Fighting Off Stir-Crazyness

Elias Florencio Almeida Ventura

Oh great, he was screwing up again, wasn't he? He really wished there was some sort of guide on how to talk to people. Maybe he wouldn't upset Emily so much if he had one.

"Well, to be honest, you're probably the first person who's actually spoken to me about it," Elias said, an odd feeling creeping over him. It wasn't quite nervousness except- no, it actually wasn't. It was more of him being really confused because the more he thought about it, the more he realized that, um, yeah. Emily was really the first.

"I mean, I have Godmother telling me how to interact with people sometimes. On one hand, she tells me I should be polite, which I agree with since it seems like the right thing to do. But on the other hand, she doesn't really give me advice besides things like 'Figure it out on your own' or 'Treat girls nicer.'" Godmother was an awful source of advice but he supposed that it was nice she was there anyways. Kind of?

Elias Florencio Almeida Ventura

"Eh, maybe a little," Elias said, starting to fidget a bit out of embarrassment. "But, sometimes, I guess things are just what you make of them. I would rather have nobody be sad over it because if you look at it a certain way, it's a not really a bad thing or a good thing. It's just a thing and not that big of a deal, I guess. Better just to look on the bright side of things, you know?"

He was relieved when the subject changed, although that made him feel weirdly guilty as well. "Oh, it's right down there," Elias said, pointing at a corner. "We just turn there and cross the street. It's just the next block over after that."

Elias Florencio Almeida Ventura

Just what things did girls like to talk about anyways? Elias had to wonder about that, because it was definitely more than just guys and regular girl drama. It was like some sort of a puzzle. His sisters always told him that girls were just the same as guys but treating Emily the same way he treated them only made her upset.

Racing to keep up with Emily, Elias came to join her at the ticket desk. He slid his ID to the person on the other side and absently paid double the price he was told. It was just an automatic reaction; he hadn't even checked to see if Emily was reaching for her own money. It was only when he had turned around to try and hand her a ticket that he realized what he had done.

A pause. "Um, sorry, should I have not done that?"

Elias Florencio Almeida Ventura

"Sure, we can start off in the rock garden over there," Elias said. He didn't even really need to clarify that statement because the rock garden itself was probably a good half of the museum at least.

Mis-matched stones with large gaps in between them had been piled up into walls to give some semblance of rooms. The height of the walls varied but none were any higher than six feet tall and each "room" had four wide doorways. Actually, it might have been more correct to say that each room was really four doorways with a bit of wall. A snaking stone path wound from every attraction.

At the short path to the first display, Elias explained, "So, each of the things here is basically a deconstructed planet or asteroid. That one, is Mercury." He meant the one that was right in front of them. "See, Mercury is mainly iron, so that's why there's all of these half-circle things sticking out of the ground. The flat discs are nickel."

He went on pointing out the meaning of various figures. There was a small pool in the shape of a palette alluding to the fact that craters were name after artists, a small mountain of stones looking vaguely like chili peppers as a play on the fact that mountains were just different words meaning "hot."

To be sure, Elias wasn't a great student. That was pretty much because he only retained the stuff that interested him. Planets were all well and good but if anybody asked him to really get into things like exact density, magnetism, and such, he would really be in trouble. Luckily, most of the stuff shown in this museum fell squarely into the "fun" side of astronomy. He just hoped he wasn't boring Emily to tears.

Elias Florencio Almeida Ventura

"Yeah, I'm normally not that into art stuff but this is pretty cool, I think!" As they went from chamber to chamber, Elias couldn't help but feel more giddy about explaining almost every detail to Emily. It was, well. It was nice being able to actually go on about something he liked with somebody else. Sure, Elias knew he was far from being the sharpest tool in the shed but it was always a relief to share that he did in fact know things. Things that other people actually were interested in. Fighting, videogames, and anime -those were all kind of a select crowd. Astronomy, though? Like, dude. Everybody liked something that had to do with that.

Soon enough, it seemed like they had gone through the entire garden. His throat was starting to get dry, though, so he definitely knew they had been there for some time. Still, there were other things to see, if Emily wanted to. "Well, that's an observatory over there," he said, pointing to a tower. "There's nothing to see right now since it's not night right now. Passed it, they've got some more gardens, but with plants aliens have brought from other planets. I don't know too much about flowers but we could take a look if you'd like."