They’d agreed to simply be “friends with benefits”, which had been Barrel’s idea in the first place, but now he suddenly didn’t just want that. Barrel didn’t really know how to approach this though, he wanted more with Stitch, but he didn’t want to push something that Stitch didn’t want, because that would ruin the perfectly good arrangement they had. There was also his own personal dilemma of his sexuality, but he was pushing that out of his mind for the time being. Barrel liked Stitch, his sexuality didn’t matter, he liked Stitch. 

Now came the terrifying part. Telling Stitch. Barrel had gone through three orange suckers in the past five minutes and was ignoring the fact that he was speeding through the Carnival grounds a little too fast to be normal. That was something he could worry about later, right now his nerves were too high to care about anything else. He finally spotted Stitch, and was going to try to casually approach him. That didn’t happen though, and within seconds he was physically crashing into the smaller boy. “Oh my gosh WHY” He yelled at himself before turning his attention to Stitch. “I’m so sorry, are you ok?” 

Why wasn’t she having dreams? It wasn’t fair. Her night had been magical. Nothing spilt on her dress, she danced with Kenai, and... There was another dance that turned her face pink as her pajama top. She should have dreamt about that kiss at least. Kisses like that were in almost every book she read; why wasn’t she dreaming about that kiss? The scene played over in her head. His outstretched arm offering his coat, his hand pulling her in, and those eyes. His eyes were perfectly dark, and deep, and the way he looked at her... Goodness. She was shivering just thinking about it. 

Snow sat in the middle of the bed she would be sharing with Stitch and looked out the window. It wasn’t snowing, but the sky had a crisp edge around the tree line she associated with being too cold to be outside. So she sat, snuggly warm in her fleece jammies, and started to dig through her knitting bag. Most of the yarn was gone, turned into the socks that were paired together in the bag, but at the bottom of the bag she found some thick embroidery thread. It was silly, but it would be something to do to pass the time. Fingering the thread she looked up, trying to catch her friend’s eye.“Stitch? What’s your favorite color?” 

Mickey scooted over on the bed to allow some room for the boy in the doorway. Looking back on it, claiming the bed as his own seemed pretty selfish. "I've got room over here if ya' want it pal, as long as you're ok with my asking you some questions."

Penny was thrilled when given the news that the train was finally packing up and leaving Norway, she felt as though they'd been sitting in Oslo for years now. Not that she hadn't loved it, it was artistic and quaint and quiet, but when living in the circus one becomes accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle, and sticking around some one place for too long always made tensions high.

Penny was celebrating the change, happily boarding her mice and taking her books off of her shelves (she found that if she left them on one of them would always fall off and if one fell off they'd all fall off and then she'd just be left with a mess). Then the mood changed. Something unsettling came about the circus. Security came and found her in her room, telling her to pack a bag and come with her. Instantly she scoured through her memories of the recent days, trying to figure out what she'd done wrong, why she was in trouble. 

Then she realized it wasn't just her. Everyone was being herded into some room or another. Anxiety took over, she felt like running away, finding Lilo, or Tia, Dor, or Reu. She saw red hair disappearing through a doorway, and she was tempted to shout out to Merida. But she couldn't. She couldn't say anything. Penny allowed herself to be led into train car fourteen, and watched silently as the door was closed behind her. She turned around slowly, suddenly realizing that she wasn't in fact alone. As she looked at her two new roommates, she could only ask, "Do either of you know why we're here?"