Hours had passed since “Cerise” had heard the booming sound, felt horribly wrong and misplaced and decided to spend the day in bed with her boyfriend. Now there was only Clarice, disgruntled and freaked out as she dealt with having woken up in bed with John Proudstar. Something had to be very, very wrong, it was finally plain to see. So wrong, she had immediately texted Rocco Spinnet, known as Finn around these parts, and felt relieved to find out she wasn’t the only one whose real self had finally asserted its position at the forefront of her mind.
Clarice sat uncomfortably, tapping her fingertips on the surface of the table as a coffee she had ordered just to have the right to sit there as long as she liked went cold and probably pretty gross. She tried to come up with some kind of timeline of weird events using a napkin and a pen she had asked the barista for. It wasn’t going great. Her eyes widened in anticipation as Rocco walked in; maybe he had some ideas.
Rocco hadn’t heard the book that others were talking about but he definitely knew things weren’t the same when he woke up. For one thing, this wasn’t his room in Atlantis. He got out of bed and walked to the door, opening it to find a living room that also wasn’t the living room he knew in Atlantis. “Bloody hell,” he said and then stopped. Finn would never say bloody hell because he wasn’t British and he was pretty sure that “Finn” hadn’t had an accent either. For a moment he just stood there, realizing who he was and knowing that this wasn’t where he was supposed to be. When his phone went off and he got Clarice’s test, he immediately told her what had happened and they arranged a place to meet.
After quickly getting ready, he headed for the coffee shop they’d met at before and spotted her immediately. He went to her table and sat down and took a deep breath. “Well looks like we were right. Something is certainly buggered up. Have you spoken to Zasha? Or the person who is someone else but I’m damned if I know who. If we’re back to normal, I wonder if she is too?”
“‘Sup Rocky? Fancy seeing you here.” Clarice replied mirthlessly. She shrugged when he brought up Zasha, shaking her head. “Honestly you were the first one I texted for a bunch of reasons but I guess I can text her, too. She hasn’t said anything to me though. I guess we need to figure this out either way. Ideas? I don’t have my powers, I checked.”
“You know that you’re the only person that can get away with calling me Rocky,” he said. Rocco had no idea what it was about her but the few times they’d talked before all this and while they’d been here, he’d liked her. “I don’t have mine either, I found my wand mixed up in some stuff in my closet, I guess it came with me but it doesn’t work. I suppose the powers will come back later. I hope they do anyway.” Shaking his head, he went on. “It’s not like we can just walk around and ask people if they remember another place. Although I suppose we could say hi to them and see what they call us. That’s a pretty dumb idea though.”
“Ah, well. It’s good to feel special.” Clarice replied with a faint smile. Things could have gotten very awkward after their weird Austenesque first meeting but in finding out that Rocco was actually chill (as was most of his family apparently), Clarice had gotten to like the guy. “Me too. But I feel like this would all be a lot easier if we had them.”
Clarice chuckled. “Hey now, it’s not like I have anything better. I don’t even know where to go from here; like, is this a mystery to solve or are we trapped, you know? Mostly though it’s freaking me out that I’ve got this entire life and network of relations built around me that doesn’t make any sense anymore. I don’t know what yours is like, but I need a plan to deal with mine.”
“Judging from other stuff that has happened since I’ve been around, I don’t think we’re trapped,” he said thoughtfully. “COS might have wanted us out of the way so they could make trouble in Atlantis or Atlantis might have just thought a social experiment was a good idea. At least it’s not “Lord of the Flies” While most of his reading related to the wizarding world and his job in it, there were some Muggle books that he liked and had read more than once, Lord of the Flies being one of them.
“We should stick together for now I think, at least until we know who else, if anyone else I guess i should say, is awake. Zaysha would be the most likely place to look since we already know she was having the same feelings we were.”
“Huh. So you think we just need to find the way out? Man, what if it’s up to us to make everyone else snap out of it?” Grimacing, Clarice chuckled. Rocco had a point; a Lord of the Flies, Hunger Games or Battle Royale scenario would have been much worse. “You’re right. Let’s check with her; she’s our best clue so far. In your experience does COS like to play? Because if they don’t wanna use us, the most obvious solution would be to… you know. Get rid of us. For good.”
“They love to play,” Rocco said. “Alicia has told me some of the stuff they’ve done in the past. They like to do sneaky stuff and see what we’ll do, how we’ll react. Aside from the time back in the spring when they kidnapped ten people and held them hostage, they’ve never done anything really violent but then there was the vampire….” he remembered only too well his time babysitting Angelus. “Okay so they can be sadistic bastards but they haven’t killed anyone.”
“Oh. Good.” Clarice replied, rolling her eyes. She remembered the vampire pretty well; she was still thankful he seemed to get bored of her. “Okay, well. They sound inefficient and stupid but that’s not my problem. I’ve never been in this situation before, so all I can do is keep an eye out for more weird shit. Like that booming noise this morning, did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear it but I saw some posts about it. Is that how you knew you were fully awake? It would make sense but I’m awake and i didn’t hear it so who the hell knows?” it was a huge mystery to Rocco, he wished they could figure out what it was that they were supposed to be doing so they could all go home. Not that this wasn’t a decent place but he wanted to go home or at least to his Atlantis home.
Clarice shook her head. “No, that happened later. It startled me so bad I fell off the bed and hit my chin and it was this whole thing, but at the time I was still only extremely confused. Then I went back to bed, and when I woke up I was… back.”
It was still uncertain whether this had been a blessing or a curse. “So we’ll check with Zasha, see if she’s awake or not and tell her to expect it if not, I guess. Right? You can’t check if there’s magic surrounding this, can you? I mean-” She held her hands up, palms towards each other parallel with her shoulders. Nothing happened. “-no powers here.”
“I can’t. My wand is just a piece of wood right now and I can’t do magic any other way,” he replied. “But yeah, let’s see if we can track down Zasha, see if there’s any correlation between us being awake and her being awake. We can meet back here say in a couple of hours?”
“Okay. More heads together has got to mean something good.” Clarice lowered her head and shook it. “I guess I should go home… John will be wondering where I disappeared off to.”
But she didn’t move, face filling with dread over having to face him with this newfound knowledge. “Or I could just sit here until closing time and then wander around town until I can’t walk. So. Coffee? I’m buying.”