At least it isn't snowing (Open)

[Princess Anna]

The swirling vortex that had pulled Anna though appeared to have deposited her in the middle of... a meadow of some kind? There was a vague hint of a bench sticking up from some of the grass nearby, so perhaps it was less a meadow and more some kind of particularly overgrown junkyard. Either way, it was definitely nowhere in Arendelle, there was no way her sister would allow somewhere as untidy as this in her kingdom.

"Hello?" she looked around, searching for signs of life, but all she saw was a small flock of birds, startled by her call, come bursting out of a nearby tree and disappearing into the sky. There was a rustle in the grass near her that she could only assume was a rabbit or mouse of some kind, at least she hoped it was, because if there were snakes in this grass avoiding them would be impossible. She could see what looked like cracked paving in the distance, a hint that she wasn't just alone in a sea of grass, and she decided that would be a much safer place to be, so she started picking her way carefully through the field to get to it. Maybe by the time she got there, she'd see another person.

[Milo Thatch]

This was going to be great. He had all his most important books, all three of the shirts and both pairs of pants he wasn't wearing packed into the rather heavy bag slung over his shoulders. He'd left a gleeful letter of resignation on his supervisor's desk, and here he was, standing in front of the portal, about to step back through and see all the people he hadn't seen in ten years. He was going to apply for a job immediately, or...talk to whoever the headmaster was now, volunteer to teach whatever languages they needed taught. Maybe even some cartography on the side, if they needed that. He couldn't wait.

Milo took a good look around, for what he hoped was the very last time, he took a deep breath, and he stepped through the portal.

The ride was...not as smooth as he remembered. He felt like he was being tossed around, his backpack kept smacking him in the back of the head, and when he tumbled out the other side, he landed face-down in the dirt.

"Augh," he managed, lifting his head and pushing his pack off of his back onto the ground next to him. Milo was much stronger than he had been as a youngster, but the bag was very heavy, and he had a suspicion he had done some falling because it definitely felt like gravity was against him at the moment. He stood up slowly, brushing dirt and plant bits and whatnot off of his front, and as he did, he thought he heard a voice. Which was good, because this was not at all the situation he had been expecting on the other side of the portal. Where even was he? It looked like...well, it was abandoned, it was clear it had been that way for quite some time. There was a bench over there, and...

Wait, he knew this place. Or...he knew it from another age, or something. He'd been to this park, he'd....yes, this was definitely familiar. He finished turning his circle, and a short distance off, he saw the back of a girl, walking away from him.

"Hey!" he called, letting out a quiet oof as he lifted his bag off the ground and hoisted it back onto his back. "Hey, hello, miss?"

[Princess Anna]

She had only taking a few steps when she heard a voice behind her, which was strange because when she'd been looking behind her, there hadn't been anyone there. Unless they were the cause of the rustle and had in fact been hiding in the grass.
She stopped though, and turned round, taking in the man with the large backpack that stood there. She hoped the backpack wasn't full of goods or wares to sell, she got enough of that from Oaken... although his goods were often useful and he had an uncanny ability to be right where he was needed, so maybe if this newcomer was that kind of person, it wouldn't be so bad.

"Hello," she responded, walking towards him a little "Do you know where this is?" it seemed a good question to start with. It was probably more polite to introduce herself, but more prudent to find out where she was first, just in case the place happened to be a country that housed any of Arendelle's enemies. Admittedly their enemies only consisted of Weaseltown at this point, but you couldn't be too careful.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo gave one of the straps of his backpack a good tug - it had gotten a little loose along the way and was hanging at an odd angle on his shoulder until he adjusted it. He looked around again; it was probably polite to look at a person when they were talking to you, but he was still just so flummoxed by the conditions around him that he couldn't keep his attention in one place for very long.

"Where this is...yeah, I uh, I got a pretty good idea where this is, it's the when that's a little rough, if you know what I mean." Why would she know what you mean, Milo? "What I mean is, I've been here before, a while back. Ten years ago, actually, I went to school here, there was...way more people, first of all, but, you know, lots less of a defunct civilization vibe to it then, too, y'know?"

He reached over and tried to pull a vine off of the bench that was sticking up through the overgrowth, but it was pretty strong, and he didn't want to take his backpack off to start landscaping, so he let go.

"If I remember right, we're in the city park. What used to be the city park, I guess." He was starting to feel more than a little weird about this...he was certain he'd only been gone ten years, but...well, Milo knew a long-abandoned city when he saw one, and that was definitely what he was seeing here. "Did you just come through a portal, too? How old are you? How long have you known about the portal, like, was it always there for you?"

