2 ½ years ago …
Sunset Shimmer walked slowly through the halls of Canterlot General Hospital with a bouquet of flowers in her arms this Sunday morning. The last few steps were always the hardest, where she had to steel herself so she could greet her friend with a smile and make sure it didn’t show on her face too much when things had deteriorated.
However, when she noticed the door to the room standing open, Sunset couldn’t help but quicken her pace, and stepping into the room did nothing to alleviate the knot in her stomach. There was a single nurse present, occupied with changing the bed sheets.
“Excuse me,” Sunset said with a suddenly dry mouth, “the woman who is in this room …”
“She’s gone,” the nurse answered simply without looking up at Sunset.
The flowers dropped from Sunset’s hands as a high-pitched noise suddenly rose in her ears, but as that neared its crescendo, it was overtaken by the sound of laughing children from down the hall.
The nurse also noted the laughter and gave Sunset a look.
“I see,” Sunset said, clutching at her chest and breathing hard. “But you really could have phrased that better.”
The nurse raised an eyebrow, then noted Sunset’s expression of shock and the bouquet at her feet, and her eyes went wide in an apologetic way. “Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I just meant she was doing her usual morning rounds.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Sunset replied, steadying herself against the nearby wardrobe in an attempt to calm down.
The nurse picked up the flowers and said by way of apology: “I’ll put these in some water for you while you go see her.” Before she left the room, she added: “You’re her friend, right? I’ve seen you around before. Please tell her that she needs her rest.”
Sunset nodded weakly. “I’ll try, but she marches to the beat of her own drum.”
“That she most certainly does.”
After taking a couple extra moments to get herself together, Sunset left the room and walked down the hall in the direction of the laughter. She knew where she was going, quietly opening the door into a communal lounge where she spotted a gaggle of children in pajamas around a pink-haired woman in a wheelchair. Half of them were holding balloon animals and toys of various shapes.
“Alright, who’s next?” Pinkie Pie asked with a smile that was weak, but reached her eyes nonetheless.
“Me! Me!” One of the kids yelled. “I want a horsey!”
“One horsey coming up.” Pinkie Pie picked up one of the slender balloons from her lap and tried to blow it up, but after a few breaths she broke out into a rasping cough as the air was released from the balloon. And it didn’t stop for quite a while as the children looked on with worried expressions.
“Are you alright, Ms. Pinkie Pie?”
“Yes,” she replied, still coughing, “my throat is just a little dry. Give me a moment.”
Having filled a plastic cup of water from the sink in the corner, Sunset came up and carefully took the balloon from Pinkie’s weak fingers, replacing them with the cup.
Surprised, Pinkie Pie looked up and smiled gently. “Sunset, thank you,” she said, slowly putting the cup to her dry lips and taking a drink, the cough slowly subsiding.
Sunset nodded. “You shouldn’t push yourself so much,” she said before blowing up the balloon in her hands, tying it off and handing it to Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie smiled gratefully, beginning to twist it into shape with her shockingly scrawny looking fingers. “Now, let’s see about that horsey, huh?”
Knowing that her friend wasn’t gonna stop until every kid in the room had a balloon animal of their own, Sunset silently busied herself with blowing up more balloons and handing them off. The hospital staff had arrived at the same conclusion some time ago. Having failed in their attempts to curb Pinkie’s excursions, they’d moved her into the room that was physically closest to the children’s wing as to at least keep what had become her daily commute short.
When all the kids had received their animal, a blonde girl of about eight years asked excitedly while jumping up and down: “Ms. Pinkie Pie! Will you do the silly dance with us?”
“Uhm,” Pinkie Pie swallowed hard, her hands grasping the armrests of her wheelchair weakly. “Maybe … maybe just …”
But Sunset put a hand on Pinkie’s shoulder, realizing that it wasn’t necessary to keep her from getting up, because she clearly couldn’t. “Listen, children,” she said softly, “Ms. Pinkie Pie is tired this morning. Maybe some other time, huh?”
“Awwww!”
Sunset began wheeling Pinkie Pie towards the door as the children waved her off. “Bye, Ms. Pinkie Pie! Come back soon!”
Pinkie smiled and waved back as they exited, but as soon as the door swung closed behind them, she closed her eyes, leaned her head against the backrest of the wheelchair and began breathing heavily, no longer able to hold her usual smile.
