paixaorpg | Foundation Day Festival: Food Tent

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Foundation Day Festival: Food Tent

Character(s): everyone in the food tent
Content: food, and lots of it.
Setting: Joco da Crianca Fairgrounds, food tent
Time: all day~
Warnings: Multithreaded posting format (please include time of day and sub-location in your comment's subject line)

The food tent is the second biggest structure at the fair, next to the Ferris wheel. It's a large white tent set up near the far end of the grounds. Inside, the majority of the tent is filled with long tables (with white plastic tablecloths) and benches for seating.

The food, along one side of the tent, is set up buffet-style. They have a wide variety of hot and cold dishes, and it's all good stuff, having been catered by Café Ersesat. It's always well-stocked, too, somehow; if they run out of anything, it's replenished within a few minutes. There is also a small bar, where alcoholic drinks and cocktails are available upon request to anyone who looks old enough.

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Alice looked amused, and part of her did want to laugh a little. My, but Chizuru had a very odd way of describing things! She herself hardly thought of eating healthy anymore, as the idea of living long was a strange one indeed. Nonetheless, Alice felt she should partake in this sugary treat, as she had been feeling nothing but an almost kind of bliss at being around this girl. In that sense, she would willingly try anything.

"Please make that too," Alice said apologetically to the food vendors, who were happy to oblige. Alice watched how they took their time carefully pouring the mixture into a kind of silver molding plate, careful to make patterns that would not result in a heavy funnel cake nor an incomplete one. Alice found herself strangely hypnotized by the whole affair. She turned to Chizuru and offered a smile.

"I do hope its to your liking."

Cinnamon and sugar and batter, fried to a crisp outside and a delightfully fluffy inside. There was nothing that screamed "festival" like a fresh, tongue-searingly hot, sweet funnel cake, out of the oil and onto the plate and carried to a table. Unfortunately, there was also nothing else that quite brought out the nostalgia of past festivals, and Chizuru felt lonely for a moment, even surrounded by the locals and in the company of a girl she really liked, munching on one of the most divine desserts in existance and getting powdered sugar on her nose.

It just wasn't the same as back home. The heavy beat of Paixaoan music wasn't the same as the tunes she'd grown up to, the blonde people all around weren't the same as the dark-haired, dark-eyed people she knew best, and Alice... nice as she was to be with... wasn't the same as Orihime. Couldn't be the same as Orihime, despite the air of being distant from reality, despite being friendly and sociable. Maybe she was a little more like Tatsuki, she thought, recalling the plethora of weapons Alice carried around and the deadly efficiency she'd shown in that one fight, but that comparison failed as well because Alice was a lady, and Tatsuki was just a reckless tomboy.

Chizuru tried again, unsuccessfully, to bury the homesickness. They'd tried to leave Paixao already, they'd gotten chased by those monsters and the men in the black coats. And even after that, the Mayor and whomever was in charge of him had probably placed even more guards by the gates to keep anybody from trying to duplicate the experiment.

But if everybody in Paixao was at the Festival today, who was manning the gates?

"I've talked enough about the kind of place I come from," she said aloud, keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself as high-school girls often did, "how about you, Alice?"

Alice blinked, tasting this funnel cake. It was actually quite good, so good that Alice almost recoiled from that taste. There was certainly nothing that gave her taste buds a challenge, remembering with distaste the filth they called food at the asylum. A bleak place, with nothing but despair, people with notes, and those loathsome twins who took great delight in torturing her. No, there was nothing in THAT particular part of her time line she would tell Chizuru about. She would spare the cheerful girl such gruesome stories.

"It has been a long time," Alice said slowly, "that someone ever asked me that question. Before the fire...I remember long walks in the glen with my sister, daydreaming for hours. And the, Wonderland was such a curious place! There was confusion, of course, but so many sights and races and croquet with the Queen and Cheshire-puss and the chessboard! Oh! I even remember the day I became queen myself when I went through the Looking Glass! Such marvelous times!"

At this, Alice felt something happened that was quite unexpected: a tear slowly fell from her face as she thought of those times. If only they had stayed, and there hadn't been a need for the rest: the fire that consumed her parents and her old being so that all that remained was a memory of the girl she had been. The fire, the asylum, and the visit back to Wonderland: the mines, the subjugation, the beheading of the White Queen...

