There were some days when Anya could just not sit still. Today was one of those days.

She was supposed to be reading ‘The Island of The Blue Dolphins’ for class, but she had long since lost interest in the book. It was boring anyway. She thought it would be fun to read, because it was about dolphins, but it was actually about a girl who got left behind on a deserted island. Perhaps she should’ve thought about the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ when she picked it up.

The small blonde girl kicked her feet as she sat at her table, daydreaming as she looked out a window. Maybe she’d go out to the garden later for some fresh air. She sighed and stood up, picking up her book and her stuffed animal. She always had a stuffed animal with her. Today it happened to be a lion, which looked like he was ready to be put out of his misery. Most of his mane was gone, and his tail was battered. Anya never kept her animals in top condition, but she loved them all, no matter how tore up she made them. Her lion was cleverly named Augustine, mostly because Leo was the astrological sign for August. She held him in the crook of her arm as she picked up her book, yawning out loud before she spotted a movement in the corner of her eye. She turned and watched as she say a small boy roll out of where she saw the movement, before colliding with a table.

Anya laughed and watched him as he scared two other girls out of their wits, raising his arms above his head and growling. He then proceeded to run about the room and scratch at people. Anya’s imagination started to run away, and, by the time he got to her, she was a lion tamer in the Cirque de Mer, and he was her tiger who happened to be causing a quite lot of trouble.

She stood with her hands on her hips, her lion looking out at the small boy. Even though she was only four feet tall, she seemed bigger. Her stance seemed to command attention as she held up her palm as a stop symbol. “No! Bad tiger! SIT! The ringmaster commands you to sit!” She said, pointing at the floor as she stared at him seriously. The corner of her lips twisted and she broke out into a grin. She was happy. Most times, her imagination wasn’t put to very good use outside of her dorm. She mostly had to pretend with teddy bears. She had never tried out her imagination on real people before.

Anya was always reading and using her imagination. This wasn’t the first time she had been a ringmaster before. But, unlike Miles, she didn’t read about a circus from a book, she actually went. She saw the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) and the tightrope walkers. She saw the clowns and horses and elephants. She had seen a man breath fire and a family of acrobats and many other things that Miles only wished he could imagine. This only fueled her imagination, of course. A child with an imagination like hers had no boundaries.

Even now, she giggled as he rubbed up against her legs. She heard some girls gasp and begin whispering behind their hands. ‘How scandalous~!’, they said. Wasn’t she a Pretty Face? Pretty Faces certainly didn’t behave that way. Oh, they’d run to Celeste and tell her all about it and she’d get scolded later, for sure. Maybe she would even be kicked out. But right now, Anastasia was busy patting the top of her lion’s head. She sat down with him, pulling her knees up to her chest. As fast as her imagination worked, it collapsed just as quick. One moment, it was in full gear, the next, it was gone. She smiled at him and held her lion. She stared at him for a long while, looking him over.

He was a boy, all right. That was for sure. He was Asian too. He had the narrow eyes and the skin that everyone called yellow but wasn’t really yellow. His eyes were a black sort of color, and they sort of frightened her, but drew her in as well. His pupils didn’t look right. She liked it. He had short black hair, like a crow’s feather. He was very thin, and he looked a little pale too. But he was short. He was taller than her, because everyone was taller than her, but still short.

Anya tilted her head to the side before smiling brightly at him, her blue eyes crinkling around the edges as she grinned. Her pearly teeth came out from behind her pink lips as she did. She liked this boy. He was nice and he wasn’t mean, at least not yet. He looked very huggable. “My name’s Anastasia. You can call me Anya. What’s your name?”