Impact in Three, Two, One [Thane]

[Thane Graves]

"I mean, there are some people I hang around with, but I really wouldn't call them friends. What is a friend anyway?" It was a rhetorical question, but he regretted posing it because he was almost sure that she would still answer. He thought of Kodi and how they hung out. By that, he meant sometimes Kodi came over and harrassed him and Thane did the same thing back and sometimes they'd go get tacos. Although they usually still managed to argue or yell about something.

He raised an eyebrow at her offer. "Not that I want a friend, because if I did...that would be fucking charity, what you're offering. You can't seriously want to be my friend." Then, she even tried to talk about something he could relate to, but failed miserably at that. "What you're describing, the people you don't like, that's me in a nutshell and yet here you are, trying to keep up with me when you're on foot and I'm on a skateboard." Were all red heads this crazy? She was babbling on and before he knew it, she was even offering him cookies. "Friendship and cookies? Wow, quite an offer." Sarcasm at its finest.

Thane rolled his eyes. Not for one reason, but for two. One, he found her absolutely ridiculous, and two, he was positive he could make better cookies.

[Calysma Jamille]

Hey! He was actually talking and asking questions now! That was definitely a good sign. And of course she had an answer for his question, not even stopping for a moment to think he might not actually want a real answer. "Friends are people that you can have fun with!" she stated, solemn. "People who you can talk to about things and do stuff with. Like go for walks! Like we are now!" She grinned, despite the fact she was doing more of a jog than a walk.

Cal considered his next statement seriously, actually going quiet for a moment to think about it. First, he was talking about charity like it was a bad thing... But there was a difference right? Right. "Actually, it's not really charity," she quipped. "Charity is being nice to someone because they need something, right? I'm being nice because that's who I am!" It didn't even occur to her that the statement could sound like bragging. "I like making friends," she went on. "I'm not just making an exception for you. I try to make friends with everyone." She grinned again, this time as he commented about her cookie offer. "I know, right?" She bounced a little. "Cookies are great!"

.... that. Was sarcasm, Calysma.

Huh?

I said--

Shh! Tell me later! We're making progress!

"Here!" she said aloud, retrieving the ziplock bag of cookie pieces, opening it, and then holding it out so Thane could get some.

[Thane Graves]

And just as predicted, she answered the question that wasn't meant to be answered. He raised an eyebrow at her. "So, going on a walk with someone constitues friendship?" That's honestly what he was concluding from this. And it's not as if they were really having an actual conversation. It was all surface bullshit, but he tried not to care, because when people tried to dig deeper is when he got pissed off and she'd already tried a few times. No matter how much he hated small talk, he couldn't stand people trying to actually get to know him to find out what made him tick. What made someone think he'd share that information with them?

She went on about what charity actually was and how what she was doing was different from it and Thane just rolled his eyes, noticing how she'd chosen to completely push aside what he'd said about not wanting a friend and how he was surely someone she wouldn't like. He hardly believed that trying to be friends with everybody actually worked.

When she whipped out the bag of cookies, Thane had to grab at least one. What? He needed to know if her cookies were at least good. It was food and if there was one common ground they'd reached, that was it, the baking, the cooking, the work that went into making food.

[Calysma Jamille]

Cal considered Thane's question seriously for a brief moment. Did going on a walk with someone constitute friendship? She grinned a bit as she answered the question, starting it with a returned question, "Why not?" She blinked at him. "So long as it's a friendly walk. There are different kinds of walks, you know. Some are very unfriendly." She nodded seriously, as if she were an expert on the matter of walking.

It was no lie, when Thane accepted some cookie pieces, Cal was well and truly thrilled. Gift acceptance was the first step in friendship, without any doubt! Despite being broken, the cookies were admittedly pretty good. Learning to bake had been one of Cal's small victories, in her mind. It meant she had access to a way to easily make gifts for large groups of people. Not to mention, learning to cook had been no easy matter at first, with her Other People arguing either with her, or with each other, and therefore distracting her. It could still could be a difficult task at times, but she'd found that measuring and laying all the ingredients out at the very beginning, before mixing things up, helped a great deal.

Feeling more than a little triumphant, Cal grabbed some pieces of cookie herself and munched on them, swinging the bag containing the rest of them beside her as she did. "Do you like them?" she asked, hopeful. Him accepting the cookies wouldn't be nearly as good if he hated them, of course. "I didn't make any mistakes with them this time! Once I accidentally mixed up sugar and flour measurements, and it was really, really bad." She grinned and shook her head. "That was a long time ago though-- when I was first learning."

[Thane Graves]

"What exactly is an 'unfriendly walk?' Because I'm classifying this as one," Thane muttered. He hadn't been very friendly to her. Was she absolutely nuts? "And what makes you an expert at taking walks?"

Thane refused to aknowledge the fact that he'd somehow gotten sucked into a conversation with this redheaded girl. And that now he was actually sharing cookies with her.

Well, he was remaining ignorant of that fact. He munched on the few broken pieces of cookies that he'd taken from the bag. He could tell her they were horrible, the worst thing he ever tasted, but Thane was into cooking and baking himself, even if he didn't like to admit and he found himself wanting to actually offer the truth to her. "Yeah, the flavor is good. Doesn't seem like you mixed up any ingredients." Rookie mistake, really. "And they're not too hard. You didn't overbake them."

[Calysma Jamille]

"Noooo, this isn't an unfriendly walk." Cal snickered. "It'd be unfriendly if we were arguing or shouting at each other. We're just talking!" Silly guy. "And I've taken a lot of walks with people, so I would know." She nodded and tapped her temple knowingly. Of course, she was having fun joking around with pretending to be something like a walk expert. It'd be hilarious if there were such things in real life.

She beamed as Thane commented on her cookies, and actually seemed to like them. That was great! It would have been horrible if he'd ended up not liking them after she'd convinced him to try some. Wouldn't have helped the situation at all.

"Do you bake things too?" she asked, curious. He talked about the cookie like someone who was familiar with them. "Or... Are you going to be a food critic?" The second question was put to him just as curiously as the first. It would be awesome if she was friends with a food critic someday! Maybe he'd be famous, and she'd be able to say she knew him! She gave an excited skip at the thought.