Assembling Toys
I was about to settle down with a book after the evening meal that Emilia had delivered to our suite, but then Atlanta dragged me away again, now also towing her adoptive mother with her.
And here we are, in the hotel’s children’s recreational room, with Atlanta, I and Emilia settled on little, colourful wooden stools round a low, square table whose surface is composed of rows upon rows of raised dots.
Well, Emilia is not the only adult here, discounting my inner age, but this still feels… bizarre.
And the situation enters the zone of utterly ridiculous when Emilia starts to assemble a… small house?… with various colourful pieces of toys which feature the raised dots, anchored on the middle of the table.
“This is a lego table, and Mom is building a house with lego bricks. Let’s add to it,” is what Atlanta tells me through a text message, before she slowly but insistently guides me in building a tiny outbuilding on one edge of the table.
This is… truly… surreal.
Even worse, the other adults who happen to glance at us regard us with indulgent smiles and warm eyes.
Some of them even join in.
`Oh, Norns.`