#Now only Fionna and Marshall are actually inspired by cryptids

[hauntingjasper]

A Jackalope girl and her cat... thing

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

Can you write about Fionna, seeing the Simon petrikov of her world?

"Woah, wait what? There's a university nearby? Since when?"

Marshall shrugs. "Since forever?"

Gary blinks. "Marshall, you graduated from college?"

Marshall smacks him on the arm. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Gary smiles as charmingly as he can. "Well, I mean... With your lifestyle..."

"I seem like an uneducated boor?" Marshall grins with just a hint of menace. "And you would be right. I never graduated. Mom made me take a bunch of business classes that I hated with every fiber of my being. So I dropped out."

Fionna blinks. "How come I never knew this about you? We've been friends since... since..."

Actually, if Fionna tries to think about when they became friends, her memories get a little foggy. Marshall crosses his eyes as if experiencing the same thing. This must be one of the side effects of their world technically being only 12 years old and at the same time much much older than that. Fionna is not 12 years old but neither can she concentrate on anything that happened before 12 years ago. It's... just a little unsettling, if she thought about it for long enough.

So, she does the tried and true method of simply not thinking about it too much. In the same way, she won't think about how it's completely novel to learn about nearby cities as if other cities didn't exist until very recently, like maybe even right now. It's whatever. She's learning about it now, and that's that.

"I... do remember..." Marshall murmurs softly, as if tugging on a particularly stubborn weed. "I snuck in an elective that Mom would have hated. It was about like Mothman and the Loch Ness monster."

"They teach you that in college??" Fionna gasps, her eyes going starry.

"Eh... It wasn't specifically about them but it was about folk lores and folk songs in general. I really loved the professor that taught it. She described like cryptids and encounters of the third kind in this really poetic, almost romantic way. It was kinda weird and like really cool at the same time. What was her name? Petrikov? Petrova? Petri-something..."

Everything in Fionna stops. She can no longer hear Marshall speaking. Because there's no way. There's no way!! Nothing outside of this city - which she knows like the back of her hand - has existed until literally someone "remembers" it exists. Their world is balancing on the knife's edge of already born and currently being made. And now there's a Petrikov here? What? WHAT?!?

Gary gently taps her arm. "Um, Fionna? You in there?"

Fionna grabs Marshall by the front of his shirt. "You have to introduce me to... her? Professor Petrikov is a woman??"

Marshall squints at her, looking markedly more intent. "Yeah. She is."

Fionna should probably note the terrible emphasis in Marshall's tone just now. But her mind is whirling with implications. Simon is here? She has a Simon in her world? A Simon specifically for this world? Holy schmazow.

Gary tilts his head, observing his boyfriend in a way that Fionna is simply unequipped to presently.

"You're... protective of her. That's kinda sweet."

As always, when faced with evidence of his sentiment, Marshall curls into himself, shrugging it off as casually as he can. "I mean, it's just you know... She's a really great professor. I learned a lot from her."

Then as if rousing himself from sleep, a certain awareness enters his eyes. Fionna catches that and wonders if a new part of their world - their shared lore - was just made.

"Yeah, actually you know what... The semester that I took her class, that's when I started playing around with songwriting. She inspired me to look into poetry more. And after her class ended, I dropped out." Marshall nods to himself, kicking back with that patented bad boy smirk. "I've been a vagabond ever since."

Gary rolls his eyes at him. "Some vagabond you are, crashing on my couch."

Marshall winks at him. "You'd be lonely."

Fionna raises a hand. "Let's get back to Professor Petrikov. Can you like introduce us?"

Marshall turn, losing some of his sass as he focuses on her. "I mean yeah. I've been meaning to visit."

Fionna feels her smile stretch so wide, her cheeks begin to hurt. "Road trip!!!"