A narrow passageway weaved between buildings, the entrance obscured by the underside of a low-growing tree. In the shade, artificial torches on walls flickered silently and cast warm light on the dim walls. The path cut between a place that served exotic foods and the rest of Frontierland, and as the path went deeper between the buildings the western-themed music from the dusty roads outside of the passageway faded, slowly being replaced by something enchanted.
Though Serena was glad to be out of the direct sun—protected by the large hedges that had walled off the restaurant from the passage—she was still trying to play catch-up. Ahead of her, Bonnie was passing out from underneath another covered section of the passage and making it to the landing with the well, bright sunlight washing over her. Somehow, Dedenne was racing ahead, and Bonnie was trying to catch up—trying to beat him to Fantasyland. Bonnie's mad, cackling laughter and Dedenne's shrieks of joy were getting more and more distant as Serena felt herself slowing down. The cool shade was far too enticing, feeling wonderful on her skin. Serena longed to get her boots off, or at least sit down for a little longer, feeling sweat bead up above her brow.
As Serena passed beneath another sunbeam that cut through the partially opened roof, putting herself beneath the shade of a larger, covered structure with a perfect hallway—and Tangled-themed mural inside—Serena stopped herself to look back. Her exhausted state took less precedence as she looked back. The crowded paths of Frontierland filled the bright, glowing portal of sunlight at the end of the path she had just come in from, but Serena was looking beyond that towards New Orleans Square. She couldn't see anything, but she knew Ash and Clemont were still there.
And the Jack Sparrow.
Something deeply unsettled Serena about the thought of it all. She didn't really know where Ash was, or if he was in danger—which she suspected he was. The longer she stayed stopped, standing in the passage, looking back towards were Tom Sawyer Island supposedly was, the more she felt helpless. The lengths of the shimmering, blue ribbon tied around her collar wandered between her fingers as she reached for them, feeling them out of comfort.
"Serena, come on!" Bonnie called. Serena's head whipped around, looking back towards where Bonnie was on the bright, other side of a section of the passageway that went through Sleeping Beauty castle.
Taking a breath, Serena broke into a light jog, heading out into the sunlit path and across a small bridge that crossed the castle moat.
Perched in a windowsill, Figaro the cat snoozed quietly—until the thumping, clapping sounds of Serena's running boots came rushing under the overpass and clattered across the stone paths of the paved Fantasy Faire pavilion. Mechanically, the eyelids on Figaro shot up, and his eyes darted back towards the ground where Serena was standing, then narrowed. Shutting his eyes for only a moment, Figaro took a long yawn, his little mechanical jaw sliding down to let out a squeaking, meowing sound before he lowered his head and readied himself to sleep some more. Then, a high, gentle chirping squeaked from a bird just beside him. A brassy, classical birdcage had been set on the windowsill, and a mechanical blue bird chirped gently and watched Figaro—until Figaro raised his head and meowed, pawing in defiance at it, ready to return to his sleep.
Serena reached the center of the pavilion, reaching a tall statue of a tower with a crooked, pointed roof and a figure of Rapunzel leaning out of the window, her infinitely long hair reaching down and swirling the tower. At the base of the tower, she sat herself down on the steps of it, taking a breath and letting herself relax. Her knees pressed together and her arms wrapped around them, thinking to herself silently.
As Serena's head turned to look around the pavilion, she listened through the gentle sounds of conversation that surrounded her, mixed in with the bright and gallivanting sound of Disney's most popular fantasy themes. It took her a moment, but she picked out the distinct sound of Bonnie's voice at the end of the space. When she turned her head, her eyes widened in terror at what could possibly be transpiring.
"You sure are a very pretty Snow White. You could almost pass for the real thing! Are you sure you're not her?"
"Of course I'm cute! That's why I have to meet her!" Bonnie pouted, sounding annoyed with the lady.
An ice cream cart, decked out with all the traditional Fantasyland patterns on its mint-green body, sat beneath an umbrella, with a register parked on one end and a topiary of various faux ice cream options towering up a small post on the other. A female cast member, decked out in typical Fantasyland wear with an equally mint-green tunic vest over a puffy, loose, oversized shirt and short dark pants, stood behind the ice cream cart and seemed enthralled by Bonnie's Snow White costume—all while she prepared several different ice cream options from the open metal door of the ice cream cart in front of her.
