2025-02-04 - Room Service Surprise

It was a quiet night. Christopher had gone out during the day and spent a while in the arcade, trying to best some of his high scores on some of the games and trying to get back up on the leaderboards over some of the others who were constantly one-upping him. It was a good-natured sort of competition. He didn't even know who he was competing against, if one were being entirely honest. It was just the entertainment of surpassing and then being surpassed. He'd drifted around for a while and had eventually made his way back around to the resort.

He could go out for dinner, but for some reason he just felt like staying in tonight. Maybe he'd go up to the roof to watch the fireworks later, but for now, he just felt like staring out over the darkness of the lake. It was surprisingly dark out over the water. Sometimes that could be comforting and sometimes it could be eerie. He was pulled back to the dream that he'd shared with Aisley. What had that giant dark thing been at the bottom of the fissure? Was it something from his own subconscious?

He finds the room service menu and flips through the pages, eventually deciding on something and putting in an order. Then, he goes to stand by the windows and just look out through them for a while. How long was he going to stay here? How long before he needed to face the question of -- what do I do with my life now? Admittedly, he liked the magic here. And he could look into programming jobs at the park. Surely someone had need of one for something. It's not like he needed to work, but after almost four months of not working, he was beginning to feel a little aimless. He could go? He could travel and see other parts of the world. But part of him liked the magic he'd begun to discover, liked the people he'd begun to meet. Did he want to just up and go now?

That question would have to be answered later, as before he knows it, twenty minutes have passed and there's a knock at the door. The room-service cart is rolled into the room and a tray with everything he's ordered set down inside for him. He turns to tip the man and just as he does so, he notices a small pink blur dart out from beneath the cloth-draped cart. Blinking, he asks "Did you see that?"

The room service attendant looks around and shakes his head. "I didn't see anything."

Both look around the room for a moment but there's nothing obvious there, so Chris tips him and gives a small wave before he turns back toward his food, sitting on the nearby table. Picking up the tray, he takes it over to the low coffee table and decides to sit on the floor there to eat while he flips through the channels on the television, trying once more to forget about the big questions in life in exchange for some more distraction.

He's about halfway through his meal when he hears it, a soft little song of about five notes playing somewhere nearby. Blinking, he looks around the room again but still can't seem to locate it. It's only when he opens up his dessert, a fruit cup with some yogurt, that he sees that small pink blur again, hopping quickly across the floor and onto the table. It's the that he comes face to face with the very bring pink snugglebunny.

It sits up on its hind legs and clasps its small front paws together, looking for all the world like it might be asking for something. And when he slowly takes the plastic off the top of the fruit cup, it hops forward a few more paces, just a little closer, but not close enough to touch.

"You want some of this?" he asks, curiously.

The bunny hops just a little bit closer then stands up again. Its nose wiggles and its ears swivel a little bit. A little trilling noise escapes it and Chris grins. He reaches into the fruit cup and takes out a strawberry, offering it out. When the bunny takes it and nibbles on it, he takes out another piece of fruit and sets it on the table in front of it. Piece after piece, he offers, and each one is devoured until he gets down to the yogurt in the middle. The bunny seems to have no interest in that, so he eats that part with a spoon while he watches it.

"Now, where did you come from? And.. what am I going to do with you?" Chris asks thoughtfully. At least it was something more immediate that he could deal with, something far more fascinating than what to do with the rest of his life. For the moment, he had something more important to think about.