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

[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.

[wwiii]

Warren would have been flapping a bit as well, if not for that whole 'glued to the wall' issue.

"How dry is the glue? I mean, maybe I can just kind of... peel free?"

This was sort of humiliating, actually.

[life_inshadow]

"It's --st-st-sticky," Tara said, testing it with a fingertip. "I can pull my finger away if I only touch for a second."

She eyed him, still fluttering about. "Do we need hot water or something? Would that help?"

Mr. Moxy had slunk over to investigate.

[wwiii]

And that was just what Warren needed. Another cat near his feathers. He picked up the candy, waved it about for a moment, and then tossed it across the room, hoping that Mr. Moxy might give chase.

"It's kids' glue, isn't it? It has to be water-soluble."

It was... like... law. Right?

[life_inshadow]

Moxy gave Warren's lower feathers an idle tap with his paw, then scurried after the stray candy. He had to get it before that fat hedgehog, after all.

"Maybe?" Tara had no idea.

She went into the bathroom and dampened a washcloth, offering it to Warren. "Do you want to -- or, or should I ---?"

This was weird. And, in a bizarre way, intimate.

[wwiii]

"Let's see if I can twist around that far without breaking them, first," Warren decided, holding his hand out for the washcloth. "They haven't had the greatest week so far."

Cats.

[life_inshadow]

Tara handed him the washcloth, fumbling with it a bit, and watched with anxious eyes to see if he could reach.

[wwiii]

Warren was going to now turn. Stretch. Reach with his arm while trying to bend his feathers as little as possible. Stretch his wings while he turned.

Something?

Anything?

One feather, damaged after a weekend of being chewed on by a kitten already, snapped clean in two. Damn. He was going to have to pull that one out later so that he could grow a new one back.

"... Maybe I could use some help, actually."

[life_inshadow]

"Okay," Tara said, taking a deep breath. She could do this. She could do this.

She gently swiped the washcloth over a feather, trying to saturate it enough to soften the glue and peeling the individual plumes away at the speed of a snail. "Is this hurting?"

[wwiii]

"No," Warren replied, giving her a lopsided little smile while he turned around as much as he dared. "It's kind of the same idea as a haircut, or fingernails. I can feel that there's something going on back there, but there aren't nerves in them, or anything. If they're fused to the wall, we could go so far as to cut them, painlessly, but then I'd be wingclipped for a bit."

And that was not something that he particularly wanted to do, no.

[life_inshadow]

Tara nodded slowly. She was concentrating too hard to say much, so she just murmured "Good" as, one by one, she tried to peel the feathers away. "They're probably going to still be a little gluey, when I'm done," she offered.

[wwiii]

"I can handle a little glue, just so long as I'm not stuck to a wall anymore," he decided, crouching down a bit to try to get as out of the way as he could manage. "It's not bad weather for a trip to the beach or anything like that, right? That would clean the rest of it off, I'm sure."

Glue in the feathers totally counted as a valid reason to subject the island to a wood-chips and corn-nuts sort of 'wet bird smell.'