live passionately

Phoenix burst out laughing at Monica’s confusion. “Do you really not know yeet? You must be older than I thought!” When she thought about it, she seemed to mostly have older friends, and Maggie was one the few ones who could meme at her level. After a good minute of laughter at her ancient friend, she composed herself enough to teach this valuable lesson. “I’m sorry,” she said, still amused, “yeet was just such a big deal a few years ago among us kids. It’s just something you yell. I don’t think it really means anything, but it’s yelled a lot when throwing stuff, like in that vine. Which you obviously haven’t seen, tragically.” Gesturing to the rock in Monica’s hand, she ordered, “Here, you give it a try and show me what you got.” 

“Oh! Excuse you, I’m thirty-two!” Monica protested, but there was a grin shining through her mock outrage, and her words were followed by laughter; she wasn’t actually insulted. She knew her humor wasn’t very in touch with even just what her little brother, on a few years younger than her, found funny, especially when it came to internet culture. Phoenix’s explanation of the exclamation was only further baffling, and though Monica nodded along and took the words into stride, she didn’t really understand. Ah, well.

“Thanks, but it came at me from a different angle,” Heather explained, liking the compliment which was true but unwilling to take full credit in this situation. She went back to the spot she had been, which was around a slight curve so the frisbee had been aiming more to her side than her back. She held her arm out in front of her hand and lined up the frisbee trajectory, then turned on her heel to continue the line to where Monica had stood a moment ago. “Yep, it was more in my peripheral vision. Still, I did have to dodge pretty quickly there.” 

“Still!” Monica watched the other woman as she retraced their positions in line with the frisbee’s trajectory, pleased when, ultimately, the woman accepted the compliment.

“Is this your usual running spot?” Monica prompted in the casual lull in their conversation. “Should I keep an eye out for more wayward frisbees in the future if we-” a quick glance down to check that Roscoe was still just vegging at her feet- “come by this way again?”

“As long as it’s not lactose intolerant.” Jenny said with a small snort, but she inclined her head in agreement. Smushed cheese was better than what she had been doing. “I think I was scaring it. I get a little too eager.” The whitelighter made room for the stranger in front of the opening. 

Jenny didn’t have time to respond when there were soft shuffling sounds from the bush, the leaves scraping against each other as the creature tentatively moved forward towards the cheese. A white muzzle appeared, revealing the face of a scraggly looking dog - potentially a chihuahua, but Jenny wasn’t able to tell. “I hope you’re a dog person,” she murmured as it began to nibble on the cheese with indescribable grunting sounds.

Tearing off her plaid overshirt, she took her chance. When the dog was far enough out she scooped him up in the fabric, not giving him much of a chance to fight, but either way he was focused on the food. Sure enough, there was blood. A small cut on his back leg that looked like it could have been done by a fence.   

A vet - Jenny hadn’t thought that far ahead. If it was just her around the plan would have been easy. A quick heal and then carting him off to the closest no kill shelter. “It just looks like a cut. I can take care of that at home. Do you want to help me cart the mutt there?” They looked like a bizarre portrait of a family feeding their baby together, with the woman hanging cheese in the dogs face as Jenny cradled him.

She could hear the animal’s faint snuffling as it investigated the cheese, and from this close, she could hear when its heartbeat began to slow marginally from panicked fluttering. Delight light up Monica’s face as as the little dog eased itself into view, though she suppressed the coo that otherwise would have left her; now was maybe not the time to make sudden noises. But it was cute, in that way that all dogs looked cute to a dog lover.

Once the dog was securely wrapped in the other woman’s shirt, Monica chanced slowly reaching out to gently pet him on the head. “Hey, little guy.” Her attempt at a second pass had him lifting his head away from the cheese to sniff at her hand, but evidently she either didn’t seem threatening, or the cheese was acceptable enough bribery, but the tiny nose shifted back to the offered snack, giving her the opening to rub at his ears.

“Sure,” Monica agreed readily, flashing the other woman a smile. “I’m parked a few blocks that way,” she said, nodding her head in indication, “if we wanted to drive?” She didn’t mind walking, if they thought the dog wouldn’t like the car ride, but she also knew some people really didn’t like walking any farther than they absolutely had to.

