes and a badly fumbled kiss, nothing had actually happened. She'd never bothered to correct anyone apart from Gloriana; more interesting to keep them guessing.

The Doctor nodded.

"That I could've gotten my head around, anyway," he remarked. ""Not much different on Gallifrey, 'cept there aren't seperate sovereign nations. Gloriana of Albion?"

"One of the more unusual worlds in which I've operated." It occurred to Una that she'd never really had to explain it to anyone who wasn't part of the League of Temporal Adventurers. "Albion was the name for England there, and Gloriana was their greatest queen. Quite the story there; her father was a spectacularly brutal despot, you see, and after he died, the men of the court who'd secretly opposed him groomed Gloriana to be a beautiful and magnificent figurehead. The rising sun after the dark night of King Hern's rule. But they insulated her, really, kept her from the hardest truths; they were running the government, not her. Sometimes I think they didn't even realise that was what they were doing." Her mouth twisted a little in amusement. "She came into her own eventually, though. I'm glad I was there to see it." She chuckled. "I've got a title in that world. Countess of Scaith, in the far north of Albion. I'm Gloriana's confidante and personal secretary. And for a long time there, I think I was her only real friend."

"Queen Gloriana of Albion," the Doctor repeated softly. "Huh. Makes you wonder if Spenser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Queene) knew something most of us don't."

He laughed to hear the end of the story.

"Ooh, Countess," he said giving her a bit of a sideways bow, clearly both teasing and yet genuinely impressed at the same time. "My Lady."

She actually looked a little embarrassed, if very amused as well. "Oh, you ... honestly, even in that world I don't think I've ever been comfortable with titles. As for Spenser... I've wondered at times myself. Maybe it's another case of bleed-through, across the time streams."

((Ahaha. The last entry in the list of major characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Queene#List_of_major_characters) is particularly striking. Also, Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen (http://books.google.com/books?id=c2z3ODByq_sC&) on Google Books. I feel obligated to point out that the original ending of the novel tends to make women throw up in their mouths a little; Moorcock has since revised it to be less discomfiting.))

Edited 2008-08-21 15:05 (UTC)

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