The Long Ride Closed

Perhaps Kenna really didn't understand what was weird and what was normal in social interactions, but it was a bit odd that Celeste said she was from Earth, right? She wasn't sure whether to laugh or edge away slowly. The girl didn't seem like she was joking... and Niki took the answer in perfect stride, while Chaleur looked as if she'd just been told that aliens walk amongst us. After a moment's thought, Kenna decided it was a perfectly valid answer. After all, they were all from Earth... right?

Kenna grinned when Celeste told her that her name was appropriate for her hair. Her mum had always told her that she was named for having a fiery inner strength, not for her hair color. But Kenna privately agreed with Celeste that it was very fitting for her hair, nonetheless.

When they turned to discussing wands, Kenna eagerly pulled her own out and admired it. "Mine's unicorn hair and mayhaw wood. Mr. Ollivander said it's 'perfect for wizards with hidden talents', whatever that means." In fact, since that day Kenna had often wondered what 'hidden talents' she might possess, if any. Maybe the wand had chosen wrong... She looked down at it a bit forlornly, hoping it would give her some sign that it was right about her and that she did have some special talents. But it just sat there on her lap, unmoving. Kenna scowled at it.

Did... did Celeste just say she hadn't the slightest 'flamingo' what it meant? Kenna thought back over the sentence to try to work it out, her brow furrowing in confusion. Flamingo... no, she couldn't have misheard 'idea' for 'flamingo', that was too far a leap. Was it one of those rhyming slangs that Kenna could never figure out? Flamingo... dingo... Ringo... star? No, nothing made any sense. Finally, exploding with curiosity, Kenna resorted to asking. "What do you mean by 'the slightest flamingo'?" she asked, leaning forward to better see Celeste. "Is it some new slang? I haven't heard it before. It sounds fun!"

It only seemed to get weirder from there. Next Celeste pulled sand out of her pocket, and - even worse! - offered it as a snack! "Urgh, no thanks!" said Kenna impulsively, blithely unaware of how insulting she might be. "Do you really eat sand? That sounds awful! Doesn't it make you choke?"

Fortunately, at that moment the real snacks trolley arrived. Kenna's appetite was almost put off by the idea of eating sand, but then she remembered that Mum had said the trolley sold pumpkin pasties. She jumped up and, after the other girls had ordered, said, "Two pumpkin pasties please! Oh and a Chocolate Frog." Kenna rummaged for the right coins in her pockets, and then noticed that Chaleur was standing staring at the cart like it had sprouted wings. "Don't know what to get?" she asked. "Meself I like the pumpkin pasties. What kinds of sweets do you like? I bet there's something similar."

Helena blinked, looking over at the girl eating sand. Perhaps it was some sort of wizard world candy, only designed to look like sand? She knew that there were plenty of candies like that in the muggle world, designed to look like rocks, or coins, or even slime, but sand was new to her. Regardless, she just kept her comments to herself.

When the trolley lady came past, and the others began to order snacks, Helena became curious. She hadn't had anything that the trolley offered, so it was all uncharted territory. A part of her wanted to order one of everything, and spend the rest of the ride tasting her way through it all. She decided she'd be much better off just choosing one thing, seeing how she didn't have the money for it, and it'd make her look considerably greedy.

As the others ordered, she glanced over the options available. She wanted to choose something outlandish, something that she couldn't get elsewhere. But then her eyes landed on a pack of Bernie Botts Every Flavour Beans. She loved jelly beans. They were practically her favourite snack. So she couldn't help herself from ordering a pack.

To her horror, the first bean she placed in her mouth tasted god awful, much like how rotten eggs smelled. She had to fight not to spit it out then and there, a disgusted grimace appearing on her face.

"Why would they sell jelly beans that taste of rotten eggs?!" She cursed under her breath.

Celeste raised a slightly surprised eyebrow at the unanimous rejections of the others. "Whatever draws your curtains," she said, dropping it back into her pocket. "I'll eat it later."

Just then, the trolley lady came ambling past them, pushing the snack-laden trolley with an efficiency that quite belied her age. Celeste declined politely— "I have salami and raisins, thank you."—and watched with some amusement as Chaleur dithered over the variety of strange sweets. Niki and Kenna appeared to already have some knowledge of wizarding candy, ordering Chocolate Frogs and Pumpkin Pasties with the easy familiarity of experience. Helena had to have some considerable daring, in Celeste's opinion, to get the Every Flavour Beans. She struggled to stifle her mirthful grin as the blonde girl screwed up her face in revulsion, muttering about the stupidity of selling sulfur-flavoured jelly beans.

