[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Festival (Part 1)

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 2405 words

B/D: From behind the tide of writer's block, I eventually finished this -- there'll be a part two later, but I need to refresh myself a little before I attempt it. Seasonal stories, man.

Hey, Miss Tall Lady! How did you lose your arms?”

The mother claps her hand over her little girl’s mouth and hisses quietly. The girl’s breath escapes from behind her fingers in clouds of white smoke. The cold is biting, even through a thick winter coat. Probably even through a fur coat, even if the fur was from a bear. In her heart of hearts, Sora thinks she’d quite like to be a bear on a cold evening like this. She’d quite like to be a lot of things.

Nath takes on the tired but gentle expression she reserves for dealing with children and idiots. “Well, you know how people say, ‘I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on?’ That’s just what happened. When I was born, my arms weren’t screwed on right, and I just forgot them someplace and never found them again. If you run across them, be sure to tell me, okay?”

“You can’t just lose body parts like that, lady,” the girl replies seriously. “You would know for sure when they fell off.”

Sora steps forward. “You can. Watch.”

She opens her left hand as wide as she can, palm to the sky, and when she’s sure the girl is watching, shoots out her right hand to graze the tip of the girl’s nose. “See? You’ve lost your nose. I’ve got it now.”

The girl pouts. “That’s not my nose. My nose is still on my face!”

“How do you know? Can you see your nose right now?” Sora asks, before adding in a conspiratorial whisper: “I have her nose as well. Don’t tell her. I don’t think she’s noticed.”

Satisfied that no lasting offence has been caused, the mother gathers up her daughter, makes her apologies and flees to the food stands. Nath sighs deeply, and rolls her shoulders. She knew she should have brought the arms, but no, she’d wanted to for the organic look. Now people are staring, as people tend to do when there are too many of them to feasibly headbutt into submission.

“Sorry about that. It happens when I’m out in public,” she says.

“It’s good, though. It means we can talk to a lot of people. You’re a good ice-breaker. Do you think we should get some shaved ice? Hime will be jealous.”

Nath struggles to keep her face carefully neutral. She did ask whether Hime and Suguri would like to come to the New Year’s Festival, but they’ve apparently found some other way to fill their evening, and it probably involves flirting. Shaved ice is probably the very last thing on Hime’s mind right now, unless she’s very particular in her tastes.

Slowly, they trickle their way through the crowds, going stand to stand to see the amusements. Humankind has remembered three very important things from the times before the war: the foods they eat, the games they play, and how to overcharge for both. There are any number of ever-so-slightly rigged games offering prizes, and that number is equalled by the number of stalls barking to sell their delicious but unhealthy fried food. The smell of sizzling is in the air, and Nath finds herself eyeing the freshly-made doughnuts wistfully. All the best things are coated in sugar or coated in red-hot oil. Nobody ever makes street food she can eat with her feet. She’s distracted by Sora tugging at her sleeve, like the lady of the manor ringing a bell for attention. “Nath, you’re a gourmet. What do you recommend? I want to try something. Should we get a cotton candy, or a box of tiny fried things?”

“I’m not actually a gourmet. And it’s ‘some’ cotton candy, not ‘a’.”

“We get multiple but only pay once? That’s a great deal.”

“Not quite what I meant… Anyway, the cotton candy is sweet and has a strange texture, so a lot of kids like it. Fried food from stands like this tends to go great with a nice, citrusy beer.”

“I see,” Sora replies, pinching her eyebrows together as if this will help her to absorb the wisdom. “I’ll probably like the cotton candy more. Should I get some for both of us?”

“Well, I don’t mind, but… most stuff from places like this is designed for you to eat with your hands.”

Sora nods, and points a thumb at her chest. “It’s fine. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Oh?” Nath replies, lifting her eyebrows. “I thought you were just here to steal noses from naughty children, like an anti-Santa.”

“I’ll give it back when she’s earned it back. Yours too.”

