Hats Off to You (Theo)

[hatter]

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Lottie." He even tilted his body in a small bow "It's Theodore, by the way, but please call me Theo."
While he prefered the shorter version of his own name, he didn't often offer it up to people, but as she had already offered a contraction of her own name, it didn't seem impolite to do so.

He immediately brightened up again when she brought up riddles, that definitely put him in a very good mood - the fact that she had done so voluntarily, particularly. He did prefer hearing them to dishing them out, but perhaps it would encourage her to tell him of more she might here, and it wasn't like he didn't know enough of them.

"Very well then," he smiled, thinking for a moment "What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening?"

[Deleted]

Theo, she liked that. Theodore sounded a bit foppish, she much preferred Theo, just like she preferred people call her Lottie, even if it was a very un-princess like name.

“A pleasure to meet you as well, Theo,” she replied back in much the same manner. She could act like a proper lady when the situation called for it, she just forgot most of the time. When her excitement got the better of her she just went off and forgot silly little things like manners and proper social graces.

Then he was smiling again, and she almost danced a little jig in victory. Gee, if this was all it took to make him happy then she really hoped she met a prince just like him here. She would have a ring on her finger in no time, she was sure of it! The only downside to the current situation, though? Now she had to answer a riddle. Yes, her daddy had used to tell her them when she was little, but she had never been particularly good at figuring them out, it usually took too much thinking and she would eventually just get bored and give up. Somehow she didn’t think that was a good move in this case.

“Well...” she muttered, her eyes squinting slightly as she thought. Hard. Animals had for legs, but they didn’t normally lose any of them over the course of a day. Neither did tables or chairs. Maybe it was more to do with the time, then, but clocks didn’t really have legs, or watches, or the sun even. Maybe he would be pleased that he bested her? She could hope. “Gosh, I don’t know! That’s a hard one,” Lottie exclaimed, fixing her eyes back on Theo. “What has four legs in tha mornin’, two in the afternoon and three in the evenin’?”

At least she knew that the proper way to ask was to repeat the riddle.

[hatter]

Theo was never sure, when giving a riddle, if he preferred the other person to figure it out or not - he always felt rather triumphant being able to give the answer, but he felt slightly disappointed that people were not so well-acquainted with riddles that they had so much trouble working them out.
Still, the happiness that they were discussing riddles at all outweighed any disappointment he might feel.

"It's a metaphor," He replied, smiling broadly "For a person. Four legs in the morning, when they're a baby and they crawl, two in the afternoon, that's adults, walking, and three in the evening because old people walk with a cane!"

Come to think of it, he did quite enjoy telling the answer himself as well, when people repeated it back to ask what the answer was, it made him feel just a tiny bit like he was answering himself.

[Deleted]

Lottie almost held her breath, just hoping she hadn’t gone and screwed up again. Really, she shouldn’t have said anything, he had already gone back to talking about hats but no, she just had to open that big mouth of hers again and tried to make him smile and endear herself to him thinking it might help her in the future. Because really, one hat by someone who could soon be the most famous designer here would be wonderful, if he was her friend... well, maybe he would decide to ask her to be his own personal model, to show off all of his creations, and would let her keep some as payment.

It was a wonderful idea... and again her mind had wondered. Luckily when she snapped back to the present he didn’t appear upset at all. In fact, he seemed quite pleased to have stumped her. And boy, had he. Riddles were supposed to be simple yet tricksy, but metaphors made everything pretty darn complicated.

“A metaphor? Golly, I never would’a thought of that! That is certainly the best riddle I’ve heard in years!”

Of course a little praise never hurt, and a lot of praise could only help.

[hatter]

Theo beamed, despite the fact he couldn't take credit for it because, of course, he hadn't written it himself (though perhaps one day he would), he couldn't help but be rather flattered taht she was pleased with his choice.

"Well, it is a rather interesting one," he agreed with a broad smile "Helps to keep people on their toes when they think they've heard them all." he confided cheerfully.

He really was enjoying himself, coming here had been a brilliant idea even if the quality of hats was sub-standard, she was a charming young woman who didn't dismiss his riddles as nonsense and would probably be thrilled to bits with any hat he made, unlike his father who had nothing but criticism, or his mother who was always too distracted to care.

[Deleted]

Well he was just pleased as punch at the praise. Perfect. Lottie had heard it said that small things amuse small minds, in fact she’d heard people say that about here, but they didn’t know about her dreams and her dreams were big, so obviously her mind had to be big too, right? Completely losing her train of thought, she just grinned back at Theo.

“Oh, tell me about it,” she said, with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “I’ve met people before that just think they know every l’il ol’ thing, and they just can’t believe that someone else might know somethin’ that they don’t. I bet that l’il riddle would just throw all’a them for a loop!”

Oh, right! She remembered now. Just because Theo loved riddles - really loved them - didn’t mean he was simple minded. No, she much preferred her earlier thought, and that was what she was sticking with: he was some sort of genius, and all geniuses were a bit odd. If that was the strangest thing about him then he was miles above so many others.

