&& /little wonders {tag: Anya}

[Rain]

Girls just want to have fun...

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With the swiftest of ladylike steps, Annette strode into the empty classroom, unsure why, exactly, she had wandered there. She tended to do that, to start walking around and let her thoughts carry her feet anywhere they pleased, and most of the time, she wound up somewhere completely random. Last time she had landed herself in the Boat House and gotten into a bit of trouble, although it hadn't been the kind of trouble she couldn't handle. She was glad that, now, she was in a place where she knew she wouldn't encounter any boys, unless they were naughty ones that had strayed into the East Wing. And if she happened to find any, she would most certainly be telling.

Boys. They were such irksome things most of the time. She only liked two of them very much--Daddy and Eli. However, she hadn't spoken to many boys, so she figured she wasn't giving them enough of a chance. But from what she'd seen, they were noisy, loud, and dirty. The noisy and loud bit she didn't mind so much, when it was appropriate, but the lack of cleanliness was appalling. That was one thing she was always bugging Eli about. His beard, if she could call it that, was far too scruffy.

With a running jump, she leaped onto a table in the center of the room. Her bum managed to land on it without sending her flying over the table, a lesson she'd learned the hard way. It had been at her mother's friend's country house. She must have been about five and, since the people inside the house were the epitome of boredom, she'd dragged the then-eight-year-old Eli along with her to explore their property. They'd located a large tree trunk, about as wide as Annette was tall, and Eli had bet she couldn't jump over it. She'd been stupid enough to take the challenge, and had wound up with a rather nasty bruise on her stomach, as well as several tear stains lining her chubby, little girl cheeks. It was funny she'd decided to take a seat on this table in the same manner. Had she learned nothing.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, wondering whether it was wrong for her to be sitting here in the first place. It was impolite to sit on tables, that was true, but there was no company around. Who would she be offending, the chair in the corner? Mummy always told her to practice her manners even when all by her lonesome, but she put no stock in that statement. There were times for proper behavior, and then there were times for loosening up, for kicking her socks off and slumping in her chair. After all, it had been much more exciting jumping (or attempting to jump) over that log than it had been sitting inside on the comfortable couches as they were brought disgusting sandwiches.

Taking advantage of her solitude, she yawned widely, her eye on the still-open door. If any authority figure were to wander in here, she would surely be scolded for sitting on a surface that was not meant for people's bottoms. How would you feel, they would say, if someone put their bottom all over the place where you eat your luncheon? But this table was so dusty. Annette figured there was no likelihood that it would be used for meals, anyhow.

Making herself comfortable, she lay back on the table and closed her eyes, her curls splayed out like sunbeams protruding out of her skull. Her hair was probably getting dusty, something she normally was finicky about, but she found she didn't care much. For now, she was drifting on a cloud, in her own little world, and was perfectly content.

[The Hatterdasher]

In a world of rules and orderly conduct, there were bound to be a few broken rules. Vases too. There was almost always a broken vase somewhere. Today, however, there were no broken vases; at least not yet. There were, however, quite a few broken rules. For example, girls were supposed to be demure and quiet. They were supposed to have poise and a sense of dignity about them. This was a very hard rule to follow for some. One, in particular, was Anya.

Anya was not demure and quiet. Sure, she could be shy when the occasion called for such behavior, but she still got over her inhibitions in time. Anya did have a lot of poise, but dignity, she was too young to have. But she was still supposed to possess it, even pretend to possess it, if she must. But she didn’t. No, she had none whatsoever. She blamed it on the long white skirts. They were just impossible to handle and she liked other skirts better.

The small blonde girl skipped down the hall in stocking feet. Her skirt and most of her stockings were grass-stained with accents of dirt. She had a leaf or three in her hair, and she carried a very old looking bunny under her arm. He was also muddy. And he only had one ear. Don’t ask where the other one went, she had no idea herself. She suspected that a brownie came and chopped it off. That was what was smeared around her mouth, anyway. Not a pixie brownie, though. No, she would never eat that kind of brownie. She expected they tasted a bit like sawdust and dirt and spider webs. The cooks at the school were very nice. She got to lick the giant brownie mixing bowl and had run out before they could tell her that her mouth was smeared with the mix. She looked like a ragamuffin that had climbed her way into high class clothes. Sometimes nobility didn’t look like nobility.

