fandomtownies | Taste of Thai, Thursday Afternoon

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Taste of Thai, Thursday Afternoon

Okay, so... there was a kink in the plans that Norman and Tip had made at the stupid vampire movie party to hang out today, eat some food, maybe plot out some kind of webseries involving interviewing ghosts? But being different shapes really didn't change the fact that they could hang out and eat and chat, so their plans were proceeding regardless. And why not? Norman hadn't even bothered going to his class or to work earlier in the week, Tuesday had been a bit of a wash while he wrapped his head around the face that he kind of looked... a lot like he imagined Aggie would have looked, if she'd lived to this age.

It had been a weird week. Getting out and spending some time with a good friend would do him some good.

"So, we don't really have much Thai food back home," he noted, smiling across the table at Tip. "What do you recommend? The weirder, the better."

Norman could do weird.

[OOC: Expecting the one, but open restaurant is open!]

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"Well, I was going to say pad thai, but if you're looking for weird. . . ."

Tip looked -- almost exactly the same as she usually did. Her chest was a lot flatter, and she was wearing her baggiest pair of pants to accommodate for the other changes, but apparently boy-Tip was otherwise indistinguishable from girl-Tip.

Which she was just fine with.

"How are you with eating squid?"

"I think I'd be okay with eating squid," Norman offered, looking thoughtfully at the menu. "I mean, I did say weird, right? And," he paused and glanced around, "I don't see any angry squid ghosts floating around, which is promising."

... Some meals got really, really weird when you could see ghosts.

". . . Yeah, I'm definitely glad to hear that our meal probably won't be watching us eat it in ghost form," Tip said. "But we should see if we can include that in an episode or something."

They would create so many vegans that way.

Really, it was kind of a wonder Norman wasn't one already, at this rate. Or vegetarian, at least. A living chicken couldn't haunt you for eating an egg that had never held a chick in it anyway.

"That would be a pretty one-sided interview," Norman mused. "The best place to go for that one would probably be... maybe one of those fancy restaurants that does its own butchering. Or a fish and chips place right out on the water. But then you get to see me relaying to the audience, 'the fish is looking at me with beady eyes, opening and closing its mouth. Maybe angrily?'"

It was hard to tell, with fish.

"Hmmm. Maybe we could do, like, artist renderings of the ghosts?" Tip said. "Otherwise it'd just look like you're, like. Trolling restaurants."

"Set up a sketch of a salmon next to the salmon that is actually really perturbed to have been brined and served with cream cheese and capers?" Norman smiled lopsidedly. "If you cut it out and glue it to a popsicle stick, we could even do little puppet shows with them."

Salmon wasn't generally very talky, otherwise.

"Oh my god that sounds awful," Tip said with a laugh. "We should totally do that!"

"Only with ghosts who agree, or with animals," Norman decided, breaking into a little laugh of his own. "I've known a frog or two who would probably be flattered, actually."

Yeah, that had been a weird day in biology class.

"I'm going to need to practice my drawing. Unless you draw?" She tilted her head. "I guess we could ask J.Lo if he wanted to do it."

"I don't draw much," Norman replied, shaking his head. "I'm still working on describing that dragon well enough that someone else might be able to."

"Ooo, a ghost dragon?" Tip tilted her head. ". . . Have you told me about a ghost dragon before? It sounds kind of familiar."

"Well, there are the big jelly-dragons that I sometimes see around here," Norman offered. "But the one I'm talking about is this huge spirit-serpent dragon from Sidon's world."

He smiled a little. "I think you were there when I saw it, actually. But it has been a while."

It was probably far less memorable when you were just looking at the weird boy who was staring in awe at an empty sky, surrounded by gorgeous landscape that was being entirely ignored.

"That was a dragon, huh?" Tip said, leaning her chin on her hands. "Ugh. Some days I really wish I could just -- see the world through your eyes. Or anyone else's, but yours especially. There's so much out there that I'll never get to really know."

Norman nodded a little.

"Yeah, one of the elders in Zora's Domain confirmed it for me. 'Farosh, the Spirit of Lightning.'" A beat. "Or courage. Maybe both."

