WoD Wednesday: Pervade

Pervade: Verb: To become diffused throughout every part of

Pervade

Before stepping inside, I brush a hand over the skirt of my TARDIS dress, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles. Relative to the amazing costumes I’ve seen over the years, it’s nothing fancy. Clearly, some people spend days, maybe even months, on their costumes for Emerald City Comicon. I don’t have the patience or skill to do such a thing, although I definitely would if I could.

My husband squeezes my hand in his, and I look up at him. Bless him. He’s dressed normally, just as he is every year, but isn’t embarrassed by my crazy attire. Noting the gentleman fully decked out in a fawn costume, I suppose he figures it could be worse. I smirk at him. My daughter tugs on my other hand, bouncing.

“Are you ready? I know it’s not SDCC, like you’ve always wanted, but this’ll be fun,” he says to me.

“It’ll be perfect.” I stand up on my tip-toes and kiss him on the cheek. “Now let’s go in and mingle with my people.”

He rolls his eyes at that.

Walking in, I’m overwhelmed at the number of people herding their way toward the escalators like cattle. So many conversations are going on in the room, that it creates the illusion of a roaring crowd. Excitement pervades the air and I breathe it in.

We ride several escalators before reaching the top level, where all the excitement is. Random bags of swag are shoved into our hands by minions and we step aside to flip through the schedule.

“What time is the autograph again?” he asks and I sigh in exasperation. The main reason we’re even here and he can’t remember one time.

“2:00.”

“Oh. That’s a ways away. We have plenty of time.”

“We’ll want to get in line early.”

“No!” my daughter opposes loudly.

“Look, do you want to meet the Doctor?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll have to wait in line.”

“We can wander the Exhibit Hall until we have to go, though,” my husband cuts in.

As we stroll down the aisles of tables and booths, I barely pay attention. We’re going to have to walk through again later. None of that matters. I get to meet the Doctor today. It’s a couple minutes before I realize we’ve been stopped at the Tokidoki booth for minutes. My daughter has merchandise and is ready to check out. They give her a little hat and we take pictures of her wearing it.

“Do you want to find the Espionage Cosmetics booth?” He asks, trying to distract me from my nerves.

“No. I want to be able to take my time and enjoy it. Can we just head over?”

He looks at his watch. “It’s only 12:30.”

“12:30?! We have to go. Now!”

I yank them by their hands and they laugh at me. That’s okay. Let them laugh. We leave the building to go to the place we need to be. To avoid the soul crushing crowd around the main elevators, we sneak our way to the ones on the far end that hardly anyone ever uses.

Once we get on, we wait for our floor, only to realize that in all the hullaballoo, we forgot to hit the floor button and we zoom past it. Blushing I reach over and push the proper button, but we continue up to another floor.

When it opens, I suppress a fangirl squee. My daughter does not. The Doctor himself, smiles his toothy smile and steps in with a polite nod.

“You’re the Doctor,” she says.

“Yes, indeed,” he responds.

“Mommy and I have been watching all your episodes this week.”

He laughs. “Brilliant.”

She tugs on my hand. “Mommy. We don’t have to wait in line now! He can just sign while we’re on the elevator.”

My eyes widen in humiliation. “Oh. Honey. We’ll wait in line with everyone else.”

She pouts and the Doctor laughs again. “Here, come with me,” he says when we reach our floor. He takes us through a back entrance into the autograph room, then sends a minion to get a photo. Upon their return, the signs the photo to our names along with “Allons-y” in the corner of the page.

Bending down to her level, he hands the photo to my daughter.

“There. Now you don’t have to wait.”

“Thank you. You really didn’t have to do that,” I say.

“I know. I wanted to. You have a good day.”

With that, he parts the curtains separating us from the line and the room erupts in applause. Leaving the way we came in, my daughter looks up at me with wide eyes.

“Best. Con. Ever.”

Note: Total fiction. I did get to meet and obtain an autograph from David Tennant at ECCC this year, but it was no where near this personal. However, the autograph is real!