Nath frowns, but lets the implication that she doesn’t deserve a nose fall by the wayside. “I still feel bad about having you feed me things when we’re out. It’s like you’re my seeing-eye dog or something.”

Sora shakes her head. “No, it’s not. Your eyes work fine. Do you want a cotton candy, or would you prefer a box of fried things?”

“I’ll take some cotton candy. I won’t eat a box of fried things – I had dinner before I came out, like a responsible adult,” she replies, careful to exaggerate the playfulness in her voice. It’s easy to slip into monotone.

“Hey. I’m an adult, and I’m responsible.”

“What for?”

“The Earth not being blown up.”

“Fair point.”

Nath smiles as Sora marches off to take her place in line. Slowly, their conversations are getting easier, less punctuated by empty silence; they have an ebb and a flow now, a give and a take. They aren’t quite on the same wavelength, but sometimes, their wavelengths intersect. Pieces of a puzzle, falling together. It’s been years, years upon years upon years, since she last had a relationship like that. She realises, all at once, how much she missed it.

“Nath, are you okay?” Sora asks when she returns, two sticks of cotton candy wobbling in her hands. “You look like you’re dreaming.”

She shakes her head, puts those private thoughts up on a shelf for later examination. “I was just thinking that we should probably get moving if we want to see the fireworks close up. They’ll start any minute now.”

Even in the low light, she sees Sora chewing her bottom lip. Wavering. Imagining being hemmed in by a hundred other people as explosions detonate above her head. The response, when it comes, doesn’t surprise her. “…Can we find somewhere to sit down instead? Somewhere out of the way. We can eat cotton candy and watch the fireworks from there.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “We might not get a very good view.”

“That’s fine. We can get a good view next year.” The blonde girl furrows her brows. “Please.”

For some reason, Nath can only think that she’s cheating. It’s not fair if she asks for something like that. She’s usually so much more direct, moving straight towards the things she wants. She’s used to a Sora who’s just a little hard-headed. That Sora just doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. This Sora removes ‘no’ from the list of answers it’s possible to give.

They thread their way back through the crowd, moving against a gentle human tide. The atmosphere is relaxed and excited all at once; there are children laughing and running ahead of their parents, old men and women basking in quiet nostalgia for a festival that hasn’t changed since they were children themselves. As they move slowly away from the fireworks display, the crowd thins and the tide breaks, until they are left to themselves on the bumpy, cobbled roads.

“Are you worried about the fireworks?” Nath asks, sitting down at a bench near the town fountain. There are a few stragglers still heading towards the display, but so few that there’s still a sense of privacy.

“…Maybe a little,” Sora replies, and folds herself into the space next to Nath. “Here. Eat.”

She holds the pink cotton candy up to Nath’s mouth insistently. The smell of spun sugar fills her senses, and she takes a bite. Just a tiny bite, of course. More of a nibble. It’s been a long time since she last ate this kind of thing, so it’s not childish to enjoy it. That’s what she tells herself.

“Nath… Do you ever think about having kids?” Sora asks, and the question is so sudden she almost chokes on her cotton candy.

“Where did that come from?” she splutters.

Sora’s voice is slow and dreamy. “I was thinking about that girl from earlier. She wasn’t afraid of us at all. You’ve lived on the Earth for a long time, so you must have at least thought about it, right?”

“Well…” Nath begins, trying to find a way to dance around the topic. She wasn’t made for dancing. “It’s not… I mean, it isn’t really an option. People like us can’t have children.”

“You could adopt.”

“I could adopt,” she concedes. “But… I don’t know. I think I’d always be second-guessing my own motives. I feel like I’d always be in danger of treating them like a pet rather than a person, because they’re gone so quickly. I wouldn’t mean to, but it’s better to avoid standing on a slippery slope. It isn’t what I need.”

“What do you need?” Sora asks, and her gaze is almost as powerful as her question. She speaks as though the question is rhetorical, as if she knows the answer and just wants to hear it from somebody else’s lips. Maybe this is the question she’s thinking about when it seems as though her mind is lost in space. Nath opens her lips her lips, trying to frame an answer she knows she won’t be able to take back once it’s been spoken.