Bonnie rocked back and forth anxiously on her dapper red shoes, the ends of her dress swaying gently in the wind beside her. Down at the front of the cart, Dedenne pawed at the surface of the cart and looked up at the ice cream treats in the cast member's hand, his drool dribbling onto the front of his costume.
Serena slowly got to her feet, looking on at the scene like there was something very, very wrong. She hurried along, realizing that the cast member was waiting for Bonnie to pay.
"Well, whenever Snow White just happens to show up, I'm sure you'll see her soon enough," the lady winked. "Now, that'll be—"
"Hold on," Bonnie interrupted, looking back when she heard Serena hurrying along. She gestured back to her, nodding over her shoulder, still somewhat annoyed with the cast member. "I need one more Mickey Mouse ice cream thingy for my friend here."
"Bonnie," Serena quickly said, somewhat annoyed, reaching for behind her to her backpack for her backpack to pull out her wallet. "You should've told me you wanted ice cream earlier—now isn't the time."
As Serena had finally found the small pouch inside the open backpack that housed her clutched wallet, Serena felt Bonnie's hand swatting away at her backpack, making Serena's head snap up in sudden, reflexive rage. She lowered her arms and the backpack in her clutches away, turning her head down towards Bonnie to look at her indignantly. When she did, she could see just what was in front of Bonnie, and she saw a wad of several dozen Disney Dollars clutched in her hand. Serena backed away, letting her wallet slide back into her bag, zipping it back up and setting it aside.
"It's my money, I'll buy as many of these as I want," Bonnie huffed. "I'm surprised you're not more grateful, especially since I'm buying you one…"
Serena swallowed gently, her eyes deeply confused as she watched the scene unfold. Though she seemed embarrassed at the prospect of stepping over her bounds and seemingly taking advantage of Bonnie, she remembered where she was and that Bonnie was just being ridiculous. She narrowed her eyes in exasperation, sighing and folding her arms, looking away. "My mistake…"
The cast member produced three more of the ice cream treats—chocolate-dipped pops in the shape of Mickey Mouse—all on sticks that she clutched in a hand. She smiled, looking down at Bonnie, letting Bonnie reach up and snatch her and Dedenne's out of her hand.
"Now, I'd really really like to see Snow White," said Bonnie, looking somewhat coy as she dabbed her fingertip on her tongue and forked out several bills from the stack in her hand, "and I don't want to wait several hours in line. So, could you give me a little bit more of a specific time?" Bonnie said with a big, thin-lipped grin, handing up the bills to the cast member with a wink.
As Bonnie passed the Disney Dollars onto the cast member, Serena eyed the haphazard stack of bills inside her hand as they leafed in the wind, held out on the end an arm Bonnie had to get on her tip-toes to reach out with properly. By Serena's count, Bonnie had several more dollars in her hand that the ice cream treats cost, leading to a single, terrifying conclusion: Bonnie was bribing the lady. The half-annoyed, half-amused look on Serena's face was suddenly wiped away, her wide eyes and careful lips appearing when she realized that Bonnie wasn't just goofing around as usual.
Serena swatted out at where Bonnie's arm was reaching. She then grabbed her by the shoulder, yanking her back and giving her a stern look. She then reached for where Bonnie clutched her Disney Dollars close to her chest, yanking at them and doing her best to confiscate them.
"Bonnie, what's gotten into you?" Serena huffed. Her face was mothering, her voice tensed when she felt Bonnie pulling back and resisting her grip on the Disney Dollars.
Bonnie gritted her teeth, yanking back on the dollars—eyeing the ice cream treats in her hand as she tightened her grip on them to not accidentally dump them all over the path. "What's gotten into me? Serena, what the heck? Stop it!"
Managing to pull herself and her dollars free from Serena, Bonnie hopped and narrowly stumbled back, a hand catching herself on the side of the ice cream cart when Dedenne showed up by her side and down underneath where Bonnie should've planted a leg. She looked disheveled for a moment, a blond lock of hair coming out of order on her head and fraying upward, the puffy shoulders on her Snow White dress sitting wrong with a naked shoulder out and the puffy fabric section jammed up underneath her chin. Bonnie pouted, her face red with indignance, her bright eyes narrowed in anger as she straightened herself out and blew away the offending lock of hanging hair with an upward jet of breath from her pursed lips.
