"A Riveting Conversation"

A Riveting Conversation

It is the first day of fall. The Calendar here won’t acknowledge that for a good few days but the weather isn’t dominated by schedule. The sky is clouded, but the sunset is nearly here, causing a peach and orange tint against the evaporated water groups. It doesn’t smell like peaches, oranges, or anything like that, it just looks like it.

The trees certainly agree with the weather and me on what season it is. Some are Theydding and those that aren’t have orange, brown, red, and yellow leaves. There are a lot of brown and red. From this height, it would be hard to tell… for any normal person.

The structure is some form of university for only the most intelligent of student. Very few students from beginning college would be allowed in, and far fewer in the High School level. Regardless of these traits, I have made no sign of interest to apply here. Space? What about it could I learn that I’d want to?

It took the texture of clay and sand, as well as the color: this skyscraper of a shape. The inner building was dozens of stories below, a large rectangular center of knowledge with curved edges and sharp edges, but it was the giant nearly pointed arch that everyone noticed the most.

The air was thinner from such a height, but not enough to make someone pass out. They knew this. They knew a lot of things. They knew that They could do anything They wanted, and live whatever life They wanted, be it of course through Their extensive knowledge. This was not an option. It was for hate’s sake, and duty’s sake, that They went a different course.

She was atop the tip of the arch. She relaxed despite the breeze that gave her unstable hold on the gripless roof floor. When it finally gave way, her large boots with the thick rubber heels, she allowed for a single moment of contact with the grainy wall. She was falling at the building’s side, upside down, and her arm was currently staining it with flecks of black fur and blood.

A brief wince and release of the slightest bit of air passed. She clutched her injury and passed through the building’s side. She was inside of it now, a ghost of a shadow, her long tail like a ribbon vibrating in the air behind her.

She kept a blank stare through the institution, able to see the trees and the grass outside every three or so seconds as she slipped in and out of the wall. She was already down forty of the seventy-nine stories at this point, with no sign of stopping her fall by any means other than the pavement, but she had to have devised some sort of plan.

It was the glint that broke her concentration, a slight reflection directly in front of her which caused a brief moment of blindness. She was vulnerable at this moment, and building hostility but refused to act. Not yet. Not until she saw who it-

His expression was at it almost always had been: the slightest frown of his jaw to indicate a hint that he was not indeed robotic, but behind those black shades, and unhidden brows, a droll stare that spoke of negativity and danger. They expressed superiority, disappointment, hostility, bitterness, and ego. It may very well have simply been a bored look, but she never thought of it as such, and he had yet to deny it. Still, he was here, and she did not wish to have been disturbed.

For a moment her foot was in the physical world as she flexed it over to kick back, and swing around. She aimed to collide an angry weaponized body part into him at the tenth floor, but he had caught her by the second, a small burst of the imploding wall sending bits of cement about the air like a sand bomb.

He made no effort into cradling her, nor did he avoid causing her pain when slamming against her, grabbing her, and landing flatly on the ground. At the same time, she did not expect anything else or more. She was tough, and sugar-coatings repelled her. Pain reminded her that she was conscious. Still, after letting her go, after she braced herself and stood, and after he stood there—staring into her with not a word uttered—all in the span of seventeen seconds, she had grown angry.

She opened her mouth but as if claiming dominance in the matter, his stern tone spoke “You weren’t committing suicide, so what was that?”

She gave him a reminder of her lack of patience for alpha-male attitudes to his forehead, which he of course did not react to. “You don’t ever feel the need to jump off a building? Just for fun?” She huffed with a wince. “Especially when you’re someone who can take it?”

His attention was on the dripping of her upper arm, her bicep was bleeding and bare skin showed through the rest of the untouched fur. “You’re highly durable,” He looked back to her face. “You had to have rubbed against it for a good while first. You’re not a masochist, so where did that come from?”

“Sometimes you wake up to the world still spinning and you think to yourself ‘Am I still alive?’,” She squeezed on her arm, the cringe mixed with a peer at him. “Yeah… I can feel it, but sometimes I don’t believe it… Now can I help you?”

With how little breath could be seen passing from his chest, mouth, or nose, one might question if he even had a heartbeat under that thick grey shirt. He walked past her, toward the trees. “You picked this spot. Having regrets about life decisions?”

“Dunno, are you?” She walked after him.

It was a long pause, minutes long. They were too busy staring at the ground, relishing the cracking of leaves. The sky was grey again with the clouds and they were nearing the highway. The other side of it held a long suburban neighborhood. “You know next to nothing about me,” He finally spoke. “so I’d imagine you’d already have figured out that I have many regrets, but none of them involve where I went to school.”

“You’re expecting me to share my psychology with you?” She huffed, not a thought going to the long awaited answer prior.

“That’s a quality shared between this term people use called ‘friend’ isn’t it?” It wasn’t the tone of how he stated it, the breath, or the question itself. It was that he slowed his walking just enough to look to her at his side. That was his moment of vulnerability, of emotion.

“What makes us friends?” She almost sounded humored by her own question. By the small huff he made and the sly but soft smile growing on his face, he appeared to as well. “Our choice in other friends I’d imagine,” He answered, folding his arms with his back leaning back just slightly enough for him to easily glance at the sky without arching his neck. “The fact that we’re part of a team working for the same goals with some of the same reasons. We go to the same place of education. Above all else, we don’t insult each other’s intelligence.”

