HELMSLEY: Helmsley Beach As far as the eye can see, the shoreline of Helmsley beach stretches out, beige-colored sandy shores lapped by surprisingly blue ocean waves. The beach itself is relatively empty, save for the occasional lifeguard stand dotting the shoreline. Visitors are present in numbers during the daytime, the beaches occupied by one person at least during all seasons. During the summer, however, the beach is a packed mess--people litter the shorelines, camping out on beach towels and under umbrellas, as well as wading in the deep waters or merely surfing them. A stretch of bridge extends out into the ocean, the boardwalk providing a better view of the deep blue waters further out into the churning waters. During the day vendors peddle their food and wares to visitors, calling out over the street musicians who play from time to time. Contents: Finnian Vala Obvious exits: Up to Helmsley Beach Drive With summer comes hot weather, at least after the city's moved out of the June gloom. And, given that it's also the Fourth of July, everyone and their mother is out at the beach for barbecues, fireworks, what have you. Finnian (and his mother, and dad, in fact) were just another part of the massive efflux to the shore, which means Finn's been here for the better part of the very long, very hot day. Evening thus finds the teenager very tired, very sunburned, and very content to just sit out at the end of the pier and watch the fireworks out over the water. Figures that Ask would have to go and get her hands hurt the day before the family's vacation to Helmsley. Fortunately, there are advantages to having a huge family with an assortment of esoteric powers; this time, it's namely in the form of Eirralin and her healing abilities, leaving little more than slightly tender scars on Ask's hands by the end of today. Unfortunately, there are also disadvantages to having a huge family: namely, every family trip turns into an enormous circus show. After spending the day with her family, running around on the beach and grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, Ask is feeling the need to get away and and not hear a relative's voice for a little bit. Ember excepted, but Ember's off somewhere chatting up some girls he met earlier today. So Ask simply takes the inner tube, pushes it out to the water, plops herself in it, and is content to float on the waves and eat her Cherry Garcia ice cream while watching the fireworks going up. The motion of the ocean being what it is, though, it gradually pushes the inner tube down the coast, a fact Ask doesn't notice until she feels a gentle bump against the side. Stirring from her hazy languor, she drags her eyes down from the sky and looks about, realizing that she's somehow made it all the way down to the pier. Er. Well, no hardship; it's not a hard walk back up to where her family's umbrella is pitched, and it's still peaceful here. And even if there's people here, they're not people she knows--she thinks. The darkness and her position in the water makes it difficult for her to make out faces. Don't ask. Don't Tell. It's a good policy to why this vibrant, slightly insane woman hasn't been about. But the fact that it's summer, and there's a beach, has brought her out and about once more. She probably was quietly trying to ammass a fortune or something to try to survive off of while she waits (somewhat patiently) for her darling soulmate (yes, HE IS HER SOULMATE... don't dispute it, he just doesn't know it yet) to come around. For all her flamboyancy, Vala is actually dressed ina modest black one piece. She sports a few reddish patches on her shoulders and the backs of her thighs (the 'problem areas' for any woman), but she seems not to care. Like others it seems that she's been drawn to the pier to witness the sunset. The breeze is nice, and relaxing. Though, after a moment, she gets bored, and she's soon standing in the middle of the pier, behind some teenager, tapping her fingers, and making faces as she figures out how to occupy herself in ways that doesn't involve being a cock-tease to the local male population (she's devoted to one person, remember! Yeah!) If only Finn were aware of just how lucky he is--! Or maybe unlucky. More likely the latter, honestly; even his lucky breaks usually end with the hot chick smacking him. Or with him tripping and ending up underneath a pile of books, or- - Although honestly he's not thinking about any of that right now, instead staring