[Princess Anna]

Anna listened politely to his explanation, but in all honesty it only made her more confused. She knew people had a tendency to ramble - she was, after all, one of those people - but he seemed to keep chopping and changing exactly what he was saying, and the strangest part was that at no point did he actually say where they were. Perhaps that was her fault, after all she had technically only asked if he knew where they were, but that was usually enough of a hint for somebody to answer the question.

Once he had finally finished speaking, she sorted through everything he'd said and all his assorted questions and gave her reply.

"There was a school here? Do you know what it was called, or what this place was called?" she hoped it would be somewhere she'd heard of. "I think I just came through a portal, I am 18, is that important? The portal only very recently showed up in Arendelle, that's the land I am from, and I went to investigate and...here I am."

[Milo Thatch]

Milo pushed his glasses up on his nose and let out a long sigh, trying to focus. He was rambling and he knew it, and he could tell that it was confusing her a little. Just...breathe, Milo, breathe and figure out what you're trying to say before you just start saying it.

"The school wasn't here," he said, carefully. "Not here exactly. It's over...in that direction, if I remember correctly. This is the city park, in the city Trenale. And...sorry, no, I wasn't asking about your age to be weird, I'm just trying to sort out timelines, see. It's been ten years since I've been here, but...this place has been abandoned for way more than ten years, wouldn't you say?"

A lot of things had changed in ten years, but Milo's awkwardness and unique ability to spectacularly blunder his way through first impressions, that had stayed just the same.

"Arendelle," he repeated, letting his bag down again and pulling a notebook and pen out of it to jot that down. "Okay. So we know there are...two portals working now, so far. But there hasn't ever been a portal there before now, that you know of, in your lifetime anyway?"

[Princess Anna]

"Trenale..." Anna allowed his words mostly to wash over her, recognising that a lot of it was him thinking out loud, and most of the rest of it she didn't understand anyway. Trenale didn't ring any bells, and she didn't recall seeing it on any maps (and she'd looked at a lot of maps while cooped up in the castle), which meant it wasn't anywhere that anyone from Arendelle had ever been before... how was she supposed to find her way home from here?

"It definitely looks like it's been abandoned for... a long time," she tuned back in just in time to answer his questions "And the portal only just appeared as far as we know. ...could people ever get home from here before?"

[Milo Thatch]

Milo nodded, pulling his backpack down yet again, setting it on the arm of the bench and rummaging through it. "I have a...I had a map I drew, from memory, so it might not be one hundred percent accurate, but..." Oh, where had he put that? He tossed a pack of ramen over his shoulder, then another, then two more, followed by a small metal watering can, which he tossed somewhat more gently, and a small cloth sack of something. "Ah, there it is." He pulled out a large folder of papers and withdrew one sheet of paper from it carefully.

"When I was here before, there was a portal in the basement of the school," he explained, looking over the paper, "and people could go back to their homes there. It's weird, though, that...I never knew the portal to spit somebody out here, in the park. But if you want to get home, we should probably see if we can get to the basement of the school, that'd be my first guess."

He started pushing his things back into his bag a little haphazardly, then stopped short. "Sorry," he said, shoving his glasses up on his nose, "I just realized, I didn't even introduce myself. I'm Milo."

[Princess Anna]

Anna breathed a sigh of relief that there was a potential way to get home, since the portals that had deposited them seemed to have disappeared and this place was nowhere near Arendelle, she'd be worried about the possibility of never returning. Now, she was content to think positively, they would go and find the portals and she could go home and report back to the queen.

"Well then," she said brightly "let's follow your map to the school and we can see if we can find the basement. Do you think there might be other people there?" while he had arrived just as suddenly as he had, he at least seemed more prepared, not to mention more knowledgeable, so she was more than willing to let him lead the way until she figured out what was going on.

"Oh, neither did I," she suddenly remembered herself "Pleasure to meet you Milo, I am Princess Anna of Arendelle."

[Milo Thatch]

"Oh gosh." Milo nearly dropped his backpack on the ground, but managed to recover quickly. Of course she was a princess, of course she was, because Milo did all his most embarrassing things in front of princesses. Except now he was older, and probably expected to be a role model and whatnot. This girl was definitely the right age to be one of his students, and he suddenly felt a lot of pressure to know what he was doing...even if the whole teaching classes thing was probably a little further off than he'd originally thought. Probably best to find the school and figure out if there were classrooms before he went filling out class rosters.

