Anna might be (elatedorgassy) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-12-22 16:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, anna of arendelle, tasslehoff burrfoot |
Who: Tas and Anna
When: December 15
Where: Tas’s place
What: Looking at Maps!
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete!
Tas was really excited to get to show off his map collection. He didn’t normally run into people who were interested in seeing such things, but he’d run into a couple of them.
He hadn’t actually met Anna in person yet, but he still considered her a friend, and he was looking forward to her visit. When he heard the knock on the door, her cheerfully went and answered it. “Hi! You must be Anna!” he said, swinging open the door and holding out a hand for her to shake. “I’m Tas! It’s so nice to actually get to meet you in person! You just finished finals, right? How did they go?”
Anna didn’t often meet people who were as optimistic and energetic as she was. This Tas guy was right up her alley. He was sort of the opposite of some of the guys in her life -- Stefan? Ezra? Seriously. -- and it was nice. Refreshing! Her grin lit up the room when he opened the door and held out a hand for her to shake.
Anna was wearing her “ugly Christmas sweater” (which was actually adorable on her) along with a skirt and some leggings. She had a Santa Hat on her red hair, and was carrying a tupperware with a half dozen, frosted cupcakes. (Home Made.) “Hi!” She shifted the tupperware to one hand, then reached over and shook his. “It’s so nice to meet you, too! Finals were amazing. I’m so glad I’m done! Oh! I made cupcakes!”
“I love the hat!” Tas exclaimed when he saw her. “I’m so glad you like Christmas! My roommate won’t let me decorate for Christmas, which is kind of a shame, but I think I might put up a tree anyway. After all, we need something to put our gifts under! Please, come in. Oh! But you have to take your shoes off before you come in. I wouldn’t want you to pop the floor! I love cupcakes! I’m so glad you brought them. Here, let me take that for you.” He took the container of cupcakes and began to hop his way deeper into the apartment. The floors, walls and ceilings were all clearly filled with air. On the walls hung a large range of maps, placed to help hide the worst of the peeling paint (which still peeled off the plastic walls somehow). There were many of them, though Tas had managed to decorated so that they didn’t make the walls look cluttered.
Deeper into the apartment, his furniture had also been turned into great, bouncy, furniture-shaped air cushions, though the electronics had all remained the same.
“Pop the…. OH MY GOD!” Anna followed Tas further into the apartment (after pulling off her boots, of course) and gasped at the bouncy furniture. She was more than willing to hand over the cupcakes, and was excited to eat one with him soon! But first… seriously, first they had to play in this place. “TAS THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER.” She said, giving a giddy little dance. “How did you--what did you--what--I can’t even…” Then she lost the ability to sentence.
Tas bounced to the kitchen and put them on his counter. When he returned to Anna, he did so with a tumble that would impress a gymnast, finishing it with a front flip in front of the girl. “Ta da!” he sang. He was rather excited about how pleased she seemed about it. Raistlin really… hadn’t been very happy at all. “It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?!” he asked. “I just woke up with it like this this morning! It’s kind of weird because I was just thinking about how great it would be to live in a bouncy castle a couple of days ago, and then I woke up and here it is! The Orange County is the greatest place on earth!”
Okay, so this was like, the best thing in the whole damn world. Anna couldn’t help but jump right on in, bouncing around on the floor, the furniture. She gave Tas her full attention when he spoke, nodding brightly. She was like a wide-eyed kid on Christmas morning in here, man. “That’s.. just… holy crap, this is SO COOL.” And you knew it was big time because Anna never swore.
“Wait, you were thinking about it? Or you were wishing about it?” She asked, bouncing as high as she could, then plopping down on her bum on the ground. She sprung back up again to her feet.
“Well, both, I guess,” Tas said thoughtfully. “I was looking up at the sky a few nights ago, and thinking about how much fun it would be to live in a bouncy castle, and then all these stars started falling. And I remembered that if you wish on a star, sometimes your wishes come true. So I said ‘I wish I lived in a bouncy castle’ and, well, here we are.”
Anna paused for a moment, staring at him. “Wait, when there was that meteor shower? Like, a week ago?” She’d seen the same thing. That night when she was crying, and Caroline was there and… oh man. She’d wished, too. Hadn’t she? Or had she simply wanted? And then…
Suddenly, Anna’s head hurt. She shook it, shrugged her shoulders, and then broke into a bright smile. “Nevermind. Show me what amazing tricks you can do!”