As she straightened out her shoulder with the hand that clutched the dollars, Bonnie then felt a hand on her shoulder from Serena, making her turn her head and look back at where Serena was. She had squatted down beside her, comfortingly like a big sister, quickly fixing the sleeves on her shoulder and smoothing back her hair—all to which Bonnie fumed silently and replayed the last few seconds in her head, her hands in fists by her side as she stood there on the path in tense form.
"Bonnie…" Serena began, seeming like she was on the verge of apologizing—just before her tone turned to be more confrontational, more scolding and educating. Her grip became intense as she, squatting beside Bonnie, turned her to face her and see the wrinkled expression on her face. "Bonnie listen, you can't just—grrkkk!"
Bonnie rammed one of the Mickey Mouse ice cream treats into Serena's mouth, ears and all, splitting Serena's mouth open wide as she took it between her teeth. As Serena choked, her lips suddenly stretched to duck bill proportions as she could barely fit the round apex of the Mickey Mouse head in her mouth, Bonnie felt Serena's hands relinquish on her shoulders as she reached for the wooden popsicle stick that hung out of her mouth. With a wink, Bonnie handed down the remaining ice cream treat to Dedenne, then hopped up back to the front of the ice cream cart with all of her Disney Dollars in hand—bribe included.
The cast member behind the cart had looked on at the scene, holding back her laughter. Serena, who had been squatted down beside Bonnie had suddenly lost her balance and was sprawled out on her back on the path beneath her, her arms reaching clumsily around her for some kind of support and to find the popsicle stick on the ice cream treat wedged in her mouth—somehow unable to decide between doing both. Muffled groans of protest and terror came from Serena as she shook her head and sputtered out incoherent curses—a sight that broke the cast member and made her laugh.
"Aheheh… Oh goodness…" the cast member laughed, wiping away a tear from her eye with the heel of her hand. "Your friend isn't lactose intolerant, is she?"
"No," Bonnie grinned, her head barely poking above the edge of the cart as she wielded her dollars, fishing them up towards the cast member. "Just boring."
The cast member took the fistful of dollars from Bonnie, hitting a key on the register and popping open the cash drawer. She quickly counted and separated the dozen or so bills from the stack, then fished out the ones that Bonnie had given as 'incentive', setting them back on the counter as she slipped the real amount into the register.
As the drawer slammed shut and the receipt printed from the top of the register, Bonnie's face that she was barely able to keep above the edge of the ice cream cart silently lost its playful expression. The bribe Disney Dollars were still on the counter, and as the receipt finally printed and the cast member tore it free, she took the Disney Dollars off the counter and folded the receipt over them, handing it to Bonnie.
"Receipt and change," the lady smiled, offering it back to Bonnie.
Reaching up, hesitantly, Bonnie took the receipt and cash back, holding it in her hand and over the counter for a moment like the lady might possibly take it back. She looked between the cash in hand and back at the lady, meeting with her placid smile and waiting eyes. Bonnie looked more confused than anything, and even a little indignant—all that fuss, all that work of fending off Serena and talking smooth, and nothing to come of it. She frowned, taking the dollars back and putting them back in a pouch that had been sewn into the front of her dress.
"Well, since you asked so nicely…" the lady smiled, fidgeting with the steel door on the top of the ice cream cart before lifting it and reaching in, outside of Bonnie's vision—reminding Bonnie that she still had paid for one more ice cream treat. "I heard from a little Pidgey that Snow White will be at the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle at about three o'clock—and I know for a fact that that Pidgey hangs out with Snow White fairly often, and helps do the dishes."
Bonnie was staring ahead, already plotting out what to do with that little sliver of information, her eyes aglow with potential as she kept replaying the words in her head. She only left her daydream when the hazy reflection in front of her on the silvery steel door of the ice cream cart dropped down and sealed like a fridge-like thunk, the cast member wielding another ice cream treat in her hand and offering it out in front of Bonnie's face. Though she was still somewhat stunned at having successfully gotten the information out of her, Bonnie looked up for a moment with bright, excited and childlike eyes. She smiled a thankful smile, reaching out and taking the bottom end of the stick from the cast member's hand taking it with her.
"Lady, you've been far too helpful," Bonnie said, putting on her savvy, smooth-talking grin again.
"I'm only telling you because I know you'll help your friend over there get her pop out of her mouth, right?" the cast member said, her tone firmer than Bonnie had heard before.
Bonnie nodded. "Yes ma'am!"
