Ice Cream Pleasures (Sandra)

The great thing about living in Maple Hollow, as opposed to in a dorm at the Academy, was that things were never a mandatory bus ride away anymore. Before if Sandra had wanted ice cream, it would have meant hoping beyond hope that they had something like that for dessert or something in the castle itself, or she'd have to take the bus out to town, and that was usually too much trouble just for ice cream. Where Sandra now lived, the nearest ice cream parlour was but two blocks away, and this was definitely close enough for her to walk. She'd spent time wandering around for a few weeks in her spare time, killing time and getting used to the neighbourhood. She'd known a good deal of the town before, having visited pretty frequently, but it was a good idea in Sandra's mind to properly familiarize herself with the place now that she actually lived there.

Needless to say, this particular parlour she'd already kind of known about, having visited a number of times with friends on their weekends and what-not. Still, it was very exciting in Sandra's mind to now be able to get there in a matter of minutes, so even though it was now November and therefore pretty darn cold, she decided to brave the weather and head out to grab some ice cream. It wasn't actually that cold, actually, once she'd been walking a little while -- the sweater had definitely been a good call. In fifteen minutes or so she'd reached the ice cream parlour, and she had ordered a soft serve half-chocolate, half-vanilla cone when she looked around for somewhere to sit. It was pretty empty, but without anything to do but eat her ice cream Sandra would feel kind of lame sitting by herself, that was for sure. Luckily, she wouldn't have to today. "Bastian?" she asked once she recognized someone sitting by himself -- even if she hadn't seen his face (though she had) the sketchbook would have been a dead giveaway. "Hey, what's up?" she asked, grinning as she bounded over to him. Hopefully he didn't mind being bothered.

Though Bastian had obviously been busy, he didn't seem too put off at being interrupted, and Sandra was kind of glad of this. It would have been pretty awful if she'd interrupted him when he'd wanted to be left alone. Luckily, he was smiling, and so she took this to mean that he didn't really mind. As per usual, she was already smiling too, so it was just a big circle of good feelings all around. "Hey!" she greeted, sliding into the seat across from him at the table without any proper invitation, but he hadn't seemed to mind anything thus far so she figured that if he wanted her to, he could just ask her to leave later. She probably wouldn't be that offended. "Celebrating?" she asked, eyebrows wrinkling together in confusion. "Huh. What are you celebrating, anyway?" Maybe he'd just gotten a really good mark on a test or something, or he liked the weather outside, and that was cause enough for celebration. Maybe it was some kind of big news, though. She didn't know.

She licked at her ice cream -- mmmm, ice cream -- and took a moment to really savour the taste before answering what he said next. "I always have a craving for ice cream," she corrected with a grin, taking a bite out of her cone too while she was at it. Ice cream cones were definitely the best, but then again, Sandra could pretty much have ice cream in any way, on anything, at any time, just name it and she'd be there. "But today I was lucky enough to have a craving for ice cream and enough money, so you know how it is!" Well, maybe he knew how it was. She figured he did if he was here, but then again, he was apparently celebrating something. "Whatcha drawing there?" she asked, looking upside-down at the picture he'd been working on.

A year in the Hollow? Well, that was a weird thought, though not a bad one. She kind of thought it was cute, actually, that he remembered such a thing and actually had made proper enough note of it that he would go out to celebrate it. The idea was definitely nice, though, of his celebrating an entire year now in the little town, and so she just beamed at Bastian. "Aw, how cute! You moved here a year ago?" She kind of felt like leaning over and pinching his cheeks or something, but that would have probably just annoyed him, so she decided that this would be a very bad idea. Another time, maybe. Bastian really did have the cutest face, though, and he was the type of kid that she found honestly, seriously adorable. "Well, ice cream's just so yummy..." Sandra said innocently, grinning a little even as she licked more at her ice cream. The cold weather outside had long since been forgotten.

She giggled a little bit at the idea of an all-you-can-eat buffet of nothing but ice cream, but she also kind of thought that there was... probably nothing better on all of Earth, actually, if it actually existed. She was sure one existed somewhere. There was of course usually ice cream at those large buffets and what-not, but there was also all that other food. She did love food in general, but not when it was keeping her from her one true alimentary love. "All-you-can-eat ice cream, huh?" she said, sighing a little bit contentedly and leaning back in her chair, daydreaming. "All those different flavours... All the ice cream I can eat... Sprinkles, too?" she asked hopefully, giggling a little bit. She was sure he didn't really mean an ice cream buffet or anything, but the idea was just too good for her not to at least imagine a little bit. She looked eagerly at the picture when he turned his book towards her. "Oh, but that's so cute! Aw, what a hero. I bet he gets all those damsels in distress," she teased a litlte bit, laughing. "It looks really good, Bastian!" She considered the question for a second, taking a small bite out of her cone. "My week was okay! Just the usual, homework and stuff." Exams were coming up soon too, much to her dismay. "What about you?"