“Yeah, about then!” Tas said. He didn’t really understand why Anna was staring at him, but then she asked him to do more tricks. “I’ve been practicing this all morning!” Tas said. He did a couple back handsprings to the wall, then a backflip. When his feet were parallel with the wall, he kicked out into the wall, front flipping off of it and then landing heavily onto the ground. “I guess I still don’t have it,” he said, glaring at the wall as though it had betrayed him. “But the floor’s so soft that you can do anything and it doesn’t hurt! You should try some tricks too!”
“Oh my God!” It felt like Anna had said Oh my God a thousand times since she’d arrived at Tas’s place… but it was an appropriate exclamation, wasn’t it? This was an Oh my God situation! Anna was super stoked to try things, but flipping upside down? She laughed. “Are you sure? I don’t want to break my neck!” Of course, Anna had experience bouncing high and taking funny positions in the air. She’d done it while singing in her Dreams. Weird.
“Okay… show me again how to do that… thing.” She motioned with her hand, then bounced a few times, trying to psyche herself up for a flippy thing.
“You won’t break your neck!” Tas said. “See?” He lept backwards to do a backflip, but instead of landing it he belly-flopped onto the floor. Then he rolled onto his back and sprung onto his feet and thought to himself. A back handspring was definitely the easiest thing to teach.
“What you do is you jump backwards, land on your hands, and then push off with them so you can land on your feet again!” said Tas, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. He demonstrated, attempting to go a little slower though it didn’t make much of a difference. “See? Easy-peasy! I can help you too if you think you need it. I’ll kneel behind you and put a hand on your thighs and back, and then I can help with the flip so you don’t flop!”
This was SO Anna. Trusting some guy she'd only just met with her life. Wasn't that the kind if thing she did? Poor, trusting, naive girl.
She gave a little giddy squeal, bounced her feet in an excited march, then moved closer. “Okay! Okay. Like… this? Ready?” She stood beside him, held her hands out, then bent her knees and pushed off, hoping for a back handspring. Her back arched, she felt like she was flying.
Tas made sure to keep his hand on her back as she jumped. Her form was a little sloppy, but that was to be expected for someone’s first time, and that’s why he was here anyway. He pushed up on her thighs, helping fling them over her head, and then yelled “now push!” when it was time for her to push off with her hands into the final part of the handspring.
So, Anna made it over, sure. But her body gave a flop and a turn, and she definitely didn’t nail the landing. Laughing, she bounced against the floor, and fell flat on her face. Hey, it didn’t hurt to fall, right? That was half the fun of being in a bouncy house. She beamed up and over at Tas. “This is the. best. ever.” She’d nearly forgotten he was supposed to be showing him maps.
Tas had forgotten nearly everything since he’d woken up to living in a giant bouncy castle. If there things other than bouncing around that he was supposed to be doing today, they’d all completely disappeared from his mind.
“This is the best place I’ve ever lived!” Tas said. “The Orange County, not the apartment. Though, the apartment too! But I’ve never lived somewhere where Halloween decorations come to life, and Christmas characters show up, and apartments turn to bouncy castles, and I get to adventure in my sleep before!”
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Anna said, “but it’s only been the last couple of years that it’s become… insane. Living here is insane.” She couldn’t help but smile brightly at the thought. She’d met her ex-boyfriend once she’d left the house that was almost a prison for most of her life. And she’d found her best friends, she’d started going to school… all that was normal. Then there was the snow, the Dreams, her sister’s powers, turning into Halloween costumes, being attached to people, people being turned into other sexes… all sorts of weirdness. It was hard to believe it was all real.
“OH MY GOD.” Anna turned to him with bright eyes. “I forgot about the maps! You’re supposed to show me the maps!”
“Insane is better than boring, if you ask me,” Tas said. “When Raist said we were moving out here,” well, Raistlin had said he was moving out there. Tas had decided it would be fun to move somewhere with Raistlin and so had signed a lease for both of them, “I was kind of worried it was going to be really boring with a bunch of California suburbs and soccer moms, but this has really been great so far! Definitely the most exciting place I’ve ever lived!”
At the mention of maps, Tas’ gasped. “I totally forgot about them too!” he said. “I’ve just been so caught up with my new apartment that they just completely slipped my mind! Follow me!” he said, bouncing toward his bedroom. The apartment had two bedrooms, but the door to one of them was firmly shut. The other room was wide open, and that’s the one that Tas bounced into.