“The nurse said you need your rest, Pinkie,” Sunset said gently as she slowly pushed the wheelchair through the corridor.
“Oh, fudge the nurses,” Pinkie Pie replied in an uncharacteristic show of annoyance. “I’m going crazy cooped up in that room, Sunset. At least let me have this.”
Sunset sighed and spotted the open door that led outside. “Hey, how about some fresh air? It’s almost spring, and the sun is nice and warm today.”
“That sounds nice,” Pinkie replied.
As Sunset wheeled her out to the balcony, she said: “Hey, I didn’t see that kid going through chemo in there today. I hope he’s alright.”
“Oh, you mean Trimmer?” A small smile returned to Pinkie’s features. “He’s in remission, so they allowed him to go home with his family the other day. He still has to come in for more sessions, but it’s looking good.”
“That’s nice,” Sunset said as she fluffed up Pinkie’s pillow and bundled her up with a blanket, and in that moment Sunset couldn’t help but really look at her. Pinkie had lost so much weight, her cheeks were practically sunken in, dark rings under her eyes and the eyes themselves slightly clouded over when she could even keep them open. To see her cheerful and energetic friend reduced to this husk of herself made Sunset’s heart ache. “Listen, I spoke to my friend from Germany the other day, Isabella, the medical student? She says her professor is working on this new set of diagnostics tools and …”
“Sunset, stop,” Pinkie interrupted weakly, “we’ve been down this road so many times.”
“We wouldn’t have to get you to Germany or him here,” Sunset said in what was almost a plea, “if we could just send him over a copy of your latest MRI scans and blood work, maybe …”
“Sunset, just stop it. It feels like I’ve seen every doctor from here to the East coast, and you girls almost killed yourselves forcing open the portal to get Mage Meadowbrook here for a magic consultation. None of them could even say what’s wrong with me. The unanimous consent is that this either goes away on its own, … or it doesn’t. It’s time to let it rest.”
“I can’t do that,” Sunset said with tears in her eyes, “if I stop, that feels like giving up.”
“It’s not giving up. It’s just accepting things as they are right now. There’s always hope,” Pinkie said, “some days I feel better than others. Even if we don’t know, it might get better on its own eventually. The worst thing is that I’m bored out of my mind here. Please, tell me some news about you and the girls, Sunset. Did you find a spot for your practical semester yet?”
“Yeah,” Sunset replied, “Twilight talked to Cadence for me, and I can do it at Crystal Prep.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Pinkie Pie replied, closing her eyes and enjoying the warm sunlight hitting her face. “I’m so glad you and Twilight made up. How are the others doing?”
“Rarity and AJ are doing well. Busy, running their businesses. Rainbow is well on her way to winning the MVP trophy for the university team this season, and Fluttershy seems to be doing well now that she’s started vet school proper.” Sunset trailed off and bowed her head while kneeling in front of Pinkie’s wheelchair, tears forming in her eyes. “Pinkie, I can’t do this. I know this is what you need right now, just some light-hearted distraction. But I can’t pretend that everything is okay, because I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.”
Pinkie didn’t reply.
“I know you don’t blame me, but I blame myself. Everything that’s happening to you, it all started after that dreadful night in Maretime Bay. It has to be connected, and it’s all my fault. I brought Equestrian magic to this world and let it run rampant, and then I put all of you in danger trying to clean up my mess while we all pretended that we were invincible, but we should have known better, I should have known better. I’m the only one who really understood the dangers, and I thought I could keep you safe, but I couldn’t, and now …”
Pinkie remained silent.
“I can’t just stop and pretend everything is going to be okay, because this is my fault. I have to find a way to make you better. I have to. I’m so sorry that this happened to you, Pinkie Pie, so please hang on until I find the solution, please.”
Once again, there was no response from Pinkie Pie to Sunset pouring her heart out, and she looked up tearfully.
Pinkie’s lips were slightly parted as her head had slumped to the side onto her shoulder, her eyes closed as if in a blissful sleep.
“Pinkie?” Sunset asked, reaching a hand up to her friend’s face. “Pinkie Pie!?” Her second call was slightly more alarmed as she put her hands on Pinkie’s shoulders to slightly shake them. She didn’t stir, and that’s when Sunset noticed that her chest wasn’t moving with her breath. “PINKIE PIE!” As her eyes began to fill with tears, Sunset screamed in the direction of the open door: “HELP! SOMEONE! PLEASE HELP!!! MY FRIEND NEEDS A DOCTOR!!!”