up and making the appropriate noises at the pretty lights in the sky. One of them bursts not far off, lending the scene enough light that Finn notices something out of the corner of one eye... And looks down to see an inner tube bobbing against the pier. "Oh, hey, good idea!" he calls, totally unable to recognize Ask at this distance but waving anyway. "Is that ice cream?" He does notice somebody walking up behind him just then, and tries to wiggle around to look up at Vala. "Oh, h--" Of course, this being Finn, this results in him falling off the pier with an attenuated wail. He hits the water far enough from Ask that the splash will probably only moisten her. Even better, the people on the pier are friendly! A smile automatically coming to her lips, despite the fact that those on the pier probably can't see it, Ask lifts a hand to return the wave--wait. That voice sounds familiar. Squinting, Ask sits up, then moves to precariously balance herself on the tube, one foot braced on either side. "Is that..." She gets no further than that before Finn falls off the end of the pier. The splash just wets her legs up to the knee, but the resultant waves rock the tube, unbalancing her already-uncertain perch and sending her flailing into the water with a yelp and another splash. Which isn't so bad, since her legs and butt were already wet from floating in the water, but her ice cream~~! Vala really doesn't think much before she's off the pier after the teenaged boy, trying to help him at least to the surface. "You should probably not be so clumsy at the end of a pier," Vala offers oh so helpfully. See, vala is a helpful kind, but she's...w ell... vala. She'll stay in the water with the boy up until they get to the shoreline. She'll also make sure the girl in the tube is okay as well. ... was that a bulb of ice cream that just impacted with her? It takes a moment--but only a moment, with Vala's help--for Finn to scramble back up to the surface of the water, sputtering as he does. He doesn't consciously realize for a moment that he's got somebody there helping him out, though his hands close on whatever of Vala he can reach, his white-blond hair plastered over his eyes. "Uh," he manages intelligently. "Oh--uh, thanks. This kind of thing always happens to me--" He ducks under a moment as a slightly larger wave swamps him a moment, coughs again, and figures out how to tread water on his own. "--ergh." Getting a hand up, he pushes his hair out of his eyes, managing to get his eyes open only to have a drop of saltwater trickle into one. "--ow! H-hey, was the-- there was someone down here on a--" He flails around until one hand hits the inner tube. "--oh, that one! Did you see them or am I just going nuts?" Now he squints at the water around them, casting about for the person he saw down there. Fortunately, Ask doesn't take too long to surface--but when she does, it's coughing and spluttering. Unfortunately, her first instinct had been to gasp, which involves inhaling, but when one's head is underwater? Not so smart an idea. Clearing her windpipe of salt water takes a few more coughs, before one outstretched hand finds her tube and she clings to it for floating aid. "Nggha! Ow. Phftoo phfoo." That, as she spits out the last of the salt water. "Um, i-is everyone...?" Scrubbing a hand across her face before using to sweep her bangs out of her eyes, she opens her eyes and peers about. For once, she actually doesn't have a hat on, and the water soaks her red curls, flattening them slightly with the weight of the water. Wait, now--that extremely pale head of hair does look familiar, and paired with the voice she'd heard before the splash... "Hey! Finn, isn't it?" she calls, a grin lighting up her face. "Wow, it's been long time! How are you?" She'd probably try to give the other kid a hug, except for the awkwardness involved in doing so while holding onto a tube with one hand. A second later, she notices the woman who'd dived in to help, and more to the point, realizes that her missing ice cream is now sitting on her. One hand flying to her mouth, Ask immediately embarks on a flurry of apologies. "Oh, no-- I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen! I'm just clumsy--ah--here--" She doesn't actually have anything to wipe off the ice cream with, so she'll just try to scoop the ice cream off Vala with her bare hands. Once she's satisfied that no one is going to drown on her, Vala sits there with this uninterested look as she's