Spree Living Room, Sunday Afternoon

[wwiii]

What was a rich guy to do when he was stupidly bored, making faces at the fact that his normally four-person cabin was down to two and a hedgehog, and wanted to get his hands on something to help take the edge off?

Well, the cabins were named after candy, after all. And, while Warren had never really had the chance to indulge in, say, certain brand-names of candy while growing up, there was nothing keeping him from doing so now, right?

In spades?

Look, he had no frame of reference for things like, 'that is way too much money to spend on way too much candy.'

And that was why he was carrying a case of Spree into his cabin today. He'd been inspired.

This could only end in stomach ache.

[For the cabinmate! Unless you have some reason to be in Spree!]

Comments

[life_inshadow]

Tara squinted more and tossed a Spree at that green target. Her aim wasn't horrible, though it would have been better if she hadn't been trying not to laugh.

[wwiii]

Warren only had to move slightly in order to catch the candy in his mouth, and, that achieved, he grinned around the candy at her.

"Good shot," he decided, laughing a little. "Your turn?"

[life_inshadow]

Tara nodded, ducking a bit to get her head at a better angle and setting the hedgehog on the ground.

"Go for it," she said, hoping she wouldn't miss too badly.

[wwiii]

Warren took a moment to squint, to figure out his aim, and then he lobbed the candy carefully toward her mouth.

He was not the world's greatest aim, no. He'd spent his lifetime reading, not throwing things around his father's condo.

Maybe you ought to duck and cover, Tara.

[life_inshadow]

The candy bounced off Tara's forehead and skittered across the floor to be pounced upon by a hedgehog. (She was trying to outrun the cat.) "Try again?" she offered, attempting to make Warren feel better. "I think I moved, maybe."

She hadn't.

[wwiii]

Warren chewed his lip for a moment, attempting to look as apologetic as possible before pulling another candy out of the tube.

"Okay, this one, I'll get," he decided.

No, he probably wouldn't. But that wasn't going to stop him from tossing Spree candy piece number two.

[life_inshadow]

Tara lunged for the Spree and completely missed, ending up collapsed on the floor giggling. (Kennedy took the piece of candy, again.)

"Is it my turn?" she asked, between snorts. "Or do you want to keep tossing until you get one?"

[wwiii]

Warren looked at the case. And then he looked at the floor where the spree had landed, and then he looked from Tara to Kennedy and back again, laughing a little, himself.

"I think at this rate, we might end up needing more candy after all," he noted. "And Kennedy is going to turn into the world's most hyperactive hedgehog."

[life_inshadow]

"At this rate," Tara agreed, emptying another tube of Spree right into her mouth, "we're going to end up with a whole carpet made out of candy, and the world's most hyperactive hedgehog."

[wwiii]

Do you know why two high school students should never be left to their own devices in a cabin with a case of sugar?

This... actually isn't a trick question. After half an hour of throwing candies at one another, with a few pieces of Spree lost forever under the couch and a few more skittering away into other regions unknown, the verdict was pretty much plain and simple.

Sugar High.

"You know what would be an awesome idea," Warren mused, somewhere in the middle of a musical interlude involving Spree maracas. "Candy art."

Cha-cha-cha.

[life_inshadow]

"Candy art?" Tara repeated. She'd stopped trying to keep the candy away from Kennedy and was now just feeding them to her.

Spinning in circles was totally how hedgehogs showed gratitude, right?

She tossed another sour apple Spree at Warren, trying to hit his wings. "Like, what kind of candy art?"

[wwiii]

In all fairness, Warren's wings weren't exactly a small target. He barely noticed as the candy bounced off of him.

He was too busy having a moment of inspiration.

"I don't know," he said, and now he was standing and pacing, fuelled by entirely too much sugar, "sculptures or something, maybe. Or... Or a mural!"

He spread his wings as far as the living room would allow without knocking anything over (though he did make the television wobble a bit), and gestured grandly to the opposite wall.

