an actor's life

Jaime jumped off of the bench, choosing to sit on it instead. He thought about all of the people at Astra and the opportunity they were given. It was amazing really, at the chances to fulfill a dream was offered to so many people. He looked up towards the much younger boy, or so it seemed to him. He remembered being the other’s age, not having much of a care about anything. “Alright, Pinocch. Does that work? I dunno, but I guess it’s the shorter version of your name.”

 Pinocchio stayed where he was, hooking his thumbs in his pockets and rocking on his heels slightly. When his name got shortened, he nearly laughed, wondering what it might translate to English as. He figured it would be ‘pine tr’ which was funny enough by itself. “Well, it sounds fine to me, it’s not like it’s mean.”

“I think most forests probably have some connection to murderers. But I can’t say the same for the bears. I’ve only ever seen one in a zoo so…” she trailed off with a little shrug. It was a valid concern, Nala could willingly admit she had been worried about moving America for it’s many dangers. She winced a little, “Oh man yeah that’s gotta suck.”

“Yeah. Call me a city boy but I just don’t trust forests.” When she mentioned a zoo, his eyes lit up. “Really? How big are they? I’ve never been to a zoo, so I’ve only ever seen pictures.” Of course, from the pictures, he’d thoughts bears looked very cute, but his dad had assured him they were giants. “The thing is, if I could go with literally anyone else, I’m usually allowed if they say it’s okay.”

Tink rolled her eyes amusingly. Knowing that her name was now permanently carved into the wood where she sat just sounded so ridiculous to her, but there was nothing she could do about it now other than accept it and move on. “Sounds good, my dude,” she laughed. “and, well, normally sharing isn’t my strong suit, but I guess I can make an exception.” Tink realized she may have misjudged this guy. He was pretty funny and that was starting to grow on her even if they had just meant a moment ago. “It’s all good. Don’t worry about it. I probably could have held my emotions under control better, but that’s nothing new for me,” she said, watching his pocket knife move.

 Carefully finishing his carving, Pinocchio hopped back up onto the bench, standing on it like he had been before. He liked it up there, it gave him a better view of the people milling around. “Thanks for that! I like it up on this bench.” He was distracted for a moment by the people, and how different they all seemed, but came back to the conversation pretty quickly. “Ah. Well, I think everyone could control their emotions more, really.”

She’d never thought of it like that before, but now he mentioned it it was odd to see a tree in full and not as part of some piece of furniture. “Someone should take you out into a forest, you’d have a great time,” she grinned at him. “Hey, nothing wrong with that. You can buy a child’s ticket for years to come and save some money on travel looking like a kid.”

 “Oh, I dunno. I’ve heard forests in America have like...bears and murderers. So I think I’ll pass.” Although that would be some sort of adventure if he did run into either of those while out here. He’d be brought home immediately, but it would be fun for a minute. “Yeah, the main problem is never being able to forget my ID when I want to get a scary movie.”

Jaime nodded his head and got onto the bench himself, looking around at all the people walking around them. There were a lot of people looking like they had places to go and people to see. They all looked so busy, too busy to stop and take a moment to realize where they were and appreciate the opportunity that they had. While Jaime also wanted to move forward with his goals while here, he had learned to stop every once in a while to take everything in.

“It’s a pretty incredible sight, don’t you think?” Jaime said and looked over to the younger boy. “I’m Jaime by the way, but a lot of people call me Jimmy.”

 The young man nearly laughed at the sight of an actual adult standing on a bench with him. He hadn’t expected his offer to be taken up on, but it was still...well, it was pretty cool. Lots of little things were cool.

 “It’s a pretty crowded sight, but at least there’s people,” Pinocchio replied with a shrug. Just looking at everyone, he could tell there would be lots of opportunities to catch up on stuff he wasn’t able to do back home. “Hiya! I’m Pinocchio. You can shorten it however, I haven’t found a good way to yet.”

Ariel grinned in response, nodding. “Yeah, of course! Beaches aren’t as fun when you go in alone, I’d like to think. You can get your stuff all packed up while I pick up the car; won’t even take half an hour. All my stuff’s packed and in my room and — ” Amidst her excitement, she’d forgotten one thing, something important: “I’m Ariel, by the way,” she whispered, sticking her hand out for a shake.

 “Yeah, won’t take long at all, and I can mean you back here!” It was sort of funny, how he was here a day and already going on an adventure with a girl, but he decided he liked his new freedom. “I’m Pinocchio. You can shorten it however you want, I know it’s a lot.” Smiling, he shook her hand, possibly a bit too much. He didn’t shake hands with young people very often.

Tink eyed him curiously. Was he seriously carving her name on this bench right now? The whole situation made Tink laugh, causing her prior feelings of annoyance to dissipate. “Did you seriously carve my name on the bench?” she asked, repeating her thoughts aloud. “I guess I can genuinely call it ‘mine’ from here on out,” she said, chuckling. “I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just… surprised. I thought you were being sarcastic before, but I’m assuming you took ‘my bench’ to be literal.”

 “I seriously just got done with it, yes. I think I spelled it right, I just did your first name, I know how to spell that much.” The last name would have been harder on him, especially since it was longer. Pinocchio couldn’t help his grin, though. She wasn’t grumpy. “Yep! I’m going to make it mine, too, though, I hope you don’t mind sharing.” As she spoke, Pinocchio started carving out his rather long name. “Yes, I did. Sorry, English isn’t my strong point.”