groped by teenagers. "you know," she tells the boy, "Most usually offer Dinner, before they do what you're doing." Then she has this wee girl trying to do the same. Vala intercepts by trying to get the ice cream off of her and back onto the girl before she gets groped by something else. "Seriously," she says, concernedly, to the two young ones before her, "Are both of you okay? I don't want to have to explain to anyone's parents that their kids are in odd straits in the ocean..." Blink. Blink. Finn looks down--well, as much down as he can with his head nearly in the water--before looking back at Vala's face again. An *almost* innocent smile graces his face, and he patpats her once before letting go. "Well, if it's any consolation, ma'am, they're the nicest I've ever accidentally groped." ... "I can get you a hotdog to make up for it? My wallet's still in my pocket." ... "I hope, anyway." He goes back to treading water, turning a little in place to get a good look at Ask--and the smile turns into a wide grin. "Ask!" he says, cheerily. "Yeah, it has! Sorry we keep, uh, meeting like this..." He trails off; fortunately for him, the fireworks have died down for the moment so his blush is pretty much invisible now. Before she can scoop said ice cream, it's deposited back into her hand, a sad little mess of half-crushed cone and melting Cherry Garcia. Flinching slightly at the cold, Ask turns her smile back up when asked after her welfare. "Oh, I'm fine! A little dunking isn't going to hurt me. But thank you for the trouble, I'm sorry you had to, um..." Get creamed? Get groped? She manages to maintain a straight smile for a while before breaking into giggles as the ridiculousness of the situation hits her. "You know, I'm going to start looking for you every time something like this happens to me now," she tells Finnian, in between giggles. The feeling of ice cream dripping between her fingers reminds her that there's no point in hanging around out here. "If everyone's okay, why don't we head back to shore?" she suggests brightly, angling herself about so as to point back toward the beach. One hand on tube, she'll use it as a sort of body-board, paddling back to land. "Oh, if anyone wants to use the tube, go right ahead!" She is /not/ getting in the middle of some teenaged crush-drama is she? She watched enough of those on the television back in..what was they called it? Colorado? Right..."Right, Let's get you to shore..." To the groping, she tosses Finnian a wink...." Don't worry, you've far been one of the best, and you're not even old enough to be experienced yet, how about that?" She pats him o the head and gives him a broad, toothy smile, before she moves to make sure both kids get safely to shore. She might be mostly self-serving and greedy, but she's self- serving with /morals/, and those morals say that Vala doesn't let kids sit there and float about unoccupied in the ocean! "Alright then, as the one who is mostly likely an adult via age here, I have to ask..." she looks at both kids, "Do your parents know you're hanging about here unattended?" She pauses to remove some bit of cone that just some how managed toi get into an embarrassing spot of her suit and she flings it without so much a second look, "And you, little girl, remind me to get you a new ice cream cone since some of it managed to get into my suit..." Good thing Finn's not the sort to have nosebleeds; he'd probably die or attract the sharks on the spot at that one. He just blushes further, before coughing and giving a shake of his head to regain his composure. "--Well, I was figuring we needed to hang out more," he replies to Ask, before looking over at Vala and realizing she asked him a question somewhere along the line back there. "...Oh! Yeah, it's not like I'm /twelve/ or anything." He kicks at the water a little more, before chuckling a bit. "'Sides, I can swim, so it's not like they're worried about me drowning or anything." Despite his bravado, he does lay a hand on Ask's inner tube. "How about I buy? I mean, I kinda was the one that landed her in the water, after all," he says, cheerfully. Maybe a little bashfully; awwwww. Maybe Vala doesn't need to worry about stray teenage crushes! W-what? Of course not! Or at least so Ask would claim, between stutters and blushes. If that were the case, Ask would be getting jealous about the groping, which she doesn't seem to be. Or maybe she just failed to notice. Or just isn't the jealous type. "I'm an