So. I decided I was going to write this story for fun. It's about the Keeper Crew in Disneyland. The writing's probably not going to be up to the same caliber as "Matchmakers," and the chapters are going to be shorter, but it's going to be fun so give it a rest. Also, I wrote most of this a loooong time ago-ie it's been two years-so Tam and Linh got the short end of the stick. Still, enjoy!
Storytime with Foster
"What do you miss most about the human world?" Biana asked.
Sophie sank back into the plush pillows on her bed and thought about the question for a moment. "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it much," she answered truthfully.
"Come on," Keefe complained. "There's gotta be something you miss."
"Well, I mean obviously I miss my family a lot. Grady and Edaline are great, but we've only known each other for a year. And while the turmoil of the time we've spent together has brought us a lot closer than we would be otherwise, they still missed the first twelve years of my life. And my human family was there for all of it. I'm not going to lie and say I miss the entire human world, because I don't, but I do miss them. And I feel terrible that I made them restart their entire lives."
"You did the right thing," Fitz argued. He was lounging on the floor next to Keefe since she wouldn't let the sweaty boys up onto her clean bed. They'd just finished an intense round of base quest—Sophie and Keefe had won of course—and the boys were a little muddier than usual. "Imagine if you'd let them think you were dead. They would have been heartbroken."
"I'd rather I'd never been in their lives at all," Sophie admitted, rolling onto her stomach and leaning over the edge of the bed to look at the boys. "Then they'd have been able to live out their lives in peace. Without any elves messing with them."
"But then we'd never have met you," Biana said from Iggy's cage. "And imagine how utterly boring our lives would be then."
"There must have been some fun stuff in the human world," Keefe interrupted, distracting her from moping as he hopped up and started rifling through her bookshelf. "Tell us about the pictures in here," he crowed triumphantly as he held her old scrapbook aloft like a prize.
"Really?" she laughed. "This again? I've already let you look through this hundreds of times."
"Yeah, but you've never told us about any of them. It's time for Foster's Storytime, Vacker children. Gather round now."
Biana and Fitz rolled their eyes, but they smiled as they scooted closer to the bed.
"What do you want to know?" Sophie asked, peeking over Keefe's shoulder as he flipped through the pictures. He stopped on an all too familiar one. The same one Dex had stopped on last year.
"Personally, I want to know why any of you would feel the need to take a picture with a giant rodent. But that's just me."
"We're in Disneyland, Keefe." Sophie rolled her eyes.
"Dex has his own land?"
"No, Keefe," Sophie sighed dramatically. "Disney. D-I-S-N-E-Y. Not D-I-Z-Z-N-E-E. In 1956 Walt Disney started this big human amusement park and named it after himself."
"That doesn't explain why you're all taking a picture with an oversize mouse."
"You didn't let me finish," Sophie scolded. "Now, Walt opened it because he had an idea to open a theme park about talking animals. There was Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. They were the original gang. Later he also added in Daisy Duck, and that's Donald Duck's wife. And Goofy falls in love with this cow. I don't remember her name, though. Maybe Mirabelle or something?"
"And people actually liked that idea?" Fitz asked skeptically.
"It sounds kind of stupid," Biana admitted.
"Are you kidding?" Keefe asked. "That's awesome! Tell me more about this, Disneyland."
"Well, Disney is this giant company. They have theme parks in California, Florida, Paris, Hong Kong, and probably a bunch of other places that I can't think of right now. They also have clothes, tv channels, movies, video games…they're in basically every market out there."
"Wait, can you get us some of these movies?" Keefe asked. "I need to see this. The silly human entertainment Foster grew up with!"
"Yeah, I could probably get you some," Sophie agreed. "I could actually probably pull up some trailers on YouTube on my iPod right now," she mused.
"Do it!" Keefe yelled, getting super excited.
"I don't know, this sounds really lame," Biana said. "Plus, you and Fitz are the only ones that speak English."
"Right," Sophie said. "And I bet they don't have an Enlightened Language translation option."