Present day …
Beep-Beep! Beep-Beep! Beep-Beep!
Sunset’s eyes opened slowly, and she found them and her cheeks wet with tears, which was nothing to say about the pillow which was soaked through. With a groan, she turned in her bed and slammed her fist down on the annoying alarm clock, laying there silent for a few more minutes until the tears had dried.
Exhausted from her recurring nightmare, she climbed out of bed and put on the water heater to make herself some quick instant coffee. Passing a half-packed suitcase, she crossed her apartment to the far wall which could be described as looking like someone had raided the set of CSI if you were feeling generous, or a conspiracy theorist’s basement if you weren’t.
All over the wall were post-it notes, photos, newspaper clippings of strange events over the last three years, held up with thumbtacks and red string, all connecting back to two central items in the middle, one reading Maretime Bay incident and the other Pinkie Pie.
Sunset lightly touched a photograph of her late friend while she took a sip of her coffee, a photo taken before Opaline had unleashed hell on Maretime Bay, showing a Pinkie Pie with healthy skin and a huge smile on her face.
“I’ll find them, Pinkie Pie. I swear,” she said, a promise she’d renewed every single day since she’d learned the truth during the Friendship Games, “I won’t let what happened to you happen to anybody else.”
Unfortunately, she hadn’t made a lot of progress in her search over those few weeks since she’d first made that promise. Wherever the other two entities that had escaped alongside Opaline were, they hadn’t made a big splash. Sunset’s eyes drifted over towards the calendar on the wall which marked today as the start of the week-long Camp Everfree trip.
I’ll find them, but I can’t let myself go down that same road I went down two years ago. There are people who depend on me for other things, and maybe it’ll do me good to get out of my own head for a few days and focus on my students.
Having already turned halfway, she returned and pulled Pinkie Pie’s picture off the wall, placing it reverently into the leather case that held the geode pendants and stowing that safely away into an inside pocket of her suitcase before resuming packing the rest of the normal necessities.
Author's Note
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Chapter 1: Welcome to Camp Everfree
“Will you be lost by time or be part of history?
Will your story be told or remain a mystery?
And when you go back home, everybody there will see
You were part of the Legend of Everfree!”
Sunset stopped strumming her acoustic guitar in the front seat of the bus for a moment to raise her arm. “Altogether now!”
“Oh, oh, oh-oh-whoa
As you join in the Legend of Everfree! (Hey!)
Oh, oh, oh-oh-whoa
As you join in the Legend of Everfree!
Hey!”
After singing along for the last few notes, the students on the bus broke out into a small applause and cheers while Sunset grinned and put away the guitar.
In stark opposition, there was a dark grumble from her seat neighbor as Cranky Doodle looked at her with one eye peeking out from under the flat cap he’d almost completely pulled over his face. “Are you gonna keep this level of peppiness up for the entire week, kid?”
“Look at it this way,” she told the older teacher cheekily. “If I bring the energy, you don’t have to expend much of yours, Mr. Almost-Retired.” And I don’t think our resident Karen over here is gonna be much help in that regard either, she added to herself with a glance towards Phyllis Cloverleaf who was typing away at a laptop while simultaneously holding a call through the earbuds of her cellphone. Why did she even come if she’s so busy with work?
Cranky sniffed, mulled that over for a moment, and finally said “fair” before pulling his cap all the way down over his face.
Deciding to leave him in peace for now before the snoring set in, Sunset stood up and made her way down the aisle to check on her students. She came across Pipp, sitting next to her friend Jazz from Class 2-B and holding her phone up above her head while looking at it with an exasperated expression. “Ugh, with every mile closer to the boonies, I can feel my upload speed slooowiiiing doooown! Is there gonna be any reception when we get there?”
“We’re going to a summer camp, Pipp, not the stone age,” Sunset answered in amusement. “They’ve got Wi-Fi. But do you remember what I said about taking a digital cleanse now and then?”
“You don’t understand, Ms. Sunset,” Pipp replied in a huff, “there’s a certain rhythm to this sort of thing, a cadence. I can’t just go dark for a week and leave my followers hanging.”
