Tasslehoff Burrfoot is not a thief (tas_wanderlust) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-03-06 20:40:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, hannah washington, tasslehoff burrfoot |
Who: Tas and Hannah
What: Hannah unwittingly becomes an accomplice in rock theft
When: Mid-February
Where: The Natural History Museum
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
Hannah wanted to say she hadn’t spent a majority of her time in the Natural History Museum looking at rocks, but a lot of her time had actually been spent there. Not all of her time, naturally. She had other things to do. Today, however, she felt the need to spend time looking at the rocks on display. She had no interest in staying home and wallowing in the knowledge that she was going to die. She knew it only because of Josh, but the more she dreamt, the closer she got to it. The closer she got to Beth dying. She didn’t think she could handle it. Beth’s death weighed more on her than her own in the end. It was Beth, her twin. They were supposed to be alive.
So today was about pretty rocks and Hannah was easily distracted by them. It was kind of hard not to be when they had new geodes and fossils out for viewing. She hadn’t seen these ones before. That being the case, she was standing as close as she could to see them while not getting in trouble for touching the glass. She hated that they were behind glass because it made studying the details of them that much more difficult, but she understood. You couldn’t just leave people to take things from a museum because they felt like it. Geodes could make a reasonable amount of money. It all depended on their condition, color, and size. The fossils were about the same.
Looking around quickly, she tried to see if anyone else could see her or was looking. When she saw no one particularly close, she leaned in just a fraction closer, trying to get a closer look at one of the amethyst geodes in the middle.
Tas didn’t have any particular interest in natural history, but the natural history museum tended to have a whole lot of interesting things to look at. He couldn’t really understand why he wasn’t supposed to touch anything, but he usually, for the most part, listened to those instructions. People in the dreams seemed nicer than people here. When he found things in the dreams, people often yelled at him for being a thief and sometimes called the city guard to come arrest him, but most people just scowled, said “Kender” like they had just eaten something unpleasant, and then Tanis or Sturm would go through his pouches to find things that had mysteriously appeared in them.
But here, Tas was the only kender that he knew of, and people didn’t seem to know that kender were handlers and also really good at finding lost things. He didn’t particularly want to go to prison all the time, even if it was usually fairly easy to find his way out of them, and so he was a little better at keeping his hands to himself.
“Wow!” Tas said, standing on his tip toes to get a better look at whatever it was the girl was looking at. “Those rocks sure are pretty, aren’t they?”
Hannah looked over at the sound of someone’s voice. She blinked before nodding. “Yeah. They are. I’ve been studying things like this for...well...a couple years.” She offered him a smile after that. She’d never talked to people here before. At least not really. Maybe a couple times when she had questions to ask, but for the most part, she was the one starting those conversations. “Can you see them okay?” She did notice he wasn’t as tall as some of the other people around. And he was on his tip toes.
“For a couple of years? Wow!” Tas himself had never really studied anything for any extent of time. He didn’t have the attention span for it. “Are they all behind glass like this? How can you study things when you can’t even touch them? I’ve always thought the best way to learn about something was to handle it, though maybe rocks are different.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No. They aren’t all behind glass like this. Usually we get to study things in the labs or go out and see them. This place just keeps them behind glass.” She looked back at them before letting out a sigh. “It would be pretty great if you could hold them, though. They always have the best selection and I’ve never seen anything like this fossil,” she said, pointing to the one in the middle. “It’s pretty amazing, though. I keep hoping I’ll find one on my own. So far, no luck. It’s pretty disappointing.”
Tas needed no more prompting. It was practically like she had said ‘Oh please Tas, get the rocks for me.’ He knew that a lot of humans seemed to lack basic skills like lockpicking, which seemed just plain silly, but he wouldn’t judge them.
His lockpick was pulled out of his pouch before Hannah had even finished her sentence, and then he was in front of the lock, inserting them. It was a simple kind of lock, to the point where he wondered why they even bothered, and he had the glass case open almost instantly. “Ta da!” he said cheerfully, turning to her with a proud grin on his face. Now they both could look at all the rocks they wanted!
Hannah felt a slight increase in her usual anxiety. Okay, it was more than a slight increase. “What are you doing,” she whispered. Oh dear lord. She was going to get arrested and never be able to do anything ever again. Josh would have to bail her out of jail. Dear god, her parents were going to find out about this. It wasn’t even that she couldn’t work as a geologist with a record, because it wasn’t serious like that, but she just couldn’t even fathom the world in which she was arrested for anything. This took ‘a love for rocks’ to a whole new level and she was not prepared for that level at all.
“You asked me to get the rocks,” Tas said, his memory already amending what had happened just moments before. He lifted two of them out of the case in his small hands and held them out to Hannah. “Don’t you want to see them? They’re even nicer now that you can really see them! Look at how this one sparkles in the light!” he exclaimed, moving one of the rocks away from Hannah so as to properly have the overhead lights reflect off all the pretty goldish flecks that were in the red stone.