“And I must say, if you’re as good at hats as you are with riddles then I am just in for a real treat!” Inwardly she patted herself on the back for that smooth flip back to the original topic.

[hatter]

"Oh, I am, I assure you that." Theo promised calmly, he didn't sound like he was boasting, but that he was simply stating fact - so either he was somewhat delusional or he really was that good. Lucky for Lottie, it was much closer to the latter. Though his personal taste, when making hats for his own amusement, tended towards the elaborate, brightly coloured side, he simply could not abide the idea of a hat looking bad simply because a person had not dressed to suit it, and thus could be trusted to stick to a commissioner's request and personal style in order to ensure his hat looked the best that it could look.

"You must tell me all about the sort of hat, or hats, you require - what you intend them for, what sort of outfits they must go with, though I do prefer that the hat be the starting point rather than everything else," It seemed a worthwhile thing to mention given how excitable Lottie was, it might just be that she would go out and buy a whole outfit just to match a hat, and that would please him immensely. "Where you might wear them, that sort of thing."

[Deleted]

As Theo had suspected, Lottie was indeed that excitable. Afterall, any excuse to shop was a good excuse, right?

“Sugah, if i have ta go out and buy a whole new outfit to match, then believe me it ain’t no skin off my teeth,” she replied with that flirty smile. She couldn’t help it, really; it was pretty much her default mode around men, especially those who might have something she wanted. Speaking of, it was not lost on her that he was throwing the possibility out there of more than one hat.

“Where will I wear it? Where won’t I wear it? A gal should always look her best, there’s just no tellin’ who she might meet at any given moment,” Lottie rambled on. “Now for colours, my favourites are pinks, reds and purples, especially pinks, though I’m certainly not against any other colours. Blues are quite nice too, they do bring out my eyes, and who could say no to a nice sunshine yellow? Golly, I am just so glad that spring is finally here. This place was just so dreary when I first arrived!”

And so on and so forth.

[hatter]

All those colours... of course it would be possible to have them all in one hat, but you couldn't have a hat that matched everything, a colour might work but a style wouldn't, or the other way round, or the pattern might be wrong, and a hat with that much colour in it would draw far too much attention - not that he minded his hats drawing attention of course, but everything had its place, and sometimes the best hats brought the right balance to an outfit, rather than being the focus of it.

This was definitely going to take several hats, and Hatter turned on his heel and started marching out of the store, stopping after a few steps when he realised he was being terribly rude.

"Do excuse me," he turned back "I was just quite overtaken with the desire to get started that I forgot to bid farewell. I will be in touch once work has begun and we can discuss the details."
He really only intended to stay in touch long enough to make sure she still wanted the hats, and to encourage her to ask for more, he was confident enough in his art that he didn't think she'd have any problems with his creations.

[Deleted]

Had Lottie been paying any attention to her companion at that point she might have noticed the faraway look in his eyes as he did all the calculations and ran over all the possibilities in his head following what she was saying. She never dreamed he would even consider the idea of putting all of her suggestions into one hat! She was just throwing out ideas that he could pick from... and if he so desired to use more than one idea to make more than one hat... well, she certainly wouldn’t argue.

Unfortunately, Lottie hadn’t been paying attention, she was just too caught up in all the possibilities and the thrill of the whole idea that she just kept talking... until Theo suddenly turned his back on her and strode away. Her words cutting off instantly, she watched after him with wide eyes and jaw dropped. Honestly, how rude! You don’t just turn your back on someone in the middle of a conversation and walk away without a word!

“Excuse me,” she said, but at the same time he said the same thing and turned back around. Quickly biting back the rest of what she planned to say, which was all really rather unpleasant, she could have breathed a happy sigh of relief when he explained. A true master, obviously, so taken with his ideas that he simply could not wait to get started. Now that Lottie could understand. “Oh, of course, I wouldn’t wish to stall progress,” she said in what she felt was a rather intelligent reply. Fishing a pen and paper out of her purse, she scrawled the phone number for her dorm room down on it and handed it to him. “You can call me there, though I do have roommates so make sure to ask for me.”

Of course she didn’t want him talking to her roommates, thinking they were here, and letting them know all about his creations. This little chance encounter was something she wanted to keep secret until she could make a fashionable debut.

[hatter]

"yes, yes, of course." he replied, almost impatiently, taking the scrawled number and folding it carefully before placing it in his pocket "You will be hearing from me forthwith."

He paused for a moment, clearly itching to depart already, but wondering if perhaps there was some other social nicety he'd forgotten in his haste to get started on hat creation. Once he'd gone over a kind of politeness checklist in his head, he nodded to himself, deciding that now it would be perfectly acceptable to leave.

"Good day, Miss LaBouff." He bowed slightly to her and then turned, almost skipping out of the store in his enthusiasm to be away.

(fin?)