SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

The vast majority of things Nia did, she did solely for her own benefit and/or amusement. The collection of knowledge she'd obtained over the years was obtained on passing whims of hers and for no other reason, and the hobbies she picked up had never been picked to ingratiate her to another. Art barely qualified as a hobby to her. It was more of a tool, a method of burnishing a scene into her mind in a way that taking a photo could not. There was only one other person she ever bothered to show them to, and while his praise was gratifying—and for that she had to remind herself that a fondness for praise was human nature, and not a deficiency of hers—it was not what drew her in, pun unintended and unfortunate. In normal circumstances she never would have shown her drawing to someone she hardly knew, but Katie was... compelling. As were her compliments.

Was she actually good at this? She'd assumed any fleeting thoughts of possible actual talent she had were delusions to be put down to the Dunning–Kruger effect and nothing more. But Katie was at least a relatively non-biased third party in this equation. She had no particular reason to flatter her. Kayla sounded significantly less impressed, but Kayla's opinions had at no point in this interaction become relevant to Nia, and she wasn't at all unhappy to see her get up and run off. One less variable to deal with.

Katie wasn't wrong. It was "kinda long to answer". Nia was used to writing long answers; whole pages in her sketchbook dedicated to single-answer dissertations were a testament to that fact. But this was the sort of casual social situation where that sort of tract would be inappropriate, setting aside the matter of penning an autobiographical excerpt for a near-stranger. Again, she was compelling, but that wasn't Nia's style. She took a moment, then wrote a couple of lines.

It would be a bit long, yes. I usually have longer conversations in sign, which I don't imagine you know.

Being polite was difficult. She frowned at her own words and added more before showing the pad to Katie again.

Not that I would expect you to, not many people do, unfortunately. I run the ASL Club at school, actually. It's a language more people should consider learning, in my opinion. The basics are fairly easy to pick up.

There. That was a personal detail, and not a particularly consequential one. She was being both polite and slightly revelatory. Truly a masterstroke in social interaction. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but it was a hell of a lot better than some of the other things that had come to mind to write down.

And there went Kayla. Bye Kayla, she supposed. Katie mumbled something to her as she passed, something that could have been ‘See ya’ but was actually nothing but a mumble of noise. Kayla was cute, sure, but that was it, as far as Katie was concerned. Probably way more palatable if you were part of that gaming, nerdy crowd. Katie was not, so Kayla quickly left her mind as she looked back down at Nia’s drawing, arms casually folded as she waited for the girl to finish what she was writing.

Nia was, obviously, right in guessing that Katie didn’t know a lick of ASL. It sucked, whenever something like this cropped up, where she couldn’t communicate with the other person as well as she’d have liked, but it wasn’t as though she was in the minority, there. She’d attempted to learn German a few years back, one of those other so-called ‘easy to pick up’ languages, and, well… Katie was nothing if not consistent. She’d struggled her way through three classes, and that had been enough to tank her motivation before dropping it.

Before Katie could reply, Nia frowned, and put her pad back down to write more underneath. Katie shrugged slightly, and fished her phone out of her pocket to check the time. If this was frustrating for her, it was undoubtedly ten times that for Nia. This was just one encounter for Katie; for Nia, this would be the situation she found herself in with every person she talked to. She could take as long as she needed, honestly.

As Katie entered her password and checked the notifications on her phone, she saw one little reminder, right at the top, one that caused her heart to lurch and do somersaults the moment she saw it.

SAFFRON’S DANCE RECITAL – SATURDAY – DON’T BE LATE!!!

It wasn’t a surprise to Katie. She saw it every time she checked her phone, after all; hell, sometimes she checked it solely to see the notification. It was just that whenever she did see it, she had the exact same giddy reaction, like this was the very first date she’d been on. She was looking forwards to it real bad. It made it more than a little hard to concentrate, as she tucked her phone back into her pocket and read what Nia had written, unable to stop the grin from breaking onto her face.

“Nah, you got me,” she said. “I can’t speak anything ‘sides from English. Trust me, I try and pick new stuff up, but, like… the second I run into a wall, and I can’t climb over it after several attempts, I just lose all motivation.”

She shrugged. She wasn’t proud of it, but facts were facts. That was just how she was.

“It’s why I box. I hit a wall, I hit my way through it. I’m good at boxing, so I do it. Why keep going with stuff that just leaves me frustrated and pissed off when I can do something I know I can do instead?”

Her grin had faded somewhat, but after a moment’s pause, it found its way back to her face.

“But I’m not one to shy away from trying something at least once. What time does your club meet and stuff?”