adult! Technically," Ask protests briefly as the two teens begin to kick toward land, making a moue. Though, granted, she has a tendency to look a lot younger than she actually is--maybe an advantage later in life, not so much of a one now. "But yeah, they know I'm around... I think. If they even noticed I'm missing, in between everyone else. I know the way back to my family, anyway, so you don't have to worry about that. Or about the ice cream, really--it was my fault I fell and it landed on you," she adds, as Vala brings up the matter of ice cream. "I can just get a new one! If, uh, I had my wallet with me." Not the case so much, given as her bikini doesn't really have any pockets to put such a thing, and she in no way has the cleavage to use as an extra pocket. "--or you can buy and I’ll just pay you back later?" she offers, turning toward Finn. As they make land, she spies a trashcan nearby and trots over to dump her handful of sea-salt ice cream (not the good kind) before returning to wash her hands in the water. Straightening, she adds, sticking her hand out toward Vala, "I'm Ask, by the way. Nice to meet you, even if it's like this." Smile. She would be inclined to comment that ugh, Teenaged crushes, but she keeps her comments to herself. After all, she's got something of teenaged behavior towards one individual as it is. Once everyone's afe on shore, she tries to straigyten out her suit. "Ah, no problem, relaly. Wate'rs water, and it seems cream doesn't like salt much." She really makes no effort to cover up the fact she's adjusting her suit in front of a young boy. Really, he'll see such things ooner or later, right? Flipping her ponytails over her shoulders she blinks a bit at the girl. "Your parents don't know you're missing?" She seems disturbed at this. If she was a mother, she wouldn't let her child run off willy nilly! She hmphs a bit, before she regards the offered hand for a brief moment before she takes it in hr own. Her hand poissesses a strong grip and calloused surface. It's the hand of a fighter. "Vala Mal Doran, at your service, Ms. Ask," She then huffs a bit and she waves it off, "Believe me, there's /worse/ things you could meet me on." She pauses, and then laughs, "i'm not going to name them, because that might incriminate me." She winks to the girl before turning her attention to the boy. "And what should I call you, oh cute little thing that plans to buy two very lovely and attractive women ice cream, hmm?" Hee~ Miraculously, Finn manages to get himself up on shore without faceplanting into the sand, losing his swim trunks, or dying horribly in some other unspecified way. In fact, now that he's had a chance to shake his hair out of his eyes, he looks downright chipper about the whole thing. ... Of course, you'd probably look downright chipper, too, if an attractive member of the appropriate sex was adjusting her equally attractive swimwear right in front of you. Finn manages not to stare, though he sneaks a look or two out of the corner of one eye. Granted, as soon as Vala looks his way again, he's very busy toeing some sea-glass that's half-buried in the sand. "Oh, I owe you one anyway," he says to Ask, before hunkering over to pick up the bit of glass. Straightening, he smiles at her. "After the, uh--the thing, you know. With the big black things. And the stuff." He glances aside at Vala, clears his throat uncomfortably, and turns away--rubbing at one arm, which is visibly (but very, very gradually) working its way from being lobster red to peeling and tanned. "I'm Finn, Ms. Doran. Nicetameetcha. Ask and I go to school together. --Well, when there is school, and between you and me I'd rather there were a few more explosions like that last one so I don't have to go back come September." Now he seems to have regained his somewhat gawky poise, and offers a wink to the older woman. "Last I saw, my parents were chasing after the two youngest while the next two youngest were throwing sand around and Atlan, Vara, and Eir were setting off fireworks," Ask replies serenely. "And Ember was chatting up some girls," she adds, as an afterthought. "They know I can take care of myself, so..." She spreads her hands, all innocence. And she may even be sincere about that innocence, too. Her smile dims a little as Vala adjusts her swimsuit so, but that may just be because Finn brought up, well, that time. "Ah! Yeah, that thing--you really don't, honestly, it's..." Not exactly her pleasure, but something she had to do