Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [11/15].

[special_rabbit]

It was a late start, down in the forge that day, because Amaya had to spend the morning picking up after her younger self, who had not quite yet broken out of her habit of just leaving books scattered around everywhere and then she had to duck into the greenhouse to ensure that the budding horticulturalist that she'd been hadn't really caused any irrevocable damage. A few of the plants that should have been watered more looked a little parched, but that was an easy fix, and the lobsters were definitely feeling a little lethargic from overfeeding.

But, over all, she'd mostly kept her herself that weekend except for the carnival, so no real harm or foul there. The consequences of the one encounter she did have could be interesting, but Amaya was mostly just sort of hoping it would be generally forgotten and dismissed.

Unlikely, she knew, but still...

...and then it was downstairs to start up the forge and try to get herself back into whatever it was that had been interrupted by the weeend.

After double checking to make sure all the weapons had, indeed, turned back to their normal sharp selves. Around here, she really wouldn't be surprised if there was at least one or two standouts, the off inflatable hammer or foam sword still lingering about.

The Forge is open!

Comments

[begmetwice]

That was unlikely, Amaya! But who could blame a gal for hoping, right?

There was simply no way Irene was going to dismiss something as adorable as tiny Amaya, however. Physically impossible, really. The fact that she, herself, had been nine years old and a giant know-it-all all weekend wasn't much of a factor.

"Morning, Amaya," she called cheerfully, mercifully not jumping right into the business of what a relief it might have been to get those braces off, or how unjust anyone's brother had been in referring to one as a snarlax. "Live through the weekend, did we?"

Notably, though, she was carrying two cups -- one black coffee, one tea, and no excuses about baristas overmaking anything to be found.

[special_rabbit]

"With all my limbs in tact and everything," said Amaya, who at that point was still working on inspecting her tools to ensure none of them had remained safetified in the effort to prevent such a fate that weekend, and she was paying at much attention to those tools as possible to perhaps avoid directly acknowledging Irene.

Still, she did have to admit, "Slightly fewer business opportunities, though, this time around."

[begmetwice]

Cue Irene setting the coffee down, without comment but within Amaya's reach, as she found somewhere to lean as she so often favored. "Well, if there hadn't been a festival to investigate, you might have ended up with a few more curious visitors over here, instead," she noted, smiling. "Stole a bit of focus, that."

Though of course tiny Irene had felt she was quite a bit above all of that. (Even if she had, indeed, tried out the slide when she thought no one might be looking.)

[special_rabbit]

"Pretty good timing," Amaya noted, while giving the plane of a chisel a little bit of a tap before testing the edge with a finger, "on the island's part," tapping the chisel on the worktable to test it a little more, "having it happen during an event where all the rugrats can congregate," setting side the chisel, reaching now for the cup, "in one place to avoid as much running amuck over the rest of it for the majority of the time."

[begmetwice]

"You've got me wondering if I ought to test whether everything of mine was returned to normal," Irene commented dryly, in light of that chisel testing. "But yes, that was smart of the island, rather than leaving us all to our own likely-destructive devices. Though last time 'round I didn't get in all that much trouble."

But then again, last time 'round, she had bought a mace from someone who had instead been fascinatingly awkward and small this time.

[special_rabbit]

Someone who was so glad this event decided to bring her back into the fold again, too. So glad. Really.

"Well," that someone allowed, "some are a bit better behaved than others, although clearly not all, or else I wouldn't be having my whole stock turning into toys whenever this happens..."

[begmetwice]

"Might also be that there's a whole group of kiddos who wouldn't know an axe from a sword in the first place," Irene pointed out. "And wouldn't know to take care. Probably for the best, since it looked like our only doctor was also tiny this weekend."

Unless that was a different little red-headed child with a different cute dog, but Irene had also listened to the radio to be sure of everyone's identities -- particularly, of course, of the awkward little girl she'd sidled up to at the festival.

"Do you normally wear contact lenses, then?" she added, genuinely curious because now she was wondering whether she'd just missed pairs upon pairs of glasses stashed away upstairs (though to be fair, she was usually busy with other things when she made it that far into Amaya's private spaces.)

