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 Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 12:40 pm
Ranza was still not totally sure if this Avery brat was a boy or a girl, but either way she had a mission. She was unwilling to part with much of her own loot, so she told her mother she wanted to by presents for the family and asked for money. Eshaa was apparently charmed by the sentiment enough to not tell Ranza that was what she had a piggybank for, and gave her a generous allowance.
She rattled the coins in her pockets as she walked through Durem's shopping district. It was cold! She couldn't wear jackets on account of her feathers, but she was otherwise bundled up as best she could - a vest, a scarf, jeans, boots. She stopped short of a dinky pom-pom hat, because her hair was growing back from her bald scare and dreadlocking quite nicely and she wanted to show it off.
The parrot girl paused to peruse the window the a toystore.
"If I was an androgynous freak of nature, what would I want for christmas?" she murmured slyly.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:12 am
"Why would you give a freak a Christmas present?" The red cheeked girl asked bluntly. Dalal had just been stepping out of the store and had heard the feathery girl's comment. Her mantis behind was strangely covered by a scarf whereas the rest of her more human body was decorated with all kinds of warm winter clothes.
A nice bag was attached to her and a pretty deranged barbie doll was peeking out of it. "You can forget about this shop..." She continued to comment and scratched her head. In fact she hadn't been sure what to buy for the basket she had to fill.
As she finally concentrated on Ranza she had the feeling that she was familiar.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 5:01 am
Ranza looked up, located the other girl, and smiled slowly. She was bigger than last time they'd met, but that made sense. "Dalal, right?" she asked.
"Someone gave me a stupid basket to fill up for some brat named Avery," she explained. "Is that a boy's name or a girl's name, do you think?"
Either way, her tone of voice indicated she was not happy about the assignment.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:05 am
So her senses hadn't betrayed her - they had met before! Dalal nodded and looked at Ranza with some interest. "Yes, right. You are..." Her memory seemed to let her down, but just as she wanted to ask for the other one's name it came to her mind. "Ranza."
Dalal grinned and tugged on the scarf decorating her back to cover a cool spot. "You got a basket too?" The mantis eyes widened. "Just so have I, that's why I'm here, I want to fill it so I get stuff too."
She pondered on the question. "I don't know anyone named Avery. My one is a girl, because I heard that name on TV before." Dalal shrugged. "Perhaps you could buy something for a girl and so a girl would be happy and a boy...wouldn't." The child grinned at the thought.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:32 am
Ranza considered this suggestion and smiled. "I like the way you think, Dalal," she said slyly. So what if she made her basket as feminine as possible and it went to a boy? Served Avery right for having such a gender-ambiguous name.
"What says filling the basket necessarily means you're gonna get one back?" she asked. "I am like, this close to not doing it at all - but the other person doesn't know that, do they? So if they're nice and do what they're told, and I refuse to do what I'm told, who's to know anything?"
"Except for, you know, Avery, who won't get a basket."
She shrugged.
"It's my money," she said firmly. "I earned it myself."
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:13 am
Dalal smiled as the older one praised her way of thinking. Nobody had made her compliment on her thoughts before and so she felt way happy. Ranza was really somebody she could look up to, although she wasn't that much older.
"There was a note attached stating it..." The mantis girl responded while she thought about the possibility of not filling the basket. It was indeed quite a good idea, but what if ..."But what if the delivery person doesn't deliver it then. I mean...that santa or someone."
Dalal fumbled around in her pockets and tugged out a few gold. "I got these from Lizzi to spend the afternoon, they are all busy. Where did you earn yours?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 12:40 pm
"I find it," shrugged Ranza, "Or I do chores, or find stuff to sell."
"Have you ever done this Christmas thing before?" asked Ranza. "My brother swears he has, but I don't know a thing about it. 'Cept some morbidly obese guy comes down the chimney that we don't have."
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Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:13 am
"Ah..." Dalal made a mental note that she had to ask Lizzi about earning more money so she could spend some more time at the shopping mall. Perhaps she could also sell some of Frank's stuff.
