Re: [The grills: Castor & Pollux]
Most people thought Hannah was really, really simple. Most people thought there wasn't much to figure out at all. Most everyone saw her as young and smiling and even more shallow than a wading pool, and Hannah knew this. She knew people didn't really like her much, not most people. Women didn't like her at all, and she wasn't sure why. Her friends were all men, and that was okay. She liked them and they liked her, and she valued them all a lot. But even them, and even still, her friends mostly thought she was the surface paint, and only some of them were now starting to see what lived beneath the coat and color.
"I think it might all depend on the person with the hurt feelings. What if they're wrong? Completely and totally wrong? Sometimes people are, aren't they? I might hurt someone, but if I didn't mean to, and if it wasn't a wrong thing, then I don't know that I can be held responsible. People get offended at so many things. People get offended even just if you're honest, even if you don't say anything bad. People don't like being disagreed with, and compromise isn't something that some people can do." These were the things Hannah had learned in her brief life. "What if the things other people want us to say or do are bad things for us?"
She smiled when he said the trick was to not take things so seriously. "I like that trick! I like to live and live and live. And when that's done, I live some more. There's so much to see and do and experience, and I find that new experiences help dampen whatever happens that's bad. But I like other round pegs too, and I'm glad I found you." She didn't think he was telling her everything, but she wasn't saying everything either, and that was okay. People had secrets, even the kindest and best ones, and as long as that was an accepted thing then the secrets didn't hurt like they could. You knew they were there, but you just didn't know what they were.
His poeticism was met with a warm smile and bright cornflower eyes. "It's magic," she said of the air in Repose. "It's like a magnet for strangeness, and strangeness is beautiful. Ugliness is beautiful too, and shadows, and everything doesn't need to be conventional to amaze. I think media makes us think specific things are normal and good, and I refuse." She stomped her bare foot deliberately, exaggeration and her hem danced in the night breeze.
"My family is fine to ask about. You'll probably meet them, if you stay around here. Mars doesn't talk much, but Jamie talks to everyone, and I'm not sure about David yet, but I'm making it my business to learn." They weren't her real family, but they had been Amy's real family, and she had all of Amy's things locked up inside her, and that kind of made them hers. "I'm strange and pushy," she countered, but she didn't think either of those things were bad, and it was evident in her tone and the accompanying smile that she liked herself a lot.
She grabbed a plate, as requested, and she brought it back to him and held it out. "We talk about books, and Ren took me dancing and to dinner. I made Rory dance with me, and we had coffee and went to the diner. Reece and I mostly talk. Eddie and I had a picnic on top of his arcade once," she said. She was missing people, but that was just a sampling. "What about your friends? Other than me, I mean."