School ended, teenagers poured out the doors, and Mireh found herself a nice little waiting spot beneath a tree in the greener part of the school's campus. It was in sight of the main entrance, so Temera and Retta would be able to spot her with no trouble, and speaking of, Retta texted Mireh saying that she was going to be a few minutes because she had to deal with a “personal emergency.” Generally speaking, when a member of the female half of the human race had to deal with a “personal emergency,” it meant only one thing, but with Retta, it could mean literally anything.
Might as well make myself comfortable. And she did. She lay down in the grass beneath the tree, put on her headphones, and enjoyed the weather, which was light jacket weather. On Shishiru, 20°C was a nice day, so a nice pair of mittens and real thick jacket were a couple of a Shishiruian's best friends.
Mireh lost herself in her trance as she stared up at that blue, blue sky and watched the clouds float on by, not a care to be had. Her music played, and it seemed like the world around her fell away. Like if she turned her head, she would find herself lying on a rock floating in a sky that stretched on forever and ever.
Of course, the world was still there, and she remembered that when one of its late residents teleported into existence beside her.
Anyone know the number for 911? Not for here, obviously, for Shishiru? Because Mireh had numerous symptoms of a heart attack: shortness of breath, sudden onset of sweat, chest pains caused by heart palpitations, and the overwhelming anxiety wrought only by otherworldly denizens. You might also want to call your friendly neighborhood exorcist.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you again.”
Nope, nevermind, false alarm. It was just Temera.
Stop sneaking up on me like that, woman. She took off her headphones and sat up. “No, it's fine. You startled me is all.”
“Oh, okay. Where's Retta?”
“Personal emergency. Don't ask. I never do.”
“Um...okay.........Is it all right if I sit next to you...?”
“Go ahead.” It's a free country, you know. You don't have to ask.
“Thank you.” She sat down, hugging her knees to her chest, and the both of them sat there.
“.......”
“.......”
This isn't awkward at all, Mireh thought. Why is it always so hard to come up with stuff to talk about with someone you don't know? It was a mystery of the universe she hoped to solve before she died. Come on, Mireh, think. What do the customers at work like to talk about? That was an easy one. “Nice weather today, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Why did I think that would work? Mireh was embarrassed. She complained about customers talking about nothing but the weather, yet here she was, becoming the thing she hated the most. Come on, there's got to be something, I don't know, interesting to talk about. Actually... “Say, Temera.”
“?”
“Out of curiosity, why do you want to come to the festival with me and Retta? I don't mean to pry, but don't you have any friends to go with, or your parents, maybe?”
“...Um...”
Oh, great, this is the part where she reveals that she doesn't have any friends, her parents are dead, and her only family is her bitch of an aunt.
“I was supposed to go with my parents, but my dad got hurt at his job, so my mom's staying home to take care of him,” Temera said. “Besides...”
“'Besides...'?”
“I, uh...That...That card you were reading in class...”
“What about it?”
“.......I wrote it.......”
“Oh. You did?”
Temera nodded.
“Um, I didn't get what it was about, but, uh, thanks?”
“It's a haiku.”
“A what?”
“A haiku. It's a type of poem whose syllable count is 5-7-5.”
“Oh, yeah, I've heard of those. My eighth grade English teacher had us learn about them, and that was pretty bleh.”
“I wrote it to say thank you for helping me.”
“Helping you with what?”
“I write poetry—”
You mean she actually writes poetry?! Huh. Sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover.
“—I had had writer's block for a while and couldn't think of anything to write. Nothing came to mind. I'd write one line and that was it. It wasn't until I noticed how often you look out the window at the school during class that the words started coming to me again.” She unzipped her backpack and started digging around in it. “I don't know what it is, but the way you stare at the sky, it...I don't know, it seems like there aren't any words for it, which is funny, considering that helped me get over my writer's block.” She pulled out a journal—tiny thing, only twelve centimeters—and opened it up. “I'd like it if you read some, especially the first one that you inspired, if that's all right with you.” She wore this tender smile that Mireh couldn't say no to as she handed over her journal, like she were a middle school girl giving her crush Valentine's Day chocolates.
