A Small Circus Caravan in Europe, Wednesday Morning
It was a sunny sort of day. A perfect day for a circus, really. Helena had been out and about off and on through the morning, running around and doing chores, rehearsing, being her father's daughter. She'd stopped to have a conversation with Pingo about the quality of the peanuts that they were selling to the punters, but that had degraded into a series of hand gestures too complex for even Helena to comprehend, and so when she whistled her reply, Pingo had stared at her for a moment, then broke into a grin, and then laughed aloud (quite the feat for a whistling mime) before patting her on the shoulder and walking away.
Valentine wouldn't have done that. Possibly. Maybe. Perhaps. Hrm.
After returning to her caravan, Helena surveyed the walls. Still so much space to fill, and a Very Important Man would fill it nicely.
And so, Helena Campbell had picked up her sketchbook, settled onto her back on her bed, stuck her feet in the air (it was a very good position for inspiration, thank you), and began to draw.
She was so enraptured, doodling jugglers and sphinxes and monkeybirds, that it took her perhaps a few moments to notice the black ripply sort of hole that appeared in the air beside her. And when she did notice it, she simply looked at it with a bemused sort of curiosity.
So long as it wasn't reaching for her, she didn't seem to mind the excitement at all.
The black ripply hole was tall, and oval-shaped, with smoke curling up from the top of it. And then there was a very pale blonde girl in a white dress, stepping through, and calmly closing it behind her.
Naminé looked around the room, taking it in. It was filled with sketches and shapes and little bits that seemed oddly familiar. Finally she cleared her throat and nodded to the girl on the bed.
"Are you Helena?" she asked.
"Helena Campbell," she clarified with a nod, her eyes looking past the girl who had appeared in her caravan with a curious sort of wonderment. It wasn't every day that girls stepped out of holes in the air into her bedroom.
Normally, it was through windows.
"How did you... do that?" She rolled over and sat up, finally looking at the girl who had appeared.
No, no, this one looked nothing like her.
Naminé smiled, faintly. Well. The girl wasn't screaming or running away; this was a good start, at least.
"It's a shortcut," she said simply, opening another portal with her hand, and then snapping it shut again. "It was the only way I knew of to find you. I need to speak with you."
Shortcuts like those, Helena supposed, would have made finding the MirrorMask so much simpler. Or, at least, dawdling around in her caravan as long as possible in order to finish a drawing or two before a show.
"I suppose you wouldn't have many other reasons to come here, if not to speak with me," she agreed, bobbing her head a little in a slight nod. "About what, then, if you came all this way?"
Naminé hadn't been sure what to expect, of this unseen Helena, from what she had heard of Valentine's stories. Someone a little more ... self-absorbed, perhaps? More conscious of being a princess. Stupid of her; Kairi was a princess, and Kairi wasn't anything like that. At any rate, Helena seemed logical and practical, and Naminé hoped that meant they could have this matter overwith quickly.
"It's about Valentine," she said, seating herself in an available chair and folding her hands in her lap. "You need to stop drawing him."
Helena found herself looking down at the sketchbook in her hand, with all the sharp-edged drawings of grinning sphinxes and leering gryphons and Valentine, staring back at her.
"Stop drawing him?" Her gaze flicked back to the strange girl sitting not more than two steps away from her. "But why?"
She was wondering now about a million things. About how this girl knew who Valentine was. If this was perhaps a dream. If maybe she'd step out of her caravan and look around to see fish in the air and half-formed people made of boots and books and rickety old wheelbarrows, and if perhaps the mirrormask had been somehow involved in all of this all over again.
Naminé was looking at the sketchbook, now, as well.
"You started again, didn't you?" she asked, softly. "Recently. It was all destroyed, last summer, the City of Light. You're ... rebuilding it. Re-creating it."
You never got things exactly the same the second time around; that was why all the proportions seemed off, to Valentine. Right?
"And you've been adding him back, as well. Valentine."
Every time Naminé drew him, he returned to Fandom. Logic had suggested that, perhaps, what was pulling him away ...
"I had to add him back," Helena said, pursing her lips for a moment in thought, "he's as much a part of it as any of the rest of the drawings on my wall."
She ran her hands over the paper, furrowing her eyebrows a little, studying it all, sorting the images out in her head.