"Well, just tell us what they're about, and then show us the videos," Keefout, and then show us the videos,"ion option."glish." on my iPod right now, "Paris, Hong Kong, 'ey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Done said impatiently.
"Can't we do something more fun?" Biana complained.
At Keefe's pleading look, Sophie said, "A lot of the movies are about princesses."
"I'm in," Biana said.
They all looked at Fitz. "I'm good for whatever you guys are," he said with a shrug.
"Cool. Let's do 'Frozen' first, because that one's my favorite."
"It's about princesses, right?" Biana verified.
"Yeah, and in my opinion, it's the best princess film. There are these two sisters whose parents die…I should probably lead with that. Here are some stereotypes about Disney movies. One: the parents are usually dead. Or at least one is. Two: the princess is usually saved by the guy and true love's kiss or something."
"That's super depressing," Biana interrupted. "The dead parents part, not the true love part. That's romantic."
"Umm, yeah, but in Frozen, the true love isn't between the prince and the princess. In fact, the prince in the move turns out to be a total lunatic. The sisters save each other through acts of love."
"But it's always nice to have a handsome, strong, dashing prince around, right Fitz?" Keefe asked, flexing his muscles.
Biana visibly swooned, Fitz laughed, and Sophie rolled her eyes.
"I'm kind of confused," Fitz admitted. "Are these children's films, or adult films?"
"All ages," Sophie answered immediately. "I mean, their target audience is typically children, but the writers usually include things for the adults that they call Easter Eggs. They're references to other films. They also include dirty jokes sometimes, which the kids obviously don't get."
"But, aren't dead parents awfully dark for children's movies?" Fitz asked.
"Disney actually brightens the stories up. Most of the Disney movies are based off of Hans Christian Anderson or Brothers Grimm Fairytales, and those usually end with death or…let's go with 'darker themes.'"
"What exactly are 'darker themes?'" Biana asked.
Right. Sophie had forgotten they'd grown up in a world where the threat of breaking from guilt kept everyone from breaking laws or doing anything bad.
"Ummm, that's a topic for another day. For now, let's get back to 'Frozen.' Which I now realize I did a really bad job explaining."
"Yeah, you kind of did," Keefe agreed.
"Shut up," Sophie laughed, shoving his arm. "Anyways, the older sister, Elsa, has this snow or ice magic. And she uses it to play with her younger sister Anna, who doesn't have any powers. But one day, she slips on her own ice and accidentally hits Anna in the head. Part of Anna's hair freezes, and she goes unconscious, starting to freeze from the inside out. The parents burst in and—"
"Wait," Keefe interrupted. "I thought you said the parents were dead."
"Not yet. So the parents burst in and take Anna to the gnomes, who they hope can remove the magic from Anna."
"Right," Biana interrupted. "Because she's slowly freezing from the inside out."
"Exactly. So the head troll, Grand Pabbie—"
"Grand Pabbie," Keefe and Fitz chucked.
"—Grand Pabbie, removes the magic, saying 'We're lucky it was the head. The heart is not so easily changed.' Or something like that."
"That makes no sense," Biana and Keefe said at the same time.
"I said or something like that. So he removes all magic, and all memories of magic, for Anna. And Elsa basically gets quarantined until she can control her powers. They're like this until Anna is 15 and Elsa is 18. That's when the parents die."
"Ahhh," the other three said.
As she finished explaining, she could see the light growing in her friends' eyes. "Show us the trailer!" Keefe said at the same time Biana said, "Elsa sounds awesome!" and Fitz said "Can we actually get a copy of this to watch, please?"
"Yes to all three of you?" Sophie said, not sure she'd correctly heard all off their questions. Or comments. "I already have it cued up on my iPod."
She played it, and Keefe laughed so hard he started crying when they started singing the first song.
"Wait, it's a musical? Oh, this just gets better and better!"
"You know what they say on Broadway," Sophie said. "If it's too emotional to say, sing it. And if it's too emotional to sing it, dance."
"What's Broadway?" all three of them chorused.
"I'll explain that later too," Sophie sighed.