ǫᴜᴇᴇɴ ᴇʟsᴀ (icicles) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-05-28 07:19:00 |
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Allison had officially decided she was going to live in the Green for the next few days. She can speak all her truths to the animals in the forest. Would it work? It might, considering some Derleth residents were turning into animals, so she could potentially be speaking to a human, and maybe the curse would keep her from spewing things out randomly when she attempted to keep her mouth shut. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. She had been trying to avoid people and instead grabbed her phone and typed up everything. Allison sighed, as she crossed her arms and left one of the buildings and headed straight for the Green. The word vomit on the network at least gave her some reprieve. Before she could head further into the Green though, she came across Elsa’s tower. It was absolutely stunning if not clearly indicating that visitors were not advised. But she couldn’t help her curiosity. “Elsa?” she called out. “I think you’re the only one who could make this here, so I’m assuming you’re inside.” Oh, honestly, why did she bother? She’d gotten hungry at some point so Elsa had wandered into Dexter (past the snow scene she’d created thanks to her volatile emotions - it looked pretty, at least, the snow resembling icing sugar where it frosted the ground) and swiped some food, but that also lead to her appearance on the network because she foolishly thought that if she typed, she wouldn’t have to lie - but experiments showed that wasn’t exactly the case, since her words were coming out as nothing but pure false nonsense. It had her fleeing back to the safety of her tower in the Green, now with a full belly but a broken heart, curling up to lean against the wall in the usual position with her cheek against her knees. Then she heard Allison’s voice. Ice cracked like shots from a rifle as the spikes rearranged, twisting back to allow entrance if she wanted - may as well, Elsa thought. The queen was incredibly lonely out here and she felt awful for how she’d upset Orlin. Perhaps the safest thing to do was keep her mouth shut and not talk to anyone, but she saw Allison was affected by the cupcake consumption too and so maybe she’d understand the sweets manipulation tactic. Not trusting herself to say anything like come in, because it would just come out as go away or something equally rude, she just let the ice talk for itself in that regard - there was a path inside the structure now, no danger of being hurt by spikes sharp as razorblades. “No, I’m not inside,” she called back, which. Well. Obviously not true. “That is simply not true,” Allison said, but she started making her way inside anyway. She’d never been inside an ice castle before and she almost wondered if this was going to go really badly and she’ll slip and fall and break something before the week was over. At least that way she could maybe talk Baymax’s ears off and he wouldn’t judge her? Still, she treaded carefully. The ice cracking earlier had been startling and she thought it was about to break apart. It most likely wouldn’t while both Elsa and Allison were inside but Allison had already had one building fall on her the previous week and once was enough for her. When she spotted Elsa, she still took easy steps until she was next to her and lowered herself to the ground as well. “It’s really pretty in here, you know, if not slightly terrifying and aloof.” Was it pretty? Elsa supposed so - her magic could be that way, she guessed. Terrifying and beautiful, much like she was - the ice sparkled in a way as well, broken bits of silver and like gemstones in some parts of the tower where the ice was thicker than other spots. Diamonds, perhaps, something glittery - she’d made a place herself, to have for herself, and she was alone again, no one to actually appreciate the beauty of her creation, but what else was new. Elsa smiled at Allison when she sat, and she thought about how to choose her words carefully. Constantly lying was hard - how did people do this effortlessly, on a regular basis? Maybe because they managed to make their lies sound smooth - she was just spewing nonsense most of the time. “I love this week,” she sighed, which - well, no. She didn’t. “Are you doing okay?” “I hate this week. I would say I love this week sarcastically too but I don’t have the ability to use sarcasm either.” She’d take a week of only sarcasm over only truths any day though. “I’m a little messed up in the head, but a part of me is relieved I’m not the only one. Until I spill my guts like I did on the network. Which I haven’t seen anyone else do except Eliot, which I feel like was worse than my dilemma. “I know you’re not doing okay, even if you say it, so what’s going on? What made you build this fortress on the Green? Did you do something incredibly embarrassing too?” “No,” Elsa replied right away, which clearly meant yes. It was just difficult to convey that because she couldn’t actually be straight with her answers - but maybe she could figure out a way to explain without sounding stupid or making things worse. The tip of her tongue darted out and she moistened her lips, unclenching and uncurling her fingers to wipe them on the skirt of her dress - did she have sweaty palms? Was she nervous? Yes and yes. That was just the way of things right now, here in her ice prison solitude. “I went to see Orlin - he was just being really mean the whole time, and we had a perfectly civil discussion and then he told me to build an ice tower so I did.” Ugh. Did the pleading look in her wintry eyes give her away? Allison furrowed her brow in confusion. “Orlin was mean? He doesn’t seem like the kind to be mean. In fact he’s like the exact opposite of Loki. Probably would never hurt a fly in his life if it even landed on his face and slapped him. Loki, on the other hand…” Though with the cupcakes affecting them the way they were, there was no telling if Orlin did have the capability with it to turn malicious. However, mean and civil discussion didn’t seem to match up. It really didn’t match up at all, and Elsa really hated speaking in riddles - or actually, these weren’t riddles. They were just bits of