Rising Shards

After getting in a fight with Scrungy, Maia had to spend a long while in the nurse’s office. While she was there, she took a long nap. And while she slept, she had a strange dream. In it, she borrowed her parents’ van and drove Iris to the top of a hill where they sat out on a blanket and watched the sunset. For some reason, Iris was in a flowing white dress. Maia kept staring at Iris, and as the sun’s light faded from the world, she and Iris stared deeply into each other’s eyes. Iris leaned in first. Right before they could kiss, Maia woke up.

That dream was on her mind quite a bit during her in school suspension. And any time she saw Iris, who was very clingy after Maia stepped up to try and defend her from her ex.

Maia had barely processed the fight. She’d never fought anyone before like that. Void monsters sure, but that was different. She’d wanted to fight Scrungy for a long time, a desire that mostly played out in daydreams that went a whole lot better than the real fight did. There was a lot to unpack from it all. One, that Maia was actually brave enough to stand up and at least attempt to protect Iris against a bully like that. Two, that Scrungy herself revealed that she had been jealous of Maia’s friendship with Iris while she was still dating Iris. Three, that Maia’s face hurt really badly. Four, that black eyes took a lot longer to heal than Maia thought.

After serving her time in the in-school suspension room, Maia wasn’t sure how to spend her day. Luckily, Iris popped in shortly after, immediately bombarding her bestie with questions.

“How are you feeling? Does it still hurt? Did they like torture you in the suspended zone? Is it called the suspended zone?”

“Fine, yes, tortured me with boredom, and no.” Maia said. “Wait, why are you asking me, you got suspended like a week ago.”

“When I got suspended, I’m pretty sure they called it the suspended zone,” Iris said. “But we did have Penteldtam as our teacher and he kept saying ‘This. Is the suspended zone.’ Before he twanged his suspenders. And then just talked about suspenders the whole time and didn’t even have us write anything down.”

“Lucky,” Maia said. “I just had Poppi and that ugh what’s her name…Junea.”

“Oh yeah, she’s a bummer.” Iris said.

“I had to write an apology letter to the staff and another to my family for my ‘poor behavior.’” Maia said.

“Pfft. That’s so dumb It was cool behavior if anything.” Iris said.

“Heh.” Maia said, starting to grin but wincing from her still aching everything.

“Do you need any ice for the ol’ eye there?”

“I just finished icing, I gotta wait a bit.” Maia said.

“Ahhh,” Iris said. “What else do we got then?” She gasped excitedly. “It’s been a bit since we had some B.F.S.!”

The two had ended up on Maia’s bed, which was one of their main spots for B.F.S. time.

“That’d…be really cool, yeah.” Maia said. “But my face is still really hurting so maybe like light B.F.S. today?”

Maia’s heart pounded. Why’d I bring up my face for B.F.S. stuff? We mostly just…bite each other. B.F.S. isn’t really a face thing. Is it? I guess I use my face to bite. Of course the dream came back into her mind, where she and Iris almost shared something with their faces before Maia was cruelly torn from her slumber. Her eyes darted to Iris’ lips, which looked like she had recently put lip gloss on them, the slight shimmer made Maia feel almost tempted to try reenacting her dream.

“Hm, I see, I see…” Iris nodded to herself. She yawned. “Thinking takes a lot of effort.”

“I’m beat too…” Maia said.

Iris looked over to her bed, then back to Maia. “What if our B.F.S. session today is a nice nap?”

“What do you mean?” Maia asked.

“I mean…” Iris said. She leaned in and softly hugged Maia, guiding her to lie down.

“I uh, what is…” Maia said, weakly objecting as Iris nuzzled against her.

“I mean, we’re both sleepy,” Iris yawned again. “Let us sleeps.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one on the other side?” Maia asked. “I’m taller.”

“Nah, today I get this spot.” Iris said, her arms still wrapped around Maia’s tummy. “This doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No, it feels really nice…” Maia said. She yawned too.

“See, we’re both sleepy,” Iris said dreamily. “This will be a nice B.F.S. session. Then when your face is all healed up…”

Iris trailed off, and it didn’t hit Maia what she had just said until she had almost completely drifted to sleep.

Oh well. We can deal with it when we get up.

As she drifted to sleep, Maia hoped she’d have a repeat of the dream with Iris watching the sunset together, and that the dream would go farther than it did last time.