80
Biigoh
Tanuki
- Location
- Tanukia
The day was nice enough that it would have been criminal to stay indoors, not when one could enjoy a blue sky with puffy white clouds as the dazzling sun hung high in the sky.
High above the beach and the bay, the seagulls wheeled about on the thermals as they hunted for their next meal.
o/~ Like a song of love that clings to me. o/~
The song played softly in the distance, words carried by the cooling breeze. The reproduction of the dead man's voice rendered tinny and faint by time and distance, by the quality of the speakers and numerous other possibilities.
o/~ How the thought of you does things to me. o/~
"You know what? I think I've figured you out." There was a pause as she looked out to the crystal sea-wall in the distance.
Beyond it, she could also see the police and PRT dirigibles docked to the Protectorate base beneath the puffy white clouds, giving an appearance of being a flock of birds crowding a bird feeder as they resupplied themselves before returning to their patrol routes. "The truth is you're a complete idiot and a fool, who is deliberately oblivious to my feelings and... hers."
"That's the only reasonable explanation for why you've been behaving the way you have."
I mmmmhed in reply while my hands demonstrated my skill at assembling trinkets into a more cohesive whole. A minor trait carried over from my youth, when I would play endlessly with the wooden puzzles that father had been gifted by his friends long ago. "That's... not true, I have been a good friend, haven't I?"
"That's exactly what I meant." She wanted to glare at me. I could tell from her tone of voice and the way she tensed her shoulders. Of the three girls who had hounded me in school, her tells were the easiest to spot. "You are perceptive enough. And then you say things like that. With any one else... I can buy that they're really blind or something."
"But not me, huh?" I replied in a musing tone as I held up the primary motivator crystal I had been working on to examine it against the light of the sun. The light passing through twisted within it, showing the various components and the internal solid state crystal circuitry.
I had been tempted to go with an essence based engine, but that held certain complications that a positive electrical feedback loop system didn't have. Such as requiring its user to be able to use essence.
"No, not you," she said with a huff as she turned to look at me. Her hair had flared up in the wind much like her skirt from the speed and snap of her twirl. "I've watched you. I know you."
The inflection to the word 'know' had me blinking for a moment as I leaned back and turned my head at a tilted angle to look at her with a single raised eyebrow.
"Know me?"
For such a bold declaration, I had to question her. I could do no less, it was a statement filled with implications, worrisome ones at that.
"Yes, I know you." She looked at me flatly, eyes partly closed as if she was lazy or tired. "Oh, not as much as Emma with your shared childhood or Lisa with her power telling her everything."
Nodding at her, I carefully placed the motivator crystal back on the terry cloth be turning about to look at her with my full attention. It wouldn't be polite or fair to her otherwise.
"I know you well enough." She sighed and raked her fingers through her windswept brown hair. "Everything you do, you do for a purpose. Even if it isn't clear what it is."
To such a statement, I didn't have much I could say.
"Fair enough." I didn't verbally deny or affirm what she say as I shrugged in response.
There was a certain inherent truth in what Madison said, one that I could not deny. After all, it was true that my actions and words all held purpose. Every single one of them. Even if I left them unsaid in my own internal monologue.
Her eyes narrowed at my response, as her mouth twisted as if she had bitten into something sour and bitter. "You..."
I found myself blinking, like the proverbial owl that mother had liked to call me in my younger days, as Madison strode to me in a forceful manner.
"Madison... you seriously can't be that angry." Certainly, my surprise at the way she pulled me up to stand by the neck of the scruffy tee-shirt was genuine. "Being angry isn't good for your cute look."
"You should calm dowww-" The flow of my words were halted as she reached up with her free hand to seize hold of my face. Or rather, my lips were puckered from the way she seized my face with her thumb and fingers resting against my cheeks.
"That's one of your problems, you talk too much." She whispered to me with a sigh as she pulled my face closer to hers. The scent of apples and roses hung around her, swirling from the breeze that blew our hair about and tangled them together.
I had an inkling of what she was about to do even as she leaned upwards while pulling me lower to meet her halfway.
My impression of my first kiss was that it was soft.
That and Madison tasted of cherries.
Despite being released, I could only stand there confounded. My first reaction was to lick my lips and confirm that she was indeed using cherry flavored lip gloss.
For once, I was truly lost for words. I wasn't aware that she had feelings for me, that she held a torch for me.
"I... erm..." My helpless look of confusion likely explained that this was something unexpected for me.
That I hadn't expected to be kissed and that this was my first kiss. After all, the first aid lessons where I had to practice mouth to mouth with Greg didn't count, one of the universal agreements of all the girls who had shared a class with him could and did agree to. There were lines one didn't cross if female, and sketchy boys like Greg was one of them.
Now her sigh was one of exasperation. "Did you think that you could play with my feelings like you have been without consequences?"
With the nature of how she felt for me delivered in a manner that was unmistakable, Madison headed back downstairs, an odd look of satisfaction on her face.
I could only sigh where I stood as I looked up at the blue sky above me with its puffy white clouds and the seagulls as they circled about on the thermals.
"I didn't ask for this." My softly spoken words were stolen by the wind as it whistled in from the bay.
- - -
Goblin Queen | Changes happen
Worm / Exalted
- - -
Goblin Queen | Changes happen
Worm / Exalted
- - -
He looked down. "Oh."
He could feel the coldness moving up his body. His vision slowly narrowed down on what he was looking at, with darkness crowding the edges and crawling inwards to fill his world. The instincts that came from his hind brain and which had evolved over countless generations calmly told him that death was inevitable.
He was looking at his end, even if his mind denied it, screamed that he could and would live on.
All he had to do was...
... was ...
take another breath... and...
... and force his... body...
... to... move...
He looked down. "Oh."
....
He looked down. "Oh."
....
He looked down. "Oh."
....