"No, never. At least I don't remember it. But I heard it's all about presents and it's stupid if you're lonely on Christmas. And I watched a show on TV where they were all crying because they found lost family members or something..."
Dalal looked around and suddenly spotted a small booth close to the street. "Do you want some hot chocolate?"
She enjoyed being with someone her age. It was often quite boring at home.
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Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:51 am
"Sure," said Ranza, who was not one to turn down what sounded like an offer of free food. She followed Dalal across the street.
"That sounds like a totally bogus holiday," she continued, "Long lost family members and all that rot. If I get any more family members, I will scream. Seriously scream. And then, like, kill someone."
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 7:46 am
"Indeed, stupid. But at least there are presents, right?" Dalal answered and pulled out her purse.
"Hot chocolate. Two times." She told the booth lady who quickly offered her two steaming mugs of hot liquid. The mantis girl licked her lips.
"You can be happy, Ranza, at least you have family." She paid the chocolate and handed one of the mugs to the older one. "You know, I live with three people who don't really like each other and often they don't like me either."
She shrugged. "But I finally got my own room. Do you have one or do you have to share?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 12:22 pm
"I have to share with my little sister," scowled Ranza, blowing on her drink. "She glows in the dark. Can you even begin to imagine how obnoxious that is? She's like a friggin star or something."
"And they must like you a little bit," she continued, "Or else they why would they keep you around?"
"Someday," she said decidedly, "I will live on a boat, and I will not have to share a room with anyone unless I want to."
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Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:14 pm
Dalal sipped her cocoa and nodded silently. Ranza definately had a point there. She wouldn't like anyone to glow in the dark in her room and at least she didn't have to share it with a sister of some kind. Hopefully it would stay that way.
"You can live on a boat? I would like to live in a large palace and everyone would do as I wish them too. But sometimes...I wish I would live in a tent on a meadow...comfortable one, of course."
Dalal hesitated as she came to think of something she had heard about earliert. "Ranza, do you go to school?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:36 pm
"School?" asked Ranza, snorting a bit. "Pshaw, yeah, I go to school. Don't you?"
She narrowed her eyes at Dalal. "If you don't, you are so lucky. Unless you can't read, I mean. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't read. It's one of my favorite things to do, right after going on real adventures, is going on adventures in books."
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:10 pm
Dalal looked away as she answered. "Not yet..." Her antennae twitched very slightly as she turned back to face Ranza.
Books...? They didn't have a lot at home. The one's of Frank mostly had pictures in them about video games and Dalal had liked to look at them when she was smaller. Eric had lots of medicine books, but they were supposed to be complicated and she hadn't been allowed to look at them. And Lizzi had read some fairy tales to her, but Dalal had enjoyed the TV and her Bollywood shows much more.
"I will go to school next year. I've already been...how do you call it? Anyway, I will go there. So it's not much fun?" The girl wrinkled her nose and kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk.
"You go on real adventures?" Dalal tried to sound very interested. In fact she was still a bit sad about not being able to read and missing book adventures. She could read her name and some other things and she could write with the help of Lizzi...
It dawned on Dalal that Ranza was probably far more intellectual, interesting and funny. She had to do something about it.
"But I've been on the internet. On a video in a blog or something."
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 3:20 pm
"It depends who you ask, if they think school's boring or not. I do okay at it, but I don't like sitting still that long, and the other kids are dumb," she explained with a shrug. She sipped her hot chocolate.
"Yeah, I go on adventures. I've got a bike, so I can go all over the city by myself!" In truth, her brother had a bike that she stole on a regular basis, but that was just messy details.
"The internet?" Ranza smiled. "That's fun. My mom's got a computer for work - it's a fancy one, too, it's from off-world - my mom's an alien, actually, or part-alien, at least - and I guess they have really good computer's off-world. She uses it to talk to people on other planets, and to send letters to her family. She lets me use it sometimes."
"You definitely need to work on the reading thing," she declared. "And once you do, I'll give you some good books."
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