[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Picnic

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 1205 words

B/D: I wanted to do a third Sora/Nath story to make it into a trilogy, and try out a more peaceful style.

The warmth of the sun on tired bones, the clefts in the faces of mountains: Sora awoke with a hunger for them, for the beauty of nature in spite of the nature of man. So they left, wanderers for a night and a day, to seek the wide-open spaces of the world.

She picks Nath as her companion. A new friend to take in new sights. There is something they share, Sora feels, beyond their history – although she hasn’t quite decided what it is yet. Wounds, maybe. An outlook shaped by something bigger than either of them, bigger than anything the world has seen since. Perhaps a future, or part of one. Time will tell.

She winds her way through stands of silver-barked trees, feels her boots slide ever so slightly on the wet grass. She can tell that there was a path here once, that people have forgotten but the forest has not; the dirt is still hard, the branches conspicuously thin. The bushes around them are laden with blackberries, ripe and plump. She picks a few and pops them in her mouth, carelessly, dooms herself to live out the rest of the day with purple stains on her fingers, her lips. A small price. The fruit is sweet, and she scoops up a handful for their picnic hamper.

Nath follows behind her. She looks different, wrapped in a traveller’s overcoat, smaller and less serene; the sleeves, knotted at the end and dangling loosely, catch and snag on brambles and branches. Her tread is heavy but tireless, each stride the same distance, each motion perfectly consistent. Not a march, not today, but close enough.

Slowly and reluctantly, the trees thin and the branches part. The sky is still eggshell blue when they leave the forest. They’ve made good time. For a moment, Sora feels proud of herself. For a moment, she forgets that she wanted to experience the forest rather than travel through it. The moment passes, and a frown begins to tug at the corners of her mouth.

“You’ve stopped. Do you want to go back?” Nath asks. She has watched as Sora floated through the forest, a butterfly dancing between flowers – never stopping long enough, never settling, content to brush her fingertips against something and claim she knows it. There is something childish about her excitement, and disappointment.

“No,” Sora says, and shakes her head, although the crease still remains in her brow. “Let’s find somewhere for the picnic.”

Beyond the shade of the trees, the untended grass lengthens, little by little, until a single gust of wind sends a sweeping wave across the surface. Every so often there are divots and whorls, nests flattened out to fit the needs of tiny animals, and these Sora avoids respectfully. In the distance stands a lonely tree, separated from the forest, with a thick trunk full of knots and downy, drooping leaves. Sora thinks that it will make as fine a destination as any; she makes a beeline for it, quickening her stride, beckoning Nath with a flick of her wrist.

“This would be a nice place to nap,” she murmurs, half to herself and half to the tree, as if asking permission. She runs her fingers along the bark, feels the warm sun-soaked wood under the palm of her hand. The trunk is rougher than she imagined it being from the meadow’s edge, more irregular. Without the shelter of other trees, the hand of nature has sculpted it freely.

“It seems a shame to come all this way, just to sleep,” Nath says, drawing closer. She doesn’t get an answer. Sora has already put the picnic basket down and begun climbing, lifting herself up hand over hand as if she’s clambered up this tree a thousand times before. There is a place in the higher boughs where the branches connect and diverge, and she settles lightly in the terminal, cradled by the branches and the leaves.

“Nath, come up. It’s good,” she calls.

“Climbing isn’t my strong suit,” Nath calls back wryly. “No finger strength.”

A rustle, and Sora’s face is peering down at her again from the leaves. “You can fly. I didn’t because it’s cheating, but you’re allowed.”

“It wouldn’t take my weight,” Nath says, and steps on a fallen branch. It cracks under the strain of her.

For perhaps the first time, Sora realises that Nath’s legacy as a weapon goes further than a lack of arms, than want of a smile. Her skin is warm but she is steel underneath, and her bones were crafted long ago by men who had grown prideful of their skill. If I had been born a few years later, Sora thinks, I would be that, too.

Nath can do many things. Sora knows this; it would be wrong to pity her, to see her as an invalid. But there are many things she cannot do, things that were taken from her and cannot be returned, a price for power in a war that should never have been, and for a moment Sora feels the weight of all those things settle on her shoulders. Quietly, she slithers down the trunk of the tree again.

“Sorry.”

Nath’s voice is sheepish, uncertain somehow. She’s trying to work out what she’s apologising for, what she would have seen if she had been able to climb up those branches with Sora and nestle in the hollow that nature made for them. The silence wears on, and she doesn’t know how to fill it, doesn’t know if it’s a silence that can be allowed to continue.

“There are just some things I can’t do.”

“It’s okay,” Sora says, and her voice is a mixture of things: irritation and sadness, leavened with whimsy. “Give me a piggyback ride instead then.”

Nath gives her a look, and wonders if she’s being made fun of. “I can’t. I don’t have arms to pick you up with.”

“You don’t need them,” Sora says, and pats her hand against the bark of the tree. “You’re strong, so I can climb you.”

“You’ll fall off.”

“I’ll hold tight.”

Sora’s expression says that the matter is settled; the force of will that brought her through the war is shining in her eyes, carrying her along like an ocean current. Nath sighs, faintly exasperated but content, and straightens her back. The skin of her neck tingles when Sora drapes her arms around it; she feels her stomach tighten as Sora tightly curls her legs around her waist.

“I told you so,” Sora says, her breath whispering against Nath’s ear. She settles her head on the tall girl’s shoulder, lets her hair brush against her friend’s cheek. “Do you see over there, those flowers where the butterflies are? Let’s go there next.”

“What about the picnic basket?” Nath asks. Her voice is low, and quiet, but not unhappy. Far from unhappy.

“We can come back for it later. For now, let’s go.”

Nath begins to walk, in her loping, tireless step – each stride the same distance, each motion perfectly the same. She is just as fast with her passenger as without her. Her tired bones bathe in golden sunshine, and her burden is as light as the sky.