Welcome to Gaia! ::

Emily sat at the table, staring down at the mound of foam, glue, acrylic paint, and glitter that had been waiting for them. Deep Sea Discoveries class at the community college had turned out to be a lot less science-based and a lot more arts and crafts than she'd been expecting. On one hand, she was terrible at science things despite her years as acting assistant to Miss Mindy's experiments. Of course, Miss Mindy had gone onto MIT and she had dropped out after one year at Northeastern. So...yes, science bad.

But glitter worse.

Glancing up, she looked at the rest of her project group. One was perpetually sleeping in class, and she felt it would be rude to wake him up. The other was always either on their phone all the time or checking their teeth in mirrors, and she had theories about this. Turning to the last member present, Emily quietly asked Strix, "Do you think the glitter is required for an adequate diorama of our Sea of Dreams?"

"They're probably microplastics of some kind," Emily agreed softly before sliding the glitter containers into a plastic bag. Which she then placed inside another plastic bag. As she drew a hazard symbol on it with a sharpie, she continued, "I hope you all finished your homework over the weekend? It'll help us greatly to design our Communal Sea of Dreams if we have visual guides to go off of."

She got up to carefully drop the glitter baggie into the garbage, and when she came back, one group member was still napping and the other was checking her molars. Okay. Emily pulled out her own homework and held it up to Strix.



"In my Sea of Dreams I meet a giant octopus with a crown. He is the Deep King. We begin trade negotiations with mutual respect and a desire for peaceful alliance. This is my seahorse mount. In the background is a castle, which he asks me to live in, but first I must pass the Deep Princess's three challenges. Only, unbeknownst to us all," her finger taps on the upper corner of the paper, "...the Sorceress of Submergia has gathered her army and is ready to strike."

Maybe the instructor hadn't meant a sea of their literal dreams. In fact Emily had originally drawn up a very inspirational sea-themed journey toward important goals and wellness, but then she'd had a very vivid, very cool dream about the sea and wanted to talk about it.

"It does suck," Emily readily agreed. "Submergia played us for fools." Giving the memory a little huff of frustration, she closed her eyes and cleared it out of her mood. No need to let past failures in dreams stop new failures in class!


"Maybe we shouldn't use my Sea of Dreams as a template." Low conversations took place around them, accompanied by the sounds of construction paper being cut and the rising scent of glue.

"What does your Sea of Dreams look like, Strix?" Noticing that they hadn't brought out any drawing or notes about it, she asked, apparently ready to play twenty questions, "Is it the color blue?"

At the same time, a fight broke out at a nearby table. Tooth Girl smoothly lifted her phone to record it.

"So, your Sea of Dreams is blue." Pulling out a small pocket notebook, Emily ignored the sass and solemnly began taking notes on the group's collective Sea of Dreams. After a moment of thought, she added, "It can symbolize the tears of the earth, crying because of microplastics and the death of whales."



"Tooth Girl, does your Sea of Dreams also include teeth?" A long pause as Tooth Girl kept filming the fight that had escalated to glue being flung. "Silence means yes."



"Strix," she turned her attention back to them and asked, "if you could be any animal, real or imaginary, what would it be?" Emily was determined to make this project work.

Beaming at Strix like they had just won Jeopardy, Emily enthused, "Albatross is very cool. "



"...would you be flying free?" Emily's face scrunched up in thought for a moment, "Are they good luck or bad luck...?" Was it both?

She decided to also add an animal for herself.



"Sleepy Pete, you're a crab."



In the background, the fight had finally escalated to O'Fortuna levels of action, and as it reached it's climax...

Glitter.

In the air.

Everywhere.

Emily froze as violence quietly filled every pore of her being.

Emily clutched the edge of the table, face stony and eyes filled with murder. The table lifted slightly but the movement paused once she noticed Strix, magically already under there. Exhaling, she blinked, the murder receded and she gently let the table down. Then inhaled and picked up a chair beside her.

Sleepy Pete was still in said chair, but not for long. He also wasn't sleeping anymore. Eyes open and dazed, he lazily rolled and wiggle wormed his way under the table, picking up a bunch of glitter from the floor. It was mainly on one side, turning him into a particularly glamourous Two-Face.

In the background, some students were debating whether they should call the campus police or the police-police.

Tooth girl clearly didn't mind the glitter, though she did squat down nearby, and finally talked to her tablemates. "It's like...some kind of arts and crafts love triangle thing?" She snapped her gum and tilted her phone for a better angle.

Across the room, Emily was raising her chair ominously above a very beautiful diorama, full of whimsy and thoughtful detail. They'd clearly spent a lot of time and collective effort on it and it really just needed some finishing details to be turned in. It was a diorama that would definitely get 100% and probably some extra credit on top. Which honestly pissed her off almost as much as the glitter they'd gotten all over her.

"Consider your Sea of Dreams," she intoned, raising the chair and then bringing it down swiftly in reality but in painful slow motion for the offending group, "...dried up!"

Sleepy Pete, once again exposed, was hit by an errant pot of even more glitter. Tooth girl continued to narrate, "A and B were both interested in C and competing, but that made them start to pay more attention to each other and I overheard C ask B out for a pottery date? So A is just like, mad at both of them? And all the repression and just just burst out. On like, all of us. Though now the, like, beautiful creation that was the crystallization of their growing love has been destroyed."

Rest in pieces.

Emily was being tackled to the ground by half the offending table group, the other half falling to their knees, trying to gather up their Sea of Dreams. Someone had decided fire was the answer, and in another moment, the overhead sprinklers would start going off. A minute after that, campus police would charge into the classroom. Eventually, a firetruck would arrive.

School legend had it, that before this building was a community college, it was an elementary school. But before that, it was a long defunct clown college. Some say this land has been cursed by the ghosts of their nonsense and japery. Others say, Destiny City is just like this.

The Seas of Dreams diorama deadline was given a week extension. It did, at least, include an exceedingly detailed albatross.