"Ooh. Do you mind?" Without waiting for a response, Celeste swooped forward and plucked a brownish-yellow jelly bean, speckled with black, from the pack and popped it into her mouth. She chewed.

"I knew it!" she said triumphantly. "Parchment and ink. I've eaten enough of it to tell."

With the arrival of the food trolley and the subsequent clamour for snacks, as well as the whole tasting of jelly beans, Celeste had nearly forgotten about Kenna's curiosity regarding her speech and habits. She turned to her, cleared her throat, and said, "I appreciate your appreciation for my choice of words. And by 'slightest flamingo' I mean I don't have a clue."

She did not elaborate on why she had replaced it with a type of wading bird, a trait that would come to define her in her later years. ("Did she just call me an unbuttered tennis racket? What does that even mean?")

"And yes, I eat sand," she added. "Kind of. I turn it to glass when I'm hungry."

Which, as far as she was concerned, answered the question fully. (It did not.)

"Thank you," she thanked the woman and handed her some coins, grabbing her chocolate frog then sitting back down. Everyone else ordered their treats, Kenna buying a few things, which made sense to Niki, she must’ve known a lot about these treats, and Helena buying a pack of jellybeans. Niki couldn’t quite remember, but she did recall her mother telling her about these special jellybeans that.. what was it? Grew? Came to life? No, that wasn’t it.

She opened her chocolate frog, pulling out the card. "Oo, cool! You collect these right? My mum keeps some of my dad’s old ones in the attic,” she read the card for a second, before turning to a Helena, who had looked disgusted after eating a jellybean. "Oh! Those are the jellybeans that come in all flavors right? Wow, I guess they really meant all flavors," she couldn’t help but giggle.

Celeste leaned over a popped one of the jellybeans into her mouth, triumphantly identifying it as parchment and ink. Every flavor, huh? Niki didn’t expect it to get that literal. However, Celeste seemed to have enjoyed it. She thought for a second. She used to eat paper when she was younger, in her first years of school. She remembered it not tasting that bad but.. enjoyable? Not really.

"How come you don’t choke on it?" Niki asked, a bit shocked. She was prepared for weird things but not really eating glass. "You can’t really chew sand, or glass. Is it even healthy?" Her gaze shifted to her hands, still holding the unopened chocolate frog. "Oh," she said out loud, before opening it. Suddenly, a frog hopped out. A real, living one. Well, not really. It was still chocolate after all, but it must’ve been enchanted some how. An enchantment that made it move lively, the exact movements of a real frog. Niki almost didn’t want to eat it. It hopped from one of her hands to another, before springing to life and jumping onto the window. "Oh!"

Helena blinked in her confusion. She would have offered a bean or two, if she had asked politely, rather than just snatching one away as she pleased! 'Did your parents not raise you better?' she found herself privately thinking, before immediately snuffing out said thought. She dared not vocalise her question, she'd rather not make enemies so very early on. Instead she turned her attention to her box of beans.

"When they say every flavour, they really do mean any flavour. I don't see why someone would buy a box of beans, risking rotten eggs in order to get... I don't know, peaches? Cherry flavour? Im not sure what the other flavours are" Helena thought idly aloud, before reaching into the box and pulling out a bean, one that was coloured two different shades of brown. Maybe it was something chocolate. She didn't want to think of the alternative. Hesitantly, she put the bean in her mouth, before her eyes shot wide open in surprise, then closed in her ecstacy. "Mmm, it tastes just like an eclair! I can almost taste the cream filling! Okay, now I understand the appeal!"

She began to greedily pull bean after bean, joyfully, and in many cases woefully, declaring the flavour. Spaghetti. Bubblegum. Something that tasted of how freshly cut grass smelled. Honeycomb. Once she hit an earwax bean, she knew it was time to stop.

"A-anyone want one?" She coughed through her disgust "we could make a game of it! If you get an awful flavour, you're out, last person standing wins?"

... She really wanted to make friends.

Nikita was right behind Chaleur turning down the sand, and popping up behind her at the snack trolley. She heard Kenna speaking with Celeste back in the cart. "One Chocolate Frog please!" Nikita announced, fishing in her pockets for money to pay the woman. Chaleur's eyed the woman and she grabbed a Chocolate Frog from the cart. She had heard of chocolate bunnies before, and other animals, she supposed, why not a frog? She as going to have to learn that things are done a little differently around here. "Are they good?" Chaleur asked Nikita curiously.

Then Kenna had arrived, asking for a frog and pumpkin pasties. All of which was starting to look a little appetizing. She hadn't eaten breakfast this morning, and now she felt the low rumble in her stomach. It was then that Kenna spoke to her. "Don't you know what to get?"

