Garden's Musings

Greif stared at Lowrie, who was, as best he could, still raising his hands up as if to say ‘why not?’. She pinched the bridge of her nose, Lowrie’s hands starting to lower, clearly a bit discouraged from her reaction. “I mean, uh, if it’s such a bad idea…” His bravado was quickly disappearing, his hands now lowered, one leaning on her desk. “It’s just, the school year has been so busy, and you’ve been helping the kids after class so much that we haven’t really had any dates lately and it’s our anniversary…”

“Wait, it's our anniversary?” Greif looked up suddenly, putting down her red pen for corrections. “I thought it was a couple of weeks away…”

“Nope, it’s today.” Lowrie smiled weakly, Greif standing and trying to put things away.

“Lowrie I’m sorry, it completely escaped me. I…I can grade these papers another time, let’s go to the forest for a date or something.” Lowrie smiled at this and shook his head, putting a hand on hers to stop her. The smile had turned into a mischievous grin.

“It will be super dark by the time we get to the forest…anyways grading these papers are super important to you, so…we could have fun with it.” He smirked, tilting his head towards her chair. It was pretty easy to get what he was implying, actually earning him the rare flushed cheeks from Greif.

“We can’t have sex in here, what if a student walks in?!” Her voice was a hard whisper, her eyes glancing over at the door.

“No worries, I locked it earlier~” Lowrie leaned in to kiss her, his hand going down to her skirt. “Let’s just lift this up and have a little quickie~” Greif glanced at the door again, before leaning into the kiss, and slowly undoing Lowrie’s pants. Lowerie grinned to himself, pretty sure he had locked the door.

Greif let out a loud moan, her mug of pens and pencils crashing to the floor to join the papers there. The two were far too involved with one another to hear the knock and the click as the door swung open. “Ms. Greif I got a question about my math homework.” Yosafire walked in, carefree as always with Froze right on her tail.

“Sorry I tried to tutor her myself, but she isn’t…” Froze trailed off her words as she found two of their teachers in the middle of…bonding. She slapped a hand over Yosafire’s eyes, who had yet to really see what was happening. “SORRY!” Froze dragged Yosafire out of the room, the angel’s face bright red as Yosafire nearly whined about not being able to see what was happening.

“Do I usually care about things like that, Lzet?” Reficul responded, sighing, before taking his hand. She appreciated always having one lover by her side; it made a lot of the monotony bearable. If she could only have the added privilege of bullying Ivlis in those meetings, that would be the proverbial icing on the devil cake as it were.

“No, but you were the one that got most of those devils to even join, and that should count for your undivided attention in these meetings.” Lzet shook his head, realizing that it was a bit hopeless to actually convince her to change her ways. The fact that she hadn’t said another word in response tipped his train of thought to look at her a bit more carefully. “You’re more antsy than usual to get home, is everything okay?”

“Everything is perfect, which is why I want to get home.” She rolled her eyes, kissing his cheek and stealing the notes that he was holding. “Thank you for these. I’ll review them later.”

“I’m not done with them, yet.” Lzet quickly took them back, trying to get them organized again. Reficul smirked and rolled her eyes at him, feeling a general calm come over her when they eventually began to near the castle. When they “landed” Reficul was barely using her feet at this point, moving through doorways and halls before finding Sin and tackling her from behind. Sin remained unmoved as she smiled and reached behind her back to Reficul, scooping her wife up into her arms and kissing her head repeatedly. 

“Oh my, did something happen at the meeting?” Sin smiled warmly and looked at Lzet, opening up her arms for him as well. He sighed as he was accepted into the embrace, Reficul getting herself comfortable.

“No, nothing happened. That’s the problem. It’s boring and dull and I wanted to be here with you.” Reficul huffed, pulling her wife and lover close to her, seeming to melt between the two.

“You’re so silly today.” Sin giggled gently, wrapping around the two. Lzet did struggle to get away slightly, but gave in quickly. The notes of the meeting could wait, he guessed. “You look tired, Refi.”

“I am.” Reficul could barely speak now, her eyes shut to mere slits as she felt herself grow even more comfortable. Sin smiled gently, looking at Lzet whose eyelids were also growing heavy.

“I’d be lying to you if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind at all…” Idate didn’t really want to lie to his best friend, his only friend. “But no, I’m not gonna. They look…pretty happy together in that stupid fucking boat.”

“Maybe you should go and apologize?” Rock looked away again as Idate stared at him in shock. “Look man, I’m serious. You’re clearly seething on the inside right now, and it’s really starting to show. So go apologize and quit being a shit head, you shit head.” Idate was silent as he looked at the boat again, seeing the bright and happy face of Shirogane and the smile of Rocma. He sighed, slowly climbing up from where he was sitting and heading into the water. He could already tell in his gut that this wasn’t going to end well, but what harm was there in humoring his friend just this once?

Over at the boat Shirogane laughed a bit as it rocked again, Rocma having made another stupid crude joke. As he was giggling, he watched as her cheeky smile faded, her eyes laser focused on something in the water. He turned his head, seeing the fin slowly making its way over to them. He yelped, standing and causing the boat to rock even more. 

