Chapter Text
Have you heard what they’re saying about the Prince?
The country wasn’t built to handle this level of rainfall. This amount was unexpected; unprecedented, for this time of year. Rain was valued and cherished, but that was precisely because the Kingdom got, comparatively, so little of it. And thus, so long as it was not excessive to the point of alarm, a downpour beckoned Beanish to gleefully play in the gutters where the rainwater caught, or to stand under protrusions of Hoohoo’s many cliff faces and catch droplets on their tongues.
Yet this – this was excessive to the point of alarm. The land had been due for a burst of newborn sunshine. It allowed for the harvesting of new produce at long last. It was a highly anticipated thing, this newborn sunshine. Perhaps people would not have been quite so stunned at this rain had it not been.
Have you heard? They’re saying this is the most rain we’ve had since records began.
And it was as devastating for the crops as one would expect; even way out where farm land was so rural that it rarely made its way onto tourist maps. There had originally been hopes that the torrent of rain would be localised. Reports came, instead, of flooding; for the flatland had never been designed to drain so much water. Citizens were encouraged to stock up. Ration delicacies, where they could. Cherry season was well and truly postponed – a fact mostly lauded by teenage girls, who liked to get their photos taken holding a basket of them in the sunshine, for generic and unexplained aesthetic purposes.
Have you heard? They’re saying this is the first time rations have been mentioned since wartime.
The rain morphed into storm by midday.
A tree was blocking the way to the Chuckola Reserve, so reports were saying. What rotten luck for emergency services, to have to head out and haul that away in weather like this. Reports came that the poor old Chuckleroot had been struck. Reports came that the power had gone out, in the Hooniversity’s residence. The castle was, considering its height, very fortunate not to have been hit; the flag remained hoisted, flicking water around in the wind.
Have you heard? They’re saying Cackletta could summon thunder from the skies, when she was alive.
Things had been in the extreme, since Cackletta’s defeat. The Beanish were a resilient, easy-to-laugh-with sort of people. Rebuilding had been swift, mourning quickly forgotten in its wake, the nation the very image of business-as-usual.
Had you booked a pleasant little trip to the Kingdom the Sunday following Cackletta’s death, having not paid any attention to the news, you might not have realised anything had happened at first.
Yet it wasn’t invisible. You would encounter evidence of what had recently happened in the words the Beanish would offer you, if you prompted them to speak, or failing that in overheard, guffawed conversations.
Have you heard? They’re saying Cackletta was planning on killing us all.
Had you booked a pleasant little trip to the Kingdom this Sunday, you would have encountered evidence of something else entirely. Had you managed to walk outside the room of your inn through the onslaught of rain, you might have gone into a store, only to discover all food had either sold out or had never even made it to the shelves.
The Beanish had a mild tendency to complain, but had you visited this Sunday, you would not have recognised this as the vice it normally was; complaints about the weather and their hunger would not have struck you as unreasonable. You might have noticed their appreciation for storytelling to pass the time – tales of bright skies and exciting quests and things that were, to their respective narrators, hilarious indeed.
Have you heard? They’re saying the Prince was the one who nearly killed the Mario Brothers with those explosives.
Had you joined these conversations, even asked what events they were referring to, you might have gotten the impression that they regarded you with mild disdain. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t their intention. A Beanish man was a man with a perpetually quirked eyebrow.
Have you heard? They’re saying the Prince never hurt Cackletta in “battle”, but always knew where she was.
To follow the collective train of thought would be a collect-a-thon in its own right. How the nation managed to get these things across to one another despite the issue of no one being able to leave their house – though the general narrative did have the potential for variation among the lot – might have made you question whether they, as plant-looking people, communicated through the soil.
Cackletta could summon thunder from the skies, they’d tell you. The castle hadn’t been hit yet, they’d tell you.
They might have told you they are quick thinkers, that they solve issues rapidly, that this is why they marched on even in the ruin they had recently faced – but would append, after some silence, that they weren’t entirely sure who, or what, was going to fix the fact that nobody had anything to eat right now.
Have you heard? Have you heard?
They’re saying the Prince is actually Cackletta’s son.