The Gilded Margin

Adventure Files| The Gilded Margin

By Shyanne Gines

Some adventures go exactly according to plan.

And some start with realizing you came to the wrong book.

Today was supposed to be a Fourth Wing afternoon.

My childhood best friend and I were celebrating his birthday, so we started with lunch at Chicken Salad Chick. I got the Sassy Scotty with fruit, and he got the Classic Carol with grape salad.

Then we headed to Painting with a Twist for what we thought was going to be a Fourth Wing bookish painting.

Except…

It wasn’t.

We got there and realized the bookish painting happening that afternoon was actually A Court of Thorns and Roses? No.

Throne of Glass.

Our original plan had been Fourth Wing, and somehow we had managed to show up for a completely different Sarah J. Maas series.

Thankfully, this is where the afternoon got even better.

The trivia for the class was Throne of Glass trivia, and there were only a couple of other people in the class.

Except nobody else had read the series.

So, naturally, I immediately won the trivia.

I’m not even going to pretend I had to work particularly hard for that one.

But instead of the mix-up ruining our afternoon, our teacher, Laurel, was absolutely wonderful.

She was nice enough to let us do the Fourth Wing painting we had originally come for while simultaneously teaching the Throne of Glass painting to the other two people in the class.

That could have easily turned into a frustrating situation, but Laurel made it work.

We got our Fourth Wing experience.

The other two people got their Throne of Glass experience.

And somehow everyone got to have a fun afternoon.

That, to me, is what makes a place worth going back to.

It wasn’t just the painting. It was the experience.

Laurel was a great teacher, incredibly accommodating, and made what could have been an awkward mix-up into something we actually enjoyed.

And then there was the trivia.

I won a $20 Painting with a Twist gift card, which I am already excited to use.

Honestly, I was already planning my next painting before I even won the gift card.

So apparently this afternoon accidentally introduced me to a new hobby.

We went in expecting Fourth Wing.

We walked out having experienced a little Throne of Glass, painted dragons, won trivia, celebrated a birthday, and found a teacher who was willing to make the afternoon work for everyone.

And that feels like a pretty good Adventure Files story to me.

Because adventures don’t always go according to the plan.

Sometimes you show up expecting one book and get another.

Sometimes you have to improvise.

And sometimes the person teaching the class is kind enough to say, Let’s make both work.

I’m already planning my next Painting with a Twist adventure.

Next time, though, I’m checking the book title twice.

Probably.