milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The sofas by the fire are warm, and comfortable, and appear deserted.

(Not that there might not be kids hiding under them somewhere, though.)

And play is, after all, very hard work, no matter how many bits of other people's dinners (vital rations) you might steal. So if you're a small person all tuckered out from hide-and-seek, the sofas are an ideal spot to curl up and nap- maybe before going back to the game, maybe for a bit longer than that.

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She looked up before he plopped, with an expression of truly glowing happiness still all around her, even as she frowned absently and stopped sipping her chocolate milk. "Where'd you go? What happened?"

"I," Luz says, looking up at slightly over the arm of the couch, "got tagged and went to tag other people. Did they get you?" There's a hint of concern that she may have been tagged, but, really, a hope she did. Chaseing the others down was great fun.

The milkshake also gets eyed carefully. "Where did you get that?"

"No," she says, shaking her head. "I just crawled out a little while ago. It was weird. One minute you two were there and then the next you weren't."

And this, this made no sense, because while Allie would never say George wasn't special, he wasn't that kind of special.

The smile he had moves into a look of concern. "What do you mean by that?" Shifting where he sits he scoots around enough that he's resting his chin on the arm of the chair along with his arms. "That othr girl...Tilda? She tagged me and I ran off..maybe that's what happened?"

No, George isn't that kind of special. He's just special in his own way of being a troublesome younger brother.

"I-" Allie was looking at with a strange look now, cause she hadn't seen him run away anywhere. She'd just been looking and suddenly he was gone. "-must of have missed it somehow."

Really strangely for being a kid, there was no embarrassment in the statement, or certainty.

George can only smile up at Allie, giving her a toothy little grin that is just downright silly. "Well at least you didn't get taged right?" Then he pauses, letting another silly little smile cross his face. "Or did you want too?"

Something about the younger girl just...makes him smile. That's all George can do.

That was not a little quiver in her. She did not do that. She was not that type of little girl.

Though he kept smiling and being jovial, which made him like this earlier, brilliant shadow of the person she almost saw there. Except he was young and his hair was all bright. And his smile and eyes, the shadows were even there yet.

At all.

"I wouldn't have minded," Allie admitted, with a tiny smile, as she looked at the milk in her hands. "It was really fun getting to play with the other kids."

"Yeah," George agrees, pondering something for a moment or two before looking back up at Allie. "Not a lot of kids in your neighborhood? There's a lot in mine- you could always..you know..come over and play and stuff."

Call it an assumption from the slightly older kid. A lot of the girls on his street had dolls and jumpropes and tea parties. Not his thing, really, but if Allie needed friends..

"When I'm not here, there are no kids where I live," Allie corrected, without malice or sadness. It wasn't a slight, it was just a fact. And it wasn't even one she'd pointed out to 'other' George, just to Rapunzel.

There was the image of dolls and jumpropes and china, to which she almost giggled, but covered it in drink her chocolate milk. "Back before I came to this home, I used to play soccer."

"Soccer?" Luz had never seen that before. Baseball, football, and the like had been more common around his part of Rhode Island. "No kids? Jeeze that doesn't sound like a lot of fun."

Who else would go fishing with you? Climb a tree? Help plot pranks and steal pies of window seals? And yes. Steal pies only to get caught doing it.

George got many a whiping for that.

"Maybe we can have another game or something here sometime."

It's not fun, but it's not about fun. It's about choices being there. And safety for the world. And one little girl not having fun doesn't seem so high a price for that.

"Soccer is a game on a green, with a ball you kick back and forth between two teams, trying to score goals," Allie explained, partially avoiding the topics she wasn't adressing. "I was a goalie. It was my job to watch the game and block the other team from scoring goals."

Kicking a ball around? That sounded like fun! Allie has Georgey hooked on every word now as she describes the game. "Really? Oh that sounds so neat! Maybe we can do it here or something!" Bounceing to his feet he soon moves to the couch keeping a respectable distance between himself and the younger girl beside of him.

"Ir we can play tag again!"

Allie is looking up, starting to grin at his excitement, which gives her a smiling pause while looking quite thoughtful.

"The outside area would be big enough for both tag and for soccer, though it'd have to be roped off and there'd have to be teams chosen for the soccer part."

There was not a glimmer there. Really there wasn't. But she had to add it. She just couldn't not with that excitement in front of her.

"It can be a rather rough sport."

"If it's that rough of a sport," Luz asks slowly, studying Allie with a glance, "how come you play it?" Rough sport in the 1920s were generally reserved for the men and boys.

Though there is a look of admiration that she participates. No doubt his sister Julie would have a fit over it.

That was a look of indignation, blue eyes and mother snapping wide open, even as it was amusement laced.

"I could take you down. It doesn't matter that I'm a girl."

Ohh a challenge! Luz may one day have to take her up on that offer. Right now, he's content to sit beside of her smileing. "Really now? We'll try it one day, eh?" That brings a little laugh from George as he smiles.

Looking back at the door he came in from the smile waves slightly. Reaching inside of one of his pockets he pulls out a shiney blue marble. If Allie knew his name from somewhere- even if he wasn't the same George, she had to be okay for a girl. "Here," he says as he offers it to her.

"Okay, but you better be ready to go down."

That? That would be her mother's streak coming out in her. Rock n' Roll drummer who took nothing from nobody and still left 'em all smiling. Her idol, if you didn't know it.

This had been cohesive though. Had been until he pulled out the marble--and she knew it was just a marble--and offered it to her. Cause suddenly she was blinking at it like it might not be, which was comforting, and not, all at once.

Something so simple.

Allie reached out and took it. Caught somewhere amid awe and trying to remember when the last time anyone had given her anything that wasn't neccesary; aka food, clothing, a room.

"It's pretty."

And, oh, did that suddenly sound girly as compared to her other thing. Which may have benn the reason for a flush.

It's however Allie wants to read it.

George, however, has a certain idea what it means to him. "So I'll know this just isn't a dream when I see it's gone." Really, a place where kids- from anywhere it would seem- could come and play games inside? It had to be one.

"Just take care of it okay? It's one of my best marbles."

"I promise." She nodded, becoming more still and contained than she had been, as she looked at the small blue orb in her hand.

There was a little more serious, too, because really George had gone somewhere and she hadn't seen him well. Just knew he'd gone to the hard, loud, scary place again, like she knew the other things.

"You'll remember it? And this?"

"That's part of the adventure ain't it?" George says with a grin, slideing from the couch and placeing his hands back into his overall pockets. "I hope so."

Glanceing back towards the door he looks back to Allie and grins from ear to ear. "I better go 'fore my mom notices I'm not there. Or Julie- she'll tell my ma if she sees me coming in late."

Allie nodded as he got up, slipping the small blue marble into her pocket, watching him get up and go. It almost hurt a little, because it made her wonder if maybe he was dead (but just thinking it she knew he wasn't, that he didn't die there even if he didn't come back for a while) and thats why he came this way.

"It was really nice to meet you."

She said simply as he was getting into his door, and it was ineffectual for the meaning, but entirely, truly amazing.

And somehow she didn't want to watch him leave, which was just confusing.

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