2.19 Different

Mab bought and repainted a pink flamingo lawn ornament. Finley didn't approve of lawn flamingos, since they 'approach a tackiness normally reserved for gnomes', but Junpei thought it was cute.

Now it's one of the only splotches of color in a whitened world.

Mab has seen snow before. She didn't expect to see it here.

The thick flakes fall rapidly, drowning everyone's footprints as soon as they are made.

Concerned townsfolk and members of the press gather at city hall for the mayor's reassurances that the snow isn't too dangerous, it won't keep coming down like this forever, and everything will be fine. Vanderburg has spoken to the feds, who are investigating, but so far claim this sector is not experiencing unmanageable environmental stresses, and some other words crafted to sound positive and befuddling. Hidden Springs is inexplicably ahead of schedule on the projected environmental-restructuring timeline!

Young Thisbe clings to her father's side. In light of Tommy Abbot being the first to brave the snowy roads with a vehicle and consequently crashing his new truck into a tree, school has been cancelled until the roads can be cleared up.

All Tommy has from the incident is a sprained wrist and a ruined truck, but still Finley pauses, wondering if near-misses with death will happen to everyone she's ever even tried to care about.

According to documents from the old times, the city should be salting the roads. Therefore, Vanderburg is calling for all citizens to donate their table salt.

Vanderburg also handed out some decorative lights he found in city hall's attic. All citizens are to hang them on their houses, as a symbol of solidarity.

The Archers place multicolored lights on their home.

It's Reve's birthday, and Finley won't answer Timmothy's calls, because she never does, so Timmothy tries to call Mab. Mab checks the caller ID and shakes her head ruefully before shutting the phone off.

Junpei does not approve of the store-bought cake, but quickly forgets about it and cheers along with his mother and sister.

Finley's son is now old enough to attend school.

Though her own mother made a living convincing people she was a spirit medium, Finley feels her son's abilities will hit people a little too close to home, so before Reve leaves for his first day of school she reminds him, again, not to let the other children know he can sense their thoughts.

"It will make them uncomfortable. And then they won't be nice to you. Or worse."

"I know, Mom."

 "Did you get your lunch?" Finley packed him a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. That was always her favorite.

"Yes, Mom."

"Do you want your hat?" The one with the cute ear-flaps to keep his ears warm.

Reve groans. "No, Mom. Just hug me so I can go, okay?"

School is going to be either awesome or horrible, and Reve is eager to get the first day over with so he knows which.

From a safe vantage point, perched on one of the picnic tables, Reve observes his agemates' behavior at recess. They've grouped themselves into cliques. Parley and Sonia Colby, Harriet Menon and Deirdre Winterly are usually playing together.

Purple-eyed Akantha Song is also friends with Deirdre, the only person who knows she has a crush on Otto Nali. Dexter Abbot, son of the dude who took out a tree with his truck or had his truck taken out by a tree, depending on who's telling the story, shivers in the cold while insisting everybody else here is a wuss for wearing jackets and mittens.

Dexter asserts his dominance over the playground via some cruel jokes about Parley's clumsiness trait. Reve can sense her holding in her anger, trying to ignore Dexter, like her parents told her to do.

Buzz off! Harriet wants to scream, but the memory of being pushed in the mud yesterday is too fresh on her mind to stand up to the little brat who calls her 'Harry' and knows her neat-trait weakness.

"Hey, new kid. Archer, right?"

"My name is Reve."

"Your Gran was the ghost hunter, right?"

Great. The class bully thinks Reve is cool. "Yeah."

Dexter raises an eyebrow at Reve's unenthused tone. "Isn't your ass cold?" There's a fine line between forgoing long sleeves and mittens, and sitting directly in the snow.

"I can compartmentalize... um..." Clued in by Dexter's confusion, Reve realizes 'compartmentalize' is too big of a word to be throwing at his classmates. 

"Neeeeerd!" Dexter shouts.

The children accept and adjust to the changed weather much quicker than the adults do.

They're already finding ways to make snow into a toy.

"What are you doing out here in the cold, Revvy?" Junpei checks on his nephew, who ran outside after spaghetti dinner and doesn't seem to care about the decreasing sunlight levels.

"The teacher did a lesson about snow and taught us about people who made shelters out of it," Reve says. "So us kids decided to replicate the process, at recess. This is called an igloo. I'm perfecting my technique."

"In case they make igloos again tomorrow?"

Reve nods. Being good at something is the key to acceptance, right? "Yup. Want to help?"

Yes.

Taking inspiration from the children's merriment, Hidden Springs sets up a festival of cold-and-snow-related activities. Ice skating, snowboarding... music, themed pictures... who comes up with this stuff, Junpei wonders.

Junpei tries on some ice skates.

Another moment for the "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING" scrapbook.

"You get used to it," Rusty Menon's wife promises.

Junpei gets the feeling she has skated on ice before.

"You're not supposed to lie to me!" Finley accuses, once the twins set aside the time to have a serious talk about the weather, about Junpei's strange question—''winter in these mountains will look different'—which led inevitably to Junpei confessing that Loki showed up and said some things and disappeared again. And Reve's teleporting trick? He's grown out of it. Now Finley knows why.

"You were going through a lot at the time," Junpei says, hoping he sounds less guilty than he feels. "I didn't want to upset you even more."

"I'm perfectly damn fine, Junpei."

"...Sorry."

Finley rolls her eyes and walks, slowly, to the window. "So Loki caused this."

"He strongly hinted he was responsible, yes."

"I wonder how he did it. We stopped him from using that device..."

"I don't know, Fin. I think we've barely scratched the surface of what magic can and can't do. We're self-trained. In the world of mages, we're practically illiterate."

"Are you saying we should take Loki up on going to Moonlight Falls, and learn what we can from them?"

"N-no! I'm not. I want to stay here. This is our home. I'm happy here."





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Etc.: Crashed truck? All Tommy really had was some routing failure. He missed some work and got demoted.

Hooray Reve is a child at last! No one was allowed to eat the cake. I remembered JUST in time. *punches homemade goal angrily*

I've got a pretty neat crop of neighbor children for him to interact with. Six boys, seven girls.

Meanwhile, outerwear critical failures have resulted in some inappropriate outfits being designated as outerwear (sometimes people wearing career outfits for careers they have never worked in), and several townsfolk carrying glocks instead of wearing mittens.

 "This isn't what it looks like!"