Private Finished Pumpkins and Past Times

"Who says I can't? Because I just did!" Maisie huffed and grabbed his finger, squeezing gently for a moment so he wouldn't poke her face again. "And you can't prove I have a fetish for nothin. I think you have a fetish for something, and I bet you're trying to cover it up by saying I do!"

The seed bounced off her knee this time, and she softly glared at her vampire roommate. She picked up a fingerful of seeds and flung them at him again. "And don't you lose any of those! I'm gonna toast these up, and we'll have nice roasted pumpkin seeds for snacks and pumpkin pie for dessert."

Then, she snorted and shook her head. "I love my family, and obviously I think it's one of the best homes to live in. 'Course, I never really lived in any other home that wasn't part of my family's. Except for this dorm, I guess. Now, my family might make a lot of jokes and push a bunch of buttons, and they're already teasin' me about living with a boy, let alone a vampire boy, but they support me, and I love 'em to bits. My ma keeps telling me to bring her home grandchildren, though, and I tell her right back to shut her trap and wait 'til pigs fly. The ol' biddy hasn't stopped bugging me about it since I started attracting all the boys' attention back home."

She scraped the last of her pumpkin innards out onto the towel and leveled her pumpkin out again. With the knife in hand, she set her hand on the pumpkin and started to lightly carve a sketch-design on the very surface with the tip of the blade. "You got anyone making fun of you for living with a country bumpkin? You already made that damn Daisy Duke joke, and I know I ain't making it any better by wearing real short shorts."

Maisie snorted and pulled back to look at her surface-level 'sketch'. She set her blade down to wipe her hand on the towel beneath her. "Of course we eat them! They taste really good, and you can season them a thousand different ways. We toast them every year and have a nice clay pot full of them just sitting on the counter. Little Sue's so greedy though that the entire pot'll be gone in a night and a day!"

She put the tip of her knife back on the pumpkin; the hand keeping everything steady was dangerously close to having a finger sliced, but Maisie seemed either oblivious or confident. The thought of all her family's teasing had her snorting and laughing quietly. "Whole bunch of dumb stuff, like 'K-I-S-S-I-N-G, Maisie and her boy-toy sitting in a tree,' and I'm sitting here going, Uncle Richard please, why," she said with laughter in her voice. "And of course, Ma's always trying to get me to bring her home some grandchildren, says we could use the hands on the farm. I say we at the farm get along just fine! N' Pa keeps calling just to say he hopes we're not swapping spit and gnawing each other's faces off, and I tell him I saw enough of that between him and Ma and he laughs and hangs up."

She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans at the moment, but she slapped her leg anyways. "Obviously there's nothing wrong with my shorts; if there was, I wouldn't wear em. I think you're perfectly approachable, though--if you weren't, I would've built a wall and then requested a room change because I sure as heck ain't rooming with a plank. Besides, I like to keep you on your toes! If I didn't, I bet you'd be a lazy couch potato who can't even be bothered to get the remote, so you just watch reruns of jewelry advertisements from ten years ago that have never been taken off the air for whatever reason, and when you finally call in because you found your phone in between the couch cushions, they send you dollar-store toys. No one should live that kinda life."

"There are a few of my family members on the island, actually. At least, I'm pretty sure there are; last I heard, they were here. There's an occasional oddball among us who develops powers--like me." Maisie paused and eyed Ash as he sniffed and inspected one of the unwashed raw seeds.

"'Weirdly fun'," she repeated, "That's me! Gotta entertain myself somehow, y'know? Put myself out there and just do things n' all that--" She blinked as he ate the seed straight, her eyebrows propped. She'd seen many a kid in her family eat pumpkin seeds like that because they were too impatient for the real toasted deal. They usually learned their lesson, and she could tell by the look on his face that he probably did too. "Raw seeds are mighty nutritious, but usually you wash them first. They don't taste very good if they still got all that pumpkin on 'em!"

In her amused distraction, her knife slipped and sliced her opposite index finger. She hissed in pain for just a second before she sighed and took a look at her hand. "My poor finger," she mumbled, "It's gonna bleed all over my pumpkin. Oh well--Halloween pumpkins are supposed to look scary and blood'll do that real nice." Maisie wiped her finger and the blade on the towel and then raised her knife to stab the pumpkin along one of her design lines. She didn't seem to be very bothered by the bleeding cut at all.

Maisie huffed and wave her hand as if it say it was no big deal, but then Ash went and returned with a bandaid and she gave up trying to say otherwise. She sighed and let him deal with her finger while she hooked her legs around the pumpkin to hold it in place while she stabbed it. "I ain't that clumsy. Everyone gets hurt once and a while and there's no way of avoiding it; it's dumb to try and they get soft if they do."

She wiggled her fingers in an attempt to tickle Ash's palm as he held her hand to deal with the cut. She'd never admit it out loud, but she enjoyed the feel of his hands on her own. "I told you, I ain't got a fetish! 'Least, you can't prove I do, so you can't say I do. I can't make you bite me even if I wanted it, either; if you didn't bite me when my neck was bleeding and you aren't biting me now, I would say you don't want to bite me at all! N' for the record, no I'm not trying to get you to bite me. That would've been mighty messed up if I fell out that tree on purpose." She also wouldn't admit it aloud, but she wouldn't have minded if he wanted to bite her, either. There was nothing to fear about it; it was impossible to suck too much blood from her. Of course, she wasn't just going to offer herself up anyways like some roast pig on a platter; she wasn't that desperate to be bitten, even if she didn't think she'd mind.

"I'll bet you do have some weird bad luck hanging around you, though. I ain't ever embarrassed myself more in front of a dozen people in the span of three years than I have in front of just you in the span of a couple weeks. Is this one of them weird 'auras' I've been hearing about on this island? If it is, I don't like it. Turn it off."

"Lot more than I got," she said with a snort. "You can lift a tree and smell a pin drop, and I can drink a lot of water or milk or whatever. Don't they have some of them 'power classes' at the school here? Maybe I'll take one of those so I can catch up to you. Fear me in the future."

Maisie flexed her fingers now that he'd let go of her hand, the bandaged one of course stiff but at least it didn't hurt. She popped the top off her pumpkin again and reached inside to take out the chunks that had landed inside from her carving. "Thanks, Ash. I ain't paying you, by the way; you're doing all this nice doctor-y stuff for free. It's only fair when I bring you all these nice pumpkins."

She swatted at his poking finger and jabbed him in the ribs in return; it wasn't very gentle since she knew he could handle it. Besides, if she hurt him, he'd heal fast just like he said. "I bet you're just trying to get me to admit something weird so I embarrass myself again. Well, the answer is only if you want to take a nibble. So ha. I'm onto you, Shortcake; you can't fool me this time." She pointed two fingers towards her eyes, then turned them around and pointed them to his in the classical 'I'm watching you' gesture.