Monica had meant to take the main trail back to her car and head straight home. She’d gone out for her weekly night-as-a-coyote outing, and while she had a fair amount of snacks in her bag, she would need a proper meal sooner, rather than later. But as she’d neared the last stretch of trail that would have taken her back to her car, the light had started filtering through the trees just so, and she’d been struck with the sudden urge to call Monty, tell him she was staying out, and just keep walking for a while.

So she did. Right after she found a spot with reasonable enough signal to call with. She paused in her walking, adjusting her backpack before resting her free hand on her hip. She wasn’t tired, but if she was going to be out on the trail for a while longer, a quick break while they chatted wouldn’t kill her.

She could hear someone further on the trail, drawing nearer, as she greeted Monty over the phone and they got their usual morning exchange out of the way.

“It’s just such a nice morning, I’m not ready to head back yet,” Monica insisted into her phone. The source of the footsteps—a lone woman—came into view, and Monica stepped off to one side and pivoted to face the trail in anticipation of the woman passing her. “But I promised the boy a trip to the park today. Do you think you could take him?”

“You promised, huh?”

“Mhm! And it’ll be good for you both. He gets to burn of some energy, you get fresh air... It’s a win-win.” On the other end of the phone, Monty huffed out an amused agreement, and she did a little fist pump. “Thank you!”

Monty ended the call not a few moments later, leaving Monica ample opportunity to chirp a bright, “Good morning!” to her trail-mate, offering the other woman a warm smile.

Phoenix laughed as she followed Monica to the rock pile. With them standing on both sides of it, it felt like they were about to start some sort of sporting competition. But if Monica wasn’t an exceptionally fast learner, then Phoenix felt confident that she wouldn’t be much of a threat. “That’s my type of no preparation whatsoever,” she joked, giving an approving nod. “That leaves you a blank slate for me to mold into a perfect rock skipping machine.” She leaned down and picked up a rough rock, then cupped it in her hands. “Now, the first lesson is to pick your rock,” she started lecturing. “You must bond with your rock. For a few fleeting seconds, you and the rock will be as one ultimate pair.” She then scowled down at the rough rock in her hands and declared, “But not this lame rock. Yeet!” And she tossed it overhanded straight into the water, where it sunk like a, well, rock.

“Excellent!” Monica grinned over to Phoenix, pleased that she had evidently made the right choice in messaging the younger woman to be her rock skipping teacher; her enthusiasm was unparalleled. She liked the injection of humor into the teaching process, and if her grin could have gotten any wider at the instruction to bond with her rock of choice, it would have. Diligently, Monica stooped to lift a rock from her pile, nodding along as Phoenix spoke.

The exclamation drew a bubble of laughter from her, even as her brow began to furrow in confusion. “Yeet?”

“Here like in Edgewood?” Dominic clarified. He laughed. “There isn’t an exceptional amount of magic shows here.” Though there was an exceptional amount of magic.  “Not that I would know. Are they sorely lacking in other towns?” 

Dominic turned to the shusher and also offered an apology. Oops, he hadn’t been planning on conversations when he chose this spot to watch from. His phone buzzed with a text that he was sure came from Maxine. A peek at it pulled halfway out of his pocket confirmed. At a much lower voice than before, he adressed Monica with an apologetic smile, “Sorry, but I gotta go meet with my partners soon. It was very nice to meet you though. Maybe I’ll catch you around with your friend. Probably not at a magic show, though. It’s not actually my usual scene.”

“Oh, no, here like the Riverfest,” Monica amended, nose wrinkling as amusement lit up her face. “This is cool, but a magic show isn’t exactly my typical idea of a day out.” She liked it well enough, if she happened across it, but she wasn’t going to seek a show out outside of something like this.

“Oh, for sure,” Monica assured with a smile. “It was nice meeting you too. Enjoy the rest of the festival.”

Jenny turned her head towards the newcomer, a dark haired woman looming over her and criticizing her plan. The whitelighter’s arm was still in the bush when she shrugged. “If it bites me, it bites me. I’m more concerned about it. I’m pretty sure I saw blood.” Obviously she couldn’t reassure the stranger of her immortality.

Reluctantly, she had to admit the woman had a point. It was already scared and big, scary whitelighter arm wouldn’t help. Jenny slowly pulled her arm from the bush, hearing another rustling sound as she did. “Do you have a better idea? Food in your bag or something?”