Turning her head Nala spotted the trees he was possibly talking about and couldn’t help but laugh a little, “Do they meet up with your tree expectations?” She looked at at him, fully noting is height and she couldn’t help but agree. This kid was small. “Nothing wrong with being tiny. Means you can probably weave through crowds pretty quick.”

 “Yeah, I guess they do. Very tree like.” He laughed to himself, unable to help it. “I usually just see them in bits, so it’s funny to see them so tall instead of being a clock or something.” Of course, he was that way about most things. Full things were odd to him. “Sure. Also good at making me look like a kid.”

Jaime had been at the compound before but there was an emergency at home and he just couldn’t stay. Now that things were slowly settling down there, he was able to continue his journey at Astra, though he was a different man than before. He was walking around, getting himself reacquainted with the compound when he saw a younger person jump up onto a bench. He raised his eyebrows curiously. 

“Hi! Got a good view up there?”

 Pinocchio stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded, looking around still. Sure, the bench hadn’t given him much, since even with his eyes at about maybe seven feet up, there wasn’t much to look at. Tall buildings.

 “It’s alright! There’s so many people.” And he felt sort of odd, since most of them looked very fashionable and young, and here he was in his dad’s old clothes. And his dad was old. “You wanna come look?”

He probably hadn’t meant the reply to be sarcastic, but that’s how Tink interpreted it, which irritated her slightly. “Ok, well, it doesn’t have to physically say my name for me to say it’s ‘mine’. It’s called a figure of speech. I didn’t actually mean that I own the bench.” She took a deep breath, calming herself. Well, trying at least trying to. “I’m Tink Bellanger,” she said, doing her best to make her voice sound less irked.

 The little Italian gave the girl a look. “Well, if you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?” he asked, curious. Of course, this could be his fault, since he missed out on a bit of what English meant some times. Either way, he didn’t see anything that looked like it could be her name. “Well. I can add it on, if you’d like.” Grinning, Pinocchio pulled his old pocket knife from it’s place, starting to carve on the back of the seat. “I’m Pinocchio Arborio. Call me whatever, but don’t be mean.”

The beach — of course! Ariel had momentarily forgot about her plans to go the beach, making her shake her head. “Oh, right! It’s about an hour and a half away by car,” she replied. “I was actually going to go after I got a rental car — you could come, if you want?”

 He could feel his face light up, and he nearly started bouncing in place. Luckily, he restrained himself and was just smiling. “Really?! I would love to!” After all, it would at least mean he would get to use the beach stuff he’d bought as soon as he found out he was going to California at all. “Thank you!”

Jim stopped what they were doing to look over at the teen when the words they once recited to the man that they called father was spoken back at them in a similar fashion. There was a discomfort that came with it. It had a lot to do with them being more like their old man than they liked to acknowledge. “—-Go for it.“ And yet, in other ways, they were more like their mother, and it was in their effort to reach out. “You, uh, ever built somethin’, then?”

 Pinocchio smiled brightly, taking a spot next to the stranger that wasn’t too close. At least he could see what was going on. “Thank you!” For a moment, he was quiet, but figured it was probably alright to speak when spoken to, in this case. “Well...I used to help papa make clocks. Really fancy clocks. Does that count?”

Tink caught a glimpse of something out of her peripheral vision. When she looked up from her phone, she realized it was a man, though he seemed very young, standing on the bench she had been sitting on. Her line of sight made its way to his face as she heard him speak. “Um, hi? Can I ask who you are why you’re standing on my bench?” she replied, hints of amusement and surprise in her voice.

 “Your bench?” he echoed, tilting his head. “What’s your name, so I can find it somewhere on here.” Grinning, he hopped down and started looking at the bench for any names anywhere on it. “You don’t look like a ‘Walt’ to me, so we’ll say that’s not you...” Pinocchio, unable to find any more names, draped himself over the back of the bench. “I’m Pinocchio.”

That she could understand. There was so much to see around here that sometimes Nala wanted a birds eye view of the place herself. “Seen anything interesting?” She asked before her eyes looked back down at the map in her hand. “The gym. Riveting, I know.”

 “Well, there’s some trees around that I’ve never seen in full before, that’s fun,” he answered. Of course, he’d given the lamest answer, because there really were more interesting things than that, but that was the first thing he thought of. “Oh! Nice. I should look into that, I’m...kinda tiny.”

“Oh, okay,” she whispers, nodding. Ariel furrowed her eyebrows in thought, tapping her lip. “Well, that depends on what you want to do, really. They’ve got a park, and a library and a couple of museums. I usually go the park to read, it’s right next to the river. Ooh, you can always go to the movies! I think there are a couple of great movies on now.”

 A spark lit his eyes as he thought about all the stuff that he could be doing. All the things that he was old enough to do. Sure, he couldn’t legally drink in this country, but he was out of his house and he could do stuff. “Is it far to the beach? I think that sounds the most fun.”

It took one look at the kid’s face to know how this was going to turn out. It almost made them regret asking, but they were slowly getting used to this form of attention. The compound seemed to be filled with exuberant beings, but they knew how to multi-task to keep them somewhat distracted, “Just a, uh, sports bike.” They offhandedly said, messing around with the code to see if each part worked. “Yea, you could say that, I guess, but uh, doesn’t mean it’s for the better.”

 Pinocchio grinned, and took a moment to figure out how to respond to such a short answer. “Well, I think it looks cool, at least? Do you mind if I watch? I won’t even say anything if you don’t want me to, I just like seeing how stuff works.” He pulled out his best smile, the one he’d used on his dad so he would get to stay in the workshop past his bedtime. Hopefully it worked.