strangetrip | Check-in May 15

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Check-in May 15

It was the 15th of the month and given the possibility of arrivals, Caroline decided that something should be done to make new people a little more comfortable.

So she was sitting in the lobby, wearing a bright yellow sundress and surrounded by a riot of materials. Her feet were bare, as her sandals were lying off to the side, and her toenails were blue. She was creating Inn survival kits. There was a little pamphlet of explanations: people call the guy at the desk Daryl; yes,everything is free; no, you can't leave; just be firm about towels. A basket of sundries - snacks from the gift shop, sunscreen, guidebook, toothbrush etc. There was a towel, because obviously.

She considered adding a bottle of alcohol, but not everyone drank - she'd noticed at least a few of the current residents who didn't - and if they did drink TOO much, she didn't want to encourage it.

Maybe chocolate?

Caroline jotted down that as a note and resumed chewing on the end of her pen. The lobby door opened shortly thereafter and she looked up with a smile.

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"Early morning maybe," Dot agreed handing over the skirt with a warm smile. "But if you decide you're comfortable, I don't think anyone will look askance. Some of the things the other ladies were wearing."

She flushed, she knew that it was the modern way, so she tried very hard not to judge.

"At a minimum," Phryne replied, pleased by Corbie's quick connection of the ideas. "But Miss Pryde would have me understand that it's a different universe. Is that a familiar concept as well?"

Sansa understood and so she smiled kindly again, nodding her head. "You're probably right but I think I need to get used to wearing this suit before I start swimming with a lot of the others."

"Are there any here that you would wear?" Sansa asked, still watching Snow but not so close as to make her uncomfortable.

Corbie could only shake her head. She'd barely even heard the word universe, let alone been exposed to the idea that there might be more than one of them.

"Of course you do, no need to rush." She smiled kindly and then moved to a display of sunblock. "You should try some of this as well. There's far more choices than we ever had at home but it will help protect you from sunburn."

Back home they mostly had zinc oxide.

"The simplest explanation--" All things preferred, being the best, she thought with a small smile as they recommenced the climb. "--is that the universe is everything you know and that exists. To say there are others is to say that there are copies, imperfect, or rather, divergent from one another in small and large ways."

"Me too, I suppose," Laynia said almost pensively. "But that's not a great commendation of here, is it? 'Oh well, we've had worse.'"

Corbie did her best to let herself absorb that information, lifting her skirts as they resumed climbing the stairs. "Like... like how a story can be almost the same, but there's a little change or a lot of change, based on where you hear it?"

Snow was hunching in on herself, but she did try to look at the swimsuits. Her eyes fell on a navy and white striped one piece that was about as plain as could be managed from what she saw.

She reached out to touch the material, briefly pulling at face at the texture. "This one, maybe."

"Yes," Phryne answered favoring her with a near-dazzling smile. "Precisely like that. What a wonderful way to explain it." She'd certainly be remembering that.

It also helped to make sense of the timeline situation, which she promptly shared. "On that same analogy, if people from the same world are characters in the same story, if they arrive at the inn, one might be from the beginning, while another is from nearer the end. My companion, Dot, arrived from nearly a year earlier in our shared story, and Jack--" The caress her lips shaped around his name said more than words what he meant to her. "Is from a little while later."

Sansa understood the face that Snow made because she'd pretty much had the same reaction before reminding herself that it was the best kind of material for swimming.

"Let's get it." She smiled faintly, plucking the hanger from the rack before pausing and looking around. "You know, I saw someone wearing a shirt over her suit. Maybe we could find a couple long ones?"

"It does?" Sansa asked curiously as she followed after Dot to look at the strange bottle sitting on a stand. Picking one bottle up, she turned it over to look at the back before studying the top. "How does it work?"

"You have experience with limbo-slash-prisons before?" It was only a heartbeat later that he realized that some might find it rude to ask such personal questions. "You do not have to answer if you do not want, I was simply curious."

Looking around to change the subject, his eyes fell on his sketchbook. "If you can overcome the fact that we are trapped, there are many good things about this place." He flipped through the book, turning it to show off the snippets of daily life at the Inn that he'd captured. Some were faceless scenes of residents lounging by the pool, sparing or meditating others were portraits - Kitty at the bar, River smiling and dancing about, Regina in the garden. "Is there something, a skill maybe, that you have always wanted more time to develop? This place can be good for that kind of thing."

"Oh," Dot couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up as she shook her head. "I have no idea. But it does."

Praise the Lord, she added silently. Sunburn was unpleasant.

In that moment, she was reminded so much of Felix that it physically hurt. Still, Corbie pushed it down by taking in other things, like the little hints of just who this Jack was. "That's gotta be... disorienting."

It was disorienting just to think about.

"Might could work," Snow accepted with an awkward shrug. "D'you see any you like?"

"I suppose it might be," Phryne allowed even while considering her own situation. "If Jack had come from when Dot did and Dot from some other time all together, but since solving mysteries is what we do, I imagine we'd have worked it out sooner rather than later."

They'd reached the door to Phryne's floor, and so she pulled the door open for the younger woman. "It's far more disorienting to arrive in a world nearly a century in my own future than a year here or there with one's most intimate friends. Or, in your case, from a world without electricity at all."

"Yes," Corbie admitted shyly as she slipped into the room. "I ain't really seen clothes like people have here before either."

"Even for me, it took a bit of getting used to," Phryne admitted, although she suspected for entirely different reasons than it would Corbie. "I'm used to being the most scandalously dressed woman around."

As she shut the door behind them, she inhaled the heavenly scent of a freshly cleaned room, well-ordered after Dot's morning visit. "For a hotel, it's really quite civilized."

Corbie blinked at that, more than a little surprised. "And you liked bein' scandalous?" Women couldn't and didn't try to get away with much deviance in Corambin society. Corbie's own wearing of colors was scandalous in a way, but in such a way that marked her out as obviously a prostitute. It was a way to mark her as less, not as titillatingly on the edge.

Seeing the look on the young woman's face, Phryne couldn't help but remember Dot at the beginning and how often Phryne's behavior had shocked her. She smiled as she gestured for Corbie to sit where she liked, and replied, "Oh, yes. I wasn't fifteen before I'd decided that men's rules were for men's benefit, and I'd follow only those that pleased me. After all, why should a body's plumbing decide who has all the fun?"

"'Cause men rule the world," Corbie said, matter-of-factly, her shoulder lifting in a glum half-shrug. She cast about for somewhere to sit and plopped uncertainly on a sofa. "And don't matter how strong you stand on your own if you piss 'em off."

"Piffle," Phryne said decisively. "Before we get into such weighty matters as whether men have any right to rule over women, tell me, darling. Would you prefer tea or cocoa, or perhaps something stronger?"

She looked as though she could use a few glasses of bubbly to cheer her up, but then, Phryne thought everyone could do with a few glasses of bubbly.

Corbie's ears perked up at the word cocoa. Chocolate was expensive at home, and has such she had only tasted it once or twice. But...

"I know I said tea before, but I think I could maybe handle something stronger now."

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Check-in May 15

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