Re: [The grills: Castor & Pollux]
"I think we're all the protagonists of our own stories, aren't we? Or we should be if we're not, and I think even villains think they're protagonists," she said, and she didn't really mind villains at all, not most of them and not on the page. "I'll let you know when your hour is up," she promised, and she was absolutely sure he wasn't a villain. "You can be mysterious, but you're not a villain," she declared with a bop of chin downwards in a nod, certain, certain, she was absolutely certain. "You can maybe be an antihero," she decided, a tip of her head and ear to bare shoulder accompanying the declaration.
But the books he mentioned were new, and she lit up like a lightbulb at Christmas, glow and happiness and Hannah was a book cracked open, an invitation to read. "I haven't heard of those books! I'll look them up if you say they're good," she promised, solemn vow and she absolutely would do as she said. "I've read the Brontës and Austen and some other individual novels, like Dorian Gray and Little Women and Anne of Green Gables." Hannah had only found reading recently, but she loved every single word she'd read on a page thus far.
She waved her hand in absolution. "I don't care about selfish, and I think I might like lack of personal responsibility," she said candidly. "I like shadows, Castor. I like the dark parts we think are too tarnished for other people to see. I want to see past the polite and the okay and the accepted," she said, the passion in her voice bloating the words full and with feeling. "I don't like people hurting innocent people, so I don't like villains, but I like real, and real isn't all pretty. If something's all pretty, then it isn't real at all."
Hannah was open and honest, and she didn't really see the point in subterfuge. Friendships built on untruths weren't solid enough to bear weight, and it was better to be open and truthful from the beginning. "I know I don't have anything to worry about. I could tell from the postcards that you were nice, and I haven't always known nice people. It's really kind of easy to tell them apart when you talk to them a lot, and writing counts."
She executed her curtsy, and then she hopped down and claimed another piece of pineapple and popped it between her lips as she sat on the picnic table's top again. He was sitting beside her now, and she sucked on that piece of pineapple and watched the coals a moment. "I expected someone nice. A man, not too old and not too young, but with idealism still present in his eyes when he looked at me." She looked over at him, and she stared and stared, attention fully focused on him as she tried to figure him out, hip to hip and her copper hair flicking around them in the summer breeze. "I expected someone maybe a little lost and a little sad, but who wasn't always that way. Someone who still hoped good things were over the horizon and who still had faith in people." She smiled brightly. "I expected pineapples."