Penn
I looked at my hands, latched together in a seemingly unbreakable hold. I could do this. I'm awesome.
Doria, Doriano, Dorialia, Doranialo, Doraminaliano.
I sighed. I'd seen her walking around. I tried to say "Hi," once but I don't think she heard me. She was talking to Bernard. Bernard thinks he's so great.
I pushed open the wooden door to find myself face-to-face with a fortress made out of old toy boxes higher than my head, as if to keep out dragons and demons. I peeked around them and I saw her. She wasn't striking or anything, not like before. She just looked normal now. Probably because she wasn't walking all confident-like. I started to walk in and tripped on some type of chord, so my thigh hit the corner of this table that was just sitting in the middle of the room. It took me a while to realize the searing pain shooting through my leg; and when I did, I winced and clutched my belt, like that would make it stop. She took her time looking up. I smiled like I wasn't in tremendous pain.
"Sorry, that table gets a lot of people. You should have said something when you came in." she told me coldly. I just smiled at her as warmly as I could.
"My name's…"
"Penndleton, am I right?" She smiled like she had some sort of hilarious secret.
"Uh, yeah." I replied bluntly "But call me Penn, please."
"Okay, sure." She said nonchalantly.
"So, um…"
"You're here to get more paper and stuff, right?"
"Actually, no. Bernard sent me to help you figure out if the sleight could use more environmentally friendly fuel to power it. Besides, the reindeer, you know. But, I mean, like, we live in the North Pole," I laughed a little. "I don't think we really need to worry about there being enough trees and stuff." I started to laugh, but she just looked at me, stoic.
"What we do affects the whole world, Penndleton." She told me solemnly.
Ouch.