She smiled. He'd remembered the exact day, too? Sandra had moved before, but she certainly couldn't remember the exact days of... anything, honestly. One year in a place was certainly something to celebrate, though, especially when it was somewhere like Maple Hollow -- she really did like it here, always had even back before she'd moved into Matt's place and became an official resident of the town. Technically, she'd only just visited on weekends before, which was still a pretty good way to learn a place, she figured, but it was pretty different. "That's good! Where did you move from?" she asked curiously. These were things that had never come up in conversation with Bastian before -- she'd known that he lived in town, but not where, and she'd never known either that he had come from elsewhere before. They'd also, of course, never discussed how good ice cream was, but that was one of those things that didn't often require discussion. Sandra just assumed it to be true of everyone she met. "And fudge," she repeated, sure that there were stars in her eyes at this point or somethign. "Bastian, if you can get me a free all-you-can-eat ice cream place, I would owe you for life," she told him in what would have been a serious tone if her smile didn't ruini t.

Sandra had to agree that happy endings were better. Bittersweet endings were way too much like... like real life, and the persistent optimist in her wouldn't allow these in stories and drawings and what-not. That would just be depressing. She really wouldn't want that. She was glad that Bastian's new superhero, this drawing, would be able to get whichever lady he so desired in the end. This entire thing reminded her of her conversation with Devin the other day, though, about his becoming Captain Canada -- why were superheroes coming up so often in conversation? "Hey, Bastian, you should draw me a costume for this new superhero I made up," she said suddenly, giggling a little bit. "His name is Captain Canada, and he has a maple leaf on his chest, and a maple syrup gun, and he's awesome." He also looked like Devin, but Sandra didn't know if he and Bastian were acquainted or not, so it might be too weird if she mentioned this. "Aw, dull's no fun!" She shook her head a little, but this did of course tend to be people's usual response around exam time -- there was no time for much else. Sandra, on the other hand, was supremely unconcerned with her upcoming exams, so she was hoping she'd just be able to shrug it off without much incident. "Ooh, you went to a concert? What concert?"

Considering Bastian was only just an itty bitty niner still, thirteen years must have been nearly all of his life, Sandra realized. That was pretty interesting! "I've been to New York once! But wow, thirteen years, huh? What's it like in Philly?" she asked, smiling a little. It was interesting to hear about her friends' lives -- she liked to get to know people and learn things about them, and sometimes she felt that, with a pretty huge circle of friends, she never knew all that much about all of them. She had her best friends and naturally she knew quite a bit about all of them, but outside of that she mostly enjoyed people's company rather than talked about their actual lives and what-not. It was nice hearing about Bastian's. He was such a cute kid. "Like a magician," she said, giggling a little, because that was what she thought of immediately upon hearing the words "up my sleeve". She had a pretty random mind. That was probably... not the greatest. "But a magician that focuses on ice cream or something." She didn't know what that would actually involve, but she was sure he could use that creative artist's mind of his to come up with something.

She giggled a little bit when he blinked. Well, to be fair, she had said it kind of out of the blue, but superheroes were the current topic of conversation! It wasn't like she'd literally just asked him out of nowhere when they'd been talking aobut, like... turnips or something. She watched patiently as he started drawing. Bastian seriously had a gift for this kind of thing. -- sometimes she wished that she could be artistic like that, but Sandra... honestly just wasn't good with her hands. Urgh. Her penmanship was at least legible, though, but she could do nothing like this. "Nope, no capes," she answered confidently, shaking her head. She and Dev had decided that thanks to The Incredibles -- that movie taught some solid superhero life lessons. She was close to finishing her ice cream at this point, and she bit into the cone, listening and watching happily as he drew. "Ooh, nice! Who was playing there?" she asked, curious. She didn't know what type of music Bastian liked, even. "Well, he's Captain Canada, so red and white are good," she said with a giggle. Part of her couldn't believe he was even humouring her like this, to be honest, but he was a nice kid.