Chapter 5 #2
“I mean, you put it in your mouth. I wouldn’t recommend rubbing it on your butt. You could! I just wouldn’t recommend it.”
She sat up, rubbing her tailbone area. “Yes please,” she mumbled, still through a pout like none I’d ever seen. I opened up my herbal bank, plucking out another Galyr’s tooth, and she perked up, looking at it. “Oh—what’s that?”
“Galyr’s tooth. It’s a restorative agent that heals low-level pain and mental distress.”
“No, no. In your little plant book. The one with the purple streak on it. It had some really interesting magic on it.”
“Oh, that’s—nothing,” I blurted, my face red, hiding the herbal bank behind my back. Oh, saints. That was a terrible job of lying. Especially to somebody who probably had divination to tell if I was—
“Oh, okay,” she said, and I slumped, staring in disbelief as she took the Galyr’s tooth and put it in her mouth. She’d… bought it. Huh. I mean, maybe she was lacking in practical awareness a little.
Still, even having gotten out of it, it hung on my mind—that there was something interesting about the skyblossom, not to an herbalist but to somebody clued into fate and its magic.
Maybe I should have asked her, but I was terrified.
So I sat back at the table and played it cool, as Lumi got up and sat at a different seat, one that wasn’t broken, and after she’d had a second to collect herself, she folded her hands on the table and spoke incisively.
“Are you fucking Summer senseless?”
“What the—no!” I’d just taken a bite of my oatmeal, and I choked on it, which—choking on oatmeal was kind of an accomplishment. “Oh, saints, Lumi, I was—of course not.”
She looked at me skeptically. “Is Summer fucking you senseless?”
“That—that was not a commentary on who’s bottoming or topping. Saints and stars.”
“Okay, okay. But you like her, right?”
“No… I mean, well, I like her well enough. She’s a nice person. But it’s not like that…”
“You’d better be telling the truth, or I’ll summon a rain of fire from the sky to lay waste to you and everything you hold dear.”
“I… don’t think you’re capable of that.”
She looked sadly down at the table. “Summer’s a really good person. I just want her to have something good in her life!”
“I know. She told me how you’ve foreseen this romantic encounter and, um, well, she’s nervous about it, for sure, but I want it to go well for her too.”
She relaxed. I was glad she wasn’t nearly as good at picking up on a lie as I’d expected.
“She’s always had really bad luck with love, so I just want this to go well for her.
She’s my best friend in the whole wide world and I’ll feel like I’ve failed if I’ve seen her true love and I’m not able to help her reach it, you know? ”
“Mm…” I nodded, slowly, studying her. “Um… it’s not that you’re into her, is it?”
“No.” She pouted, puffing out her cheek, and she looked away. “It’s not that, but I don’t think you’ve earned the right to ask what it really is. A woman has to have her secrets. In the meantime, I need some caffeine. Do they have coffee here?”
“Oh, um, yeah.”
“I know that. I could foresee the coffee. I was wondering if you’d tell the truth.”
“You could also have just looked at the menu, you can see it through the window from where you are.”
“Oh.” She paused, looking at the window and back at me. “Hmph. You win this round, Miss Cadence,” she said, standing up. “Um… thanks for the tooth stuff.”
“Yeah, no problem. Is Summer not with you today?”
“She had a fight with Swatty yesterday morning, so he’s probably not waking her up on purpose this morning just to teach her a lesson.”
“Swatty…” She had said she’d had to get swatted awake. Should I have been worried about Swatty?
“You’d better not be grinding all over Summer next time I see you!” she said, heading back for the doors, and I felt my face burn as I turned after her.
“Oh, saints, Lumi, I wasn’t—Lumi!” I called, but she ignored me, her haughty demeanor dropping as soon as the door shut behind her and she didn’t realize I could still see her, flouncing over to the counter.
It was getting exponentially harder to focus—more and more reasons piling up for me to be distracted, and I did an even worse job paying attention in classes today, mind drifting to everything both Rosie and Lumi had said, and invariably, always, back to Summer.
I was distracted enough I accidentally enchanted a plant-growth spell onto a stuffed galobalo toy in one class when I was supposed to be demonstrating a practical technique, and the professor had to step in to stop it from crawling across the room with vines lashing and knocking things off tables, and I was tired and stressed already by the time I got out of my last class and got a text message from the girl who’d sat front and center in all my distracting thoughts from the day.
A picture, and then another message. I stood off to the side of the crowd filtering out of the class hall from my last class, and I opened the message to see a picture of an exploded alchemy bench, scorch marks and pieces of broken equipment, and then the text, so it didn’t work.
Saints are you okay??
just fine!! let’s meet?
Oh, saints. She was angry at me. I’d gotten her bad snapbush.
But I still wanted to meet her. I had a problem when it came to this girl…
Tell me where to meet and I’m there.