“What? I did not!” She thought over what she said for a moment, nearly groaning at herself for even saying she wished she could have seen them closer. It was clearly an idiotic move. She was never going to do this again! “I do want to see them, but I don’t want to be arrested.” She felt her heart rate still increasing. The geodes were really pretty, but she was not sure she could enjoy it when she had high levels of panic influencing the way she felt.
“Arrested?” Tas scoffed. “For looking at rocks? I’m sure they won’t do that! Here,” he said, pushing the rocks in his hands towards her.
“Or at least kicked out for messing with their things. Probably they're going to think we're trying to steal them.” Which she wasn't. God, she was going to have to figure out how to deal with this...after she got a little bit of a closer look.
They really were amazing. How did nature even manage to make these things happen? It was the most wondrous thing ever. How minerals and earth could come together and make this. “They're beautiful,” she said quietly.
“They really are, aren’t they?” Tas asked. “I wonder how they get so colourful. Most rocks are kind of grey and boring, aren’t they? Though I guess there are lots of red rocks over at the grand canyon, even if they aren’t as shiny as these ones. Or as smooth. I never realized how interesting rocks were before actually!” His rambling was brought to a stop as his keen ears picked up the steady clomping of boots on tile, still far away but getting louder.
“Someone’s coming,” he whispered loudly. The geodes vanished into his pouches, and he reached for Hannah’s hand so he could pull her down the hallway. He was sure no one would bother arresting them just for looking at rocks, even if they were pretty, but Hannah seemed to be so worried about the possibility that it seemed wisest to just avoid the situation all together.
“They are.” She smiled for a moment before looking at him. “Well, they form inside hollow rocks or...well, if lava cool and forms with a hollow center. Like a bubble. Then minerals get inside. Usually with the help of water.” Her voice was no less filled with admiration when she talked about the formation of geodes. “Then the minerals grow toward the center. It takes such a long time.” But the effect was no less wonderful. “Usually it’s quartz or amethyst, but so much of how they form depend on where they form. Whether it’s sedimentary rocks, lava, igneous rock. Even where geographically. Geodes in Spain are different from geodes in Brazil.” Everything about this was amazing. She was entirely in awe of the way things happened, how they happened. She was seconds from sighing happily just thinking about it, but then he mentioned someone coming.
She stared at him for a moment after he slipped the rocks in his pouches and dragged her off down a hallway. “You know, that’s not helping our situation. We could have just put them back and acted like they’d been the the case the whole time.”
Tas listened raptly to her explanation, surprised at just how interesting rocks really could be, and made a mental note to make sure to ask her more about them once they were once again somewhere where they could chat freely.
“Oh, you think so?” Tas asked innocently, turning down a corner. “You were just so worried about being arrested that I thought it would be better to just avoid the whole thing. Do you think we should go back?”
“I think we’re making it worse, but I’m also not sure how to get back there without getting in more trouble.” She let out a sigh. She needed Josh. Josh would know what to do. She almost texted him with ‘SOS. Have been put in uncomfortable situation with strange, short man who has no issues with picking locks in museums and dragging me into his shenanigans. Send help’. But she didn’t. “This is like a really terrible dream. This is what nightmares are made of.” Only she knew that was just her being dramatic. She knew what nightmares were made of and they were made of...well...the dreams. She was walking towards what she was sure was her death.
“Hmm,” Tas said philosophically. He pulled her around a corner, and deciding they were probably safe there for now he stopped. “Really? This is what nightmares are made of? That sounds amazing! I wish I had nightmares all the time!” Tas, not really understanding the concept of fear, had had dreams of monsters and ghosts and had decided that they were his most interesting dreams. “Anyway, I bet if we put our heads together, we can come up with something! Do you think we actually need to put our heads together for that to work? You might need to duck down a little bit if that’s the case. I’m not really tall enough.”
Hannah stared at him again. He was honestly the strangest person that she’d ever met. “Nightmares aren’t fun. At least not in my experience.” She was busy pressing her palm against her face the longer he spoke. How did he even exist? How had he not been killed by some random stranger somewhere? “I’m pretty sure no one needs to actually physically put their heads together to figure something out.” There was a hint of exasperation to her voice, but she sighed and tried to think of ways to get herself out of it. “Maybe we need a distraction. Someone to distract people while we put them back? Well, I guess technically, one of us would be the distraction.”
It wasn’t the first time someone asked how Tas hadn’t been murdered yet, nor would it be the last. “Are you sure nightmares aren’t supposed to be fun?” he asked, contemplative. “Because they always sound like fun. But you probably know best,” he said after a moment. After all, he’d never had a nightmare himself. “Oh! I can go distract him! I’m really good at distractions. My best friend Raistlin tells me all the time how distracting I am!” How convenient that that could be handy. “I’ll go right now,” he said, turning on his heel and heading back the direction he’d come from.
“They aren't. That's why they are nightmares, not dreams.” But they were dreams in a way. Just the sort that made you wake up in a state of panic. She had no idea how he had never experienced them. Especially not when she’d been experiencing them since she first started dreaming. At least that’s how they all felt. However, the more recent ones were certainly more nightmarish than the ones that came before. Crushing on a boy wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, she’d realized. Assholes trying to embarrass you for no reason was the worst thing. Or dying. She was pretty sure that’s where this was all building up to.
