Room 202, Thursday Morning

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka surveyed the empty side of her room seriously. Her panda was on her lap. Her bunny and her giraffe were hiding under her pillow. (The pillow was doing a rather poor job of hiding them, but all of them present in the room had agreed to pretend.)

"I think," she said, "that you need your own bed!"

"My own bed?" the panda asked happily.

"Yup!" Alluka said and, suiting action to words, she bounced over and set the panda on the bed. As the panda flailed its arms happily, Alluka was thoughtful. "Do you like it?" she asked.

"Like it!" the panda chirped back at her.

"Okay," Alluka said, though she thought it was awfully bare and kinda lonely looking on that side of the room, now that her panda was over there. "Can I come and visit with you?"

"Come and visit!"

So Alluka fetched her bunny, and Bubbles the giraffe and let them know about her panda's new home and that they were all going to visit her.

It was much friendlier with all of them on the bed, as they talked to each other. It was a lot like a tea party, just without the tea.

(Alluka was very good at entertaining herself.)

[Door cracked, post is open!]

Comments

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ever since their shopping trip a couple of weeks ago, Ringo had been trying to figure out what, if anything, she should say or do about her growing suspicion regarding Alluka's (lack of) understanding of traditional gender dynamics. Maybe she should do nothing! After all, Alluka seemed happy and content, and that should be good enough. Except that Ringo didn't want her friend being surprised if someone else brought it up at some point.

So last night she'd made her decision, and now she was outside Alluka's door, hand poised to knock, when she heard voices speaking from inside. It meant Alluka was there, but it sounded like she wasn't alone, and this was the sort of conversation Ringo didn't want to attempt in a group. She fretted for a minute, chewing on her lip with indecision. Which gave her enough time to notice that the voice which didn't belong to Alluka sounded sort of mechanical. And was mostly just repeating things back to her.

She wondered, then shrugged. It was worth finding out. It'd be a shame to waste her current sense of determination, after all. So Ringo took a deep breath, then knocked politely on the door.

[that_oldsaying]

All conversation inside abruptly ceased at the sound of the knock. Alluka blinked and looked at her toys, which blinked back at her. Then she slid off her panda's bed and hurried over to the door.

It was still super weird when people actually visited her!

She opened the door and peered out, then beamed. "Hi, Ringo! Hi!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Alluka's excitement helped overcome a pretty good amount of Ringo's hesitation, and she grinned back. "Hey, Alluka. I'm not interrupting you or anything, am I?"

[that_oldsaying]

She shook her head and bounced back so that Ringo could come in.

"Nope!" she said happily. "We were just celebrating my panda getting her own bed!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Oh, that's pretty great for her," Ringo smiled as she stepped through the door and glanced over at the cluster of animals. "She's probably pretty excited."

[that_oldsaying]

"She's super excited," Alluka declared and hopped back to the bed on the empty-looking side of the room. "Right?"

"Super excited!" her panda said, waving her arms around.

Alluka beamed at Ringo. "See?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

That was, actually, pretty impressive, and Ringo's eyebrows rose in appreciation. "I do see!"

She grinned. Then her expression sobered slightly as she recalled what had brought her here. "Hey," she said, voice growing a bit more serious. "Do you have some time to talk? You don't have anywhere to be or anything, do you?"

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka picked up her bunny and hugged it, taking its spot on her panda's bed.

"I'm totally free!" she said, fidgeting a little. "Just celebrating, but my panda doesn't mind if we do more of that later, if you want to talk! She likes you, after all."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Awww, that's sweet. I like her, too." She was certainly very cute, at the very least.

Ringo stepped into the room and walked over to stand near Alluka's bed. "Can we sit down? This could take a little bit."

[that_oldsaying]

She hugged her bunny for a moment longer and then gravely picked up her giraffe too, kissed her panda, and left it behind as she brought the other toys with her.

Alluka offered Bubbles over to Ringo to hug and took a seat on her bed. Ringo could do the same, she guessed, as Alluka looked up at her friend with big blue eyes.

"Am I in trouble? Was, was I bad?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo's eyes widened in surprise and mild alarm. "No, no," she said quickly, not having intended to give that impression at all. "You haven't done anything bad at all."

She shook her head and offered Alluka what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I just have a serious topic I want to discuss."

[that_oldsaying]

"Okaaaay," she said, rather doubtfully. Serious topics rarely equaled good things for her. "I'll do my best to listen!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

Hey, this wasn't easy for Ringo, either. In fact, she felt herself taking a deep breath before plunging onward.

"That's all you need to do."

Another deep breath. "Okay, so. Um. What do you know about the difference between boys and girls?" Ringo asked, trying not to let all the words come out in a rush.

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka blinked at her.

"Boys are boys and girls are girls."

Duh.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"That's true," Ringo nodded, a burst of amusement suffusing her smile. "But why? What makes them different?"

[that_oldsaying]

Now that was a... harder question. She pondered it carefully.

"They're different because they're boys," she settled on. "And, and they're usually the knights in stories and my brothers get to leave their rooms."

Which was also a difference, but not one that had anything to do with her being a girl and them being boys.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Is being a knight what makes them boys, or do they get to be knights because they're boys?" Hopefully Ringo could navigate her way toward some way of making sure that Alluka understood that there were reasons, whether they were good or not, that people decided who was a girl and who was a boy.

[that_oldsaying]

"Ummmm."

Alluka was getting more and more confused. This was the serious thing that Ringo had wanted to talk about--oh!

"Ringo, Ringo, is there someone you like?"

Was she here to talk about a cruuuuuuush?

[soniaroadsqueen]

"What? No!" Maybe.

Huh?

"That's not what I wanted to talk about," Ringo said after a moment, just barely managing to keep from face-palming, and not managing to keep from flushing bright pink.

[that_oldsaying]

Alluka giggled and hugged her bunny.

"You look like you've got a crush now," she said happily. "And you've been asking funny questions about boys. Who is it? Who is it?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"We can talk about that later," Ringo insisted. Or, you know, not. Hopefully the conversation she intended to have would be distracting enough!

"Because what I'm actually asking about is whether you know about stuff like sex and male and female anatomy."

[that_oldsaying]

They were totally going to talk about it later! Because a crush was important! And exciting!

Alluka blinked those huge blue eyes of hers at Ringo.

"What?"

That wasn't nearly as exciting as the crush!

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Anatomy? You know, like, body parts?"

Hmm. This wasn't going to be any less awkward than a discussion of crushes, was it?

[that_oldsaying]

No, no it wasn't!

Alluka laughed. "But we all have the same," she said. "Hands, feet, legs, arms. They're all the same!"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well, that's true, there are a lot of things that are the same. But have you noticed how a lot of girls have, like, breasts and stuff?" Ringo gestured at her own chest, which was pretty significant for someone her age.