"And…" The cast member leaned back, lifting an arm that had been hidden out of Bonnie's sight beneath the edge of the ice cream cart and revealing another, Mickey Mouse shaped, chocolate-dipped ice cream treat on a popsicle stick—one that Bonnie hadn't paid for. She then reached out with a knowing smile, offering it to Bonnie. "…you'll replace the ruined pop with a new one, right?"
"Yes ma'am!"
Serena still had melty chocolate smeared around her lips, even as she tried to clean them off with one of many dozen napkins in her hand. She checked the selfie camera on her Pokedex, making sure that she had completely cleared it once again before closing the pink clamshell on the device and letting it slip in the topmost pouch of her bag, closing it and settling the bag back where it sat on the ground between her feet. She then sat herself back up in the bench, coming to slouch against the lacquered wooden boards that braced the backside of it. Her arms folded and fell into her lap, somewhat defeatedly, as she took a sigh and tossed the wadded up napkin that remained in her hand over towards an open, waiting trash bin beside the bench.
"Are you gonna eat this, Serena?"
By her side, Bonnie had finished slurping up the milky, dark chocolate that remained on the popsicle stick in her hand. In the other hand, she still wielded the ice cream treat she had been given for Serena, keeping it up and just out of reach of Dedenne—who had the only remains of his ice cream smeared all around his tiny maw.
Serena sighed, not even bothering to look over. She had thought about it for a moment, even imagining herself eating one, but then she remembered wedging the other ice cream treat out of her mouth. The jarring image of Bonnie standing over her, putting a foot on her chest and grabbing the ice cream treat by the stick and pulling it out with both hands stayed with her. She couldn't stomach remembering the 'after', where she had belched up the rest onto a shelf of neatly manicured garden at the end of a wall along a pathway.
"It's all yours…" Serena sighed. "I can't imagine why Clemont was so giddy to dump you on me."
"Just remember Serena, make the most of it," Bonnie said between bites. She quickly devoured half of the ice cream treat in only a few moments of Serena giving her permission—even making Serena wonder if she had even waited for permission when she saw how much progress she had made out of the corner of her eye. As Bonnie offered the other half of the chomped-into Mickey Mouse treat down to Dedenne, she grabbed the lone remaining napkin of the former large stack Serena had all but used up and cleaned herself.
Serena's gaze withered as she looked out at the Fantasyland skyline, doing her best to think about literally anything else.
"You're stuck with me, alright? So let's have some fun," Bonnie said, without a thought to Serena. "You can't just leave me."
Sections of chained-off queue looped around a spot in the central back end of Fantasyland, all around one large circular ride: Dumbo the Flying Elephant. All around a central, blossoming onion-like structure of bronzed metal work and steampunk-style gears were large fiberglass Dumbo elephants, all with pastel-colored saddles on them and large, wing-like ears. Attached on large, red metal arms and suspended over a watery pool, they had just been loaded with guests and the doors on the side of them had just been shut. A cast member closed the chain on the gate, stepping back under his umbrella and putting himself behind the large control console of the ride.
Bonnie's whole body was pressed to the gate in front of her as she reached with a skinny arm to deposit the popsicle sticks that had once held the Mickey Mouse ice cream treats into a waste basket that stood just beside the cast member at his console. With precision, Bonnie shutting an eye to focus her aim and putting her tongue out between her lips for good measure, she flicked the trash out and sent it sailing into the open top of the container, getting it to fall in perfectly. Down beside her, Dedenne cheered, leaping up and down.
Serena and Bonnie were close to the entrance, only a few people back in line. Serena was standing, absentmindedly, watching the ride while listening to the gentle organ music that one might find in a circus. Though Bonnie's antics were happening just below her, she paid no mind and ignored them mostly. Thinking of Bonnie and where they were and how they had gotten there and the ice cream and the fight with Jack Sparrow—all of it made Serena annoyed, and the only way she knew to not get annoyed was to not think about it at all. She ignored it, instead focusing on the busy scenery ahead of her and lost herself in it.
As Bonnie slipped her arm back and stepped away from the fence, she had a furrowed expression on her brow. Even as she backed away, she still stared at the ride as the Dumbo elephants began to move, spinning and gently taking off the water.
"Serena… What's wrong with all the Donphan in that ride? They look sorta pudgy or something."
"They're supposed to be elephants, like the original cartoon," explained Serena, sounding placid and mechanical, doing nothing to hide her uninterest. "Elephants are a mythological creature that come from a place far south of Kalos. They used to be in stories and other myths, and that's what they used."