anyway? Or something. She waves it off with a slightly sheepish chuckle, then shakes her head. "Oh, come on, there's some good things about school! Like.... um.... ... ... uh...." She trails off, casting her eyes upward as she thinks. "... .. uh .... don't rush me, I'll come up with something soon?" and the names of children just keep on coming. "Wow," is all Vala can seem to produce. She shakes her head, and scratches the top of her hair. "That's a lot of... hrm." She then shrugs and then reaches over to invade Finn's personal space, hooking her arm with his. "Off to buy ice cream, right?" She then blinks a bit at Ask, and then shrugs, moving to hook her arm with the other girl's as well. "You know, I can't remember for the life of me what school was like..." Finnian squints at Ask as she lists off the names of her siblings. "You guys aren't Mormon, are you?" he asks, suspicious, before starting as Vala links an arm through his. (Much as could be expected, his skin's currently a lot warmer than normal. Oh, sunburns.) "Oh yeah! Right." As covertly as he can, he pats his swimtrunks down for his wallet. On finding in, it he gives an inward sigh of relief, before pointing in the general direction of where he last saw an ice cream vendor. "Onward! To ice cream!" That's not an unusual reaction when people realize just how many children there are in the family. No doubt her parents are going to breathe huge sighs of relief when the eldest go off to college--but that's still a year ahead. Giggling, Ask shakes her head. "No, just that both my parents wanted lots of kids. The last three kind of came as a surprise." And then Ran had decided enough was enough and had her tubes tied to eliminate any more surprises. But that's probably too much information for these two. Finding her arm linked, Ask blinks, then cheerfully returns the favor, scooping up the inner tube by the handles with her other hand. "You're not really missing much, trust me," she reassures Vala. Ah, but then the main purpose of wandering away: "To ice cream!" And she follows the general direction indicated. When both Children's attention are diverted, Vala moves to adjust her hair to make sure that it covers the weird scar at the base of her neck. While she could easily come up withs ome wird trajic accident story, she'd rather not lie to kids. "Yes, to ice cream." She looks to Finn, "I would love to have something that equals 'death by chocolate'. You know of anything that would be sold here, that could equate to that?" Since he's the gentleman and all that. "I /guess/ school isn't as bad as other things we could be doing. Like running through minefields, or forced labor, or being slowly eaten by ravenous zombies," Finn "grudgingly" admits, grinning at the two women. He misses the whole hair- adjustment thing; but heck, he's got his own weird little problem that he hopefully won't need to explain at the end of the night. "...hmmmmm. It's a Ben and Jerry's, right, Ask? That means they've got Phish Food. Which is okay if you don't mind marshmallows..." "Exactly! Or sitting through five back-to-back showings of Titanic, f'r instance," Ask adds, flashing a grin. She misses the hair-adjustment, as well; the slight motion is easily dismissed as Vala simply scratching the back of her neck, anyway. "Yup, it's Ben & Jerry's--if you're looking for super-chocolatey, maybe Chocolate Fudge Brownie? Or there's that other one, the New York Fudge thingy..." As they come up to the ice cream stand, she adds, "Or we could just look at what they have. Me, I think I want, mmm..." Peering at the ice creams in their buckets, she nods firmly. "A Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, please!" Vala smiles at the kids and looks at the menu. Hrm. She, being the not- earth native that she isn't just simply states, "I want a really big bowl of that peanut butter chocolate stuff!" She cups her hands to signify 'big bowl', and she doesn't even check to make sure it's alright with the young lad about it either. Pft. He's a man, he should learn how to shell out the money for lovely ladies sooner or later. She then blinks and glances down at Finn. "... Minefields and zombies...? At School?" She waves her hand flippantly, "Might as well add mind controlling nearly immortal worms to the lot!" She then forgets her place and asks of Ask, "... What's a 'titanic'? Is it a form of sweet?" "Actually, school would be a lot cooler with minefields and zombies." Finn carefully extracts his sodden