Anya was busy looking. For what, she didn’t know, but when she found it, she would. She was looking for magic. Magic could come in the form of anything, of course. She was a sharp girl, and she knew that conspicuous magic wasn’t really magic at all, just a bit of gimmickry. She blonde began peering in empty rooms to see if there was any magic in them. She would skim the room for something shiny, since she often found shiny things were VERY important. But the only thing she found was a Euro, which she pocketed because money was money, and money bought candy. She wanted magic, though. She was absorbed in looking for shiny objects that were magic.

That being the case, she almost missed the girl lying on the table.

She was so busy hunting for magic, but as she walked away, she paused, walked backward, and looked back in, sure that her mind was playing tricks on her. It wasn’t though. She blinked and stared into the room, licking the left corner of her mouth and then all the way around, removing most of the brownie mix, but not all of it. She looked down at her rabbit, who seemed to not care about anything that was going on (but you wouldn’t either, if you had one ear) and back up to the girl. She had the sudden urge to poke her. More specifically, she wanted to poke her nose. She walked across the room, her stocking feet keeping her footsteps silent. As she approached the girl, she tentatively reached a finger out and held it in front of her own face. Then, slowly, she reached out until she was two inches away from the girl’s nose. What if she was dead? That wouldn’t be good. Maybe she was sleepy? But who would sleep on a desk?

But, in any case, Anya jabbed her finger so it poked the girl’s nose, hard, then stepped a few steps back, ready to run for it if necessary. However, she couldn’t help but speak, her tiny voice echoing in the empty room, even if she was whispering loudly.

“Sleeping on tables isn’t good, you know! It’s bad for your back!”

[Rain]

Girls just want to have fun...

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The ceiling in the room was a rather boring one. Annette lifted her head to slide her hands under it, her arms forming triangles as her hands joined together behind the pretty (at least, she considered herself pretty) little trunk where her brain was kept locked tight. Yes, the ceiling was flat and lacking any creative embellishments. It was flat and white, like the underside of her forearm, although that was far more interesting. She had been captivated by ceilings before, some with murals painted on them, some that arched until they formed a dome, and some with little patterns in them that, if she stared hard enough, accidentally formed pictures, like clouds when they were stretched out the right way. But this was no Michelangelo ceiling, nor did it serve as the canopy for any palace. Just an empty old classroom, thus, an empty ceiling.

She was so immersed in her thoughts that she didn't hear the tiny footsteps, or the breathing of the small girl that, unknown to Annette, was now in her company. If she had, she would have anticipated the interruption, but she never would have expected to be interrupted in such a manner as this.

"Ouch!" she cried out, jerking to an upright position and massaging her nose. It had been poked, and without much difficulty, she was able to locate the source of the disturbance. It was a blonde girl of about her age, perhaps a little younger, the like of which Annette was not used to encountering at Florence. Her small voice was amplified by the emptiness of the room, of the ceiling, of the sounds.

"I wasn't sleeping," Annette told her. She was willing to forgive the girl for the poking incident, since it had only hurt a bit, but it was still bizarre enough of an act to evoke a question. "What made you poke my nose? It's a rather odd way to greet somebody."

Annette was used to handshakes, and she wished she'd received enough hugs to be used to them as well, but poking noses was a different story. She supposed it was an interesting turn of events--most certainly unexpected, if unorthodox at the same time. Was that a bad thing? She couldn't decide. All she knew was that she had never poked anybody before.

"I'm Annette." She stared to put out her hand, but hesitated. "Would you like me to poke your nose as well? Or just a handshake?"

It couldn't hurt to ask.[/color]