”Totally calm about the fact that we were all summoned to a floating island in the sky and end up in some sort of weird family meeting right beside a dead body.”

“Right?” I said under my breath. Nice try, Bro, but we can’t really play off something like that like it ain’t shit. Gotta give him credit, though. There’s not much of a standard for those kinds of reactions.

I laughed along with him, really awkward and breathy, and my gaze shifted away from his own somewhere off to the right, where there was more blue stuff floating around. It…well, I guess it was petty of me, and pretty childish, but hearing him speak now, one on one, actually listening to his words was a little harder than I expected. His voice was deeper—too deep for me to comprehend and accept. And he was larger, too, pretty much an adult now, nothing awkward or gangly about him anymore. The most fucked up part about it though was the fact that he had been gone for so long, and that I was able to notice all of this so easily. Hell, I had been the bitch that went AWOL, what am I talking about? And I missed him so much but this was a different Bro now—only slightly different, it was true, and only by looks and age. But I still wish that I had grown up with him, and not away.

There was no ignoring that huge, dark, beautiful bitchy elephant in the room now; I couldn’t run around with wads of stuff stuck in my ears, avoiding the topic of our shared blood (or lack thereof) and running around with the whole “HE’LL BE MY BRO FOREVER” spiel. It was depressing seeing so much of the moon in him and a shadow that I never really perceived on him before; he used to be this open book, all easily flustered ‘n stuff, but he….well, I can’t really explain it. No, scratch that, I can: I didn’t feel like I knew him anymore. Maybe I did, I dunno, and I was just being too suspicious and butt-hurt about his Ma—but at this point, Mesec was suspect and I hated it but that’s how it was.

“I…I tried looking for you,” I said (still awkward), my eyes still averted off to the side. Jeez it wasn’t getting any easier talking to people. Who even invented words? Words did nothing but make up lies and shitty policies. If everyone did nothing but grunt and shit and sleep we’d be a whole lot less screwed than we are now. Gugh. “Where…where did you go?” I chanced a glance up at him, wondering if I was still looking for a clue or maybe still looking for my Bro. Something I can hold onto and say, “Yeah, that’s him, I was dumb for ever having any doubt.”



@[Mesec]
speaking