There is a whistle and a bang; suddenly their faces are bathed in amber as the night sky springs to life. A constellation of sparks hovers overhead. Sora winces and the spell is broken, the moment lost. She huddles against Nath’s shoulder as more fireworks scream upwards to fill the sky with light.

“Are you okay?” Nath asks, turning her face to nuzzle the top of Sora’s head with her chin. It’s not a hug, but it’ll do for now.

“Auuuu. It’s not fair. They caught me by surprise. It was a sneak attack,” the girl sniffs. “It sounded just like artillery…”

“I know. I know. At least they’re prettier than artillery fire. Do you see that one, that explodes like a ball?” she asks, looking skyward. “It’s called a peony, after the flower.”

It seems as though she has to make a deliberate effort to connect her gaze with the display, but eventually she does. When she speaks, her voice is low and controlled. “It looks more like a dandelion clock. I wish I could blow on it and all the sparks would fly away like a real dandelion.”

“You look like a dandelion, too. Yellow and scruffy at the top,” Nath teases.

“I’m not a dandelion. Hime’s more of a dandelion than me.”

“Oh, you’re right. Maybe you’re more like that one, over on the right – with all the sparks falling down. They call those horsetails, or waterfalls. One year, I forgot about the festival and went out flying when they set up the fireworks display, and I almost got hit by one of those. I flew in and out of the sparks like a salmon jumping upstream.”

“No way,” Sora says, and gives her a light punch in the side. She isn’t scared enough to miss when somebody’s messing with her.

“How about that one, then? That one’s a palm. See how it spreads out wide, like a palm tree?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen a palm tree before.”

“I have a few growing at my summer house. Remind me and I’ll show them to you. That one there’s a willow…”

She keeps talking, describing the fireworks in her calm, steady voice. She can’t outshout an explosion. But she can give Sora something else to focus on. Some other sound to listen to. She talks about gunpowder, about scaring away spirits and sending out salutes. New practices, and ancient history. It’s not a big town, and not a big festival; they run out of fireworks long before she runs out of facts. As the final shower of sparks fades in the sky and the last light washes over their faces, Sora doesn’t seem afraid at all.

“Nath… How do you know so much about fireworks?” she asks, after a good ten seconds. The last explosions were chased by a round of applause so loud they could hear it from the fountain.

“I told you before, but… a lot of the things that bother you right now also bothered me, right after the war. Except, I didn’t have anybody around to help me deal with it. Eventually, I figured out that I should try and learn about them. Rationalise them, I guess. The more I learned, the less scary they got. You want to hear about lightning? I can tell you all sorts of things about lightning.”

“...Nn. Maybe tomorrow,” Sora replies. “But right now, I wanna stuff myself with cotton candy and then go to sleep.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Nath says. She can see the tiredness creeping into Sora’s eyes. The aftershock of the fireworks. “You did really well tonight.”

Sora nods, and stands up on slightly unsteady legs. She runs a hand through her hair, as if checking how dandelion she is. “Let’s go home,” she says.

“My home, or your home?”

“They’re both home, so either is fine. But I want to see how Kaze is doing. He’s not as brave as I am.”

“So my home is your home, now? I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m not exactly overflowing with spare rooms or spare beds.”

“That’s fine. I don’t have a room or bed at Suguri’s house, either. I can do without them because I’m good at sleeping. I have the most practice out of anybody.”

They carry on the gentle back and forth as they walk home, unhurried despite the cold. There are clouds forming in the night sky; it will probably snow tomorrow. Sora thinks this is fine, because it gives her an excuse to hibernate, and inch closer to her goal of becoming a bear. Black clouds aren’t quite as scary as they used to be for her.

Perhaps they never will be.

A/N: Something feels lacking about this, but in the end it just ended up being a vehicle for banter and that's fine too sometimes.