[special_rabbit]

It was just the one pair, actually.

"....no," Amaya said, with extreme reluctance, because she had a feeling she knew where this line of questioning was going, and she didn't exactly relish the idea. She also felt the particularly odd urge to push some sort of phantom glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I don't..."

And now she was trying to find some detail about Irene's younger self to turn the focus onto instead, but little Irene was...well, not a lot different from what you'd expect from littee Irene, really, so it was a bit tricky to work with as far as effective distractions went.

[begmetwice]

Tiny Irene was really just an Irene who hadn't hit puberty and learned the art of the innuendo yet, that was all. Otherwise she had been pretty much herself since birth.

"Really? I've always loved a woman in specs," Irene offered, raising her eyebrows. "So consider that on my radar, love. You were -- so charming. And not what I'd have expected."

Really. She would have figured Amaya for a bold little tomboy with too much energy, or the like. Maybe with a little wooden play-sword or something.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya was just going to give Irene a withering, somewhat tortured sort of look before taking a good long sip of her coffee, as if to let the reminder that at least she was getting coffee out of it bolster her for having to deal with ridiculous claims that her humbly awkward bookworm beginnings could be considered charming.

Not to mention quenching down any absurd notions of perhaps actually wearing her glasses more often now. It wasn't (entirely) a vanity thing, anyway! It was just pracitcal, glasses were a terrible inconvenience with all that heat and swinging, and her eyesight wasn't really all that bad to begin with.

And she supposed she should be grateful that Irene narrowed in on the glasses over anything else.

"Pretty sure you'd like one without 'em, too," Amaya countered, since she was pretty sure anyone whose inclinations seemed to line up so particularly to all of her own various traits couldn't really be as discerning as she liked to let on, "but I guess all my late night reading was a bit more effective than some other's."

[begmetwice]

Irene was not particularly discerning when it came to attractive ladies, no. But the trouble was that finding a large majority of the women on the island (bespectacled and otherwise) compellingly attractive didn't matter, when one in particular was so magnetically fascinating that it made it hard to concentrate on all the pretty other options available.

And now she came with a bonus like glasses and an adorable bookish childhood.

"I've proven that already, I think," Irene offered, taking a languid sip of her tea to cover her smile, "but yes, you were more effective. Your poor teeth, though."

And that was said with utmost sincerity. It really had looked dreadful.

[special_rabbit]

And Amaya couldn't help meeting that with a sigh. It'd probably only be a matter of time, after all. Better to just get it out of the way and she could go back to stubbornly hoping this place could afford anyone even a shred of privacy.

"Well, that whole thing was well worth it," she pointed out. "These old chompers can withstand just about anything after enduring that."

Plus, the mechanics of it had sort of been her first taste of meddling with metal in fascinating ways, too.

[begmetwice]

"I really did see a girl get gum all stuck in her gear once," Irene offered, even going so far as to gesture expansively at her own face to indicate what a terrible mess it had been. "Got in her hair, too. Even if I hadn't heard radio, the fact that tiny you said she used a stick to dislodge things would have told me it was you. That's the you-est thing I think I've ever heard."

Fond as fond could be, that, even if Irene could very well tell that Amaya did not seem to agree with her re: the charm of her own tiny counterpart.

[special_rabbit]

Amaya did not really agree with Irene re: the charm of any of her own counterparts, so...

"Never underestimate the power of a well-utilized stick," she said, because she could at least agree with the idea of such an adage bring attributed to her on any form or age.

"I'd say you were pretty easy to suss out, too," she said, maybe in an effort to get away from the topic of her tiny self now that the glaring highlights were out of the way.

Forget the fact that Amaya did have the added bonus of remembering the last time she'd gotten to encounter tiny Irene.

[begmetwice]

"I've pretty much always been me," Irene agreed with a quick smile. "Nine's too young to have picked up most of my bad habits, at least."

Maybe someday they'd regress to a slightly older age, and Irene could demonstrate how she had once been Very Cool, and had worn entirely too much eyeliner and smoked like a chimney and pretended to know things about bands that had broken up before she'd even been born.