"It's...it's um, an honor, your highness," he said, dipping his head in a quick bow. It had been a while since he'd been around royalty, and now he was trying to remember that and also figure out if he was holding his own map upside-down. To his credit, he was holding it the right way, and oriented himself quickly enough. He secured his backpack and pointed in the direction he thought the school ought to be in.

"I'm not sure about other people," he admitted, "but if there are people, I think...it would make sense that they'd try to get to the school, too. The school was the reason people came here, back when I was here, so that would be my guess."

[Princess Anna]

Anna nodded gracefully back, as she had been taught to do, but quickly lost all her regal charm in favour of reassuring him, she waved her hands dismissively.
"Please, don't stand on ceremony, we're both lost here so we should just work together." she decided, and she would feel bad if he started bowing and scraping when he was obviously the one who knew more than she did. They were a long way from home, she didn't need to be a princess here, and to be honest she had a lot of fun when she was not behaving very princessly, like when she'd gone looking for Elsa with Kristoff.

"Okay, let's go and see if anybody's there then," she nodded, setting off in the direction he'd pointed, skirts swishing through the grass with the force of her marching. She didn't worry about stepping on any mice or snakes in amongst the grass, she was making more than enough noise and disturbance that they were probably fleeing away from her and clearing a path. Besides, she had on good sturdy boots that would probably protect her from any attempted bite or the like.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo relaxed slightly when she proved to be one of those princesses who wasn't preoccupied with the fact that she was a princess. He had met a few of those in all his travels around the world with his grandfather, and even though he had a pretty good education when it came to court etiquette, he was awkward enough that he'd managed to screw up on multiple occasions. He certainly didn't want to offend a princess who might end up being a student who could have her royal parents tell the school not to hire him.

"This is really weird," he said, as they walked forward, "like, really weird. I thought I'd be coming back to pretty much the world like it was when I got sent home, but...this is way different. I was your age the last time I was here, and I mean, I'm feeling pretty old lately, but that wasn't long enough ago for things to be like this."

The reality of the situation was starting to settle in. He had quit his job for this. He had quit his job and moved out of his apartment and he had left absolutely everything behind because he was sure that he was qualified to come back here and teach, and now it wasn't even apparent whether there were any people here to teach. What if he and Princess Anna were the only people in this whole dimension, and there wasn't any way for them to get back to their own worlds? He just didn't want to spend the rest of his life teaching languages to only one student.

[Princess Anna]

"You definitely don't look old enough for all this to have happened," Anna said thoughtfully, looking around the overgrown park. This place looked like it hadn't seen any sign of habitation for... well, ever, really. It would be odd for something to change so dramatically so suddenly. Odd... or magical... her eyes widened slightly.

"Unless it's a spell!" she said brightly, enthused by possible having cracked the mystery "Maybe there was somebody with some kind of...uh... plant magic, and they freaked out about something that was kind of totally normal but also sort of understandable to freak out about, and they accidentally caused all these plants to grow all over... and they can probably undo it we just have to calm them down and maybe an act of true love is required..." she realised she was being overly talkative and very specific, so it would probably be best to explain where her theory came from.

"My sister has ice powers." yea, that would do it.

[Milo Thatch]

It was good to hear that he didn't look a hundred and fifty years old, Milo thought, with vague satisfaction. He had never been overly concerned with his appearance, but even he would have been a little alarmed to be told that he looked old enough for a whole civilization to have crumbled into disarray in his lifetime.

Milo obviously was a firm believer in most things magical; he had experienced enough weird things in his life and had spent enough time at this school to know that just about anything was possible. Nevertheless, her train of thought was a little difficult to follow, mostly because it was so very specific, and he had a hard time figuring out whether he was supposed to understand these things she was referencing. Was this...a young people thing? Was he not hip enough to know about...plant magic and true love?

Oh. Sister. Ice powers. That...maybe...explained...something.

"Oh," he said, knowingly, nodding slowly. "I see." It wasn't a bad idea, though, that maybe this wasn't what it looked like, maybe there was a spell involved. "I wonder if there were any people left here," he mused. "I don't know what happened, see, I was just...here one day, and there was a war, and...then...whammo, suddenly I was back at home in my granddad's old apartment, and believe you me, I had to do some fast talking to explain that one."

[Princess Anna]

Anna wasn't bothered by his vague response, she was used to getting that from people when she rambled on a bit. He at least seemed like he'd been paying attention, and that was more than she got from some people, so really she was doing better than usual.

"That sounds very strange," she frowned "You were just... home? Without any warning? I can imagine that was rather difficult to explain... wait, did you say there was a war?" she looked around, as if there would be some sign of what had happened before, but all she could see was overgrown plants "Looks like it's over now anyway... "