"Right there. Right there would be perfect."

[life_inshadow]

"Yeah?" Tara asked, standing and pacing toward where Warren was. She stared at the wall, as if seeing it for the first time. ".... yeah! We could make flowers! Or, um, circles. It'd be --"

She broke off, seeming to try to talk herself out of it. "A total waste of food, oh my god."

[wwiii]

Warren needed to take this moment to give the case of candy on the table a very pointed look.

And then to turn to Tara, and give her the same look.

Because between them, they'd only gone through about ten tubes of candy.

Out of two-hundred.

"I think we can probably spare it. The 'Little kids are hungry in Africa' thing probably doesn't even count with Spree."

[life_inshadow]

"... I'll donate money to the Salvation Army or something," Tara decided, seeing Warren's argument but not quite ready to let go of the guilt completely.

But 190 tubes of Spree made a pretty strong argument for an artistic use.

"Okay, uh, do you know how we do this? I guess we start by putting glue on the wall..."

[wwiii]

"Right! Do we have any glue? And I guess we're going to want some sort of spray-sealant, too, so that the heat and humidity don't melt these things..."

Yes. Gluing candy to the walls and then covering it with a layer of shellac. A brilliant plan, truly.

[life_inshadow]

"Right!" Tara said. "Um .... I probably have glue? Somewhere?"

She bounced over to her alcove and started poking things about, trying to find the glue, and emerged with a tube of Elmer's triumphantly clutched in one hand. "Here! But I don't think I have spray shellac. Maybe there's a spell..."

[wwiii]

Warren could remember quite vividly the spell that Tara had cast on him on the spring trip so that people couldn't see his wings on the beach. He was given to think that this, therefore, was an idea that bordered on pure genius.

Especially when sugar-fuelled like this.

"Do you think you could manage a spell like that, really? It would save me a flight into town, after all."

Not that he'd mind an excuse to fly around town. But a sugar-crash while airborne would probably be disastrous.

[life_inshadow]

"Sure," Tara said, going over to find her spellbooks. "It's just making it stay, right? It's not going to hurt anything."

... famous last words?

[wwiii]

This could not possibly end well.

"Right! What could possibly go wrong?"

And those were the words that tempted fate, right there.

[life_inshadow]

"Absolutely nothing," Tara decided.

Even Kennedy looked like she didn't believe that.

Paying the hedgehog no heed, the pair started smearing glue on the wall and sticking on candies in a design. Tara's bit of it was less symmetrical than she wanted; she also kept eating the source material. Still, she was happy-ish with it was she stepped back to admire the spirals.

"Wh-what do you think?"

[wwiii]

Warren had decided to keep his portion of the mural simple enough. There were a few circles here and there. Some of them were slightly more ovular than he'd intended. Some of them weren't actually any shape known in nature. But they were colorful, at least.

He looked over at Tara's design, grinning at the results and giving his feathers a pleased little ruffle as he did so.

"Very bright," he decided. "Much less drab than these walls were before we started, I think. Should we switch spots, so I can add some bubbles over there, and you can make some swirly things over here?"

[life_inshadow]

"Sure," Tara said. "Maybe some little paisley-ish ... things. Paisley is pretty."

She was tempted to pet his feathers when he ruffled them like that. She managed not to.

[wwiii]

"Delicious paisley," Warren mused. "It could totally catch on."

He grinned, reaching over to pick up some more candy from his pie of Spree tubes so that he could make his way on over. The unfortunate thing about his wings was that, while they were insanely flexible, his feathers weren't jointed, and so they had an unfortunate tendency to brush up against whatever was directly behind him when he bent forward.

And so, when he stood up again and felt the tug on the end of a couple of his longer feathers, he was immediately aware that something was amiss.

"... That can't be good."

[life_inshadow]

"You're, um, you're --" Tara went over and lightly ran her hand over the spot where the feathers met the wall. "I think you're stuck."

She was flapping a bit; she had no idea how to fix this.