“I just…” Jenny pursed her lips. “I can’t leave it. I’d feel bad about it for…forever.” Literally.  

Blood, she said? Monica sniffed, tilting her head to mask it as an absent thing, and not her attempting to catch a scent. It was a fairly high-traffic spot, and she wasn’t close enough to make out what was fresh from something recently passed versus what was currently cowering in the bush, but she did recognize the metallic tang of blood, faint though it was. Maybe the animal was just a little banged up?

In any case, she’d just solidified her plans for however long this took.

Monica slung her bag around to her front to sift through its contents. Now where was... Aha! She triumphantly produced a stick of string cheese that only looked a little smushed from part of a day in her bag. “Everybody likes cheese.” Not exactly true, but she’d yet to live with a four-legged critter not hell-bent on stealing cheese if they knew it was on her plate.

She drew within arm’s reach of the woman and crouched down, extending the cheese stick out in offering. “We should think about how we’re gonna get it to a vet, if it’s hurt.” It was the middle of summer, far too warm for Monica to have a jacket on her to wrap the critter up in, and neither of them appeared to have anything large enough to carry anything for any kind of distance, bags notwithstanding.

Trevor laughed along with her, glad to see her sense of humor matched his– at least when it came to the expense of their mutual friend. “I don’t know if he would, but I also don’t know what I would do if he did.” He shook his head as if resolutely. “Better not to test it!”

He followed her eyes back down to the cart. What had his plan been? “Do you mean plan A or plan B? Plan A had been to stand here pathetically like a hitchhiker ‘til some good Samaritan offered to lift it for me. Plan B was gonna be attempting it solo and hopefully not shattering the whole thing at once. But if you’re offering, I guess the plan worked,” he cracked a grin. “I wouldn’t mind the help getting it out of the cart at least. Once I have a better grip it shouldn’t be too heavy.”

“I wouldn’t say you were standing pathetically,” Monica ribbed, her mouth quirking up into a sly smile, “just a little lost.” 

Some of her skepticism about him carrying the TV on his own remained, visible in the way she looked between it and him again. “Four hands are better than two, for maneuvering,” she offered. The box said it was a 50-inch flat screen, and while she figured a grown man could manage the weight of it without much trouble, she also knew that that box was going to be an awkward carry.

It occurred to her, suddenly, that Trevor probably still had no idea that she wasn’t human. It had yet to come up, and while she’d had the benefit of years of coaxing stories of home from Monty to know that Trevor knew about the supernatural, Trevor didn’t have the same ground to stand on when it came to her. She could just come out and say it... but that wouldn’t be as fun as taking the brunt of the TV’s weight with ease and letting him wonder for a bit.

“I can brace the cart and take the bottom?”

Heather was impressed by the woman’s reflexes, that she had caught it before it even hit the ground. She gave the dog a glance, hoping the excited retriever didn’t approach her. She wasn’t scared of dogs, but she did not appreciate when they jumped up on her. Her gaze then followed the frisbee as it made its way back to the college students, who caught it then went straight back to their game. 

Turning back, she recognized the woman as the one who she had the awkward encounter with during the earthquake. “Maybe so, but they should still be more careful. Nice reflexes, by the way.”

Monica reeled Roscoe into to return to a heel as she wandered the few steps it took to bring herself and the other woman within comfortable conversational distance, prompting the dog to sit when she stopped. She hummed thoughtfully, regarding the students as they tossed the frisbee around. “I guess it’d be nice if they’d at least looked a little sorry.” But she was in a good mood, and it hadn’t really hurt, so she wouldn’t hold it against them.

She did recognize the other woman from the earthquake, she wasn’t going to be the first to mention it, since things were starting off amicably.

“Thanks!” she chirped in answer to the compliment. “Yours must be pretty good too, to have gotten out of the way. I didn’t even seen it coming.”

“I just don’t understand why you want to be in the sticker bush,” Jenny huffed, on her knees in front of said bush, peering through the dark hollow that a whimpering animal found itself in. It wasn’t completely clear what animal it was, but it was clearly in pain and if Jenny just left it she just knew she’d regret it. Perhaps impatiently and without much forethought, Jenny reached an arm into the bush, thorns lightly digging into her skin, but her whitelighter resistance protected her from the tiny scratches and she could always heal the worst of it later. Or keep it, like battle scars.

