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 Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:26 pm
Grocery carts were the best things ever. It was amazing the things you could do with grocery carts. The alley next to Test's place led into a small wooded area with a bike-path running through it. Anise and Touda had both been warned not to play there after dark, but that morning they had found a discarded grocery cart amongst the trees.
"Faster!" Touda shouted, as Anise attempted to push the cart and then jump onto the back so they could both coast. Their attempts had not been going well - Anise was too little to effectively maneuver the thing and Touda was, well, four-legged and furry and completely ineffectual when it came to pushing. Which automatically meant he always got to ride.
"S'not fair." Anise panted, dropping to the ground. "I wanna ride too."
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:37 pm
The cafe' had been slow that morning, leaving very little for Jamie to help with. Becca had promptly banished him so that he "wouldn't be under foot", though he had a feeling she had just wanted him to go out and have some fun. Jamie always had a hard time reading his mother, though, so he couldn't say for sure.
Once it was light enough he had taken out his bike for a ride. When he had fixed it he had added in a little something along the wheels, a small piece of mettle that clicked against the tires as they turned. It almost made his bike sound like a motorcycle...almost. Man, he couldn't wait to get one of those someday, when he was big.
He zoomed down the bike path, peddling and gliding along the curves, imagining he really was on a motorcycle instead. He was so caught up in it that he had to break really quickly when something came around the bend. The sudden stop toppled his bike off balance and he had to hop to catch himself, but he managed it. Peering over the handlebars he tried to get a better look at what was in the way...how strange!
"What are you guys do'n?" He asked.
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:42 pm
Anise had let out a feminine little scream of terror when the bike came bearing down on them (even though it was the cart that was directly in the way, not her) but as soon as it was apparent she was neither hurt nor in need of rescue, she gave a little huff and and stood up.
Touda jumped onto Anise's shoulders as she replied to the boy "Trying to ride the grocery cart." Tilting her head, she asked a question of her own. "What are you doing?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:00 pm
"Isn't it a little hard to ride in it, when no one's pushing?" He asked pointedly. His eyes immediately went to the grocery cart, examining it thoughtfully. The tinker in him was wondering over all the things he could end up making with a cart like that...the second question, however, brought him back to attention.
"Ahh! Just riding my bike," he explained with a small, friendly smile.
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:13 pm
Anise admired the bike while Touda sat perched on her shoulder. "Another blind kid." The mononoke said derisively. It wasn't Jamie's fault he couldn't see Touda, but sometimes the mononoke felt left-out because he was invisible to the majority of the population.
"Touda and Tok were riding." Anise explained. Tok, her creepy looking plushie, was in fact still inside the overturned cart. "I was pushing, but I'm too short." She gave a little pout. "I wish I had a bike like yours."
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:42 pm
"Well, maybe when you grow a little bit you can...I know I could only have a tricycle when I was how big you are...that was fun too, though not as fast," he replied.
Sadly, despite the abnormality of his family, Jamie was very much a normal boy. Perhaps his skills with tools and devices were strange, but it was true he had no magical abilities like his older sister or, though unknown to him, his mother. So the mononoke child was absent form his view, but he was able to notice that the count Anise mentioned was off.
"Touda? Tok? But ah..." he smiled sheepishly, "There's only one in the cart." He propped up his bike on the kickstand and went over, pulling up the overturned cart and setting it steadily on the path again.
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:50 pm
"Thats Tok." Anise said, nodding towards the plushie. "Touda is invisible. He's a mononoke." She'd had a lot of practice with this explanation, having to explain to almost everyone they met that Touda was invisible. Atop her shoulder, Touda stuck his tongue out at Jamie and made an unforgiveably rude gesture.
"Where do you come from?" Anise finally asked. She'd found that she was more and more curious about where people were from now. Apparently the brief life she'd lived with Robbie and Charlie had not been anyhwere close to the norm and she was now hungry for other people's experiences. Even staying with Test, she knew wasn't the definition of normal. It was, however, safe.
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 5:00 pm
"Invisible?" Jamie echoed, looking intently at the cart and then at Anise, as if he were trying very hard to see Touda. He was very very curious. "Why's that? Does he have a gaget on? Or is it magic?" He straightened up a little, his eyes briefly darting up as he lifted a hand to his face thoughfully. He murmured quietly to himself, briefly distracted, "A device for invisibility would be really cool but man...talk about a lot of energy and parts to cause that sort of light distortion..."