“Yeah,” Zipp said with a snort-chuckle in reply to her sister’s despair from the seat behind her, “the world will be deprived of knowing what you had for breakfast, sis, and all three of your followers will start posting comments asking if Princess_Pipp is dead.”
“You’re a singer, Pipp,” Sunset pointed out shrewdly, “so you should know how profound it can be to switch up the main melody or leave a dramatic silence on occasion.”
“What are you getting at, Ms. Sunset?”
“What I’m saying is, why don’t you give them a bit of a tease with your last bar? And instead of looking for content all week, be in the moment. You can still take photos and videos to post later. But instead of drip-feeding your fans boring minutia, you’ll have an amazing story to tell when you get back home.”
“Hm, leave them deliberately in suspense for a bit,” Pipp mused, then took a selfie and began typing while mumbling to herself. “‘Off on an analog adventure for a few days. All the deets when I get back. Meanwhile, stay fab, Pippsqueaks!’ Post.”
After Jazz’s phone made a notification sound, she immediately pressed a few buttons. “Liked and reposted. … Uh, Pipp? Did you take a look at that selfie before posting it?”
“Huh?”
Jazz held up her phone, showing the picture Pipp had just taken which had been photo-bombed by a grinning Zipp peeking over the headrest of her seat while holding up her fingers to give her sister bunny ears.
“Ugh!” Pipp made an indignant sound before grabbing a half-empty bag of marshmallows and beginning to pelt her giggling sister with them.
Sunset moved on, finding Sunny and Misty sitting together while quietly talking with serious expressions. “What’s with the gloomy faces here? Aren’t you looking forward to camp?”
The two girls looked at each other before Sunny said quietly: “Aren’t you worried about the … other two?”
Sunset sighed. So that’s what they were whispering about. “You saw my mom’s memories as clearly as I did back there,” Misty whispered. “There’s two more things out there like the one that took her.”
Sunset had no choice but to nod at that. Other than Misty, who had seen it, only Sunny had been let in on that fact for now. “I know, and I’m looking into it. But right now there’s nothing for us to go on, nothing for us to do other than keep our eyes open. You can’t obsess over these things 24/7. I mean, what are the odds that one of them is even near Camp Everfree right now? And it doesn’t look like they’ve made any major moves in the last few years. We gotta live our lives in the meantime.”
Sunny narrowed her eyes at Sunset. “Is this gonna be one of those things where you give great advice but are really bad at following that advice yourself, Ms. Sunset?” Misty underscored that with a raised eyebrow.
Put on the spot by two sets of judging teenager eyes, Sunset couldn’t help but grimace slightly as the image of her conspiracy board back home popped into her head. “You two are getting way too good at reading me,” she said, pointing at the two students in turn. “But if I’m already obsessing over this, that’s all the more reason for you to take a break. You’ve earned it. We’ve been through a lot, you two especially. It’s okay to just have fun this week.”
Another look passed between them, and Sunny eventually replied with a shrug: “We’ll try. But you’re a mystery-solving magic teacher, and we’re a bunch of magical kids on a bus. All we need is for Sparky starting to talk, and we’d basically be a Saturday morning cartoon.”
“Well, I’m putting this show on hiatus, so you can relax a bit, Ranger Red and Ranger Green. Okay?”
The two girls looked at her with confused expressions.
“Never mind,” Sunset said in embarrassment, “I guess that one was definitely before your time. Oh, and Misty.”
“Hm?” Misty turned to look at her after Sunset had paused before moving on.
“I like the new hair color,” she said, pointing at the red highlights in Misty’s curls. “It suits you.”
Misty beamed at the compliment as Sunset moved on, passing Rufus demonstrating a magic trick to his classmate Onyx and Izzy fully absorbed in the process of telling a funny story to Posey Bloom, who had put on an eye mask and was clearly asleep in her seat.
When she stopped next to Sprout, Sunset smiled. Noticing his teacher, he looked up and sheepishly showed her the sketch he’d been working on, a Bob Ross inspired landscape. “You’re getting good at those. Make sure you don’t kill those light areas that separate your terrain.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I’m really enjoying it. It’s fun to try and adapt those techniques to pencil.”
“Have you ever tried charcoal?”
“Eh, I don’t like it as much. Feels like I don’t have as much control.”
“It’s good to give up control sometimes. It can make you be more bold in your strokes.”