"But… Why not use Donphan? Couldn't they incorporate it so it's a little more realistic?"
Serena ignored Bonnie's question. Instead, she folded her arms, looking up and away, staring up at the ride as the shadows of passing, flying Dumbo overhead crossed over them.
A long silence passed between the two of them—long enough for the cast member eventually to announce that the ride was over, and for the arms that held the flying Dumbo to lower down until the stumpy, reaching feet of the elephants grazed the water beneath them and came to a complete stop. All of the doors were opened by a different cast member as she raced around to get up to the doors on the sides of the elephants and open them one at a time, speedwalking around exiting crowds of people. Soon enough, the chain that had held back the front of the line had been relinquished, and the front of the line—including Bonnie and Serena—were led out onto the wide curved area and allowed to choose whatever Dumbo they wanted.
Serena walked out onto the pathway that circled the open Dumbo elephants casually, fully expecting Bonnie to race up from behind Serena and choose whatever color of Dumbo she was feeling at that moment. When she didn't, and Serena was alone on the path, she looked back to see where Bonnie had gone—even momentarily suspecting that something was wrong. To her surprise, when she looked back, Bonnie was following just as casually behind and with as little interest as Serena had. It made Serena pause, stopping her walk and letting the flow of people walk behind her—and inadvertently letting Bonnie walk ahead, Serena's head turning and tracking, watching as Bonnie walked ahead of her without a thought of her.
Standing there did Serena no good, and she quickly hurried along the path to reach and catch up with Bonnie, watching as Bonnie had already picked out a Dumbo to ride in. Once she had reached it, she hesitated outside of it—seeing out of the corner of her eye that the loading cast member was coming around again to secure the doors on it, and that Serena had a few moments. Still, she was stopped silent when she saw the expression on Bonnie's face—she was angry, annoyed, her lips in a pout and her arms folded, her leg bouncing on a tapping foot as she waited for the ride to start and get itself over with.
Deeply, deeply confused, Serena slipped into the Dumbo and sat herself down on the worn, fiberglass bench, the knees of her long legs barely above the front opening of the Dumbo seat. Her boot soles thumped on the bottom of the floor, sending a shimmy through the suspended elephant and making an unusually hollow sound. Her hips were pressed up against Bonnie's, and though she saw that Dedenne was still very excited to ride the ride, she couldn't bring herself to look over at Bonnie and see what was happening.
"...hands, arms, feet and legs, inside—remember to watch your kids, and Pokemon!" Timothy Q. Mouse, the host of the ride, lisped as he gave the pre-flight announcements. "To make Dumbo fly higher, just use the magic lever in front of you!"
"Bonnie, what's wrong?" Serena asked, finally looking down at where Bonnie was by her side. Though she was a little more impatient than she meant, she said it without an ounce of skepticism, genuinely worried for Bonnie. She looked on, watching Bonnie fidget in the seat beside her, coming up with an answer.
Finally, Bonnie turned her eyes up to Serena, defiantly. Her nose wrinkled with childish, impotent rage.
"I know I'm not Ash, alright?" said Bonnie, getting the words out quickly like she was ripping a bandage off.
Serena blinked. For all the things she thought it could have been, she hadn't really expected this. Was it really that obvious that she'd rather be hanging out with Ash? She hadn't really brought it up or even talked about it with Bonnie. She thought she had tried to make the best of that decision. At the end of the day, it really had driven all of her decisions up until that point. Her eyes lightened, looking sympathetic, her tense posture in the small—yet sizable—Dumbo elephant ride car relaxed a bit as she leaned an arm over the side.
Then again, why was it Serena's fault? Serena hadn't told Bonnie to get ice cream. It wasn't Serena's fault that she had a Mickey Mouse treat rammed into her mouth, or that she had spat it back out in chunks all over a neatly-trimmed topiary. After all, Serena was the one who had been practically babysitting Bonnie ever since they had left New Orleans Square. There hadn't been a moment in Fantasyland that wasn't an absolute disaster. Serena narrowed her eyes, looking deeply annoyed, her face darkening as each poisonous thought blossomed in her brain.
"You don't think I know that already?" Serena shot back, turning to Bonnie, catching her off-guard.