wallet from his swimtrunks, an intricate maneuver that leaves him unable to do much more than hum a reedy snatch of "My Heart Will Go On" as Ask brings up Titanic. The following extraction of a twenty is a lot easier, though the bill is very, very wet indeed when Finn does manage to get it out. "Huh," he adds, to no one in particular, before shaking the bill. "God bless the US treasury, I guess. Strawberry for me. Uhm, small." A moment later he's forking over the sodden twenty, and favoring Vala with a grin. "You gonna be able to eat all that?" Well, there were--or had been--bombs and an animated skeleton at school, so it's actually not so far off the mark. But both were somewhat unusual occasions. Really, most of the time the day is humdrum. Even if Monroe /is/ chock full of... somewhat unusual students. In the midst of getting her cone from the tired-looking attendant, she blinks at Vala. "Titanic? You know, the movie? About the ship?" Not seeing any immediate recognition, her mouth falls open for a second, before she laughs. "Wow, I didn't think I'd meet anyone who managed to escape the fuss that movie made! But you didn't miss much, Ms. Doran, it was a long and kind of boring movie." As Finn hums a bit of "My Heart Will Go On," Ask rolls her eyes, but can't help but laugh. "With a song that was seriously overplayed." Getting some napkins, she hands a couple to everyone before taking one for herself, and sets to on her ice cream with gusto. "Mmnum. Thanks, Finn." Impulsively, she leans over to drop a quick, ice-creamy peck on his cheek, before she blushes and skips away to a hillock, safely half-visible at best in the dark. A second later, though, she has to come back to sheepishly retrieve her tube, still blushing. Vala gets her hyuuuuge bowl of ice cream and to answer Finn's question she digs in happily to her chocolate-peanut butter happiness and moves to find somewhere to sit, oblivious about the whole mess that the teenagers are talking. She hrms ab it, finding the song sappy with it's beat, but it's what Ask says that gets her attention. "It's a bout a ship? What planets does this titanic visit? Does it actually get to see other galaxies?" Seh taps a chocolate covered spoon against her lips as she ponders. "I wonder what the specs on a ship like that would be, and how much someone would want to pay for it." PONDER! Vala's comments on Titanic make Finn blink. Then blink again, before leaning over to peer at her with wiiiiide eyes. "You're serious you haven't heard of it?" he asks, openly astonished. Then: "Are you for REAL?" He looks like he's about to say more when Ask leans over to reward him with a peck on the cheek. Which is, of course, an excellent way to distract a teenage boy from anything. "Erm," he manages, when his brain has managed to restart itself. The ready availability of his strawberry ice cream and change provide an ample distraction, though, so by the time Ask's come skipping back he's quit blushing. Of course, it also helps that Vala's being openly weird. He squints at her, before taking a slurp of his ice cream. "...It's, uh. It's an ocean ship. It sank a really really long time ago. A bunch of people died," he finally settles on. "...are you serious about the spaceship thing? You're not with NASA, are you?" Skipping over to the table Vala took a seat at, Ask drops onto the bench next to her, leaning back against the table with an elbow. She can't help but giggle at Vala's questions. "No, it's--well, what Finn said. I don't think they had spaceships in 190whatever. Or was it 1910-whatever? ...anyway. Where do you come from, Ms. Doran, to not have heard about it?" she asks, innocently curious. The woman's English seems accentless, so it's very strange. For that matter, she has to marvel at how the woman can dig into the gigantic bowl of chocolate and peanut butter ice cream. Mmm, peanut butter and chocolate. And she's not exactly feminine about eating. In fact, she's not quite ladylike at all! Oh well, must be one of those things. She regards Finnian for a moment, licking a big smudge of chocolate off the top of her lip. "Uh. Yeah, I think I'm for real." She pauses to pinch her arm, then shrugs. "Yup, feel real to me." She frowns though. Hrm. Isn't there something she should have been remembering... "Oh... THAT Titanic..." She shakes her head and rubs her forehead. She needs to remember that things like this shouldn't be all out in the open and all. It sucks. Especially since she doesn't