Skyward: Stories from the Stars

Puzzles!

Sorry, this is not "dinner party part 2" but I think it's cute nonetheless :) . It takes place in the deep caverns (Jorgen's Family Manor) and his parents are already dead (sorry if that was a spoiler to some, happens in Evershore).

Spensa POV

I could stop a delver, make it cry tears of sorrow and fear when it saw me, could hear what the enemy was doing with my mind, which was why I was so scudding angry when they put me and Jorgen on a mandatory R&R. It didn't even make sense to put Jorgen on R&R, him being the Admiral of the DDF but apparently Cobb and Hesho were going to work together to be the admiral of the DDF while Jorgen was out.

"Spensa!" Called Jorgen out of a living room. Yeah, you heard me right, 'a living room,' Jerface's house had 5. Well really his house had a living room, a sitting room, a drawing room, a lounge, and a parlor, but they just all looked like scudding living rooms.

I walked into this one—officially called the drawing room, though we did no art in there—and saw that the coffee table was set out with a bunch of tiny pieces that had bumps and indents on the edges. On these pieces there were tiny little picture fragments. On the end of the coffee table farther from the couch sat a box lid with a painting of the Nowhere on it, letting you see all of the fragments from an aerial view, the lightburst shining in the distance, and the air a orange pink.

"I don't know if you've seen one of these before, but it's what's called a puzzle." Said Jorgen, smiling and gesturing for me to sit down on the couch beside him.

I hadn't known what it was on sight but, yeah, now that he mentioned it I remembered the puzzles that I had learned about in school. They were a way people from old Earth relaxed. You would put together the pieces to make a picture.

I sat down beside him, as he started to separate the edged pieces into a pile and deftly fit them together to create one edge of a fragment. I took two pieces and started to jam them together and alas, they were not working properly.

"If you refuse to fit together that box will become your pyre as your fiery, puzzle-y death comes to pass and with no relatives or friends your cardboard body will rest in cold earth!" I said this vigorously, knowing that threats worked the best on inanimate objects.

Jorgen chucked beside me.

Jorgen POV

"Let me help," I said, chuckling at how Spensa-like that was to say and how she was so amazing nonetheless. I took her hands from their top and carefully placed one down, having her drop one piece, then I showed her how to place the piece she was still holding in from the top so that they interlocked together. Before I pulled away my hands I brought one hand up to my face and gently kissed the top of it. She looked at me, half smiling and half... another emotion that looked as if she wanted the puzzle box to become my pyre.

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A half an hour later Spensa flopped back onto the back of the couch, looking exhausted.

"This is so boring, can the picture just be finished already!" She groaned.

"Sorry, this is a 2,000 piece puzzle," I said, "it can take fifteen to twenty hours to finish."

"Or," said Spensa, smiling slyly. "I could just hyperjump all of the pieces into the correct spots."

"No, the point of the puzzle is to-" I cut off, seeing her grab the legs of the table and disappear. As my eyes opened from a blink she was back and lo, the puzzle was finished, the fragments each having different colors and landscapes, the lightburst a pure white with pink and orange light radiating off it.

"See how much less time that took," she said, poking my shoulder. I sighed, only vaguely knowing how she pulled off that trick: the had hyperjumed the table and almost all of the 2,000 pieces of the puzzle but the one I had been holding into the Nowhere and hyperjumped them out all at a different location to create the puzzle.

"The point of the puzzle isn't to take shortcuts, it's to work through your problem." I said, sighing again.

"But I was 'working through the problem' just in a different, quicker way."

"But you're not- you're not supposed to-" I stuttered, running my hands up my face and into my hair. "You are so annoying and stubborn sometimes!"

"You still love me for it," Spensa said a mischievous smile on her face.

I sighed again for, what, the tenth time, but the sincerity of my words surprised even me as I was trying to stay annoyed at her. "Yes, I love you all the more for it."

I put my arms around her pressing a kiss to her lips, she curled into me and kissed me back with her own ferocity and passion. The one piece that wasn't in the puzzle lay forgotten.

Sorry that it was kinda cringe but I got stuck halfway through and just kind of had to belt the rest out, I will start working on Dinner Party Part 2 now!