Such a wonderful world, one she felt responsible to fix.

"But that was a very long time ago. I suppose the time for those thoughts are over. Now then, there seems to be something on your mind Chizuru. Penny for your thoughts?"

That still seemed like a strange expression. What WAS a penny anyway?

"Just homesick and missing my... my family, I guess," the lesbian replied quietly, nibbling her cinnamon-sugared treat. "It's been happening a little-- well, okay, it's been happening a lot lately. It sounds like your life has been very different from mine."

Quaint, different, but perhaps not altogether worse (except, if Alice had mentioned it, the part about the loony bin). Chizuru wondered if it was true, what some people had said over the journals about whole different worlds and that was why everybody was so strange.

But that didn't explain why now she felt the need to say good-bye, to stretch her legs and run from the city of Paixao, so fast the guards couldn't catch her. Didn't explain why she felt like she could just start running now and be back home by nightfall.

Don't be silly, she scolded herself. Remember what happened last time we tried "just running"? Monsters and creepy men in black coats and Sora getting kidnapped and-- change the topic. Change the topic.

"Alice, did you ever think about romance, back then? About growing up and settling down with someone?"

"I see," Alice said softly, taking a bit more of the fried dough. It really was quite good, and although she was sure its nutritional value was quite low, that didn't stop her from indulging. "My life was a long time ago, dear. It was a time where peculiar things didn't matter so much, and there were so many ideas in my head I thought I would break. You could call it, I suppose, a time in which I experienced bliss."

Alice was quiet now. There was certainly something chewing at Chizuru's heart, but she would have to be patient and wait to see if the girl would tell it to her. Pushing for information was only necessary if she wanted immediate results, and with Chizuru, this wasn't business. Everything was personal.

"Honestly?" Alice pondered the thought a moment. "No. The idea seemed like a grown up one, and at the time that seemed terribly boring. To me, grownups assured the world stayed on an axis, whereas children were the thinkers, the creators, the ones who began sparks of innovation that would change the world. Settling down was a very taboo thing in my mind: it meant lack of freedom to think and be more than just the being embodying a body and going through the motions. I wanted to create worlds, to experience the continuing lures of what the mind had in store for me."

Alice laughed. "As you can see, those ideas did not end well all the time. They take a toll, like everything in life."

Chizuru's mind was indeed elsewhere; it was trying to keep her body from acting on the impulse to run and go home (but I can't go home, this is Paixao, the trap). She brought herself back to the conversation only slowly, and even then missed most of what Alice said.

"When I was really little, I wanted to be the hero in fairy tales. I'd find a nice princess, inherit a kingdom, and... it never really happened," she finished lamely. "Countries just don't seem to work like that any more. And my princess..."

She nearly swore. After changing the topic three times so she wouldn't think of 'Hime...

"... I'm sorry, Alice. My princess is back home waiting for me, and I have to go back to her. Our relationship was wonderful, but... I can't stay here any longer. Give Sora my apologies when you find him, okay?"

Chizuru placed what was left of her Paixaoan money on the table and ran for the exit of the festival, her funnel cake falling to pieces in her hands as she fled the city that was a trap and a cage, praying that her sudden flight wouldn't cause Alice any more trouble, she'd been enough trouble already...

Alice slowly raised her head at Chizuru's words, and then watched helplessly as the redhead made her exit, her hand wanting to reach out. There was something in Alice's heart that begged the girl to stay, to hold on, to please nor go...

Could she listen? Would she let her go?

"CHIZURU!" Alice called. "Please, I..." but the girl was gone. Alice's hands was outstretched, her heart in her hands, but it seemed inevitable. The girl... wanted a last day with her. She lowered her head, looking at the money left on the table, and with a sweep of her hand, knocked the money off the table.

Currency was useless. She had to find Sora. It's what the girl asked, and she'd honor that, even if there was someone else...

But Alice was tired. The hotel was accessible. She'd go, wash the last of her wounds, continue on. The idea of love was nice, but if it was gone, mission was her only other option.

She'd find Sora.

"I'll miss you," Alice whispered, holding up a hand as if expecting Chizuru to run back to her. She looked at the remains of the funnel cake and grabbed a bit for herself.

Souvenir...

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Foundation Day Festival: Food Tent

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries

Re: Shortly after noon, looking for deep-fried pastries