[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Visionary

It was a Monday, although Mondays had ceased to mean anything for either of them. Living so long threw time into a strange relief. There was the past, which stretched out so far that it could only be comprehended a little at a time; the future, potentially limitless; and the present, vivid and delightful in the moment. There was no place for Mondays in a timeline like that.

The weather, however, still had a measure of respect for Mondays, and had obliged tradition by throwing down lashings of rain since morning. It fell in fat, stinging drops across cobbled streets and trickled down from the roofs of the buildings that had been restored since the war.

Of course, Hime was overjoyed. She was rarely anything else, it seemed. Wet, miserable mornings provided an excuse to put on long coats and clomp around the streets in heavy boots, splashing in puddles and generally taking sensations that had long been denied to her on a starfarer's ship. In particular, Suguri found her love for heavy clothing baffling.

“Well, imagine wearing nothing heavier than a t-shirt for three thousand years. I've gotten so used to light clothes that heavy ones throw off my balance and make things interesting,” Hime had said when asked about it.

Suguri, who had lived comfortably in the same zip-up jacket for four hundred years, didn't quite see the appeal. Neither, though, did she see the appeal of running around in the rain without an umbrella. She was half-tempted to take off and get above cloud level to wait out the showers, but then she'd miss Hime splashing around – and that was something she did see the appeal of.

“Oh, Suguri! You look so silly with your hair plastered to your scalp like that!” Hime giggled, conveniently ignoring the fact that her own hair was scarcely any better. “Oh, I know! We should get hats together. I adore hats!”

“Mm? What kind?”

There was a moment as Hime processed the question, and failed to come up with a satisfactory answer. “Just... hats. In general. All of them, I suppose.”

“I…see. Well, I'm sure there's a hat shop around here somewhere. Shall we get some lunch first?”

Hime came to a dead stop. She stood, straight-backed and dripping with rain, her mouth curved into a little 'o' of sudden, incredible inspiration.

“Suguri,” she said, with an intensity she didn't even muster in the middle of pitched battle. “You are my best friend.”

Suguri let out a low whistle. “That is terrifying.”

“Earlier, I saw a shop selling ice cream–”

“Hime, that's a bad–”

“So once, just this once–”

“Listen–”

“Can we have ice cream for lunch?”

In her mind's eye, Suguri saw an ice cream dish piled high with as many scoops as would fit. She saw mounds of brightly coloured sprinkles. She saw eight different kinds of sauces, and sickly-sweet stomach aches.

With her real eye, she saw Hime pouting. She sighed.

“Strawberry or chocolate?”