think before speaking! "For some reason, I thought you guys were talking about something else..." She quickly pulls a name from some papers she had read when she was sort of shanghai'd on Earth. "For some reason, I got it confused with something else. Like the Challenger or something." More quick thinking, "Was in an accident, you see. Had a head injury." She thinks for a moment, and then tilts her head forward to show the odd scarring. "See? I think this came from it. So... I tend to get things sort of mixed up and all..." She waves her hands around. Please little wee teeny boppers buy it. She's been good at staying out of trouble! Not that she knows what weird trouble would happen. She'll stuff a huge spoon of ice cream in her mouth, looking natural about the entire thing. ...huh. Finnian joins the girls at the table, settling himself across from them and working on his ice cream for a little while as they speak. Well, he's got eyes mostly for Vala right now, truth be told, because she's the one that's being the weirdest right now. "Mmf," he remarks, before swallowing, "I don't think any of the shuttles have been out to another planet yet, but I can kinda see how that'd be confusing." He sounds...skeptical, at least a little bit, but like he's also ready to let it alone. Quite the literal woman here. Hastily catching a dribblet of ice cream before it falls onto her hand, Ask occupies herself for a few seconds cleaning up the scoop so that it doesn't drip before looking up at Vala again. "Oh, really? I'm sorry, that sounds unpleasant!" No really. "Titanic and Challenger are very different though..." Say, if it had been Apollo and Challenger, but... and there was still the point of no landfall on another planet as yet. Much less different galaxies. She doesn't sound like she disbelieves Vala, though, and her expression is sympathetic. Ah, naivete. "How long ago was this?" She hates lying to kids, but she doesn't want to really get into it. Mou. Daniel would be laughing his ass off at her... or frowning disapprovingly at her... or both... Sigh. She's disappointing her Daniel by doing this! Oh why couldn't she keep her... "Few years ago, roughly," Vala says. She sounds very sincere about this, and hte answer comes not to quick, and not to slow. Truth be told--well, it is the truth. She did get the scar 'a few years' ago, as it were (she can't remember) and it /did/ mess up her memories... just not the ones she's saying. "They both ended badly, didn't they?" Vala comments about Titanic and Challenger being different. About the planet thing, she ponders this. "Maybe it was my overzealousness about the prospect of space travel. I mean..." She takes another big gulp of ice cream, using it to hopefully recall her Earth history. "We've gone to the moon, right? And there's been... probes... to like," Take another bite of ice cream to think about the system, "Mars... It would just be great to go to other planets. On a /ship/... not see it through... something's camera right?" She wipes ice cream from her lips, "Though, they shouldn't name it Titanic. That would probably be bad." Finnian takes another bite of his ice cream. Well, actually, he sort of misses the ice cream and gets a little bit of it and the air, he's so busy watching Vala. "...Oh, yeah. I have dreams like that sometimes. Not about the Titanic, or Challenger or anything like that--about, y'know. Other planets." Whoa. His first crazy person, or so the thought in his eyes might be read. He goes for another bite of ice cream, this time managing to actually get it in his mouth. Mmmfh. "Hmm, I guess in that way, yeah," Ask admits, bobbing her head. "And I think everyone thinks that would be cool--but we're kind of a long ways away from it yet, and stuff," she adds, with a bit of a chuckle. "But that's why science fiction is kind of popular, yeah?" She glances at Finn curiously as he mentions dreams. "Like what?" If only she knew, she might not ask, but. She has dreams sometimes, too--well, doesn't everyone--but of other worlds. Not planets per se, as much as--'lands' is the first word that comes to mind. There's a crunch as she licks away most of the visible scoop and starts nibbling on the cone. Phew! Things seem to be calming down. "Science fiction is so fun, isn't it?" She says with a beaming grin to Ask. But then, Finnian mentions dreams and she blinks. Tilting her head, she says with a bit of curiosity. "Really? I bet lots of boys your age have dreams about planets..."