"It's my world, my dream. Of course I had to put it together again. And Valentine. Of course, Valentine. He's a very important man, you know."
She had seen his tower. It was amazing.
"I couldn't possibly not add him back."
"He isn't part of your world any more," Naminé said firmly. "Isn't just ... a plaything, a toy, for you to create and destroy at your whim. It's been months, since you left him all there, hanging in a void between reality and nothingness. Now he matters, to you? This is the first you could be bothered? He doesn't belong to the City of Light any more."
She set her chin. "Nor to you."
Well.
That had certainly been unexpected.
Helena watched this strange girl quietly for a moment, and then looked back to her book, where a juggler who was all corners and heavy clothing stared up at her with two small dots that were barely the tip of her pen hitting the paper.
"Is he yours, then?" It wasn't an excuse, even though Helena certainly had a hundred of them. It wasn't really an accusation, either, or a defense, or much of anything except for what it seemed to be. Four words, forming a question.
Yes. No. Neither seemed quite right.
"I redrew him when the world ended," she said, quietly. "Brought him back to school, where he had been before. We go to school together, Valentine and I. I drew a memory and he came to my doorstop, shattered, in a hundred pieces lying there in the hallway. He's mine, yes. But more importantly, he's his own."
How odd that, with words being tossed about such as 'world ended' and 'shattered,' that the notion that seemed to strike Helena the most was the one that someone like Valentine should have any need for an institution such as school.
"He is his own," she agreed. "A very important man. Though... I'm afraid I don't quite understand why I'm not to draw him."
Naminé blinked for a moment, trying to process that ... oh. She hadn't yet explained the pertinent point, had she?
"We've been playing tug-of-war, you and I," she said calmly. "Any time you draw him, he's pulled back to the City of Light, and I'm forced to redraw him to get him back again. I imagine he feels a bit like a ping-pong ball, at this point."
And now Helena was trying not to picture Valentine as a round white ball with a mask, being bounced back and forth across a table by two bored monkeybirds with paddles, and she had to lick her lips and then bite onto her tongue to keep from laughing at that notion.
"So, I've been bouncing him away from where he belongs, while all the while I thought that I was putting him in a place meant for him, which isn't complete without him?" Helena for the life of her couldn't imagine her world being finished, now, unless it included a rather troublesome juggler. "And if I were to stop drawing him, he would stop bouncing about?"
That wasn't a terribly difficult request, really.
"I should hope so," Naminé said. "I know it's a strange sort of request. But every time you pull him back to the City of Light, I have to return him, and it's made for some rather abrupt conversations, this morning."
And it had terrified her, thinking that he was perhaps gone, somewhere irretrievable and lost to her for good, but that seemed odd to admit to Helena. And it was her own.
"Yes, I can see how being there one moment and not there the next might make things a little confusing," Helena agreed, giving another little half-bob-nod of her head. "You know, I never really figured Valentine for the schoolboy type," she mused. "If I had known he might have had a life outside of the city, I might not have decided that he had to be put back there. Things have been... odd, or we might have had this conversation sooner."
She smiled at the strange girl, whose name she hadn't even thought to ask for yet, and nodded again, setting her sketchbook down on the bed beside her.
"It won't happen again. There are plenty of other things and buildings and fish to draw, after all." She looked at the pictures on the wall. "I think mostly I'm drawing some of them because it's almost like going back, you know."
"Odd?" Naminé tilted her head at that. "Is everything all right, with your City? Can you not go back? It seems strange that a place you create would bar your entry."
She considered. "Valentine ... makes for an unusual student, I think. It's hard to say. Our school is itself an oddity, and its students much the same, so no one is too out of place. Many of us ... aren't what would be considered normal, for this world. Possibly not even real. But even so, he stands out, somewhat. Possibly it's his flair for the dramatic."
"I wouldn't doubt for a moment that Valentine stands out in a crowd," Helena replied dryly, leaning forward to study her wall of drawings. "This is my city, these drawings on my wall. I can't exactly climb up onto them to get inside, and besides, my mum's the one who does the climbing in my dad's show," she explained. "Or she used to, until months ago. My ending up actually inside of it wasn't something I did on purpose. I went to bed one night in my Aunt Nan's flat, and when I woke up, everything was all grey and shadows."
She smiled and shook her head. "And when I got back, there was too much going on in real life for me to have a chance to try anyhow."
