Chrissy had not expected Tara’s room to be quite so pink and, for lack of a better word, Princessy.

The room was mostly pristine, its lavender walls almost completely devoid of the many posters you’d normally find on the average teenage girl’s bedroom wall. Two had been hung with apparent care though, fantasy art featuring dragons and knights. A third was on the door, which she only saw when she closed it. An advertising poster for the Red Sonja movie that had been trimmed to fit in the door frame.

The bed too was very princessy, with its neat quilted bedspread that displayed a variety of fairy tale heroes. The desk was left mostly empty, but even there there were hints of a younger Tara’s love of princesses. Small figurines, apparently from cereal boxes, stood in front of a long line of pink notebooks, which Chrissy suspected Tara used as her diary.

She glanced at the white carpet, wondering if her socks were clean enough to touch it, then let herself further into the room as she looked for somewhere to sit. The room lacked much in the way of sitting options, leaving only the bed, the desk chair, and a dark blue bean bag chair that stood out oddly in the pink room.

Tara cut one of the sitting options by dropping down on the bean bag, then gestured Chrissy to the desk.

“You can have the chair,” she said, leaving Chrissy to very uncomfortably fit her body into the furniture that seemed intent on not letting anyone but Tara sit comfortably.

“So…” Chrissy said.

“So…” Tara echoed.

Silence fell on the room.

“Want to play a game…?” Tara tried a moment later.

“Like what?”

Again, silence.

“How about… ” Tara started, trailing off, deciding that she wasn’t sure what to play.

“Hey,” Chrissy said, her eyes landing on a piece of gray steel that lay along the wall, “You have a sword?”

Tara nodded, “It’s just decorative though. You can’t fight with it…”

“Still cool… Can I hold it?”

Tara shrugged, “Sure.”

Chrissy, glad to abandon the chair, shuffled over to the sword to pick it up, finding it surprisingly light. As she lifted it, she realized how wobbly the blade was.

She remembered the Red Sonja poster and, smiling to herself, she stepped in front it, where she attempted to copy the pose.

Tara hid her mouth behind her hands to bite her giggle back. Even though Chrissy was slightly offended at being laughed at, she liked the sound of Tara’s laugh.

“What?” she demanded, straightening up and loosely holding the sword in her hand.

“Your battle crouch,” Tara said, then thought for a moment, “You look like you had a bad burrito.”

“That bad?” Chrissy pouted.

Tara nodded vigorously, biting her lip as not to laugh too hard at the other girl.

Chrissy checked the poster, trying the pose once more, this time getting a little closer to the real thing.

“Not bad,” Tara said, “Would look better if you had long hair…”

Chrissy shrugged, returning the sword to where she found it, “That’s okay. Vampirella’s cooler anyway.”

“Who?”

“What do you mean ‘who’? Vampirella!”

“Is she from a TV show?”

“Comic books.”

“Oh,” was all Tara had to say in response to that, “I don’t really read comics.”

“But you have,” Chrissy said, then lamely gestured to the Red Sonja poster.

“That’s a movie!”

“No! She’s from Conan the Barbarian.”

“Isn’t that also a movie?”

“Nohooo,” Chrissy said, frustrated, “That’s also based on a comic book.”

“...Oh. Well, as I said…”

Chrissy bit back a pout. She wasn’t fussed about Tara not being into comic books, but was disappointed the other girl didn’t know her favorite character. She was also slightly put out at the fact that Tara was fine with dropping the source material in favor of movies… Which Chrissy thought were pretty bad to begin with.

It was quiet again. Tara sat back down on the uncomfortable chair.

“Hey,” Tara said to dispel the silence, “Want to play battleship?”

“I don’t know how…”

“I’ll show you. It’s pretty simple.”

Tara struggled out of the bean bag chair and leaned over Chrissy to get a sheaf of paper. Her hair smelled of the strawberry scented shampoo she used.

“Sorry,” Tara mumbled as she bumped her elbow into Chrissy’s arm.

Chrissy didn’t respond, watching as Tara started to draw a grid.

Before Tara had a chance to properly explain the rules of battleship, Mrs Brooks called from downstairs.

“Christina! Your mother’s here!”

“Well… Some other time?” Chrissy, who half stood and half sat on the desk, suggested.

“We’ll see,” was the avoiding answer Tara had for her.

Chrissy nodded, got up and rushed down the stairs, leaving Tara alone with her thoughts… Which Tara was very grateful for.

She immediately took out the notebook she’d been writing in earlier that day and started to pen down her new impressions.

“The hobbits had left the area of Brookmoor, terrified of the new arrived vampires… When A’rat heard, she immediately prepared to drive out the vampires….”

Tara stared at the sentence. She didn’t like the word ‘vampires’ twice so close together, but wasn’t sure what to replace it with.

She leaned back in her chair as she sifted through her thoughts, landing on her map in the end.

After taking out the map from under her bed and carefully rolling it out, she picked out the pencil that had specifically been reserved for her fantasy based cartography. She crossed ‘The Hobbit Hovels’ near Brookmoor castle, then wrote ‘Vampire Coven’ above it.

Tara shifted her weight, realizing she still had the bouncy ball in her pocket. She took it out and put it on her desk, where she poked it with the back of her pencil. The ball was blood red, possibly why it had drawn the interest of Chrissy. It had a few pink speckles that glittered in the light as it rolled. She poked it again and watched it roll off the desk. It bounced lamely on the carpet, standing out starkly among the white.

Tara was about to pick it up again when an idea struck here.

‘With the vampire’s heart safely in her po,’ she wrote, then suddenly stopped.

She blankly stared at the paper, sighed and got up to get the dictionary. A brief search later, she finished writing the word ‘possession’.

‘With the vampire’s heart safely in her possession, A’rat would be able to control the creature’s blood lust and keep the people around Brookmoor Castle safe.’

She glanced at the map as she wrote and it occurred to her she had also added ghouls to it not long before.

‘Two new kinds of undead in the area could only mean one thing however… The evil sorceror Swile up to his old tricks again.’

Tara’s eyes rested on ‘sorceror’, wondering if she had spelled it correctly. She shrugged, smiled to herself and started to write.