InsaneJournal

Who Aurora & NPC fair-goers
Where: Tom McCall Waterfront Park
When: Sunday early afternoon
What: People watching, butterfly watching and homesickness
Status: Complete

For all that she was effectively stuck until she got back into her own body, Aurora couldn't bear the idea of just sitting at home. Reading about this world on her tablet machine was something to do, but it was one thing, one sedentary thing, and for someone who'd been in the middle of a quest when the wormhole had taken her, one sedentary thing was not exactly satisfying. There being not much adventure in Portland, she would settle for a job, but the waiting made her restless and impatient. She had taken to walking around the trade districts (as she still thought of them), watching people shopping and listening to the things they talked about, taking breaks sometimes to sit in a food court or bar. Perhaps she ought to be saving her money for when she was able to clothes shop again, but thrift wasn't a habit she had often practiced and each snack or drink never seemed like much. And it was, after all, research.

Today research had taken her to the waterfront, which was a lot more crowded than usual in honour of the CityFair. She wasn't sure if it was more people than she'd ever seen in one place at one time, but if not it was certainly close, and for a while as she walked around she had to push down a nagging sense of claustrophobia. One thing she'd noticed since The Change though was that people seemed to give men just a little bit more space - not much, not even so much that she'd noticed it immediately, but a little. It helped keep her calm until she started to get used to the crowds.

Now she had found the (somewhat lengthy) line to the Butterfly Discovery Centre and was finishing off the "candy apple" she'd purchased earlier while slowly moving toward the front, surrounded largely by children of varying ages and their parents. She hoped she didn't look too out of place on her own, but it wasn't like children were the only ones who could be interested in fauna. (Alright, mostly she just wanted to feed the butterflies. The educational displays she was more curious to see what an "educational display" actually was than what information they might impart.) Her timing was good today, it seemed; she ate the last of her apple as she reached the front of the queue and was left with just the stick. Not spotting a bin, she put it in one of the pockets of the jeans she was wearing. Awfully convenient, though she wasn't entirely sure why she'd ever need five of them, and the jeans themselves were very restricting. And heavy. At least with dresses you could use the air flow to cool down on hot days.

But then she was actually going into the Flutter Garden, a name that made her think of people's reactions when she told them she was from the Enchanted Forest, and sartorial annoyances could be ignored for later - along with crowds, and technology she didn't really understand, and cultural differences, and the strange taste of the air here. She hadn't even realised why she'd wanted to come in before, but now she was here she thought she understood. If she blocked out the noises from the main fair outside she could almost pretend she was back home. Not home home, maybe, but... a neighbouring country, perhaps. Unfamiliar but in a familiar way, something she hadn't thought could be possible before she'd arrived here. Animals just didn't get close to people like this here unless it was contrived to happen. Nature was kept separate and at bay, not a part of people's lives. It was only butterflies, but at least it was something.