#enzi

“Uh… there. Look, that line kind of looks like it could be horns right?” She tried faintly to gesture up as she envisioned the invisible lines connecting the stars like a dot-to-dot. To her relief, N made a sound of delighted interest, wriggling his legs about excitedly as he shifted beside her.

“Oooh, yeah! And look, there’s its nose! What a handsome fella!” He beamed. “See? You totally are good at this.”

The praise made Uzi’s heart lighten and her lips curled upward more than she thought possible. She gave his hand a squeeze, and felt as his digits squeezed hers back in turn.

They must have spent over an hour laying there, pointing out patterns and making shapes and stories out of them. Battles between highland cows and cyborg kangaroos, of empires rising and falling, and long-lost, legendary firearms embedded in impenetrable stones.

N was good at storytelling. Probably because he had lived in a library once, Uzi thought, he must have absorbed a lot of narrative skills simply by reading and re-reading the many books around him. It was so endearing, watching him get so excited, stammering over his words as they tried to leave his mouth faster than his tongue could articulate them.

“They always looked so serious though, y’know? I never really got why.”

“I mean… from what I saw, they were all weird and old-timey. They probably wanted to live like humans did before fun was invented.” Uzi glanced out back in the direction of the bunker sheepishly. “Speaking of old-timey… this is fun and like, cute and all, but I don’t think anyone actually dances like this anymore.”

“Oh, really?” N asked, quirking his head slightly. There was a sadness in his eyes, though he seemed to be hamming it up for her. “Waltz is dead?”

Uzi snorted, then shook her head pensively. “’Fraid so, buddy.”

“Aw, dang…”

“But hey, it’s fine. I think this is like… basically just a slow dance on an oil-frenzy. And I think slow dancing is still socially acceptable, or whatever.”

“Oh… so we should just like… slow it down?” After a brief pause, N let their pace ease back into something Uzi could far more easily keep up with, smaller steps, languid now, and she watched his expression change to something far more wistful as they spiralled around each other slowly.

“Huh… this is nice too,” he said quieter. “Um… Can I hold you closer? I think I’ve seen people do that before.”