two birds | arcane viktor ♡

two birds meet

I couldn't have guessed since the place seemed like it belonged to Piltover, but the pollution gave it away. We don't have this much chemicals in our waters in Piltover.

My line of thoughts were disrupted when a random girl bumped into my shoulders. She immediately apologized, which I replied with a shy nod. I turned my head to where she climbed from, noticing there's one last area to be discovered. I slid down the large, smooth rock and used my sweaty hands to secure my place on it.

Before I was able to continue my way down, I caught a glimpse of a boy sitting just beside the river below me. I observe him as he twisted a piece of metal inserted into what seemed like a boat. He has a dark brown hair and clothes that looked like different fabrics sewn together. I leaned near the ledge to take a closer look, what is he doing?

He looked up. I gasped and hid out of instinct, my heart pounding at the sudden scare. Did he see me?

I grabbed the edge of the cliff and slowly peeked from behind the ground, he was already looking at where I was, catching my eyes when I revealed myself. We both stared at each other, frozen in place before his hands moved and pulled on the metal that was attached on his boat. From where I was I could see how it started shaking, I squinted my eyes and let my head hang out from the cliff to take a closer look. His eye lowered to take a glance at the object on his hand and then back at me.

I gave him a smile, which he awkwardly returned. He seems friendly.

His face disappeared as I stood up from the ground to make my way to him, jumping on the rocks over the waters then climbing down to the land. His eyes followed me while I approached and sat down next to him.

"Hi!"

"Hello."

I moved closer, examining the details on the boat. He slightly leaned back from me, eyes glancing around rapidly.

"Wow... it's so well-made." I tilted my head to take a look at the side of it, "Where did you buy this?"

"Uhm," he cleared his throat before speaking, "I made it."

My eyes lightened up. "You did?"

He nodded. I inhaled from my mouth, breath taken away by the thought of him being able to create something that looks complicated.

"That's amazing...how were you able do it?"

"Well, I..." He started explaining how he created it, including the materials and the tools used. It took all the interest out of me focusing on how he was describing the steps on how he made it, he only had scraps as materials he still made it possible? Wow. I got distracted from my thoughts when I noticed the way he was talking, I got curious enough to ask a question.

"What happened to your voice?"

"Huh?" He paused, taken aback by my question, he raised his hand to touch his throat.

"You're pronouncing your words weird."

"O-Oh...uhm," he blinked multiple times, not knowing how to react. "It's my accent..."

"Ohhh!" My mouth formed an 'o' shape. "So that's how accents sound like. I've never heard of it before."

"You don't have people with accents in Piltover?" He furrowed his eyebrows.

"I never really go out much—wait, how did you know I'm from Piltover?"

With his eyebrow raised at me, he looked at me up and down and spoke, "No person from here would dress like you."

My eyelids dropped halfway, lips fell into a line. "What do you even mean by that." It wasn't a question. It kind of makes sense, though. Compared to his clothes I guess it's not that hard to know I'm from Piltover because of how painfully fancy my elementary school uniform is.

He pursed his lips as if holding back a smile, then turned his attention back to what he was holding. Like he did earlier when I first saw him, he inserted a piece of metal into a hole in the boat and twisted it, then pulling it out. I could now see the gears rotating, helping the mechanics work together to make the wheels of it move.

"Will it work on water?"

He shrugged, and adjusted his position to raise the boat as it hovers above the river. He dropped it. The wheels did its job and it moved through the waters smoothly, the sound of splashing being heard.

Eyes following the boat, he grabbed the wooden cane that used to lay down between us and used it to help himself stand up.

Oh. My eyes darted down to his legs as I watched him walk to catch up with the boat. I didn't even notice it at first.

I stood up and picked up my pace to follow the boat too. It was accelerating as it got closer the the downward curve of the water inside the dark cave infront of us. I've already passed by him while he was struggling to keep his pace, I started to walk a little faster, eyes still on the boat.

"It's going to fall down there!" He was already way behind me when I spoke loudly, hearing him struggle with his uneven foosteps. I turned my head to look at him then back at the boat, he's not gonna make it. I raised my arms as an attempt to reach for it but it was swimming a lot faster towards the rocky cave.

I heard a yelp and a loud thump behind me. I immediately stopped running and turned around, taking a sharp inward breath at the sight of the boy face down on the ground.

I ran to him, grabbing his arm to pull him up. "Are you alright?" Crouching down to take the wooden stick from the ground, he sighed and adjusted his posture. "I'm okay."

"What...happened? With your leg."

"I was born with it..." He tilted his head down to look at his right leg. "They didn't want to play with me," He signaled at the hills far beside us. He must be talking about the kids earlier.

"I couldn't run around and swim with them, because of this." Raising his leg, he moved it a little to show the limp.

I could feel my chest hurt, although I didn't have a bad leg, I could sympathize with him to the part where no kids wanted to play with him. "The kids in my school didn't want to play with me as well. Uhm, they said I talk a lot about uninteresting things and that it's annoying. Which is true, I guess." I let out a small laugh. When he didn't laugh too, I cleared my throat.

"Can we be friends?" His eyes brightened, raising his eyebrows.

"Friends?"

"Yeah! If they don't want to play with us, we can just hang out with each other. Like friends!"

This is the first time I'm asking someone to be my friend. Usually, whenever I approach someone in school it's either I'm asking for help or I'm just there to talk about future technologies and my ideas. It drove them away because they weren't interested in those kind of topics yet, but it still made me feel lonely for a while. Now that I found someone who seem to have the same interest as me, I don't want to let go of the chance to be friends with him.

His eyes glowed under the sun, the upward curve of his lips emphasized his round cheeks.

"Okay, we can be friends."