Hang a Shining Star from the Highest Bough [Open]

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Pues no pueda andar, ya mi esposa amada," Eva sings aloud inside an empty church, a strange conglomeration between the one she visited as a child and the one she dragged her son and husband to as an adult. She lifts up her hand and puts her middle finger and thumb together.

Snap, Macy's, 1990. Blank faces bustling around, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas blaring over speakers installed in the ceiling, tinsel and red plastic ornaments in the corners of the building. Some man dressed as Santa has a kid on his lap.

"From now on, our troubles will be miles away." Eva joins in with the radio. What with the holidays coming around for a lot of the Earth crew mates, caroling has given her compulsions an acceptable outlet. People are far less likely to comment on someone singing a Christmas carol than someone talking to themselves incessantly or humming snatches of classical music to themselves.

The Sensoriums truly are a wonderful thing, and she's been in them for well over an hour now, testing what they can do. She's gone back into memories and conjured ideal vacation spots and parades. She hasn't drawn up anyone she knew, but as she gets more confident she requests more crowds, and started up the habit of clicking her fingers for each transition.

"Here we are, in olden days, in golden days of yore…"

Snap, their empty living room, 1989. A stocking full of candy and action figures lies in front of her on the table. Eva looks around, at the parts she knows are hers and the parts she doesn't remember, the parts Stacy must have made up.

"Oh, God, this is exactly as depressing as I thought it'd be."

Snap, and the room is gone, and she's standing inside a stop-motion world of clay while Hermey and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer seek out fame and fortune.

Comments

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

Stop motion. Well, this was the first time Alex had walked in on someone replaying a stop motion. What surprised him even more was that he recognized the scene.

"Rudolf! Hermey!" He wandered tentatively into the world, looking for it's creator. He half expected to see one of the outsiders, especially one of the younger ones, but wasn't terribly surprised to see that it was a grown woman. Everyone got nostalgic, after all.

"Ah, M-merry Ch-Christmas." He smiled, stepping back. "I-I didn' mean to intrude..."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"No, no, come on in!" Eva says cheerfully. She knew he was there as soon as the first word left his mouth - she's perpetually vigilant. "You recognize this scene?"

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

"How c-could I not?" He grinned and looked around a bit more, "Mom an' I u-used to watch this every Ch-Christmas!"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"One of the local television stations used to play it every Christmas Eve when my son was little." She snaps her fingers and fast-forwards to the first encounter with Yukon Cornelius. "This was always my favorite character. What's your name, kid?"

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

"I a-always liked him t-too. I'm Alex." He had to wrestle with his sleeve for a moment, as something moved inside of it and he pulled his hand out to offer a handshake.

The bulge in his sleeve moved up his arm to his shoulder and relieved itself to be a black rat. "An' this is A-Alice. She's rather f-friendly."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She shakes his hand. "Eva." She nods at the rat. "All the stop-motion doesn't scare her? I've heard prey animals have really easily triggered flight responses."

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

He shakes his head, "She's to d-domesticated, has a terrible natural d-danger sense. G-good s-sense of dangerous p-people though." He scratches her head and she leans into his hand, unperturbed by the oddly moving figures around them.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like that might be useful on this ship. Will she respond to the Abominable Snow Beast when we hit that point, do you think?"

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

Alex laughed, "P-probably. She's n-not that off, f-fortunately. She's also afraid of c-cats. B-but she's usually m-my guide in t-trusting people. Sh-she was only wrong once."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Hopefully to no great disadvantage. It must be helpful to have her around. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd been carrying around a little danger meter."

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

"W-well, I spent a wh-while mistrusting this v-vampire who was a-actually not bad at all. Alice still doesn' like him, but he's been a huge h-help." He scratched her head again and brushed his cheek against her, "I s-still love her though."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Well, I'd hope you'd still love someone if they made mistakes every once in a while. What's said vampire been helping with?"

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

He laughed at what he presumed to be a joke- how could he not love someone after making a mistake when he made so many? The question about the vampire flustered him however. "O-oh, w-well, I was in an o-odd and really c-complicated position in my h-homeworld, and he's been helping me s-sort out some strange c-complications. I m-mean, I don't mind explaining, b-but, it's a bit c-complicated."

