First Floor Parlor [Saturday evening]

[pasunereveuse]

Celia had grown tired of the strange coldness of the room she shared with Eleanor -- it came and went, in patches and bursts, and something about the room made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. As much as she loved the architecture and design of the house, and as much as it was almost a relic of home...perhaps it had been left too long on

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[iceolatedqueen]

Elsa was looking slightly perturbed as she made her way into the parlor. She had wanted to try to get an early sleep tonight, to perhaps to into town tomorrow to get away from this place and all of its eerie quirks, but something had taken to hovering over her head whenever her eyes were closed and she had half a mind to see if perhaps there was enough room to grab a nap on the sofa, at least.

Yes, she had taken the time to dress herself properly before heading down, though her hair was hanging in a loose braid over her shoulder. Pinning it all up again just to try to get some sleep seemed silly, at best.

"What in the world..."

She wasn't certain what that was on the television there, but she was half wondering if maybe she had been better off with the eerie feeling back in her room.

[nobloodymessiah]

"Plastic surgery gone wrong," Eleanor shared, from her position on a nearby chair. "People wanted to make themselves prettier, and the results were, to be charitable, suboptimal."

[iceolatedqueen]

"I... see..." Elsa stared in horror at the screen for a moment, and then inched her way over to a chair not far from Eleanor's. "And somebody thought that this needed to be recorded for posterity and shared with the entire world?"

Television still baffled Elsa, somewhat.

[nobloodymessiah]

"Have you ever seen something so horrifying that, while you don't necessarily want to look, you can't look away?" Eleanor asked. "A gruesome accident, perhaps, or a painful or humiliating conversation at the next table."

It seemed to be a very human impulse, to look closer at a trainwreck.

"It's being recorded for posterity for the most crass of reasons: money."

[iceolatedqueen]

"I can't really say that I have," Elsa admitted, feeling a touch self-conscious about that. She'd lived a very sheltered life. Even around here, she tended to try to keep to herself. "Although I suppose 'money' doesn't surprise me so much. I did learn the value of it while growing up."

Just... on a much broader scale than most.

[pasunereveuse]

"I have no idea what's wrong with it," Celia greeted Elsa with a sigh. "I think the television may have some sort of desire to sell me something called a blender, because it keeps coming to this advertisement."

[iceolatedqueen]

"Or perhaps it's as confused as I am about what was on before?" Elsa fidgeted with her braid for a moment, staring at the television before looking back at Celia. "I think blenders are a tool people use to prepare food."

She knew that much, at least. It was good to be able to make some sense of the situation.

[pasunereveuse]

"'Prepare' seems like an awfully gentle word for what that looks like," Celia said, staring at the television in surprise. "'Pulverize' maybe. 'Liquefy.'"

She shook her head, bewildered. "The prior program was on badly-gone surgeries, which was significantly more interesting, though no less confusing."

[iceolatedqueen]

"The blender, at least, seems like it could be useful for making... sauces?"

It seemed like a reasonable theory to Elsa, anyway.

"And a program on bad surgery sounds rather as though it should be an educational one. I'm not entirely certain I'm convinced that's what that was."

[pasunereveuse]

"I feel educated," Celia said firmly as she flipped back to the surgery show. "I mean, I'm sure there was a more educationally-based approach than sensationalist television, but...I certainly feel like I'm learning a lot."

She hadn't even known about plastic surgery before today!

[iceolatedqueen]

"But a lot about what, is the question," Elsa replied, blinking. "Certainly not the science behind this?"

[pasunereveuse]

"I didn't even know it was possible before today," Celia replied with a shrug. "While they might glorify the more sensationalist aspects, I still get to learn about a procedure I didn't even know existed, and now I have a jumping-off point should I choose to research it."

[iceolatedqueen]

Elsa nodded a little, looking thoughtfully back toward the television.

"I suppose any knowledge gained is still knowledge," she allowed. "I might even be more interested in it, if my first exposure to it hadn't been..."

What was the phrase that people kept using?

"... like watching a train wreck?"

[pasunereveuse]

"Something seems to agree with you, at least," Celia noted, as the channel changed itself again. "You haven't heard of this being a quirk of televisions, have you?"

[iceolatedqueen]

"Not at all," Elsa admitted, "but then, I don't know much about televisions in the first place. I'm much more confident with books."

She didn't have to, say, socialize in order to read a book. Elsa was generally more confident with anything that allowed her to stay behind closed doors.

She was working on that.

[pasunereveuse]

"Me too," Celia offered with a tiny smile. "I didn't have children my own age to play with growing up, but I always had books. It's been hard for me to always see the appeal in television, in light of that."