“Stop right there, please,” she said firmly to the approaching person, her eyes still on the bush, but her free hand up in a universal stop sign while the other was elbow deep in the plant. “Don’t scare it off. I’ve already been here a half hour.” 

“Hey, are you–” alright, Monica would have finished, were it not for the woman’s raised hand and request. Not someone in distress, then. It was only after the woman’s ‘Don’t scare it off’ that Monica strained to listen for said ‘it’. From within the bush, she could make out a wild, rapid little heartbeat.

Her mouth opened in a silent oh of understanding. It was probably for the best that she’d been asked to stop, then; the presence of a werecreature probably wouldn’t do the woman any favors in coaxing out whatever panicked critter had claimed the bush as a hiding spot. Half an hour, though. That was a long time to sit and wait and comfort your average city-dwelling animal. Especially when part of that plan involved sticking arms in after it. “I dunno if reaching in after it is gonna help, if it’s scared,” she cautioned. “What if it bites you?” She knew what her plan would be, but she also knew she had her were-healing on her side.

Trevor knew nothing about the rules of the Navy but he shrugged and nodded. It made sense to him. He’d always heard the military was strict in its dress code, but there were also many desk jobs that made people do the same. Not that that was any reason for his own lack of tattoos. 

“Glad you clarified that because that was not the image I needed to keep me up at night,” he laughed, both at her face as much as at himself for having asked. “That’s not a half bad plan, you’re right. Swimming sounds like a much more plausible way to see them than ‘Monica told me about your ten tattoos, now strip.’”

Trevor’s delivery just as much as the words themselves sent Monica into a fit of laughter. Now strip. “What, you don’t think he’d go for it?” she couldn’t help but ask, even though the both knew the answer to that. The last of her giggles faded with a sigh, and her gaze dropped back down to the television in the shopping cart.

“So what’s your plan with this, exactly?” she prompted, nodding down to the box. Actually, while she’d meant more in the long term, she considered the television for a moment, then looked back up to Trevor. What had his plan for lifting it been? “Diiiid you maybe want a hand getting it in your car?”

Dominic had thought that she was letting the casual conversation drop, but returned to attention when she continued. He laughed. “Good luck with that. Have you been trying to sell magic shows for a while now?” he joked. 

With a friendly smile, he gave his name as well. “Dominic. Nice to meet you, Monica.” She seemed around his age, but he couldn’t be expected to remember everyone even with how small Edgewood was. They also got a surprising amount of people moving in all of the time.

“Thanks,” Monica returned with a laugh of her own. “Only since I heard there would be a few here. So I guess that depends on what you’d consider ‘a while’.” It wasn’t nearly as long as she’d been trying to convince Monty to branch out on social media, but it had stretched out for longer than her attempts to convince him that they should absolutely order barbecue for a few days from somewhere with a proper grill, since they didn’t have one of their own. So it was all relative, really.

“Nice to meet you too, Dominic.” A pointed throat clearing from one of the other audience members had her grimacing apologetically. Technically, they were at the back, and there was a whole lot of noise from the rest of the festival... but they were standing within the viewing area, and not to mention, Dominic had seemed rather invested in the show before she’d pulled his attention away... “Sorry,” she offered, though her tone still carried notes of amusement, “I can be quiet.”

“Ten? Holy crap he must have all them really well hidden, I never realized he’d gotten them.” Had Monty ever talked about wanting to get tattoos? Trevor couldn’t remember at this point. 

Trevor couldn’t help but snort in response to her words and the mental picture she painted. Fuck Luck. “Yeah that checks out. That sounds exactly like the type of thing he would do. He always had a flair for the dramatic.” Trevor shook his head, still laughing. “Should I even ask where he has this particular piece or should I just assume its on his ass or something?”  

“That would be a mixture of old regulations and the general outlook of Naval command on tattoos. If you want ink, but you wanna keep getting promoted, it’s better to keep it hidden.” Monica herself was no stranger to that. “But it’s all,” she lifted a hand to gesture broadly around her chest, “mostly up here, just like, where a short-sleeve shirt covers it all.”