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..."

[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]

"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]

"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'.

[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."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

Eva shrugs. "I have nowhere to be. Though we should probably get to the Island of Misfit Toys."

She's still attentively gathering all the information she can on everyone on the ship.

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

Alex smiled with fond memory. He had always loved the Island of Misfit Toys. "O-oh, okay." He looked around, unsure if she meant that they should walk there, or change the scene, or something like that. "Should we...?"

[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."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Well, I haven't actually tried walking around in here. I don't know if we'll just hit a wall or if the system will convince our brains we're moving forward. Care to find out with me?"

[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?"

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

"Oh! I-I'm p-pretty sure it just g-gets us ta think we're moving forward, I've been all around c-central park- Oh! But w-we c-could still test it!" What if she was just trying to get him to 'adventure' with her.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Oh," she says in a bit of a fluster, seeing that Alex isn't sure what to make of her request. "I don't like to stay still. I'd rather we walked while talking. Burns more calories that way, or whatever excuse sounds most convincing to you. You were saying, about your homeworld?"

[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.

[hack-rat.livejournal.com]

"Right! Homeworld!" He begins walking, offing Alice a piece of what appeared to be a pink chocolate chip. "W-well, some of the k-kids in my world were apparently eligible f-for this experiment. I was one of them, as you c-could probably g-guess. N-not entirely s-sure what was done to us, b-but we e-ended up being able ta see things o-other's c-can't.

"W-we see shadows- emotions r-really, negative ones, but they l-look like shadows." He made a gesture around himself, trying to indicate where the shadow would be, or in his case, was. "W-we also haveta e-eat them, 'c-case normal f-food just," he shrugged, "we don' g-get anything from it, 'c-cept the taste."

He scratched his head, "There's powers that s-sorta c-come with it, a-an c-complications, like how we a-always need ta take these p-pills, o-or how we need ta be c-careful around people with stronger shadows..."