“Yeah … bold … strokes …” He mumbled and looked away with a slight blush on his face.
“Something wrong, Sprout?” she asked, leaning in a little closer with concern.
He drew back a little and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Uhm, can I ask you an awkward question, Ms. Sunset?”
Holding back a chuckle, Sunset replied: “I think you and I are way past awkward, Sprout. Shoot.”
His eyes briefly wandered towards the front of the bus where his mother, who had come as one of the chaperones, sat. But then his eyes wandered almost immediately back to Sunset. “Are you gonna be wearing that all week?”
Following his gaze, Sunset looked down on herself. She was wearing a t-shirt with the Camp Everfree logo and a pair of brown shorts with matching boots. “Almost everyone is wearing this,” she replied.
“Yeah, well, everyone else is everyone else. You’re … you, and you fill that out a little more than the rest of the girls.”
I … guess I can’t argue with that, Sunset thought. Nonetheless, she put one hand on her hip and adopted a stern expression. “Is this gonna be a problem? I thought we’d moved past this.”
“Oh, you made it abundantly clear that nothing is ever gonna happen, which I’m grateful for, truly I am. But there’s only so much of this a guy can take,” he said and sheepishly traced an hourglass shape with his hands to emphasize his point. Clearly, they weren’t as far past awkward as Sunset had hoped.
Sunset coughed uncomfortably. “Keep drawing mountains, Sprout. Maybe add a cold mountain lake and imagine dunking your head in it. It’ll be double practice,” she told him and moved on while thinking: I guess there will still be some mounds and valleys in those landscapes at the end of the week, after all.
She could hear him let out his breath slowly before burying his nose in his sketchbook again as she checked in with the rest of the students in other seats.
It would have probably been unprofessional to say it out loud, but Class 2-A had become her pride and joy, altogether not surprising considering what they’d been through together. But she had no less affection for the students of 2-B which she taught in English. Events had conspired to put much of her attention on Sunny and her friends over the school year, and she hoped to make up for that at least a little bit over the coming week.
When she reached the final row of seats, she gave a nod to the fourth and final adult passenger on the bus. “All good here?”
Bright Hope gave her a smile and a nod.
“Thanks again for agreeing to chaperone on such short notice. Most of the other teachers felt a little … burnt out after the Friendship Games.”
“I can imagine,” Bright Hope replied. “It’s the least I can do after all the trouble I’ve caused.”
“Opaline caused, not you,” Sunset corrected her gently. “It’s worth remembering that. Anyway, it’s a good chance for you to spend some quality time with Misty, right?”
She glanced over to where Misty was sitting with a complicated expression on her face. “Yeah, hopefully so.”
Sunset followed that look and sat down in the seat next to her, stopping short of laying a comforting hand on the shoulder of the woman who she didn’t really know that well, after all. “Listen,” she said. “I wanted to check in with you. It’s been a couple weeks since you’ve been back, and I know it couldn’t have been easy. How are you doing, Bright Hope?”
She continued to stare in the direction of where Misty was chatting with Sunny before answering. “It’s been … weird. I was ecstatic to get my life back, only the life I left and my new life aren’t quite the same. Before I was Bright Hope, postgraduate student with big academic aspirations, now I’m Bright Hope, headmistress of an orphanage.”
“You’re still headmistress?”
Bright Hope nodded with a sigh. “I actually minored in child psychology in college. That’s how Opaline got the job there in the first place, on my credentials. They don’t have anyone to replace me. Thankfully, Ms. Junebug agreed to come out of retirement for a week, so I could come on this trip.”
Sunset blinked in surprise. “Wait, Ms. Junebug? The previous headmistress? She’s still around?”
Turning away from looking at Misty, Bright Hope finally met Sunset’s eyes with a bit of amusement. “Of course. What? Did you think Opaline did something to her?”
“I mean, I’d hoped nothing drastic,” Sunset said, coughing in embarrassment, “but yes. I kinda figured she did something to push her out and take over.”
“It’s not that absurd a conclusion, I guess, knowing what she’s like,” Bright Hope admitted with a sigh. “But no. Ms. Junebug really was just looking to retire, and Opaline has, I mean, had a really good knack for timing if nothing else.” She shook her head. “Anyway, as far as anyone but Misty is concerned, everyone seems to think that I’ve always been there for the last three years. My name is even on the paperwork. Even where members of CPS and the school board are concerned, I seem to have replaced Opaline in their memories, except for that Ms. Daisy. She’s been a great help, by the way. Thanks for putting us in touch after the Friendship Games.”