“Wait,” she called out, running after him and grabbing his arm. “I need the rocks first. Then you distract.”
Tas paused, and gave her a confused manner. But he’d been told he had things that he didn’t remember having often enough that his first thought was to check his pouches. “Oh, these?” he asked innocently, handing them out to her. “Wow! What a stroke of luck that I picked them up so we could put them back!”
Hannah almost sighed before carefully loading them into her pockets. Hopefully he was as distracting as he claimed to be because otherwise this was going to end poorly and she was going to cry a lot. “How did you forget that?” She was officially worried about him...and she thought she was worried before. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Go distract, I’ll put these back.”
Tas grinned cheerily. He was indeed as distracting as he claimed to be; he was probably more distracting than even he knew. He headed back toward the display, and, incidentally, the footsteps which were now moving much quicker than they had been before. He peeked around a corner and noticed a security guard coming around the corner, red in the face and out of breath. He clearly wasn’t very good at cardio. Tas ducked back behind the corner, and as the security guard came past the hall that he was in, he stuck his foot out and tripped the man.
“Oh no!” Tas exclaimed, rushing to the prone security guard’s side. “Are you okay? Here, let me help you up. You sure seem to be in an awful hurry. What’s going on?”
The security guard explained things, and Tas gave a very convincing exclamation of dismay. “Oh no! They stole it? That’s awful! Thieves are just terrible, aren’t they? You know, I thought I saw some very suspicious people over this way,” he said, pointing down a hall that lead away from both the display and from Hannah. “Come on, I’ll show you!”
Hannah’s heart was racing and she was going to need a hug or something after this was over or to talk to Josh. Pretty much anything that would not make her feel like she was going to have a small heart attack. She let out the smallest of sighs as she noted Tas and the security guard walking off in a different direction. She was sure he wasn’t the only one, but anything was possible.
Slowly walking out from the hallway, Hannah did her best impression of looking casual. She was not meant to be an accidental criminal. Not that she thought anyone was, but Tas handled it remarkably well.
There were a couple people standing around the display. She wished she had some magic or any sort of ability. But she didn’t. So she was going to have to get creative. She took a brief moment to make herself look disheveled before making her way to display, saying. “I tried to stop them. They went that way.” She made herself sound breathy and like she’d really just done what she said. She hoped her acting was up to par, but it seemed that it was, since everyone took off in the way that she’d pointed.
She didn’t really wait for them to be gone long before she took a quick glance around and dumped the rocks back in. She wanted to apologize to them for not carefully putting them back, but no criminal would return things that way and the museum would certainly fix them and put them back in order. So she wouldn’t be suspected by anyone, she walked away from the display. It was only when she was in a different place altogether, that she allowed herself to relax. She fixed her hair and let out a small breath. She was never doing this again.
Tas led the security guard around for a couple more minutes, before he excused himself and ran back to the display. He was pleased to see that evidently, Hannah had succeeded, and then he went out to find her. It only took him a bit of searching before she managed to find her, and he ran up to her.
“Hi! Hey-” it was about this point that he realized he hadn’t actually exchanged names with her. That was awfully rude of him, and he’d definitely have to change that. “You! Wasn’t that exciting?! We did it! What a great team we make! I’m Tasslehoff Burrfoot, by the way,” he extended his little hand for her to shake, “but you can call me Tas! All my friends do!”
Hannah looked up, blinking for a moment at the way he addressed her, which was probably due to the fact that they hadn’t really done introductions. “Exciting?! No! It was anxiety inducing. I never want to have to do that again. I’m much better at just observing crazy things and not being a part of them.” They did do it, though. That was the only thing that made her feel relieved. “I’m Hannah Washington. My friends usually call me Hannah. Only Sam really calls me Han.” She allowed a few moments before she said, “I guess it’s still nice to meet you...even if you are probably insane.”
“Oh, well the only way to get better things is to be a part of them!” Tas said helpfully. After all, what was the point in living in the Orange County if you didn’t want to do crazy things like fighting gremlins all the time? “Hannah’s an awfully pretty name, by the way. But I don’t think I’m insane.” He frowned thoughtfully for a moment. “Though I guess I’m not out of sane either, so who knows!”
“I don’t think I want to be a part of them.” She was just glad she’d made it out safely. But it was over and she wasn’t in jail. So there was that. “You’re pretty odd, though,” she said after a moment. “I get the feeling you do things like this all the time.” She shook her head. “Come on. We should probably go before we get into more trouble. Because I don’t think I can handle another round, honestly.” She started toward the exit. “Let’s at least do something normal like getting food. Anything you want. I’ll pay.”
Well that just didn’t make any sense. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of them? That was clearly something Tas was going to have to find out about once she took him out for food. “Anything? I could really go for some of Otik’s Spiced Potatoes right now. Oh! but I guess those only exist in my dreams. Oh! But the Hanged Man has some pretty tasty spiced potatoes! We could go there!”
“I’m afraid dream places are a little impossible, but I guess we can go to the Hanged Man. You might have to tell me where it is, though. Because otherwise I will never find it and I am now curious about what spiced potatoes are.”