Dear Reviewers:

Yes, it is time. Due to my third year in university being so busy (18 credits, five classes, part time job, several essays a week) my update schedule will be a little on the slow side. Thank-you all for those who have been patient, and will continue to be patient.

It's good to be back :)

Pippin

PS: You'll find that the epilogue of Dr. Pepper will deter greatly from this introduction. Many things, like friendships and personalities (including mine) have changed a great deal since our last adventure. But don't worry. It's still me, and this is still going to be a fun ride!

Summary:

Sequel to Strange Things Happen in Libraries with Dr. Pepper. Pippin is back and joining the Pevensies aboard the Dawn Treader. Adventure and hilarity to ensue. Blatant self-insert, anti Mary Sue. R&R!

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STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN

By Pippin Baggins

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Chapter One,

At Festivals With High-Heels

I don't suppose anyone would recognize me now.

I suppose they'd wonder what the blazes came over me. Why I would put my life on the line… why I was risking my neck for this.

Was my existence worth this?

Who would look at me and think I was the same person?

I, painfully nicknamed Pippin in high-school—forever dubbed through the internet as Pippin Baggins—was wearing a pair of high heels.

Anyone I once knew could perhaps recognize me—but they would take one look and say, "That can't be Pippin. Pippin would never be caught dead in high heels."

My point exactly. I was waiting for the moment to trip and fall over, face planting, and dying. It would be all too easy; a lack of coordination and air of clumsiness was still in my possession. I still couldn't dance to save my life. Nothing about me is graceful. All it takes is a little fissure in the ground, a hole, an unstable blade of grass—a friendly shove, or an unfriendly shove—followed by any other kind of accident. A spilt drink, a bicycle going by too quickly, maybe getting chased by a bee.

Anything could happen, and then, I would die.

In my mind, there is no injury or hospitalization. It's always instant death for me. It goes straight from possibilities to an epitaph, a prediction to a eulogy, a random thought directly to the grave digging… from a single gulp of Dr. Pepper to being swung out two stories over a parking lot but landing in a sandy cave instead?

Hey, it happens.

But I didn't fall, and I didn't die. I sat on a park bench and took a deep breath, crossing my legs, looking absently on my cell phone, trying to act as if I wasn't just planning my funeral. I awkwardly wiped perspiration from underneath my bangs, glancing with envy towards a family walking by, all holding a different colored sno-cone each.

Gotta love summertime, I thought, waving a hand at my chin, trying to cool down. A short walk, (albeit terrifying,) from the music stage to the food booths, was no easy walk in a pleasant Walden sun.

No, this sun was angry and bent on sending showers of metaphorical hellfire down on the sweating heads of my small-town village. This was the hottest summer I could remember. My arms stuck to my sides, the backs of my hands were turning red from being left out of the sunscreen application. My hair hung lank around me, and the jeans I wore were screaming out my stupidity in fashion choice.

There's a very good reason why my father calls me Creature of the Night.

I hate the sunshine, but not as much as I hate warmth. I like to wear a sweater and watch the rain—not boil alive without the privilege to scream like a lobster in a pot.

Staring too long at the grass, bleached and parched in the July dehydration system, would give one a migraine. People all over the park dropped like flies from heat exhaustion. I was regretting leaving my water bottle near the stadium.

The festival where every resident of Walden gathers, on the last weekend of July, was always the highlight of my summer. There are booths, rides, the small-town parade, the live music, the fireworks display, the fair, the parks, and the bustling crowds of Waldenese folks who were either way too friendly or not friendly enough. It always reminded me of the scene in Grease when everyone I know gathers in one place. I expected someone to break out in We Go Together at any minute. Can't deny the fact I wasn't guilty of it myself once or twice.

There were picnic tables all around me, and booths with typical fair foods—like corn dogs and cotton candy—and all kinds of people. I looked around listlessly, unsure what I was looking for.

I didn't even know why I walked over here, I didn't have any money.

The band playing over on the music stage wasn't terrible, there's no reason why I should have left my shady place and friends. I had simply gotten up, said "Be right back," and marched in one direction. Without thinking of where to go, I was suddenly preoccupied by keeping my ankles from rolling out beneath me.

There was nothing around the food court, nothing interesting. The trees hung damp with humidity around the park. You could almost feel the ultraviolet rays. Everyone wore sunglasses—not a pair of eyes were to be seen. There were a lot of whining children. I saw one with a runny nose.

I shuddered, grossed out, and decided to leave.

As I began to walk again, I tried not to focus on each footfall. I was listening instead. I listened for a breeze, I listened for some kind of movement in the air. I listened for a roar in the rumbling engine of an antique car rolling by, from the vintage car show down the street. I listened for a cry, a cry that might grow louder, and turn into the lone hark of a Narnian horn.

I knew these moments of restlessness, suddenly needed a walk, breathing in the normalcy—breathing out the memories—were pretty pointless. Life is life. This was the summer of invisible volcanic lava drenching my pores. This was the summer of a festival, like every year, meeting friends and family on a picnic blanket to watch flowers of fire erupt and explode in the night sky. This was my real life. And I was never going back to Narnia.

