milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Coral climbs up onto one of the barstools, with a thoughtful expression. It's been a bit of a strange playdate with her friends from school.

"Lady Bar, where's... Newsyland?"

Bar produces a globe, which she starts looking at to try and find countries beginning with a N. After five minutes she looks back at Bar.

"I don't see it. Is it near Legoland?"

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Enzo, who is once again noodling on his guitar, looks up.

"Coral?"

He looks around for Guppy.

Coral looks round.

"Hi Enzo."

Daddy isn't here.

Apparently not. They grow up so fast…

That, Enzo supposes, puts him on babysitting detail by default. He gets up and moves to the stool adjacent. "Whatcha doin'?"

She's particularly little for five too.

"I'm looking for Newsyland. My friends are moving and I want to know if we can still do playdates."

Enzo's brow furrows. "I don't think I've heard of that one."

Granted Earth geography is not his best subject, but he has at least looked at maps and lists of countries, and Newsyland is not ringing any bells. Perhaps it's where all the paparazzi come from.

Bar produces a napkin with 'New Zealand?' on it.

Coral picks it up and looks at it.

"N...e...w... new... I don't have my special glasses." she says, handing it to Enzo.

He reads it. "Oh, that makes sense! It's a New place," he informs Coral. "You know, like New York. New Zealand, two words."

"Ohh... do you know where it is?" Coral asks.

"No, but now we've got the right search term, we can find it. Unless you want to just tell us?" he asks Bar.

42° S, 174° E, says the next napkin.

Coral looks blankly at the numbers.

"I don't know what these mean." she says. "I wear special green glasses when I read."

"They mean which lines on the globe to look for," says Enzo, who has at least learnt that much over the years. "The first number is how far south of the equator, and the second number is how far east of… Hang on, let me find it…"

He traces his fingers over the globe for a while, and eventually locates the island grouping in question. "Here it is! Near Australia."

Coral looks at it.

"Oh." she says quietly. "I don't think we're going to get to do playdates."

"Yeah, that... would be tricky. Sorry."

There is a little bit of lip wobbling.

"Why would they want to go all the way over there?"

"I don't know. Maybe their parents have new jobs over there or something. But hey, even if you can't play together in person, maybe you can be pen pals."

"What's pen pals?" Coral asks.

"Long-distance friends. You can e-mail, send each other pictures, stuff like that."

"Oh. Maybe that will be okay." Coral says.

"It can be fun. You could even vidwindow—I mean video chat."

"Will it be night there?" Coral asks.

"Oh, yeah. I guess it would be. Maybe not the video chat, then."

"Until we are teenagers then one of us can stay up all night."

"Good plan. Although you might be able to catch each other when it's morning for one of you and evening for the other. You'll have to see, I guess."

"I guess that means I need to make a new friend." Coral says. "But I'm friends with most of my class really, well, I don't have lots of enemies like Fry does."

"Are Fry's enemies really enemy enemies, or do they just not get along?"