Sunset nodded. “It’s the nature of Opaline’s magic and how magic interacts with this world in general. Gloriosa had her own run-in with magic, so she can see through it. From the perspective of anyone else, Opaline Arcana never existed.”
“I wish I had the luxury to pretend she never existed,” Bright Hope replied glumly. “The first thing I wanted to do was to find a new place and give Misty the home life she deserved,” she said, rubbing her forehead, “but like I said, the orphanage doesn’t have anyone to take over, and I feel obligated to try and undo the damage Opaline has done to these kids. Even after everything, I’m still putting other things above Misty. I’m a horrible mother.”
At this point, Sunset did lay a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not. You just never had the opportunity to be a mother to Misty. Give her some time. I’m sure she’ll give you the chance. You’re here now, aren’t you?”
Bright Hope shook her head. “I have no right to call myself her mother. Even discounting all those years Opaline was piloting my body, I have made so many mistakes, and all of them ended up hurting Misty one way or another. I was … so glad that she didn’t seem to hate me when we reunited at the Friendship Games, but it was an overwhelming moment for both of us. I couldn’t blame her if she thought better of it and decided she wanted nothing to do with a suspected murderer of a mother.”
“You’re not a murderer,” Sunset said firmly, “at least I know that for a fact, and so does Misty.”
“Aren’t I?” Bright asked glumly. “I may not have wielded that glass shard, but it was still my actions that ended up costing my mentor his life.”
Sunset wanted to reject that notion, but she knew from painful experience that Bright Hope was probably not ready to hear it, no matter how logical a comeback she had. So instead she went with: “I’ve been meaning to ask, what happened when you went down to the station to talk to Captain Shining Armor?”
“He was very nice,” she replied. “I figured he’d put me in handcuffs and an interrogation room. He did neither, though he did grill me for over two hours in his office on every last detail of that night in Maretime Bay three years ago. Almost four years ago now, I guess,” she corrected at the end.
Probably to confirm the story I told him, Sunset figured. I told him everything I saw in the vision, including how Professor Discerning Eye’s death was an accident. “What happened then?”
“When he was done with all his questions, he sat there quietly for a very long time. Then he tore up all the notes he’d taken, looked me in the eye and told me to go home to be with my daughter.”
“Sounds like good advice coming from a man I know to be a great big brother, husband and father,” Sunset said, lightly squeezing the other woman’s shoulder. “Listen, I won’t pretend to understand everything you’re going through right now, but I do understand a lot of it, probably more than anyone else. So if you need someone to talk, I’m here for you. You seem like you could use a friend right now.”
Bright Hope finally gave Sunset a genuine smile. “Thank you, Ms. Shimmer.” She sighed. “You’ve given me my life back. I can’t even begin to fathom how I could ever repay the kindness you’ve shown Misty and myself, and I’m sorry to be such a gloom stalker. I … never had a lot of friends, except for Argyle and the professor. I’d very much like to be your friend, Ms. Shimmer.”
“Call me Sunset,” Sunset replied with a smile.
Just then, the bus rocked to a halt as the snoring in the front seat stopped, and Cranky laboriously got up from his seat after rolling his shoulders for a bit. “Alright, everyone, make sure you got all your things before stepping off,” he called out from the front, “this bus ain’t coming back until next week, so check your seats and don’t forget anything before you get your bags.”
Sunset breathed deeply as the campers got their bags and made their way in the direction of the gazebo that was the center of Camp Everfree. It felt good to breathe the fresh air, and the beautiful landscape held a silent promise to make all the chaos, trials and tribulations of the last year a distant memory, at least for this one week.
“Hello, campers!” Gloriosa Daisy’s voice called over the speakers as she stood under the gazebo with a wireless microphone in hand and a smile on her face, at once familiar and different from the first time Sunset had stood here on account that the redhead’s cheerfulness seemed 100% genuine and not forced this time.