I inspired her, huh? It'd be a lie to say that Mireh wasn't at least a little bit elated and flattered by this. She had never inspired anyone to do anything before aside from inspiring her mom to yell at her when she got awful grades on her report cards. She read the poem, heart a-flutter.
My life, once so high,
Now death digs deep in my bones.
When shall my moon fall?
“...........” I inspired this? THIS? It should be noted that Mireh was no fan of poems before, but now she really wasn't a fan.
“So, what do you think?” There was still a middle school girl giddiness to her, like she were waiting for approval, a hug, or a Nobel Prize.
You don't want to know what I think. “...It's, ah...it's unique,” was the best compliment she could come up with.
“I was thinking of changing the first line to have more alliteration like the second line. What do you think?”
“I don't read or write poetry, so I don't think I'm the best person to ask those sorts of questions to. Sorry.”
“It's fine,” Temera said. “Feel free to read more if you'd like.”
I should've known there were more. Poems were like roaches, after all: they hated the light of day, and where there was one, there were 1,845 more.
She looked at the journal. On the next page were undoubtedly more poems that she'd rather live her whole life not reading. However, Temera was sitting there, staring, and she felt that her offer to read was more of a diktat than an offer. Not sure how to retreat from this predicament, she mentally prepared herself and turned the page.
Candle before glass.
The wind came, and the light went.
Winds last, fires fade.
She threw up in her mouth. Don't tell me I inspired this one, too. Beside that fine work of art was another that she wasn't able to stop herself from reading.
A babe on the beach.
A line of prints where it's been.
Proof washes away.
Mireh would've been debating whether to ask Temera if she had written any poems that weren't proof that God—if he/she/it/they/etc. existed—hated her, but she couldn't. She suffered a momentary lapse in consciousness, and it took her brain a moment to reboot. Though she wished it hadn't, because when she came to, the page had turned on its own, and she was staring down at yet another masterpiece borne from the craftswoman known as Temera Kachou.566Please respect copyright.PENANA4jvz7kc9vU
One after the next,
Epitaphs telling of lives.
Lives forgotten more.
How long?
How long was Mireh destined to suffer this torment worse than the Brazen Bull?
She looked up at the sky. Why won't you kill me now?
“I haven't been able to stop writing for the past week or so,” Temera said. “I'm going to need to get a new journal because I've almost used up that one.”
You've got to be kidding me. Mireh was maybe thirty pages in, and the journal looked to be one hundred pages total.
“In fact, a new one's coming to me now.” Her lips parted, and Mireh knew the next words to come from her mouth were going to be a curse whose words turned those who heard them to stone. Mireh, who liked being made of flesh and bone, jumped in with, “Hey, uh...”
“Hm?”
“How do I put this?” How indeed. Asking for poems that didn't make her vomit was what most folk would call rude. “You don't happen to have happier poems in here, do you?”
“Most of what I wrote before my writer's block was more light-hearted.”
I have to see this to believe it. Mireh was starting to think that the words happy and poem stuck together created a paradox. She flipped to an earlier random page and read the poem scribed on it.
A frog on the pond.
Content like a springtime day.
No worries to be.
Who writes poems about frogs? Frogs are exciting as rocks.
Apologies to frog lovers everywhere.
The frog in question didn't appear to be having an existential crisis, so Mireh was satisfied labeling this poem as light-hearted. The next one, too.
Boredom reigns supreme.
She sits there, hours to waste.
Fun remains distant.
However, that didn't mean she would label them as quality. “Here,” she said, returning the journal before more irreversible damage was done to her psyche.
“Thank you for reading those, even though you don't like poetry,” Temera said as she reclaimed her little book of charms.
