"It's here," Lou muttered, clicking on the app notification the minute it registered. "It's here."

Hi, welcome back to our Travel Huggers app!
Do you want to meet your Travel Huggers?

Lou spammed the only option available: YES.

Travel Huggers group created.

Please name your group.

Ginny 🌻 has named this group "the beaches".

Click here to view your group information.

Ginny 🌻: Hi!

Lou 🐸🐸🍵: hey

Gi 🤘: yo

Ginny 🌻: Nice to meet you!

Gi 🤘: Carlos get on this chat

Carlos 🤘: what's up?

Gi 🤘: this is the travel huggers app take a guess

Carlos 🤘: ohh hey guys!

Aster 🍝🌿: hello

Lou 🐸🐸🍵: hi

Thy 😊: hey :D

Thy 😊 has started a video call.

Lou swore under her breath, angling the camera so she was barely visible before pressing accept.

"Hi!" Thy greeted cheerfully, filling up most of her screen. He was very blonde and very French. "Hello?" 

Another girl had also picked up, and she shushed him. "Not so loud! It's 5am here." She spoke with an Australian accent and her face was mostly covered by unruly curls. (She must have just woken up.)

"Hey," Lou spoke up, lifting a hand to wave at them.

The Australian (Ginny 🌻) waved back. "I'm Imogen."

"Lou."

"Hello?" Somebody else had answered the call. "Why are you calling me?" 

"Did you sign up for Travel Huggers?"

Their eyes lit up. "Ohh! Hi! My name's Mila, I'm a non-binary Slovak American."

"Pleasure," Thy grinned. "I'm Thy, grew up on a French farm, this is Imogen and that's Lou."

"Oh my gosh, this is so cool!" Mila exclaimed. "I'm finally meeting the people I'm going to be travelling with for a year!"

Lou couldn't help but smile. "Half of them haven't picked up, so don't get too excited."

"Should we go through the information they've given us, and the others can catch up later?" Imogen (Ginny) suggested.

"Sure," Lou nodded.

"Did they give us our official locations?" Mila asked, biting on their lip absentmindedly.

"Sea of Stars, The Great Wall of China, Aurora Borealis, Parthenon, Golden Gate Bridge, Rio de Janeiro Carnival, Piton Mountains, Equator Line, Colosseum, Eiffel Tower, Swiss Alps, Taj Mahal, and the Great Barrier Reef." Thy read out loud, proud of himself for finishing in one breath.

Imogen gasped audibly, sitting upright.

Mila clapped, and Lou joined in.

"Thanks!" 

Two pings sounded in a row, and Lou's screen shifted to make room for two new camera views.

"Hi," Gi said at the same time as Aster said "Bonjour!". "Salut!" Thy responded to both. He never seemed to stop smiling.

"Carlos is finishing some music at a friend's," Gi explained, taking a spoonful out of a bowl of pesto pasta she had resting on her lap. "I'm Giani, his sister."

"And I'm Aster," Aster butted in. "Apologies, Giani, I had to get my introduction in somewhere."

"This is Imogen, Lou, and Mila, my name's Thy," Thy reeled off.

"It's turning into a game of my granny went to the shops and bought," Lou quipped.

Thy frowned. "What's that?" 

"You don't know?"

"We'll have to play it on the road," Giani decided. "Oh, Carlos is joining now guys."

Ping. 

"I'm Thy, this is Imogen, that's Lou, Mila, Aster and Giani, welcome to our Travel Huggers call."

Carlos was on the move, earphones plugged in. "Cool."

"Can somebody look up the departure date?" Aster asked.

"Of course," Imogen stood up, moving to tie her hair up and pace the room. She was restless.

"I've got it!" Thy's beam was back. "We've got to be at the San Francisco Travel Huggers HQ by the 22nd. So, in six days."

Lou froze. Six days? She'd only just got hold of her US visa waiver.

There was silence as this seemed to sink in.

"I'm ready for this trip," Gi proclaimed. "I'll pack an hour or so before the plane takes off, no sweat."

"You're being stupid, and you're going to forget something important," Carlos informed her.

"How much luggage should we bring?" Mila considered, twisting a piece of frizzy hair around one of her fingers.

Thy paused. "I hadn't even considered that." 

Lou put her phone down and went over to pull her suitcase down from the top of her wardrobe, thinking aloud. "I think a trip to Primark might be helpful. I could do with some new clothes."

"Primark?" Carlos wrinkled his nose. "Too much colour, too little black."

"Shopping isn't a bad idea, though," Imogen added.

"I'll do mine online," Aster chipped in. "But I've got to go. Dinnertime in France."

"Bedtime for this Frenchman," Thy yawned. "Night guys." 

They logged off, and Carlos silently logged off too. 

"That— CARLOS!" Giani yelled, muting herself before reverting to Italian. It seemed he'd arrived home.

"What time is it where you guys are?" Mila's voice filled the silence.

"Still about 5," Imogen sighed. "I guess I should have some yogurt and then maybe go for a swim in the ocean. Unless you wanted to do virtual shopping together? I could wait a bit."
"Virtual shopping might be cool!" Mila perked up at the idea, and Lou considered it mentally. If she did, she'd have to pay express delivery to make sure it arrived on time, but she could also get to know these people better.

"Yeah, okay," she nodded. "Let me set up my laptop."

Imogen was very pleased, and although she had been planning a swim, it was worth waiting a while so she could socialise with her new friends. She took her phone to her kitchen where she began preparing a bowl of fruit and yogurt. "I need to get something to eat, and then I can borrow my Mam's iPad to shop as long as I return it later."

"Okay!" Mila started tapping away at something, presumably getting up a website. "I cannot wait to be travelling with you." 

A/N

hello people, hello new people, hello aliens, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, to all the new guys I know it's short and sweet, in my opinion it's better to leave you wanting more than drag it on and bore you to death, and besides it's better than never updating my apply fics

big thank you to LIGHTNINGTHIEFGIRL for helping me copy and paste all the info over for the cast

I've decided I'm going to finish my research for this fic, and I have a week of exams starting Tuesday the 3rd of May so it may look like I'm doing nothing for the next two weeks but in reality I'll be finishing research and revising

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