He blinked and rubbed the back of his bushy amount of hair, "Sorry. Where do I come from? You mean where I live? Well...it's quite a ways down this bike path and a couple of streets over. I live in the house connected to a small cafe' my mom owns."
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Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 5:18 pm
Anise wasn't sure what a gadget was, but she was pretty certain it didn't matter. "S'magic. Or something." A coy little smile and a tilt of her head followed that comment. "He's like a ghost." She added. "You have to be able to see ghosts an' stuff to see him."
"Boo." Touda said, leaping the distance from Anise's shoulder to Jamie's.
"He's sitting on your head now." Anise informed the boy with a grin. She felt a faint surge of jealousy at the mention of "mom" but was unfamiliar enough with family structures to genuinely realize what she was missing. "Next to a cafe? Does that mean you can cook?"
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Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:50 pm
"Oh, well that definately explains why I can't see him...I don't have any abilities like that," he said, seeming not the least bit embaressed about it. He found such abilities common enough that he wasn't surprised by them, but not so common that he felt left out not having one himself.
He twisted a little, as if trying to see. "Do you mean my shoulder?" He asked curiously, as he felt no weight on his head, but felt something there instead. And surely his great bushy locks would have parted if something was sitting there...unless it was tiny. "Of course, you're the one who can see him, so I suppose I shouldn't ask," he laughed.
"Can I cook...? Well yes, I guess I can. Well, I can follow a recipie anyway, that's all I really do," he explained, "But I do have a friend who's really good at cooking...she can make just about anything taste yummy, and she doesn't use a cook book or anything most of the time."
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Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 12:29 am
"I can't cook." The little girl let out a huge sigh and tossed her curls. She was too young to really understand flirting, or manipulation for that matter. But on some deeply cellular level she just naturally knew what to do to best get someone's attention on that "awww" level. "Test says she can teach me, though. Test is the lady we're staying with now."
"Ask him if he'll push us both!" Touda said, wriggling a little bit. Jamie's shoulder was more comfortable than Anise's, being somewhat broader and definitely stronger. Not that the boy could really feel the mononoke's weight.
"Touda wants to know if you'll push us in the cart?" Anise asked hopefully, giving him her best puppy-face.
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Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:08 am
Jamie nodded knowingly, "Well, I bet she'll do a good job teaching you! Cooking isn't too hard, it's mainly about following directions...unless you want to experiment of course." He never did. Experiments when it came to food...did not turn out so well with him. That's why he admired Sophia so much, she had such a handle on it. He was almost jealous but...he didn't like food enough for the desire to stick. He was fine with building his mechines and such instead.
At the question he smiled brightly, easily convinced, "Well sure! Let me just move my bike out of the way..." He went back over to it and took down the kick stand and wheeled it over into the grass, where he set it down on the ground clear of the path. He then went back to the cart, giving it a tiny push to test it's wheels. Hm...seemed good.
"Ready?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:44 pm
Scrambling rather awkwardly into the cart, her plushie clutched tightly, Anise looked back over her shoulder and grinned with excitement. Touda leapt lightly from his perch on Jamie and landed just as lightly in the wire cart.
"Ready!" Anise cried out, barely able to contain herself. It would be so much better with someone else pushing. Especially someone who was bigger. Jamie definitely looked like he'd be able to get a good running start.
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Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:11 pm
Once they were in, or at least he thought they were since he couldn't actually see Touda for verification, he adjusted his hands so he had a good grip on the handle bar. He then leaned forward, putting his weight into it as he pushed. It was slow for the first two steps, but then the speed began to increase immensely. Soon he was running behind the cart more than pushing it, except for when the path went uphill slightly. The hardest part, of course, was turning. Shopping carts really weren't made to turn sharly or speedily, so each turn he made was wobbly, unbalanced, and almost close to either tipping or slowing the ride down. Despite the close calls he kept going. They hadn't crashed yet after all!
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:16 pm
Anise squealed with delight, clapping her hands. She wasn't afraid of falling, oh no! Touda clutched the front of the cart with his claws, feeling the wind in his fur, tongue lolling out like a dog. It was a good thing Jamie couldn't see such undignified behavior.
"That was great!" Anise crowed when they finally coasted to a stop. She beamed at Jamie. "You're the best cart-pusher!" She added, giving him a little peck on the cheek.
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