And so one, stuffy summer evening passed like any others. The air conditioning was turned on, I read and wrote a little, watched too much TV with my brother, and eventually dropped into my bed. It's just another night like many. Tomorrow was day two of the festival; time to leave the music and food, and seek out rides and games instead, and end the spectacular by watching fireworks rise into the dark Saturday night sky. And this climax would end my summer, August was for preparing again for school.

It's the holidays now, I thought sleepily, What I wouldn't give for a cruise or something. Anything. Something... THAT something. One more time.

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Day three of the festival dawned hotter than the last. Everything was shadowless in the ravaging, bleaching, white-hot air blanket wrapping Walden in its thermal embrace, giggling Global warming! Global warming!

During an air pocket of evening, where a breeze that did not bring any cooling whistled through the heavy boughs of light blue twilight, it was time to brave the crowds of the carnival ground with my friends. With blankets and bags left behind on the soccer field, amidst hundreds of little family clusters already waiting for the fireworks show, we picked our way through into the artificial gold lights of rides and games that ripped you off. There were six of us or so, friend who'd known each other from church or school, gripping hands and laughing hysterically as we fought crowds and jerks to get in line for the Ali Baba ride.

The Ali Baba is a row of seats, two rows in fact, like the innards of a school bus with no walls and the seats facing all left, with only pull-over guards to keep you in these rows. A giant swinging mechanism, with the seats attached to the bottom, begins swinging slowly from side to side like a pendulum. It begins swinging so hard that the rows are carried higher and higher, until it freezes for a moment at the top—and all of Walden is spread in twinkling lights below—and then gains enough speed to shift and drop, drop drop, like the Tower of Terror, all the way down. Three times it does this terrifying draw up, up, and up, and freefalling down, down, down, until the swinging slows and we can depart, still screaming with laughter and adrenaline. It makes ones head feel like popping off.

Standing under the ride itself, while waiting in line, is utterly terrifying. Standing next to its base, the rows of seats will be swung just over our heads, dangerously close, with a metallic roar and a rush of wind and pieces of straw from the dusty material of the fair's ground. I stood in distracted bliss, laughing with my friends, basking in hilarity, feeling nothing but life within the moment, thinking of nothing that was passed and nothing in my future. In an essence, my mind was reduced to simply being a young adult in summertime—there's nothing but giggling like a fanatic at some inappropriate joke, making plans that never happen, or awkwardly moving aside for yelling, swearing people.

Eventually we're crowded into the seats, apprehension glistening on our foreheads and in the palms of our hands. We clutch the small bar over our shoulders like the protective device on a swing-set for toddlers. The motor starts, and our laughter grows into shrieks, and eventually, the shrieks into screams of rushing terror—but the fun kind.

Up—up—up! High above Walden, my head feels as if it is swelling to the size of a balloon and about to burst. The sprinkled streetlights light up small spheres of people pointing to and laughing at our ride, held high for the split second of euphoria in the night sky, finally growing dark to the normal human eye. Then we drop, and I scream so much it hurts my stomach, and my lungs pump for a lack of oxygen. Then we swing down again, down as if Edgar Allen Poe is pressing down with a giant thumb, trying to send us into a great pit of people already watching with their mouths hanging open. But the momentum carries us up again, into the brief relaxation of Walden's upper atmosphere.

I hear the high, mournful wail of a train whistle.

Completely forgetting the brace I'm in, I try to sit up and peer over the nearest tree-line. Just down the street lays the library, quiet and subdued in after-hours sleep. The tracks, alongside, are empty. There is no train. Why do I hear a train?

Second drop, a whoosh of air, left completely breathless and teary-eyed. I had one more chance to see why this whistle… the whistle that spoke out of travels into time and completely different worlds… was loud enough to be heard over the crowds, merry-go-round soundtrack, and the first eruption of fireworks.

In the crack of pink and yellow, the fireflies of the maelstrom spectacle, sucking "ooh's!" and "aah's!" out of the crowds dotting the lawns. It distracted me a moment as the ride came up again in an instant. I tried in vain to sit up again, clamoring my collarbones against the brace in a rather painful epiphany.

I was looking; I was free-falling for the last time. I was hurtling towards the earth in nothing, protected by nothing, seeing nothing below my feet. Fairgrounds I came from, but it would not be to fairgrounds I would return. Laughter faded into sounds of absence, the music died away like a bad record in a horror film, stuck on one chord and losing its volume.

But I did not feel afraid. The feeling I felt, whatever it could be labeled, was only one of rightness. Wherever the current of air rushing in my ears and gravity shutting my eyes was taking me, this was the right way to go.

It was almost like my soul had been expecting this. Like I knew it was going to be tonight—in a shower of fireworks, in the shriek of laughter, in the scream of a train whistle behind a curtain of visibility—as if I knew what was going to happen all along.

I'm on my way, Narnia.

Alright, lurkers and very patient, pleading fans, you may review. Your reviews always coax me to do my best, so please, leave your thoughts for me :)

Thanks for reading!