Bonnie hadn't expected Serena to come back with anything—in fact, she had been banking on Serena feeling bad for Bonnie. It put her on the defensive, sitting up a little more on the Dumbo bench. "Maybe if you stopped—arrrgggh—if you stopped treating me like I'm supposed to be all 'yes milady' and 'whatever Serena wants', all 'I'm sensitive to whatever Serena feels, I'm such a dreamboat', then maybe we could actually have some fun!"
"Fun? Is that what you think this is? Fun?"
Just then, the Dumbo they were sitting in plunged forward, dropping for a moment before slowly raising back up and slowly accelerating. A hydraulic arm kept them suspended above the water, humming audibly as the arm slowly lifted them into the air and sent them flying around in a gentle arc. Dumbo reached his apex, wavering in air as they came around and seemingly flew over the gathered crowds in the queue line in front of them, then glided around back towards an open vista of the park—the blue, pink and purple tent roof of the King Arthur Carousel as its gleaming golden inner workings turned beneath it, the stony outer structure of Sleeping Beauty Castle's lower show buildings for rides like Pinocchio's Daring Journey and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, all the way up to the bright snowy side of the Matterhorn.
The Dumbo suddenly dropped, then flew back up, wavering frantically in-air. Though Serena panicked for a moment, wondering if they were about to hurtle down into the ground, she looked in front of the inner car of the Dumbo ride and watched as Dedenne wavered the 'magic lever', raising it up and down to raise and lower Dumbo. Though Serena reached for the sides of the inner car, holding herself to gain some sense of stability and not throw up, she watched as Bonnie then grabbed for Dedenne and yanked him back into her lap, his arms still reaching for the linger black joystick.
"Of course it's supposed to be fun—listen to yourself!" Bonnie protested, holding down the squirming Dedenne to keep him from getting free or inadvertently launching himself over the side. The whipping wind of the quick-turning ride made Bonnie's perfectly postured hair whip around across her forehead, muffling her voice gently and intensifying the annoyed look on her face.
As the wind picked up, the Dumbo reaching higher into the sky, Serena reached to keep her hat on. It didn't distract her enough from forgetting what Bonnie had said—in fact, she almost wished she could. The words were the only think she could think of at the moment, and she couldn't shake them from her subconscious no matter how hard she tried.
"Serena, you chose not to go with Ash. You chose."
"What was I supposed to do?" Serena shot back at Bonnie, her voice at a shrill shout above the shrill wind.
Bonnie's eyes went wide with shock when she heard Serena say the startling words. Her anger resolving and taking deeper root in her, she then sat herself back down, thumping against the fiberglass bench and making the Dumbo drop for only a moment, just as the arm slowly raised the both of them back up as they went around for another flying pass. She folded her arms tightly, keeping Dedenne in her lap and turning her head away.
The break in the conversation bothered Serena a lot—it seemed to stop up some part of Serena's consciousness, making her fidget in her seat. Her arms tried a dozen different positions from where she was sitting in her side of the Dumbo, from resting it on the outside to tucking them neatly in her lap and safe inside the inner car. Finally she sat herself up, looking at Bonnie in defiance of her silence.
"Bonnie—are you listening?"
"I'm listening, I'm just not talking—you told me to shut up, remember?" Bonnie spat out, refusing to look at Serena.
A deep, angry snort left Serena's nostrils as she paced herself. As she thought to herself, she felt the Dumbo slowly begin to descend—her eyes first darting to the joystick in the center of the front inner car to see that Dedenne hadn't somehow gotten loose, then seeing that it wasn't the joystick or 'magic lever' that was lowering them. The ride was ending, and the Dumbo they sat in was on a descending trajectory towards the pool of water in the the very bottom of the ride concourse.
"Fine Bonnie, you want to be treated like an adult?"
Bonnie wouldn't look up. She ignored Serena.
The ride slowed to a halt, and Bonnie was staring ahead of the Dumbo they sat in, looking just past the nose of it and looking at the limp tail that had been sculpted onto the Dumbo in front of them. A cast member was coming around on the paved concourse, going to each of the Dumbo vehicles and undoing the doors on them—stopped up a few Dumbo cars ahead of them as she wrestled with someone's seatbelt for a moment.
Serena was watching Bonnie, waiting for her to look up and look back at her, waiting for her to acknowledge the threat that she had laid out. When Bonnie finally looked up and back at her, it was to look at her once again in defiance—she was testing Serena, waiting for her to make her threat real.
"Then..." Serena began, finally gathering the courage to say it: "Then you're on your own!"