Rising Shards

I tried to hold in my sad, grumbling noises as I walked around the dorms. I just wanted to blend into the background somewhere. There was a small library in the girls’ dorm that I figured could do the trick. Because my sister worked in libraries, I spent enough time in them to want to avoid them at school. So I was feeling very down to think of one as a retreat. When I got there, there was a small display set up that had the librarians’ book picks for the month on it. The ones on the top shelf were books about ideal showering tips, and on the bottom shelf were these weird old photography books that had a bunch of naked people on their covers. The bottom shelf seemed incredibly inappropriate for a high school and it also felt like they were taunting me, so I left and just went to the lounge area and started moping by myself in front of a computer I checked out. 

I gave a moment’s thought to searching for advice online, but I wisely realized that any search I’d look up would probably yield really bad results, and someone would definitely walk up right behind me right as the bad results loaded up. So instead, I looked up videos of cats and continued moping. At approximately the umpteenth cat video, someone tapped on my shoulder.

“Excuse me, Zeta,” Amara said. “Can you assist me with something?”

“Hi Amara,” I said, turning to see the fox Kanibari standing with her hands clasped in front of her. “Sure, what do you need?”

Amara held her hands up, which were tangled with dark green yarn.

“I’ve gotten myself a bit tangled up here,” Amara said. “Could you help me with this configuration?”

“Configuration?”

“Just do as I say, we’re trying to follow this,” Amara said, revealing a small, folded sheet of paper that had been obscured in her yarn mess. It looked like it was from a craft set for yarn-based projects. After freeing the paper from the entanglement, I couldn’t really make sense of the instructions as they seemed to be in a language I didn’t know, so I relied on Amara to tell me what to do as she had me work to untangle the yarn, which was stuck pretty deep in her fur and claws, and then to re-tangle it to make whatever it was intended to be.

“What exactly is this supposed to look like when we’re done?” I asked.

“…I have no idea, actually,” Amara said.

Once we finished, Amara had some kind of yarn tree puppet thing that looked cute when it was finally completely separated from our hands.

“Thank you, if you hadn’t stopped by, I could have been at this for hours.” Amara said.

“No problem,” I said. I was grateful to have something to take my mind off my shower misfortunes.

“You seem a bit down,” Amara said. “Something you’d care to share?”

I held back a groan I felt coming up my throat. I didn’t want to explain this to every friend I ran into, but I was in too deep with this conversation not to. Plus, Amara had the same ability as Lillia Cadence to glare her way into getting what they wanted from me.

“Have you ever had an incident with your roommates?” I asked.

“Explain.” Amara said.

“Well, like…you know.” I said.

“I’m sorry, Zeta, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

Amara’s glare wasn’t icy like Lillia’s, but hers instead had a fire behind them that was just as scary.

“Well, I took a shower a bit ago, and when I walked out, I thought nobody was in the room…but one of my roommates…was. And they, Oka, it was Oka, might have…seen some things.”

Amara pondered for a moment.

“Don’t you have a system?” Amara asked.

“I do!” I said. “It just…didn’t work this time. Or I forgot it for a second. Like the worst second to forget it.”

“We have a system,” Amara said. “It’s worked out for us so far. But I can’t deny that I’m a touch jealous.”

“Jealous?” I asked.

“Having that kind of steamy, sultry encounter with your true love…it sends chills down my spine just thinking about it!” Amara said, nuzzling her yarn puppet to her face.

“It wasn’t steamy,” I said. “Or sultry, whatever that means. It was just really uncomfortable.”

“Don’t be too sad,” Amara said. “If I wanted Rain to see me like that, I’d want it at my peak performance, if you catch my drift.”

“I’m not entirely sure I do,” I said.

“I’m just saying at least you were fresh from the shower; your hair was free of pollutants and ticks, and your skin was probably more radiant after just cleaning it.” Amara said.

“I’m torn between saying you should write poetry and saying how uncomfortable I am.” I said.

“The point I’m making is that at least you probably looked better than you would if she spotted you say, all dirty from a void fight or if you were rummaging around in the sewers or something.”

I’d ask why Amara even brought up the sewer thing, but I figured it wasn’t worth it. I had to agree with her that at least it was preferable the way I was for Oka than if I was basically some kind of sludge monster.

“That actually does help to think of it that way,” I said.

Amara sighed longingly and looked up to the heavens.

“Is something bothering you now?” I asked.

“You’ve inspired me, Miss Faleur,” Amara said.

“Huh?” I said.

Amara gripped her fists together with intense determination, squeezing her poor yarn puppet.

“I’m going to cause an incident of my own for Rain,” Amara said.

“No, wait, I think that might be a bad—”

“Destiny is calling for me, and if the stars already shone in your favor on this evening, then perhaps they will for me as well.” I was really concerned that Amara promptly began unbuttoning her top.

“Amara, I really think it’s best if you—”

“Don’t try to stop me,” Amara said as she ran off, trails of unused yarn that were stuck to the back of her shirt for some reason twirled behind her like a cape.

Amara’s good advice lost some of its luster balanced with her sudden proclamation. And when I was alone again, I started brainstorming ways to deal with embarrassing events and came up with an idea.