Norman had a great way of making things sound really cool right up until he kept talking.

"I wish I could share this," he added after a few moments. "There are so many things I would love for you to be able to see. I mean... not all of it is something you'd want to." He saw some very horrible things pretty much daily. "But... some of it is just..."

He smiled. Shrugged.

"I mean, some of it is dragons."

"Some of it's dragons," Tip said, almost reverently. She'd never really had a chance to go through a fantasy phase as a kid, but -- dragons. "Maybe Fandom will find a way," she said. "If it can do this," she gestured towards her own chest. "Then why not?"

Norman nodded his agreement.

"A weekend where other people can see what I see," he mused. "Or maybe where just you can. But I bet fewer people would litter in the graveyard if they knew the ghosts in there were going to hold a grudge and then tell the first person passing by who had done it in the first place."

Not that, you know, Norman had any experience with that, oh no.

"I would never litter in a graveyard," Tip declared. ". . . I mean, I might have once, but there were major extenuating circumstances."

Her mom had been abducted from a cemetery. Tip couldn't honestly say what she may or may not have left behind there after the fact, that night.

"Extenuating circumstances get a pass," Norman decided. "Most ghosts have been around long enough to appreciate that when things get ugly, the living tend to put manners to the side for a while in order to get things done.

"Yeah . . . I didn't really get anything done, either. Unless falling on my butt and crying counts."

She'd been eleven. And her only family member had been abducted in front of her. On Christmas Eve.

Falling on her butt and crying probably counted.

Norman offered her a small, kind of wry smile.

"I think in come cases, that might count double."

Because, really. Any ghosts who couldn't forgive her for that probably found themselves faced with a chorus of 'boo' from all of the other ones.

"Now I kind of feel bad. It must be hard for them to watch people get so upset and not be able to comfort them. Even when they aren't their actual family."

It wasn't easy on a lot of them, no. And Norman could have said as much, but.... "Nobody needs to feel bad for getting hurt, you know." That seemed important to say instead. "For being upset in the face of terrible things."

That had to be said, first.

"They do what they can," he offered. "But most people don't find cold chills very comforting."

They might not need to, but adultified children sure as fuck were good at it!

Tip ducked her head a little, and picked up her menu again.

"Ooo, hey, they have fried cuttlefish."

Norman gave a soft smile, but let the topic drop, looking over at her menu instead.

"Cuttlefish? Have you had that before? I'd say that has to be weirder than squid if only because calamari is such a popular thing, maybe?"

"I have not. So it'll be new and different for both of us." She smiled and shrugged. "Maybe it'll be, like, halfway between squid and octopus."

"Or maybe it'll be completely different," Norman mused, "like... scallops or something. Lobster? Now I'm actually really curious, I think that means we have to try the cuttlefish."

"Cuttlefish it is! And some pad thai, just in case it's terrible."

"That sounds like a great combination," Norman decided. With all the experience of a guy who had never really tried pad thai, either. "And then from there I guess we can see if we still have room for dessert."

There was always room for dessert.

"Mango and sticky rice," Tip declared. "With crunchy mung beans. That's my favorite part."

"Okay, then that," Norman agreed, easily. "The coconut sticky rice? I probably wouldn't have thought of rice as a dessert food, but I guess rice pudding is a thing, too..."

And mochi, and horchata, and calas, and...

“Rice is an every time food,” Tip said. “Especially in Asian cuisine.”

"I guess it's kind of to them there what wheat or corn are here, huh?" Norman nodded a little, thoughtfully. "I really need to try more than just Chinese food now and then."

Especially since most Americanized Chinese food didn't exactly count.

“You do,” Tip agreed. “Good thing that’s what we’re doing right now.”

"Expanding my horizons," Norman agreed, grinning. "Hey, what else is there around here to try? Sushi Station, Ching Tai, I guess, but I've already had lots of Chinese. Everything else is pretty familiar already."

Huh.

"Broader horizons might require a bit more travel."

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Taste of Thai, Thursday Afternoon

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