Chaleur looked at her, trying not to look like a deer in the headlights. She shook her head no. "I've never seen any of these sweets before. I do like gummies, and honestly, those pumpkin pasties don't look bad."

After a few more seconds of squinting until something called out to her, Chaleur spoke. "I'll take a pumpkin pasty and two licorice candies." She pulled her money from her bag and handed it to the woman, who in turn traded the candy with her.

Then Helena decided to join them. She bought a small box of what looked to be Jelly beans. She popped one in her mouth before her face contorted in disgust. "Why would they sell jelly beans that taste of rotten eggs?!" Rotten eggs? What in the world?

Celeste slithered up next to Helena and tried one for herself. "Parchment and ink. I've eaten enough of it to tell."

Chaleur was baffled, she laughed at the absurdity of it. "What kind of jelly beans are those?" She got closer to the girl to get a better look at the box. Bertie Botts Every Flavored Bean, and they must really have meant that.

The girls returned to the compartment soon after their shopping was done. Chaleur looked out the window. The sun was high in the sky, and the fields were endless green, but in the distance she could see a few darker patches of trees. Her attention was drawn back to Nikita, who was opening up her chocolate frog. There was a card inside of her box for collecting. That was something she was more used to. Card games. She knew card games.

Helena offered the group a bean. Chaleur shook her no squinting at the box a bit. "No, thank you. I'd rather not try my luck today." She was not about to go through the train ride with the taste of parchment and ink in her mouth, or whatever else may have been hiding in the box, unknown and probably awful.

It was then that the frog became animated then, suddenly full of life and movement. Chaleur watched in amazement as the frog hopped around. It truly looked real. It leaped to the window and stuck onto the glass. "How did it do that? How is it moving." She was pretty sure she was panicking, but she had to reel it in. There was a rogue chocolate frog next to her face, and she was trying very hard to cope.

Truth be told, Kenna was beginning to be a little worried about Celeste's health. Eating sand AND glass? She was lucky she hadn't shredded her insides to bits... She was sure her mum would disapprove. Then again, she did have a fun vocabulary, with her flamingos and curtain-drawing. Maybe all the glass-eating made her words more creative?

Kenna giggled at Helena and Celeste's reactions to the Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. "That's the fun of it, you never know what you'll get!" She grinned as Helena got a taste of an eclair bean, and then went wild with the rest of the bag. The good flavors really were excellent. It was incredible how they made a tiny candy taste exactly like so many things. Of course, she could understand Chaleur's trepidation. The nasty ones tasted just as real as the good ones. But Kenna liked a little risk in life.

"Ooh yes please," Kenna said, accepting the offered bag and pulling out a bean of her own. "That sounds like a fun game. We can also guess what we'll get!" She examined the bean she had selected closely. It was sort of marbled deep red and beige. "Hmm... it could be chips and ketchup? Hopefully not something with blood..." She cringed at the thought, but tossed the bean in her mouth nonetheless. "Mmm! Jam doughnut!" she said with a grin.

Kenna had to giggle at Chaleur's reaction to the Chocolate Frog. She reached over to pluck the frog off the window and handed it back to Niki. "It's just a short enchantment, it goes back to normal chocolate after a minute. What card did you get, Niki?"

Helena chuckled out at Kenna's response.

"Surely they wouldn't put blood flavoured beans in there... right?" She mused, her confidence fading mid sentence. Before she tried her first bean, she also doubted that they would've put in rotten egg flavours, or parchment and ink, and yet, here they were. Shaking off the thought, she pulled another bean, and hesitantly put it into her mouth, somewhat regretting her purchase. Maybe if she had just bought the cauldron cakes, or whatever, she wouldn't be as nervous. Regardless, she took a moment to chew, really letting the flavour flow through her mouth.

"... Is... is this spaghetti?" Helena spoke up, beyond confused "I think it is! I can taste the sauce, and the meatballs and everything! It's... not entirely unpleasant, but... seriously, spaghetti?!"

She took a moment to swallow the bean, the spaghetti flavouring lingering in her mouth for a moment or two longer, before she continued.

"I guess I should stop questioning the logic behind the bean flavours, huh? What sense does it make to have a bean flavoured with spaghetti? Well, just as much sense as any other flavour, apparently" She chuckled out, shaking her head in disbelief "God, magic is amazing. I'm going to love it at Hogwarts, I really will!"

She turned her attention to the window, watching the scenery pass by, as she daydreamed about all the things she'd do when they finally arrived.