Katie was grinning. And while there was some embarrassingly sentimental part of her that liked to imagine that smile was directed at her, she hadn't been so oblivious while she was writing to not note that she had checked her phone, and that was from whence the joy came. Some part of her was curious; another part was irritated, and it was that part she really wanted to quash. Why should she care for social niceties like not checking your phone during a lull in conversation? Admittedly it was a longstanding problem for her, an unfortunate symptom of her need to write her thoughts. All conversations, or at least those with the majority of her peers, were plagued by major gaps. She tried to keep her annoyance at a minimum, tried to be understanding, learning a whole new language to communicate with one person was an unreasonable expectation, etcetera etcetera. But this particular bout of botheration seemed to stem at least in part from a different source. Not thinking about that overly hard seemed to be for the best.

The subject at hand was the important thing, as were the actual words coming out of Katie's mouth. She seemed... amicable, at least, to attending ASL club, though it was hard to discern how serious she was when her emotions about the matter were as obfuscated as they were. Still, she couldn't complain about a "yes". And she couldn't complain about seeing Katie again.

As she looked back at her sketchpad and began to write she heard a familiar bell. The tour guides here carried an honestly rather irritating bell with which they rallied the group before moving forward, and its peal marked the beginning of the tour she'd signed up for. Thinking, she turned the page and wrote quickly.

Right after classes end on Thursdays. Room 205.

She tore that page out and handed it to Katie before continuing writing on the previous page.

I hope to see you then. That bell is for the tour, if you're coming. Otherwise, I'll be on my way.

Katie took the scrap of paper from Nia as gently as she could, briefly noticing how small and delicate the other girl’s hand was in comparison to her own. It looked like it might shatter merely being in the presence of Katie’s battle-scarred hand. She smiled at that, then her mind wandered to Saffron’s hand, and Saffron’s hand slipping comfortably into her own, and she smiled even more and blushed without meaning to.

Just as she was about to read Nia’s message, she heard a loud ringing sound from behind her. She glanced around, frowning, trying to find the source of… what sounded like a decently sized handbell. Like someone was about to start walking about with a scroll of parchment, going all ‘Hear ye, hear ye’ or something.

After a couple more moments of fruitless, halfhearted searching, Katie shrugged, and turned her attention back to the paper instead, as Nia wrote something else on her seemingly neverending sketchbad. She nodded as she absorbed the relevant information, folding the paper up and trying to resist the temptation to just scrunch it up and shove it into her pocket.

“Neat. Got a boxing class on Thursdays but its later in the evening, so I should be good for that. Promise I’ll make it to the first one at least.”

Katie gave Nia a thumbs up, then forwards to check what else she’d written on her pad.

“Oh, shit, is it? This is my first time on this tour so I’ve got, like, no idea what I’m in for. Might be boring as hell, but I paid good money for it, so…”

Katie shrugged, before stretching, making a satisfied noise as she heard her back pop, then nodding her head in the vague direction of the bell.

“Lets head on over. You mind if I stick with you? I don’t really care for the idea of some stranger tellin’ me about the history of stalictites or something. I’ll do my best to keep the long questions down to a minimum.”

Nia wrinkled her nose as Katie responded, and frankly she couldn't really articulate why. She had been quite keen on being around her up until now, but she had to admit to herself she didn't particularly want to go on this cave tour with her. The whole wanting to keep questions to a minimum thing was part of it; she now felt some social contract was in place that made her feel slightly guilty about all the questions she was inevitably going to ask. But perhaps more than that it was just a moment that had come and gone. A passing fancy that would never be anything more. Logic had caught up with her. Whatever she said, Katie probably wouldn't come to the ASL meeting. Plenty of people had said they would and then hadn't bothered. Why would she be any different?

But she paid for her tour, too, and she was going to go on it. And all logic aside, it was still hard to look away.

Nia didn't write anything else. She just nodded, and stood, and let Katie take the lead. If nothing else, she could appreciate the view.

>> Nia Karahalios continued elsewhere...

"Aces."

Nia looked a little less... enthused to be going on the tour than Katie had expected. Maybe she preferred the view from far away than from up close. Made sense, given she was an artist; there probably wasn't gonna be much light in the caves, and she couldn't imagine that holding a pen in one hand and a flashlight in the other would make for fun times.

Maybe it'd be best if Katie did ask her a bunch of questions, if she wasn't real interested in the caves themselves? Give her something actually interesting to do on the tour? God knows, Katie would probably lose interest less than halfway through their journey into the cave.

Hmmm, actually, nah, that probably wouldn't work either. Nia would need light for that as well, unless Katie suddenly learned how to be fluent in ASL in the span of five minutes. And a girl like Nia probably was interested in what was gonna be said on the tour, even if she didn't outwardly show it. That girl ate knowledge like it was candy, after all.

Katie mulled things over, as she lead the way towards the tour.

((Katie Agustien continued in Glitter and Gold))