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Fic: The Man Who Fell to Finaqua
Title: The Man Who Fell to Finaqua
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Rating: G
Characters, Ship: Ahamo, the Queen and random OCs
Summary: Ahamo arrived in the Zone and promptly threw off everyone's day
Warnings: pre-series *Written for Round 1A at tm_challenge. 750 even, according to Word.
Disclaimer: The original characters belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The OCs are mine.
The Man Who Fell to Finaqua | The Man Who Stayed in Finaqua
If it wasn't for the two suns, he'd swear that the storm had dropped him in Minnesota. Okay... the giant palace was also a bit of a red flag. Everyone was looking at him like he was crazy. Honestly, they were lining up to look at him and he was the crazy one? He was just a Midwestern guy with a balloon and, now, he was feeling a bit like the star of a freak show.
He hadn't expected to set down lakeside that morning - just as he hadn't expected a thunderstorm to pop up in a cloudless sky - but, when he finally came to, the blast valve wasn't staying open, he was running out of fuel and there was a fairly substantial hole in one of the panels. It wasn't the most graceful landing he'd ever made, but he got on the ground in one piece.
The descent had attracted an audience and, while many of the people gathered around the balloon were staring in awe and wonder, it was the firecracker of a young woman who pushed through the onlookers that had his awe and wonder.
What he had gathered from her... raving, was that his "contraption" was situated on the exact spot she had been planning to spend her afternoon. He made the mistake of waving to the open landscape and suggesting that the view was probably the same just twenty feet to the right and, judging by the expressions of the others, it was probably the wrong thing to say, though he didn't quite know why.
As she was getting angrier, and turning what he would call a 'royal shade of purple' - he probably shouldn't have laughed as he realized that thought - he noticed that he was in the presence of a beauty he'd only ever seen at the movies: Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn... Grace Kelly.
He didn't mean to stare at her, but he just couldn't look away. When she realized he was staring, and hadn't heard a word she said, she actually stuttered and stepped back. Raising his hands defensively, he took a deep breath and wished that he didn't look like a drowned rat that had just taken a ride through the spin cycle, and he calmly explained that he didn't know what had happened, or where he was, and he was sorry to have ruined her day's plans.
One of the older men in the crowd stepped forward and whispered something to her, which she nodded to, and then - again, almost regally, he noted - she faced him and "suggested" he follow the man to the house so that a medico - whatever that was - could see that he was unharmed.
Seeing that she would not take "no" for an answer, he acquiesced and followed the older man. On the walk to the house, he learned that she was not only a princess, but the princess, and that he was currently in Finaqua, which was the royal family's residence in the Southern Guild of the Outer Zone. Where that was, he still didn't know.
They'd put him up in the old tool shed at the edge of the tree line and he spent the days trying to figure out why the blast valve had malfunctioned. The princess had arranged for her seamstresses to mend the panel, but had otherwise gone about her own business. She sat lakeside, under her fancy parasol, or she enjoyed the view from the swing under the gazebo, but she never caught herself watching what he was doing. Regardless of the number of times he caught her watching him, of course.
The clothes he wore were borrowed, lent, donated - he was practically a walking Goodwill spokesman - but he was thankful for the dry clothes when they had been offered. Unfortunately, he wasn't living in the Middle Ages, nor was he a hippie; he was an accountant, who happened to pilot a hot-air balloon in his spare time. After rolling the massive sleeves of the borrowed shirt up for the third time in an hour, he threw down the wrench, yanked the shirt over his head and went back to work on the burner.
He knew it was probably an inappropriate move, being that the future queen was just over there, but the weather was horrific. In fact, it was the hottest day in the Southern Guild, on record, in three annuals. He did laugh, about half an hour later, when he realized she'd actually moved closer.
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Rating: G
Characters, Ship: Ahamo, the Queen and random OCs
Summary: Ahamo arrived in the Zone and promptly threw off everyone's day
Warnings: pre-series *Written for Round 1A at tm_challenge. 750 even, according to Word.
Disclaimer: The original characters belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The OCs are mine.
The Man Who Fell to Finaqua | The Man Who Stayed in Finaqua
If it wasn't for the two suns, he'd swear that the storm had dropped him in Minnesota. Okay... the giant palace was also a bit of a red flag. Everyone was looking at him like he was crazy. Honestly, they were lining up to look at him and he was the crazy one? He was just a Midwestern guy with a balloon and, now, he was feeling a bit like the star of a freak show.
He hadn't expected to set down lakeside that morning - just as he hadn't expected a thunderstorm to pop up in a cloudless sky - but, when he finally came to, the blast valve wasn't staying open, he was running out of fuel and there was a fairly substantial hole in one of the panels. It wasn't the most graceful landing he'd ever made, but he got on the ground in one piece.
The descent had attracted an audience and, while many of the people gathered around the balloon were staring in awe and wonder, it was the firecracker of a young woman who pushed through the onlookers that had his awe and wonder.
What he had gathered from her... raving, was that his "contraption" was situated on the exact spot she had been planning to spend her afternoon. He made the mistake of waving to the open landscape and suggesting that the view was probably the same just twenty feet to the right and, judging by the expressions of the others, it was probably the wrong thing to say, though he didn't quite know why.
As she was getting angrier, and turning what he would call a 'royal shade of purple' - he probably shouldn't have laughed as he realized that thought - he noticed that he was in the presence of a beauty he'd only ever seen at the movies: Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn... Grace Kelly.
He didn't mean to stare at her, but he just couldn't look away. When she realized he was staring, and hadn't heard a word she said, she actually stuttered and stepped back. Raising his hands defensively, he took a deep breath and wished that he didn't look like a drowned rat that had just taken a ride through the spin cycle, and he calmly explained that he didn't know what had happened, or where he was, and he was sorry to have ruined her day's plans.
One of the older men in the crowd stepped forward and whispered something to her, which she nodded to, and then - again, almost regally, he noted - she faced him and "suggested" he follow the man to the house so that a medico - whatever that was - could see that he was unharmed.
Seeing that she would not take "no" for an answer, he acquiesced and followed the older man. On the walk to the house, he learned that she was not only a princess, but the princess, and that he was currently in Finaqua, which was the royal family's residence in the Southern Guild of the Outer Zone. Where that was, he still didn't know.
They'd put him up in the old tool shed at the edge of the tree line and he spent the days trying to figure out why the blast valve had malfunctioned. The princess had arranged for her seamstresses to mend the panel, but had otherwise gone about her own business. She sat lakeside, under her fancy parasol, or she enjoyed the view from the swing under the gazebo, but she never caught herself watching what he was doing. Regardless of the number of times he caught her watching him, of course.
The clothes he wore were borrowed, lent, donated - he was practically a walking Goodwill spokesman - but he was thankful for the dry clothes when they had been offered. Unfortunately, he wasn't living in the Middle Ages, nor was he a hippie; he was an accountant, who happened to pilot a hot-air balloon in his spare time. After rolling the massive sleeves of the borrowed shirt up for the third time in an hour, he threw down the wrench, yanked the shirt over his head and went back to work on the burner.
He knew it was probably an inappropriate move, being that the future queen was just over there, but the weather was horrific. In fact, it was the hottest day in the Southern Guild, on record, in three annuals. He did laugh, about half an hour later, when he realized she'd actually moved closer.