“Welcome to Camp Everfree! I’m your Camp Director, Gloriosa Daisy, and I’m here to make this the best week of camp you’ve ever had, so don’t hesitate to come to me or Mr. Mennes if you have any questions.” She indicated a man standing next to her that Sunset didn’t recognize. He was tall, with bronze skin and his black hair pulled back into a braid at the back of his head, standing there with a stoic expression and his hands clasped behind his back in what was almost military discipline. “Mr. Mennes, why don’t you introduce yourself?” Gloriosa said as she handed the microphone off to him.
He took the mic, but did not speak immediately as he let his gaze sweep over the group with a set of dark, piercing eyes. “Good morning. My name is Ramer Mennes. Ms. Daisy and I are here to make your stay fun, but also safe. To that end, please don’t wander off into the woods on your own, especially at night, and I expect you to listen when we tell you things. Thank you.”
“Well, that guy seems like a barrel of laughs,” Izzy could be heard commenting dryly while he handed the microphone back to Gloriosa.
“He’s just doing his job, Izzy,” Hitch said in response, “I can respect that.”
“Laughs don’t come in barrels. They come from inside you as your body’s response to delight.”
Sunset suddenly turned and looked around. That last voice had sounded awfully familiar.
“Something wrong?” Cranky, who stood next to her, asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No, I just … Did you hear something just now? Was that one of the kids?” Sunset asked.
“You’ve been a teacher for almost a year now,” Cranky said with amusement, “have you not learned to tune out the random chatter of a class yet?”
“It just sounded like …” Sunset shook her head. “Never mind. I was just remembering a joke I heard once, I guess.”
“Thank you for the safety reminder, Mr. Mennes,” Gloriosa said as Sunset turned her attention back to the introduction. “Now I want to hear from you. What is going to make your stay at Camp Everfree the best week ever?” Picking out a student at random, she held the microphone in front of Zipp.
“Uhm, paddle boarding?”
“Of course, the lake’s beautiful this time of year! How about you?”
Onyx, one of the students from Class 2-B with a barett and scarf, snapped her fingers twice. “Slam poetry, the soundscape, from the landscape, makes the heart ache.” Standing just next to her, Dapple underscored that sentiment with a few beats on the bongos he always carried with him.
“No better place to get inspired than here.”
“Nature walks,” Hitch suggested, and was immediately backed up by a bark coming from Sparky who was being held in his arms.
“Naturally!”
“Oh, here!” Jazz raised her hand. “How about a karaoke night?”
“Or a talent show,” Pipp built on that, “we could all show off something different.”
“I second that,” Rufus said immediately, turning his wrist and making a playing card seemingly appear out of thin air between his fingers.
“That’ll be a new camp tradition,” Gloriosa said with a smile and a wink, “but I’m into it! How about over here?”
When the mic was held up to Trey, the student with the black trenchcoat comically draped over his camper outfit, he struck a dramatic pose and replied: “I wish to pit my very soul against the dark abyss until I’ve walked off the edge and have been swallowed up by it, only to emerge stronger in my understanding of the dark arts!”
“Uhhh, …” Gloriosa blinked several times and turned her head slowly to meet Sunset’s eyes.
“He’s talking about baking,” Sunset informed her calmly.
“Oh, I see,” Gloriosa said with a nervous chuckle. “Well, we’ve got a fully appointed kitchen you’re free to use outside of meal preparation times.”
“What about the Camp Gift?” Sunset asked knowingly.
“Of course, the camp’s oldest tradition,” Gloriosa replied with a wave of her hand. “Almost everything you see here was built by previous campers. Every group works together to leave something behind for future campers. This gazebo, the totem pole, that sun dial, even the picnic tables.”
“That multi-purpose dock you see down by the lake was my year’s gift,” Sunset said proudly, “eventually, at least.”
“Multi-purpose?” Zipp asked with a raised eyebrow. “What possible purpose could a dock serve other than being a dock?”
“Fashion show runway,” Sunset answered with an absolutely straight face.
Zipp grimaced in disbelief, but Pipp squeed at that, clearly inspired. “Oh, I love it! We could build a stage right next to it for our talent show! I mean, doesn’t the lake and those mountains in the distance make for the most gorgeous backdrop you’ve ever seen?”
“Well, that sounds like a super plan,” Gloriosa said with delight, “but remember you’re here to have fun first and foremost. To that end, let’s hand out the tent assignments, so you can get rid of those heavy bags. Once again, welcome to Camp Everfree! Hope you enjoy your stay!”
Author's Note
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