alphabet soup and pure unadulterated lies. She laughed at the mention of Loki though - yes, he was a lot meaner than Orlin. Though Loki had never been mean to Elsa personally, of course. They had been friends from the beginning - maybe it was the connection, the bonding over being able to wield ice and snow. Orlin was always nice though. Kind, handsome, also braver than he thought he was - in her view, it took a lot more gumption to continue to be kind when the world was cruel than to give in to being a terrible person because everyone else had. His sweetness was one of the things that had initially attracted her to him in the first place. “He’s exactly like Loki,” Elsa lied (lying liar), then winced. “...I really just...” She bit her lip so she didn’t finish that sentence. Then just buried her face in her skirt and let out a small, dainty sort of scream. “You don’t need to stay here if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly fine by myself and not basking in how terrible I sound.” By the time she finished talking, Allison had already made herself comfortable right next to Elsa, leaning against the wall as well. “You are lying straight through your teeth,” she said in response to her claiming she was fine. And then she paused and glanced over at her, tilting her head questioningly. “You are also not invisible at all. What color is your hair?” She was lying straight through her teeth? Good call, Allison. Elsa very much was - and she couldn’t help the sigh of sheer relief that escaped her. “No, I’m not,” she said, perking up a bit and then with all the seriousness she could muster, very gravely answered the question. “My hair is black.” See?? This week was horrible and she’d had an argument with Orlin, but now at least she felt somewhat better about the fact that she was being heard. That someone who also ate the cupcake understood how annoying it was to actually have eaten the goshdarn cupcake. Well from her reaction it seemed like nobody else had figured this out about her, so Allison winced. “This means Orlin was not mean, and it wasn’t a civil discussion, and he definitely did not tell you to build this temple. Did you lie to him about something and it came out incredibly wrong?” Maybe there was - oh, right, charades! She used to play that game with her sister a lot, when Kristoff was courting her and they would all play together. As Allison ticked off the observations, starting with this means Orlin was not mean, Elsa touched the tip of her nose to indicate it was a correct answer; observations were much better than direct questions, anyway. “No, I told the truth about everything,” she insisted, but she didn’t even try to make that sound convincing - she may be over here lying about everything (truth? What was ‘truth’? It felt like a far-off concept, and so did making sense) but that didn’t mean her body language had to try to back up her lies. Because it didn’t. She had this panicked, deer-in-headlights expression on her face on a perpetual basis now, and was either slumped and defeated or wrought with tension, muscles knotted like they were a network of twisted tree trunks. “It came out fine - I sound fine, don’t I?” Bleeeeeh. “You do not,” she said. Allison couldn’t even be reassuring with her cupcake-induced honesty, so she wasn’t even going to try and tell Elsa that she’s sure it’ll be okay. “I mean, obviously you know that, but you asked me a question so I have to answer honestly. I think what you need is a liaison between you and basically everyone else on campus lest you say something like calling somebody ugly.” Elsa sighed, placing her hands over her face with the heels digging into her eyeballs - because she felt a headache coming on, and she had no way to stop it. Maybe just lie here and rest her head against the ice - that might feel good. Because her self-imposed exile wasn’t going to go away until the end of the week and then she could properly apologize to Orlin. And the less people she talked to, the better. “That’s a horrible idea,” she replied, which hopefully Allison interpreted as agreement - otherwise Elsa was probably going to scream. Everyone on campus was also unfairly attractive and so calling them ugly (in the rare instance she did make an observation about someone’s looks) wouldn’t really help her case; she needed an interpreter or else she’d be going on a whole apology tour next week. She also needed to stay in her ice tower, so she settled in and prepared to not move unless she had to. “Hey, that’s not– oh right.” The defensiveness was a knee-jerk reaction before it clicked that it was an agreement. This was going to take a while to get used to. “Well, I’m glad we figured this out together. Do you want me to talk to Orlin and tell him to believe the opposite of whatever you had told him last time? You don’t have to tell me what you told him. I’m curious but just a little bit. Then again, you probably can’t tell me accurately anyway.” “Sure I can,” Elsa insisted but, no - no, she couldn’t. At least Allison sort of got the point now and Elsa could breathe a little sigh of relief. She’d noticed that one or two others had been afflicted with the same lying curse (because they were just saying too many ridiculous things to not have it be a similar thing - she recognized the plight of constant false babble) so at least it wasn’t only her. And other people were vomiting gold coins and jewels everytime they tried to speak, which seemed far worse - she really couldn’t think of a silver lining to that one other than having jewels and coins that were, by and large, useless. “Definitely don’t talk to him. But if you did, I don’t know - I guess you could also ask him about what happened, but he probably won’t tell the truth,” she added, and then she actually...giggled a little. Pure madness, really. Oh, how she hated this week. “I will probably leave my ice tower at some point.” Nope. She wouldn’t. Allison understood all of that. And if she had the power to stay in an ice tower or any kind of tower she built on her own, she totally would too. So Allison nodded and patted Elsa on the arm. “Totally get it. If you ever do, then you can always come find me, and I’ll be your in-person translator too. For now, deep breaths in and out, Elsa. You’re not alone.” |