"No damage from the weekend?" she asked, nodding vaguely towards the ceiling. "My entire kitchen is covered in peanut butter."

It was an American delicacy, all right? Tiny Irene had not been able to help herself.

[special_rabbit]

Ah, yes, the time when Amaya had finally discovered things like snark and confidence but still hadn't ditched the glasses quite yet.

And Irene's report had thankfully left Amaya flabberghasted enough that the avoidance of answering the question by simply asking another question wasn't even intentional.

"Peanut butter?" she asked. "Now, how in the blazes did you manage to accomplish that?"

[begmetwice]

"It's very American, peanut butter. I'd only had it a few times before I moved here," Irene offered with a slightly exaggerated wince. "And while it does seem that I tried to clean up a bit with kitchen roll, I managed to smear it on the cabinets somehow in the process of having it on my toast all weekend."

Maybe it was better that little Irene had eaten most of a jar of peanut butter, considering the alternative might have been to attempt to use the hob? (Bad enough she'd used the toaster and seemed to have broken the electric kettle.)

[special_rabbit]

And Amaya was just going to take a moment to appreciate the visual that explanation offered of pristine and put-together tiny Irene caught up in a mild peanut butter nightmare only made worse by her own efforts to fix it, as well as the fact that Irene had also referred to this mess in the present tense, thus suggesting the problem had still not been completely attended to.

"Sounds like you've found yourself," she said, because she could not stop herself even if she tried, "in quite a sticky situation."

[begmetwice]

Adult Irene had woken up with jam and peanut butter on her pillowcase this morning, since she had not been quite as fastidious as a child and washing one's face unprompted when one's parents were not around to insist upon it was clearly for other people. The whole flat was a disaster by her standards.

The tea she was currently enjoying was a fortification against an afternoon of cleaning (or sourcing someone to do it for her on short notice, one of the two), in addition to being an accompaniment to Amaya's coffee, which Irene would have supplied even if this weekend had been perfectly average.

"Indeed I have," Irene sighed good-naturedly. "She -- I -- got it on the dog, even. I thought I was a fairly neat child but I think all children must just be sort of like that. Hamish always turns up slightly sticky on those weekends, too."

[special_rabbit]

"Hamish?" asked Amaya, her head tilted with a blink of confusion before context clues managed to weld themselves together in her mind. "Ah, right. One of those kids, right? I guess I do have to give Zephyr that much, she's never really been sticky..."

Just a constant babbling stream of information, which she clearly hadn't gotten from her mother.

"Then again, she's always been a bit older, too."

And she was refusing to think of any other previois children and their alleged stickiness, thank you.

Please ignore that she could very easily give you her estimations on the potential stickiness of all three of them...

[begmetwice]

"Hamish is always about seven and -- honestly, as fussy as I am, his supposed father might be worse, so his stickiness is a grand mystery," Irene shared, shaking her head ruefully. "I'd love to end up with an older kiddo one of these days, like Zephyr."

Who Irene had quite liked, when she'd turned up with her own alternate progeny in tow that weekend.

"Or, you know, no children at all, either hypothetical or being one myself."

[special_rabbit]

"I definitely vote for the no children at all," Amaya declared, lifting her cup as if to toast to emphasize the sentiment, "hypothetical or one's self."

Please ignore the strange melancholy that may one day sweep in once Zephyr actually aged out of it, because she did progressively get older and eventually wouldn't be an AU kid so much as an AU young adult, which would not be oddly devastating, how dare.

[begmetwice]

"Watch us jinx ourselves," Irene teased, lifting her own cup in an answering toast. "The island will be invaded by children we have no relation to at all. Or we'll stay adults next time, and still be visited by little Irene and little Amaya and have to watch out for them all weekend."

That sounded like something a therapist would have a field day with.

[special_rabbit]

"Well," Amaya pointed out, "at least we'll now know to keep you away from the peanut butter."

And she knew she could just shove a stack of books at her own little self and they'd not hear a peep from her probably the whole time.