“Shiro don’t!” Rocma shouted as she stood, the boat completely unstable now. Shirogane went to grab Rocma as the boat suddenly flipped. Shirogane started to swim down to try and get Rocma when his very heavy tackle box cracked the back of his skull. Blood was in the water, his vision slowly starting to bleed into black. Rocma was still sinking, her eyes wide in terror. Shirogane couldn’t see much as he reached out to grab her, when another strong hand grabbed his arm and yanked him forward. He tried to turn his head, seeing Idate grabbing his arm. He wanted to panic but the fog from the tackle box was still there and he was more limp than anything.

Idate swam forward a bit faster, finally grabbing Rocma’s dress and yanking her towards the surface. She instinctively swiped at him with her claws, her own panic starting to set in as her lungs started to burn. Her claws suddenly hit paydirt however, as more blood blossomed in the water, long marks across Idate’s face now. The orca scowled a bit, but didn’t let her go, the two lovebirds being not so gracefully hurled onto shore. 

Rocma coughed up a fair bit of water before she turned to Shirogane whose head was still bleeding a bit. She didn’t know what to do, before turning as she heard water splash. She stood tall, her claws ready to slash open Idate’s gut as he climbed onto the berg. He looked at her, his face  showing more of a confused expression if anything. 

“Are you fucking blind?! Get him to Yukisada numbnuts!” He snapped at her, tossing his cigarette away as blood ran down his own face. Rocma stared longer, more confused and stunned than anything. Idate groaned, grabbing the both of them and dragging them, easily, to Yukisada’s igloo.

~~~~~~

Idate winced a bit as more alcohol was pressed against the light gashes in his face. He would have preferred to drink it, but the owl wasn’t going to let him, the prick, due to it being a blood thinner or something. He glanced over at Rocma, who was wrapped in multiple blankets and towels, lording over Shirogane who was laying on her lap. A long and uncomfortable silence fell over the room as Yukisada did his work fixing everyone up. 

“Is he… the wolf, I mean. Is he gonna be okay?” Idate finally spoke, hissing and swearing a bit as he felt the swab press against the cuts again.

“Yes, he is.” Yukisada sighed slightly, grabbing some wrappings to wrap around Idate’s face. “Hold still, please.”

“Why the hell did you jump us?” Rocma snarled, Idate snorting in response.

“Jump you? I was just coming over to say hi.” Idate flashed a casual grin, his hand instinctively feeling around for his smokes and lighter. 

“Cut the bullshit!” shouted Rocma, whose eyes were full of blistering fury, which ended up causing Idate to actually fall quiet. That bit came as a genuine surprise to Rocma while she reached down and reflexively rested a hand across Shirogane’s chest in a protective gesture. “Your swimming up scared the hell out of him and the boat tipped. The only reason you were going to come over would be to harass us. Why?”

“If I was going to harass you two, why the hell would I save you, especially after you slashed up my face?” said Idate as he turned his head to snap, only to get pulled back by Yukisada.

“I……I don’t know.” responded Rocma. She went a bit quiet, Idate doing much of the same. She took a moment to gather her thoughts to choose her words carefully. “Why did you save us?” She finally asked after the tension increased tenfold.

“Because I treated you both like shit. It took me a bit of time to realize that but now that I do, I feel shitty about how I treated the both of you.” said Idate frowning. The red of his blood began to return unpleasant memories of that awful red sea. “I was just coming over to apologize, that’s all.” The silence from Rocma was deafening, Yukisada trying to remain silent between the two of them while the orca spilled his proverbial guts to the polar bear across the room.  

“Apologize?” Shirogane spoke up, slowly sitting up. Rocma’s head shot down to look at him while she tried to hold him down, but he smiled a bit. “I’m okay, I promise.” He leaned against  her, his head still swimming with vertigo and a mild smell of almonds in the room. “Why? Why on earth would I accept an apology from someone like you? You, who’s done nothing but bully and pick on me for as long as I can remember.” Idate winced a bit as he took the words to the face, not being able to respond with much of anything in return. Shirogane was correct, and he had no words that could be given as a valid response. 

“My, uh…my last little bender ended…badly. And I realized that I…didn’t have anyone that wanted me back. So,” Idate cleared his dry throat audibly, while Yukisada double checked the wrappings to make sure they were secure. Shirogane was a bit stunned into silence while  he slowly was able to support his own weight. Both Rocma and Yukisada tried to stop him but he stumbled slightly across the room before he sat down next to Idate. Up close he could see that he wasn’t lying, and that something really bad had happened to the orca while he was gone.

“The things you’ve done, not just to me but to a lot of people here on the berg…I don’t think it’s any surprise when I say that it’s going to be a long road to get anyone to trust you.” Shirogane stared at the side of Idate’s head, the orca not being able to really look him in the eye. 

“I know.” mumbled Idate. He was right, and that was probably the part that hurt the most. The two seemed to let the silence hang in the air while Rocma stood frozen for a moment, not liking the idea of Shirogane being within strangling distance of the orca.

“Thank you for…saving us. Rocma and I, I mean…” Shirogane smiled slightly. “Honestly, I thought you were coming over because you liked her and were going to beat me up…” A small smile could be seen as Idate looked at Shirogane out of the side of his eye.