This choice: Landing at a weird medieval-themed airport. • Go Back...Chapter #5Landing at a weird medieval-themed airport. by: grumbus   The patchwork landscape grows closer, furlong by dizzying furlong. The runway you appear to be descending towards is disconcertingly tan and dusty, but the harried flight attendant that you hail down assures you that it’s faux-dirt, for authenticity.
You cling onto that promise almost as tightly as your armrest as the pilot chirps the ubiquitous landing spiel. Your dad has been and remains enviably asleep throughout this entire ordeal — likely sleeping off the few cocktails he had ordered mid-flight, the lucky bastard.
You hit the faux-earth tarmac with a thankfully familiar shuddering grind of wheels against solid earth. You catch sight of a variety themed planes as you hurtle down the strip of brown: one a green-scaled dragon with perpetually stretched wings; another a pegasus with equally extended ells; a third opulently decorated with skeins of different fabric and bedazzled with (hopefully) faux jewels.
That must be hell on the aerodynamics, you think as you mercifully, blissfully, fall unconscious.
~~~
“Wake up, Rob.”
“mghrrfump” Waking up seems bad. Sleep is better. No planes in dreamland.
“Wake up, or I’ll send your middle-school photos to that girl you like.”
Your eyes shoot open and almost immediately punish you for opening them. Everything is bright. As your pupils slowly contract, you’re greeted with the unpleasant sight of your father gazing impatiently down at you, and the equally unpleasant sight of the WonderKingdom airport terminal.
As with all of Wonderworld’s boroughs, WonderKingdom is carefully curated to ensure maximum immersion. But because the WonderKingdom experience starts at landing on the artificial island, the airport has been interjaculated with the horribly high-fantasy gimmick that it prides itself on. Stalls line the walls in the stead of stores, offering greasy meat-products or gimmicky jewelry, all purchasable with the local currency of faux metal coins. Knights line the security gates in lieu of TSA agents whilst a harried employee garbed in traditional star-and-moon wizard robes waves a magic wand over queue waiters. The roof looks to be made of wood and straw, and you pray that the latest jet departure doesn’t whip it off.
Tapestries hang from the walls depicting Wondertainment fantasy media, though, disappointingly, the only glimpse of Allaria you can catch is her knife-eared head in ¾ profile, her wide blue eyes narrowed and plump lips twisted into a pout, all in a feeble attempt at authority. You guess that it wouldn’t probably do well for publicity if a full-figured portrait of the lush lass festooned the welcoming walls.
“Yeah, yeah, cool isn’t it,” your dad mumbles. Before you can assure him that it isn’t at all cool, he slaps you on the shoulder and starts to crab walk away. “Need ta use the little adventurer’s room. Piss out a couple brews.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Your dad stops his hasty egress for a second to hook a thumb a ways off to your left. You follow the invisible line to a figure in puffy-panted jester’s garb. A smile is plastered on a face that you would describe as elfin if it weren’t too on-the-nose, any lock of hair concealed by the belled hat. They stand half a foot below you and are frighteningly androgynous, but you assume she’s a woman, for convenience
“‘ello there, acolyte adventurer! I’m Jingle the Jester, your guide to the Wondertastic World of WonderKingdom!”
You wince at the cacophonous greeting. “Yeah, uh, nice to meet you..” You scratch the back of your head and desperately scan the room for Dad. “Is there… anyone else here to greet us?”
She gives an animated shake of her head, sounding a light tinkle from her belled cap. “‘Fraid not, sirrah! Just little ol’ Jingle! Follow along carefully now!”
She beckons you forward with a rainbow-gloved hand, and you do your best to turn your grimace into a polite smile as you comply.
~~~
The last fifteen minutes could perhaps qualify for the ‘most mind-numbing’ superlative. A squeaky-voiced harlequin — who didn’t even have the good manners to be nice to look at — coaching you on the lore of this insipid place? Your dad’s wet dream, probably, but worse than a root canal for you.
Most of your time is spent shooting jealous glares at the Hawaiian-shirted tourist who’ve been lucky enough to have an elf clad in a skimpy leaf camisole point animatedly out the window at a giant tree, or a duo of amazons in matching chainmail bikini explain the minutiae of the token-based economy. You catch some hastily spoken words from Jingle: ‘Implicit Waiver’ and ‘legally binding tacit agreement’, but the rest of her spiel goes one ear and out the other.
You only snap back to the present when the pesky Pierrot waves a sheaf of faux-yellowed parchment in your face.
“Whackthp is it?!” you splutter through the sheets of cellulose.
“A character sheet, sirrah!” Her smile is nauseatingly sweet. “One o’ ya ordered the premium package!”
“And those are…?”
“A carnet to a fantastic, authentic WonderKingdom experience!” Great, more sonnets instead of straight answers. You’d ask what she actually means, but you don’t want to open that can of verse-spouting worms.
You flip through the sheets, where a dizzying amount of stats, description boxes, ‘drawing reference’, and a spell list all greet you, all empty lines that, you realize with a shudder, you are supposed to lace with words.
“Am I supposed to fill in… all this?”
Another tinkling nod. “Right you are! No need to make haste!”
Your face pales. There is a need to make haste. If Dad gets back before each and every category is filled in, you’ll never leave this airport. You squint at each category vaguely, not even sure of what you’re supposed to be writing for. Some kind of companion? Is an actor going to follow you around, spouting lines from some esoteric 80s show?
Wait.
“Uh, can I put, like, an existing character in this?” You ask, nearly dropping a page in your haste.
“Certainly, sirrah! Second-to-last page!”
You see it. A refreshingly succinct page, only containing a simple ‘Character Name,’ Guest Name,’ and… ‘Roleplaying Aid’?’
“What does this mean?”
Jingle tilts her head in a manner that she appears to think conveys friendliness, but it more closely resembles a psychotic mannequin. “Ah, that’s just a little rigamarole we put the ol’ box ‘neath to make sure everythin’s context sensitive,” She punctuates the last two words with a jostle of her bells and a tap of her head. “No point in havin’ a ‘You’ or ‘Why’ when a ‘Thou’ or ‘Wherefore’ ‘ll do!”
You return a hesitant nod. By the sound of it, they’ll send out a theater kid. A weird one, by the sound of it.
“Hey Rob! What’re chatting up the clown for?!”
A finger of ice creeps up your spine. A peek over your shoulder reveals your dad, bowleggedly hobbling his way back from the bathroom. Quick as a flash, you write the only character you know on the form — Allaria Seraphina — and pause on the next line.
It would be nice to have a busty elf cling to your arm for the duration of the trip, but on the other hand, your dad might actually attempt filicide if he susses out your secret. And sure, you might be able to suss out a grope or two if you give ‘prima nocta to your pop, but it wouldn’t feel quite the same...
Hastily, you write ____, and shove it into Jingle’s gloved hands.
 indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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