malik has no idea how to feel about this-- and there's a flicker of that uncertain feeling when mabel hugs him. there's apprehension, concern, sadness, a tinge of anger. nothing overtly positive, but it's something compared to the empty void he was before. ]
I-- thank you?
[ what......... does he do. does he like. pat her? sure. he'll give her a little head pat. BUT JUST ONE.... ]
[ she laughs and gives him a good ol' shoulder pat in return. there there, malik. i know it was hard to receive affection, but you pulled through! (Mabel doesn't quite know what to make of all those...strange, not nice feelings he has, though. Aren't hugs supposed to be nice?) ]
So! Your turn! What do you need to do for your task?
I need to tell you about a memory... Which is better than showing them unprompted. Like when I was younger than you are now... and I--
[ he is even more conflicted and unsure! and his sadness? there's more of that now. ]
I didn't get to do many things as a child. I wanted to see a lot of places, and experience a lot of things... I found a discarded book in the street one time, and it had pictures of things I had never seen before.
[ oh! wow! awkward! Mabel gets the sense that this is going to be an Important Somber infodump, so she forces herself to be calm. She can tell that Malik is gonna have a hard time saying this so...she might as well help by prompting him a little, right? ]
[ he's trying to stay constrained, because yeah this is incredibly awkward! he doesn't like this, not one bit. ]
I remember a page with a motorcycle in it very clearly. I begged my sister to let me keep that page. She said I could as long as our father never saw it.
[ the validation actually gets a flicker of positive emotion! ]
I thought it was interesting and exciting... to be able to ride across the land, completely free... I had never seen anything like it before. I would have kept the whole book, if my sister had let me... but I was okay with just one page. So I took it back home with me, imaging what having a motorcycle would be like.
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malik has no idea how to feel about this-- and there's a flicker of that uncertain feeling when mabel hugs him. there's apprehension, concern, sadness, a tinge of anger. nothing overtly positive, but it's something compared to the empty void he was before. ]
I-- thank you?
[ what......... does he do. does he like. pat her? sure. he'll give her a little head pat. BUT JUST ONE.... ]
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So! Your turn! What do you need to do for your task?
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I need to tell you about a memory... Which is better than showing them unprompted. Like when I was younger than you are now... and I--
[ he is even more conflicted and unsure! and his sadness? there's more of that now. ]
I didn't get to do many things as a child. I wanted to see a lot of places, and experience a lot of things... I found a discarded book in the street one time, and it had pictures of things I had never seen before.
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Like what kind of things?
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I remember a page with a motorcycle in it very clearly. I begged my sister to let me keep that page. She said I could as long as our father never saw it.
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I thought it was interesting and exciting... to be able to ride across the land, completely free... I had never seen anything like it before. I would have kept the whole book, if my sister had let me... but I was okay with just one page. So I took it back home with me, imaging what having a motorcycle would be like.
I did get one later, after I left home.
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And? Was it everything you'd ever dreamed of?
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Actually... yes. I'm quite fond of it.
[ A.... POSITIVE EMOTION?! holy shit ]
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So where'd you get to go on your cool shiny new motorcycle?!
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[ oh yeah we're rolling with TWO COMMENTS IN A ROW of positive vibes ]
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[ gasp ] Are you saving up vouchers to buy your cool water-floating motorcycle?!
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