"The only way into it that I know of is the mirrormask, and that's... in it. So I couldn't reach it, even if I wanted to go back.
Naminé stood up, looking at the wall. "May I?" she asked, walking over to it. Looking over the shapes, and buildings, and fish, and a very familiar face peering out at her here and there. A smile played on her lips, as she ran her fingers over the pages. How bizarre ...
"The mirrormask," she said, turning back to Helena again. "I knew that was how you got out - stopped it, I mean. I didn't realize that was how you got in, as well."
She eyed the wall again. "Would you like to see it again? Your City."
"See it again?" What else had they been talking about? Helena had forgotten already, her face lighting up in a broad smile. "I think I would like that very much, actually. I mean, I know it wouldn't be the same, as it isn't quite... finished, yet?"
Her eyes lingered on a few spots on the wall, here and there, that were still waiting for drawings to fill them up.
"Everything else was in Aunt Nan's flat, on my wall there in Brighton. But we've been traveling and busy and then waiting and then on the road again since mum fell, I thought it might be best to keep it all here, this time. My walls have never been so full."
"Your mother?" Naminé asked, giving Helena a curious glance. "Is she all right?"
She turned around again, facing Helena. "We could go there, if you like. To your City. I can open a doorway there as easily as anywhere. We --"
Her eye caught on a small puppet, hanging from the ceiling, twisting in the wind. She didn't even realize when her mouth fell open.
"Is that ..."
"Valentine?" Helena looked up at the marionette, a modified Punchinello doll that she'd had as far back as she could remember. "Who else would it be?"
He did look Very Important, hanging there like that with a grand view of the room, didn't he? It was no wonder his tower could fly, Helena supposed.
Naminé clapped one hand over her mouth and proceeded to laugh herself silly.
"Forgive me," she said, shaking her head. "It's just ... just that ... seeing that. It's making my head twist all inside-out."
This girl's laughter was contagious, really, and Helena had to take a moment to giggle, as well.
"It wasn't nearly as funny a puppet before I met him, you know," she replied. "Though I think it may be the reason he thinks he looks so good in a hat."
...
"He hasn't tried to wear any hats to class, I hope?"
Helena worried that he might obstruct the view of students sitting behind him.
"He fancies himself a 'hat person,'" Naminé said, giggling harder. "He wanted to wear a very outlandish hat during our play, in Mythology class. I suppose it's good that Sokka is his costume mistress, and he sticks with directing. Otherwise I can't imagine the sorts of hats he'd make the actors wear."
"That sounds exactly like Valentine," Helena agreed, standing up to inspect the puppet. "Has he found his fortune yet? He always did seem fond of money."
That, of course, being Helena's great understatement of the day.
She turned around to smile at the girl again.
"You can really take me there? Let me see my city again?"
"He's ..." Never forgiven himself for selling you out. Naminé cleared her throat. "Not as interested in his fortune, as of late."
The other topic was safer.
"Yes, I can. Or at least, I can find Valentine, and that's where I believe he is, and get us back to here again safely either way." She held her hand in front of her, letting a portal flicker into place. "It's safe, I promise, I just open shortcuts. Very handy, I must say."
"I wouldn't doubt that for an instant," Helena said, stepping to get a closer look at the portal.
She smiled at the girl again and held out her hand.
"My name is Helena," she said, "though you seem to know that already. I never did catch yours."
"Naminé." She smiled and turned from the portal, reaching out to shake the other girl's hand. "My name is Naminé."
She blushed. "It's odd to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you."
Naminé? Helena had a sneaking sort of suspicion that Valentine would have approved of this girl's name, at least. It certainly seemed a romantic sort of name.
"Have you?" He quirked her head, curious. "Well, now I'm going to wonder what he had to say about me, you know." She laughed faintly, shook her head. "On second thought, if it was Valentine who told you about me, I'm almost afraid to ask."
"Only that you had no proper face, and you seemed to think his whole world a dream," she said simply. There was a lot more, really, but it didn't seem worth going into. "Shall we?"
"Oh yes," Helena agreed, looking back toward the shadowy hole in her room. "I think I really would like to see how my city is doing, now."
She could hardly wait.
(OOC: NFI/NFB for distance, OOC is welcome, of course. Preplayed with the indomitable abominable snowmonster, palestshadow, who also coded this up because she is amazing.)