The walls in this room had a lot more maps on them than the living room did. There were shelves on the walls (which Tas had put up himself), filled with a random assortment of junk things Tas had found interesting. An assortment of crystals, sand dollars, some feathers from a colourful bird, and a paper dragon were some of the more interesting things, but there were far more things like a crushed blue can of some, a pile of smooth pebbles, and random pieces of shapeless driftwood were far more prevalent.
His bed, dresser, end table had all been turned into the same plastic as the rest of the apartment. So had the easel and the chair sitting in the corner of the room, though the map on his easel was still made of paper. “This is the one I’m working on right now,” Tas said, bouncing toward it.
Anna turned to bounce along and follow after Tas. She accidentally bumped into the hallway wall, but that was okay. She didn't mind the bouncy bit. Being quite bouncy herself, this was just fun and not embarrassing. Though, she did kind of miss her shoes.
She headed into the bedroom and gasped. "...wow!" She said, looking around. "This is amazing. You're a collector!" She moved further in and came to his side so he could show her the map. "...it's amazing!" Apparently, 'amazing' was the word of the day for Anna. She half expected PeeWee Herman to come bouncing out from behind a big, blue chair. (Though, she was a little young for that reference.) "Did you study how to make maps? Or does it just come naturally?"
“I am!” Tas said. “Whenever I see a map I don’t have, I make sure to snatch it up! There’s all sorts of interesting ones. I even have some from when the Ottoman Empire was still around!” Not that Tas knew much of the Ottoman Empire. Just that he had some really, really old maps from when it was around.
“My dad and my uncle both liked to make maps, so they taught me when I was a kid!” Tas said. “The rest just came from lots of practice. I try to make maps of all the places I travel, and things like that.” Of course, he’d never quite gotten the hang of ‘scale’ and his maps of his travels were rarely ever accurate.
“That’s so amazing.” Anna said, smiling at all the maps. “I wonder… how old is map-making? I mean, there must be hundreds or thousands of years of map history. I can’t believe I hadn’t even thought about it until this moment. How strange is that? Something I use practically every day.” She wondered how many other things she was taking for granted.
“Aww, that’s really sweet! Something you could do with the whole family? My mom and dad really liked art, so maybe that’s where I get it!” She grinned.
“Oh, map making is even older than people are!” Tas said, as if he had any idea what he was talking about and that he wasn’t completely making everything up as he went along. For all he knew, he was telling the truth. “They found some maps that were made by the people people grew out of! Pre-caveman and everything! They used them to track where they travelled and where all the best hunting spots were!”
He laughed. “Well, my mom didn’t really draw maps or anything. She actually really liked to cook. Whenever she’d make her veggie pies, there’d be riots in the commune over it! She taught me how to cook too!” Tas was also a fairly good cook. He did most of the cooking in the apartment, except when Raistlin brought home take-out, and it seemed like in his dreams he did most of the cooking too. “I bet it is though! Do you draw lots with your parents?”
“That’s so amazing!” Anna replied. She believed every word he said, which was silly, as how could people-made things be older than people? But Anna was in a bouncy mood (no pun intended) and anything and everything made her happy and excited. She was naturally on the naive and trusting side, so that just factored in.
“Oh. No.” Anna fell sad again for a moment. “My parents are dead now.” She cleared her throat. “I liked to look at art when I was little. We had tons of these coffee table books with full color pictures. I learned all about impressionists and surrealism before I learned algebra.” Beat. “Not that I ever really learned algebra.”
Tas immediately felt bad about bringing them up. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he said solemnly, reaching forward to give her shoulder a bit of a squeeze. “But that’s really neat! I still don’t know algebra! But then again, I don’t know much about impressionists or surrealism either.” He knew what all of those things were (well, ,not impressionism), but that was about where his knowledge on those subjects ended.
“Oh, it’s okay.” Anna forced a smile, but it became more genuine as she talked. “I can teach you about art if you want to teach me about maps? It could be a thing! Artistic maps. I kinda like that idea.” She reached forward to give him a hug. It was sudden and tight, and she released just as quickly. “You’re a great friend, Tas. I’m so glad we met one another.”
“That would be great! Like, a student-mentor-mentor-student relationship!” He didn’t really have much interest in actual art - he wasn’t bad at drawing, a skill that had developed as his cartography skills had improved, but the theory of things always bored him to tears. Anna’s enthusiasm was catchy though, especially for someone who was naturally enthusiastic like Tas was.
“I’m glad we met each other too!” Tas said. “We’ll definitely be great friends forever!”