[livestoannoy]

"You know, I had been thinking of buying you a new yacht for Christmas," Marco said, sighing dramatically as he entered the sensoriums. "But sadly, I have no money. Or anything resembling a lake of ocean to put it in. So, you get no yacht. Which is a real shame, cause it was going to green sails and everything."

He plonked down on a small hill of snow, and fished something out of his pocket. It was a small boat - or at least, a block of wood that he'd carved into a vague approximation of a boat, with a stick and a scrap of cardboard in the shape of a sail attached to the middle of it. He held it out to Eva. "You'll have to live with this one instead."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Why would I ever want a manufactured yacht when I could have a hand-crafted, one of a kind, limited edition treasure a la Marco?" She sits down next to him, examining it with a grin. "Who do I talk to about getting images of it installed permanently in the Media Library?"

She snaps her fingers and they're on a dock, surrounded by boats. She reaches to hug him. "Besides, we have all the yachts in the world right here, and I've always liked home-made things. You'll have to wait until Christmas for your present, though."

Which is Eva code for 'I haven't even thought about it yet, last minute scramble'.

[livestoannoy]

"Nah, you don't want to put it in the Media Library. This is a precious cultural artifact - Stacy might not give it back to you."

Marco returned the hug quickly, before drawing back and remarking, "My yacht still would have been better."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"I said pictures of it. I'm not letting Stacy get her strange little tentacles anywhere near this beauty." She pockets it gently.

She rolls her eyes. "And it would probably be covered in blingy lights and computers and fancy stereo systems and things that go beep. I know your generation."

[livestoannoy]

Marco grinned. "Well, in that case...call up Peter Parker and arrange a photoshoot."

Picking one of the deck chairs lying around, Marco took the opportunity to start lounging on it. "But Mom, if you don't have a stereo how else are you going to blast the sounds of Queen over the ocean waves?"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She's read enough Marvel comics to Marco as a kid to know that name. "I don't know why, since I've already found out that Superman is on board, the fact that Spider-Man is surprises me."

She laughs. "As much as I love A Night at the Opera, there's something nice about just the sound of the ocean. Not that you'd know, since you never stay quiet long enough to hear it," she teases.

[livestoannoy]

"Superman and Spider-Man are nothing," Marco said with a snort. "You wait until you start running into the Power Rangers and Woody the Cowboy."

He rolled his eyes, letting Eva show just how how 'nice' he thought the sound of the ocean was. "I'll listen to the ocean when it figures out how to play a guitar solo."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"By the end of the month, I'll be having lunch with Brenda Star and book-clubbing with Sarah Connor." She shakes her head, clicks her fingers again and a cup of coffee is in hand. The Sensorium won't be getting old to her for a while.

"You're your father's son in a few ways. If it doesn't whirr, click or ping you don't have time for it. Not that we have much to do besides have dead time on Stacy."

[livestoannoy]

"You forgot about things that go vroom," Marco said helpfully.

He titled his head, looking out over the 'ocean'. "So Captain, where are we headed?"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Right. Forgot about 'vroom'. Oh, and whatever noise the internet makes. Can't forget the random dial tones and static that herald the unparalleled brilliance of modern technology." At least dial-up noises became fairly obsolete once trade with the Andalites got into full swing.

"Wherever you want to go, first mate, as long as it's family friendly. I was thinking Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, or maybe playing with the scale again and literally standing on top of the world." Vacation spots haven't really held the same allure since Marco ended up filthy rich and able to get them tickets anywhere back home. "Which we'll reach by sailboat, obviously."

[livestoannoy]

"Dial tones? Please, we have broadband now, Mom. Dial-up is so last year."

Marco's expression was carefully innocent. "Not family friendly? Me?"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"So that's why the home computer is quieter than the one at the office. Who knew?" For the umpteenth time, she reflects on how weird it is that she knows Yeerk tech so much better than human tech. Having a computer engineer in the house made her lazy about keeping up with modern innovation.

"Yes, you. You're not fooling your mother, Marco."