paradisa | case #002 ☕ [dicated]

[Kate had tried. She had really tried to totally ignore the egg. She had ignored it when she'd woken up to find it had appeared on Castle's bed stand. She ignored it when he started poking it excitedly. She ignored it when she came into the room and found it sitting nestled between her pillow and some blankets. She ignored it so much, and with so much of her heart and soul, she was almost sure at some point she would blink and it would simply vanish.

Instead, it hatched.]

Hey. Hey! No, off the bed! Off the bed! What, you want to chew up the other pillow too? How about my shoes? You want one of those, too!

[It takes a moment for Kate to realize her journal is open. Mainly because the small direwolf puppy that hatched is now chewing on the corner, droplets of drool hitting the paper and she swats him to get him away.]

Castle! I swear... [She is going to strangle him. But since her journal is already open, she might as well take some advantage of it.] Does anyone have any... I don't know, dog food?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Please don't give Castle ideas about names, Alexis. Please.]

Unicorns don't exist, Alexis.

[Yeah. That's all she's got.]

They do here though because it's a magic castle. I mean, how else can you explain a baby horse with a tiny horn on its head that hatched out of an egg?

I don't believe in magic, Alexis. Whatever is goin' on here... There's another explanation. Someone is screwing with us.

Ok. When you come up with an explanation for a unicorn, let me know.

[Alexis is usually a pretty practical person but she can't deny what's right before her eyes. It's not like her dad who just makes stuff like this up out of thin air.]

[And Kate knew that, and she own practically was almost to the point of a disability when it came to the castle. She couldn't wrap her head around it, and she preferred just to ignore it, because then maybe it would go away.]

This... It just can't be real.

[Alexis has found that, unfortunately, ignoring things didn't make them go away, otherwise she'd be back in New York by now.]

But.. it is. We're here and we're conscious.

You sure about that? We could have been... Brainwashed or drugged. Maybe all of this is some kind of insane hallucination.

We've been here for, what, two months now? You still think we're being drugged?

I'm all for this being some kind of weird mind trip, but I don't know if reality is pointing at that anymore.

The problem is, I don't know what reality is pointing at. But sentient, magic castle is not something I'm running to wrap my mind around. It's... Nuts, Alexis.

So it's more that you can't justify what's going on here, not that it's actually happening?

[Alexis is a logical person too. She gets that.]

[Kate raised her eyebrows.]

I guess. I just think there's a better explanation for all of this, Alexis. One that doesn't involve magic.

Any ideas so far?

[Because Alexis has wracked her brain and has yet to come up with anything.]

Drugs. Some kind of brainwashing or subconscious suggestion. Or really advanced technology. It could be any number of things.

If it's drugs, how are we being dosed? Why aren't we feeling any kind of side effects?

Maybe we're being dosed in a way that doesn't cause side-effects. Maybe... God, Alexis, I don't know.

What you're talking about seems like something so big only a major government agency could pull it off. Are you thinking government conspiracy?

Maybe. Alexis, after what we've been through the last few years... I'm not gonna discount that.

You have a point.

Though usually when it's a government conspiracy, grandpa [it felt weird calling him that] is around somewhere. So far he hasn't materialized.

[ Kate was a little surprised to hear Alexis call him that, but, it was an accurate description. Kate had just never really spoken to her about it. ] Well, this is a slightly different situation than Paris.

Different in that there's a magical castle involved this time?

Something like that, yeah.

case #002 ☕ [dicated]

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