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Car pulled the door to behind her as softly as the current would allow, as we listened to the dampened shouts of argument.
"So, don't go in there," she said with self-deprecating authority.
"What did Lorr do this time?" I asked, half-knowing, but wanting to be sure.
“Dyed her hair again.”
“Black?” We'd heard she was going to.
“It's a really lovely purple black,” Shu said, as if to do Lorr justice.
Purple made almost everything better. Not black-dyed hair.
“You'd think they'd be more worried about infections, with all her piercings, than the pollutants.”
“Hey,” I flipped a hand out, “she dies, gets sick, she pays. Right? Pollutants mean we pay. And Dad has to put up with the Board, again.”
“Speaking of which...” Mer said, as if bored, “I've got a catch, if we want to take a little marathon swim out there.”
“Really?” Shu was squealing to match the noise inside.
“Quiet, you.”
“Shu, grab the nets, and come from there,” I said. “I'll get some packs together.”
“What about Lorr?”
Shu pouted.
“Lorr will be in a black mood, let's say double black mood, for a few hours. It'll be clear for us when we get home, as long as we make it out to be a present-hunt.”
“Ooh,” she cooed, at least not squealing anymore, “I love present hunts.”
“Sunshine,” said Car, rolling her eyes.
We undressed to sports bras—no point in keeping village dress-code when on forbidden forages; the guys even went shark-hunting naked, though that, that was just stupid—and slipped out the bolt-hole.
Slipping through the reed-patches, out over the cove walls, we made it free. At the retainer wall, we scribbled messages to ourselves for our return, for good luck, in graffitist lettering so no one could tell who it was, and launched into the deep. Car's hair glimmered still like salmon-crest, Shu's floated like a wraith with her ghostly form, but I felt mine make me just one of the shadows, and slipped into the grace-sway so many of the punk-chicks would laugh at in the avenues.
We swam for over an hour, Car tracing her steps, then all of us homing in on the sonic-interrupt of the boat. We anchored the net strategically, spreading it out over the target acre, fastening it to the few high-points out here. It was so cold down there breaking surface, with the nose-stinging air so fast like a riptide, felt comfortable. Shu's eyes reflected white, and we all gaped at the moon for a few minutes.
“Hey, kid, we need to get a move on,” I said to her.
Car agreed. The weirdness of our voices made me shiver against the comforting spray and slap of water.
Shu began chanting the elemental call, invoking her moon-make to the sky's wide picture of weather. Weather was something we could bring, but we saw little of it at home. We trembled, excited and afraid, as the rolling approach of the tempest raced closer. The boat was coming, too. Shu began directing winds, whirling them so the boat couldn't stray too far. When she was conjuring, Shuramafwen Deidi turned to a bit of glimmering cloud-gossamer, herself. Her silver-white eyes seemed to glow out, not just reflect, her long fingers to become part of the white wind that blew most pliably for her, and her body rolled with the water like the foam-lines cresting the near-shore wave. While Car, Mer, and I could duck under for some less intense breathing, she had to stay up where the intoxicating, fierce air was until the tempest was just right. When that happened, she just began to laugh, too full of oxygen to handle it, and so Mer and I grabbed her to duck her under. After a minute, I dropped in to say,
“You all right, Shu? Go tend the net, hon.”
Her eyes were turning less shiny. She smiled and did what I asked.
“Okay, baby,” I said, and we all flipped down to go mess with that boat.
There were less cargo boats these days, and usually they were huge. This one was a private company's. Like idiots, they had lashed some of the cartons to the deck, the back hull filled with them. Mer began to giggle. We anchored a line to one of the holding ropes, and she hauled herself up to cut them loose, before we all dove in deep, to let them clatter off, pulling the anchor with us.
Then Car said,
“I'll go hove in the cartons. You two want to play a little tag?”
Mer raised a neatly thinned eyebrow at me.
I rubbed my bare tummy, wondering about the conditions on-boat. It was fun, but also freakishly dangerous to go splash around like castaways—if our parents found out we had done it, we might be excommunicated from the village, even as "youths".
"We going to haul this by Gramps?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go straight there, instead. We left Lorr behind."
She would have hated to miss a tag. From the weepy clinging to each other (to keep from being discovered legless) to sneaking back out of the sick room with the magazines tied up in their trash bags, she loved the whole ridiculous shtick. She was almost as much of a drama-babe as Mer.
What do you think of the concept? Anything strike you as even too silly for the story? Let me know. I'm revising this one, or rewriting, as it were, so I'm looking for all kinds of criticism.
Happy Tuesday!
