Welcome to Gaia! ::

Almere had already been up to space once, so maybe she shouldn’t have been getting all emotional again, but this place was a ballroom. They were two of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and Almere was having to reach up to wipe the starts of tears out of her eyes as her chest started to fill with even more happiness, and joy.

It was in terrible shape, but that was okay. There were lots of good stories that started out in ruins.

“Maybe, but think about how talented you’re going to be at the end of this,” she said, after she made sure she could breathe and wasn’t going to sound like a crybaby. “You’re going to be a DIY master and and ice skater, with your own castle!”

As long as they could clean a big enough place to sleep, that was enough for her.

“Let’s see. Can I help?”

“I’ll watch so many renovation videos with you,” said Almere. She already watched HGTV with her mom, and it was fun, even if it was mostly focused on the reveals and kind of glossed over the actual work part.

“And it’s gonna be hard to compare a place like this to Halle’s,” she said, even as she still looked around, her eyes wide and shining with delight. “His is so cozy, kind of cottagecore, except the forest version? Like something out of a Bob Ross painting. This is somewhere people used to have parties.

Looking at the places where the floor was scuffed, she could imagine people twirling all night in high-heeled shoes.

“Do you think there’s a place where people used to put trash when they lived here? Or are we going to have to carry it all home?”

“Oh, we should take our own trash back for sure,” said Almere. Plastics and candy wrappers in a place as perfect as this, even buried or something, made her feel weird about everything. “But if we do start building, or, I know at my wonder there’s a lot of broken things in the back rooms. If we take that back to Earth that’s just as bad, right?”

This was complicated beyond what Almere knew about. She liked the idea of protecting nature, but she didn’t know much about how to do it other than trying to recycle.

Instead, she looked at where Mechelen was cleaning. “That is very satisfying,” she said. “It looks like something out of a Swiffer commercial.”

Even if it was probably going to take most of the evening just to clean off enough of the floor that they could sleep.

“Oh, it’s so magical!” she said, lighting up like she had the moment they’d first stepped foot here. “Castle-y, like this, but the rooms are smaller, except I found a big kitchen. It really does make me feel like I’m Cinderella! There’s so much to explore. We can go there next time.”

Mechelen, she thought, would love to see it, and they could make more commercials for cleaning supplies. The dust there was awful.

“Anyway, I’ll take the floor diaper,” she said, but didn’t actually look all that grossed out when she reached over for the swiffer. “Just think. All of this is dirt that we’re not going to be sleeping in.”

Almere got caught up in the rhythm of mopping, and she even changed out the diaper pad, so she wasn’t looking at Mechelen for a minute or two. Then she heard her talking about a spider. She wasn’t really afraid of spiders, but she also wasn’t the biggest fan of them, especially in places where she knew that she was going to be sleeping.

What if it crawled into her blanket fort?

Still, she hadn’t seen any spiders in space before, so she walked over, looking curious.

“Woah,” she whispered. “That is very shiny.”

It looked like the kind of creature that could be used to make an immortality elixir, or maybe even the kind that could start talking and give them a sidequest. She listened for a few seconds, but it didn’t say anything.

“We probably have enough cleaned that we can put down our stuff,” she said, instead. They could keep listening for sidequests from over there.

While Mechelen did some finishing touches on the cleaning, or at least the cleaning for right now, Almere tried to do a spin on the dance floor. She wasn’t a dancer or anything, but this place made her feel like she could be. Only, she gasped halfway through the spin.

“Squishmallows!” she said, coming over quickly to get a closer look at the other girl’s collection. “Woah, you’ve got all the good stuff.”

Bringing some Earth things, like trash, up here might ruin the effect of the place, but she thought this only added something special.

She took off her backpack and added her own things to the pile. There were her own blankets, and a small bag of homemade cookies.

That could wait, though. She did have a vision. “I was thinking we could make a fort,” she said, then glanced around the room again. “Is there any furniture in here somewhere? Chairs or something?

Oh. This was a lot of really messed up furniture. She could see the faded details and all of the signs that this place had used to be breathtaking. Still, more than the ballroom, this stuff made it clear just how ruined this ruin was.

"Furniture restoration is a whole thing," she said, puffing her cheeks out. "I think it's kinda hard?" Or, at least, you needed a lot of power tools according to what she'd seen on TV. Almere didn't have any power tools. Still, faith and hope shone through her eyes. "But if anyone can do it, it's you!"

They were on a mission to be the best at everything, so, something like this couldn't stop them.

"At least we should be able to make a nice fort out of these," she said. Yeah, they were falling apart, but all they had to support was a couple of blankets. "Yeah, four should be good."

She grabbed on of the chairs that seemed to be in slightly better shape. Slightly.