“Sure, no problem.” But don't ever make me do it again.
Temera cracked open her grimoire to one of the last pages and started jotting something down, probably that curse she almost cast a moment ago. As long as she didn't chant them, Mireh was content if she spent the whole festival writing her spells.
Temera's pencil was scribbling away like she had to write these poems or the whole world was going to blow, but after a minute, it stopped, and she looked toward the horizon with her eraser held against her chin in a thinking motion. “Have you ever been beneath the Ternion Baldrics before?”
“A few times. My mom used to have a friend who lived right under them, but she got a divorce and then remarried, and now she lives farther south, so we haven't been since.”
“Hmm,” she said as she stared to the south. They couldn't see them from here, but if they headed for the roof of the school, which was three stories high, they could see the Ternion Baldrics (as they were formally known), the three thin rings which wrapped around Shishiru's equator. They weren't the most impressive rings, but they were something to look at if you were from a planet that lacked rings. “Are you and Retta going to the rings tomorrow night to watch the Flight?”
“That's the plan,” Mireh said. “I'm guessing you want to come, too?”
“I, uh...if that's all right...”
“I'm sure Retta was going to drag you along anyway.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Me and my parents were supposed to watch it last time, but we didn't have the extra money, so we didn't have the gas to drive down.”
“Retta and I have been saving up, and with the way she is, the only thing that could stop her would be her dropping dead.”
Speaking of that she-devil, she came running up to Mireh and Temera. “Sorry for making you wait.”
“Done dealing with your 'personal emergency'?”
“Yup! Everything's a-okay!”
“On a scale of My Meeko to Quicksilver Raconteur, how a-okay are you?”
“Mmm, I'd give it about a...Key Iidar!”
Another inside joke of theirs. This wouldn't take that long to explain, but it's best we stay focused on the main story.
“Mireh was good to you, right?” Retta asked Temera. “'Cause if she wasn't, I'm gonna haveta show her why they call me One-Two Punch Petty Betty!” Nobody calls her that.
“I was showing her my poetry,” Temera said.
“I found our culprit behind the card I found in my locker,” Mireh said, thumbing Temera.
“You wrote that?”
“I was thanking her...”
“Thanking her?” Retta's eyes rolled over to Mireh, and then she dropped down to her level, wrapped her arm around her shoulder, and drew her in real close. “Mireh. We've had this talk before. You don't sell our stash of drugs to minors.”
“You would've done the same. She paid top dollar for it.”
“Well then,” she said, satisfied, and stood up. “I suppose I'll have to let you off the hook. But just this once.”
“I promise not to do it again.”
“As long as you understand,” she said. “Drug deals aside, are you ladies ready to head on over?”
“Uh, drugs?”
“Of course I'm ready, I've been waiting on you,” Mireh said, standing up.
“Did you drive to school?” Retta asked Temera.
“No, I took the bus. How come?”
“If you want, you can leave your backpack in my car so that you don't have to lug it around half the night,” she said. “And then if you need me to, I can give you a ride home afterwards.”
“We're not driving over now?”
“Nah. The festival's not that far, and besides, trying to find a place to park over there is a real pain in my rectum.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” she said, standing up and holding her backpack by its strap.
“No problem. Think of it as my way of repaying you for however Mireh helped you out.”
“You repaying me for Mireh helping me?” she asked, then drew an air chart with her finger to try and figure out Retta's logic.
“Retta, that doesn't make any sense,” Mireh told her.
“It doesn't?” Retta thought long, and she thought hard. “No, I guess it doesn't.”
“I still don't get it...”
“Don't worry about it,” Mireh told her as she headed for her car. “Half the stuff Retta says I don't get, either.”
“Heh.”
Mireh threw her backpack in her car, and Retta and Temera put theirs in Retta's car, and when that minor business was said and done, they walked to the festival.
And so it was that the girls' first and last night together began.
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