entranceway | [Video]

[Here's Hayley in a video feed, looking extremely annoyed. This is not how she wanted to continue her day .... at ALL. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and with a loud and annoyed sigh, gets right into it so she can get to her point and get out of here. Hopefully. She is in a mood about this -- sorry, Wonderland. Among other things happening back home, she's recently been reunited with her daughter after several months, and she's quite eager to get back home to her.]

Hi. [A beat.] I have no idea who or what I'm addressing, but here goes. I'm Hayley, and I'll be playing the role of Captain Obvious for a second here. Last I checked, I was definitely in New Orleans. This? Is definitely not New Orleans -- I can tell that much already. So, with my role of Captain Obvious now over, who can tell me the quickest way out of this lovely place [ -- yep, that's sarcasm -- ] so I can go back and be with family and friends? [She has yet to discover that most of them are already here, whoops.] Thanks in advance.

[That's it, that's the video.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In and around the Quarter, mostly. I've spent some time out in the bayous too.

Are you from there also?

I am. Born and raised.

But...it's been a long time since I've been home.

I was born there too, but not really raised there. [She was kicked out of her adoptive parents' home when she was thirteen.]

Because you've been here a while? [that's her guess, anyway.]

That too.

[Coincidentally, Hazel had left when she was just a year younger; by the time she turned twelve, her mother had uprooted them both to Alaska, where they spent the last year of their respective lives before the final confrontation with Gaia.]

[It was far more complicated than that, however; when she said a long time, she hadn't been referring to her stay in Wonderland. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the seven decades she'd spent in the Fields of Asphodel: the Greeco-Roman equivalent of Limbo, followed by another year at Camp Jupiter before she was then pulled away from her new home by a Quest, and...well...]

[Then came Wonderland.]

Longer than that, really, though I have been here a while. Months.

But before that, I was living in California.

I'm sure that was quite a change -- which, after moving myself around for several years, I know that feeling. But at least California's a nice place, or ... as I remember it, it is. Were you looking for a change of scenery or?

[It was nice enough. After a year's time, it had just started to feel like home.]

My brother brought me there after our mothers and his sister died.