“Spoken like a real intellectual,” She sighed, finally letting go of her nearly healed wound, hand stained now as she observed the red mixed with her padded paws. “Try this then with your smarts: do you want to be friends?”

“I definitely don’t mind it,” His answer made her tense just slightly, a small ‘I knew he wouldn’t give me a direct answer’ coming from her thoughts. “What I want, or wanted, doesn’t matter, because as far as I am concerned we are friends, and I have enjoyed that prospect greatly over time.”

“You’re not romantic,” She pointed out. “You’re never romantic, so either you’re dying and trying to be nice, or…”

“That’s where you’re thinking too deeply,” He shook his head. “This was coincidence. I was there on a walk and I saw you above.”

“And you aren’t going to say how you got above.”

“You don’t care I’d imagine, and I care even less because I want to know why you were up there.”

They were at the other side of the highway now, free of cars. They had gone under of course, not risking running through massive traffic. The houses of brick, trees, grass, cement, and most importantly leaves, welcomed them to the land they were familiar with.

“… It…” She knew he wouldn’t hold it against her. Despite being intrusive, he never showed any hostile intent toward her. The fact that he was so disinclined to repay the favor was what made her so unwilling, and so she countered “Only if you tell me some as well.”

“… Very well.”

“… Right,” She cleared her throat. “You weren’t just on a walk.”

“No I was,” He nodded as they neared a school. Neither could help but glance at the swaying squeaking swings for a moment. “I was thinking about something though. You know by now I didn’t have the same childhood as any of you. All of this isn’t new to me, but there’s nothing like the original early years growing up in this environment that leaves it in imprint… am I right?” His head turned to her for a moment.

“…I guess so,” She slowly replied, making it a short choice of words so that he would continue.

“I’ve been here many times now, but I can’t control the weather, or more importantly the seasons. I wait for Autumn and I look for the special moment.”

“Like the church?” She almost chuckled.

“Not exactly but you’re on the right track,” His stare was dead ahead again. “I was simply on a search for the perfect feeling to remind me of things I lost.”

If it weren’t for his direct and stern “Your turn” she would have probed further but he wasn’t going to say more. She prepared herself and spoke “I’m disconnected to it all.”

“… Go on,” They were walking up some steps to the left, leading to a higher road toward the clearing of houses. A long road would be ahead.

“Well…” She tensed, not being happy with the pressure now. “I just… no one here is like me. Sure there’s some of those test subjects from… all that,” She winced a bit, looking over at the pale brown furred fox. “Er, no offense,” He only shrugged back at this, more interested in the black cat’s continuation, which she provided. “I don’t relate to anybody here. Tess… bless her crazy coffee-surged blood-pumper, I’m not her type. I only met all of you through her.”

“So none of them are friends then?” He teased.

“I’ve never been grounded anywhere before,” She continued as if he had said nothing. “I feel like I’ll pack up and leave any moment now. I don’t relate to places or people. I just go, and yet I’ve been living her for some years now.”

The road was getting shorter and shorter, a long hedge to their side and a forest to their front which they turned into.

“Something about all this is kind of… familiar but not really. That girl… She’s got something to do with it.”

“Tess?” His eyebrow raised at this, his question almost muffled with disbelief.

“No,” She groaned, a tad annoyed he didn’t catch on. “Ira.”

“… Ah… But aside from all that, you chose that building.”

“I guess it wouldn’t work acting like it had nothing to do with it, huh?” She smirked as they were nearing a clearing of the woods. “No… I guess not… I won’t lie about it. I could make it work for sure. I could be one of those super smarts and get some massive degree that lets me take on any job I want. I could even be a real spy but that’d give them the satisfaction.”

He wasn’t going to ask who, or state that he knew. She knew he knew, and it was indeed her family.

“He’s proud of you isn’t he?” The fox asked.

“He’s always proud of me,” The cat answered. “He’s the only thing I have that’ll tell me what I am. Those… files, I can’t make sense of them at all.”

“But he won’t.”

“For my ‘own good’, and every time I get mad at him, I’m just mad at them. It’s their fault he doesn’t tell me more. But I’ve got this don’t I?!” Her tone rose as she ripped her bladed weapon up to view, the small hissing from its supernatural black and white tints echoing further fury. “This is mine, and they don’t get to take it again.”

“They’re gone,” He reminded, unfazed by the dagger. “You’re free to do whatever, so why don’t you?”

She stopped walking, realizing where they stood now. He smirked and she glared. With the slightest movement here and there, he had directed their path. With the openness of words, he had distracted her here, all to make a point.

“You’re right where we are because you’re comfortable, but not content. You have a loving guardian, caring friends- you have a boyfriend that is constantly tripping over himself for you trying to balance proving he’s worth you and you worth him. It’s too much isn’t it?”

“… It feels manufactured,” She finally growled out, though not at him, just at the world now. “Everything here somehow feels not right. Something was taken from all this…”

“Yes…” He sighed, removing his glasses for a moment to rub his eyes and then put them back on. “It was… a lot of somethings were taken.”

She sat on the rim. “What were they?”

“… The…” He couldn’t say it yet. Maybe he didn’t even know it. So he just asked “Would you call me your friend?”

“… Well… I guess not. Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” He sat next to her, leaning back against the higher rim. “I can suffice very easily with… ‘simple co-workers’.”

He was right about a great many things, but his flaw came in reluctance for the rest. Still, they were here now, sitting on the still fountain, the cold wind brushing against them with fall leaves  all around them. The moon would come out soon as they sat there,

In Glimmer Moon Park.