Less Than Alive: Still Kicking

Riots: They Start With A Word

“It’s just a leaf.”

I think it’s safe to say that all of us have had the experience of being scared out of our wits and jumping to the air. Yeah, that happened. Only I, being a manly man, gave out a shrill scream worthy of a two-year old.

“Whoa, calm down! You’re gonna call the whole neighbourhood down on us. Folks need their downtime you know. Gives them the occasion to contemplate just what they can do with their lives.”

Standing right beneath the post of one of the street lights was my favourite nihilist.

Count of times I’ve made an idiot of myself in front of a pretty girl: Six. I’m on a roll.

Happy End grinned at me, her smile hardly visible within the shadow cast by her hood. And yes, she was wearing a hoodie, one that was light brown and had a design over the front that read:  Aliens probably don’t exist. “Figured you’d pass by here eventually,” she said.

And then my mind broke. Simple logic would say that, by her statement, she was implying that she was waiting for me here. But logic and past experience dictated that females did not, in fact, do anything good to me.

“So, um, you decided to come?” I asked, trying to stand taller as if I hadn't just totally gone and embarrassed myself.

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I did. I mean, it’s probably going to end up being something really silly and I might regret it later, but, well, you never know unless you try, right?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah, I totally want to try things.”

One of her eyebrows arched, but her smile only grew. Somehow that was scarier than any other reaction she could have had. “Come on, kid, don’t get ahead of yourself.” She stood up and began walking. “I want to get there early, to check the place out a bit. I’ve got a hunch or two to follow, you know?”

“Um, yeah, sure,” I said as I galloped after her. Someone once said that you had to act cool and collected around women. That someone had never met Happy End.

By my estimate, we were still a good ten minutes away from the gathering. Ten minutes spent alone with a really cute girl of about my age. Ten minutes for me to say something crushingly stupid. “So, uh, Happy. Why are you so... you know, the way you are?” (Why is it that in my head, everything sounds dandy, but when my mouth opens only stupid comes out?)

“Um, genetic diversity? Or do you mean my personality?” she asked, somehow inserting so much bubbliness in her sentence that I feared for my sanity. “I guess.... Well, I don’t know, really. I like gardening,” she suddenly blurted out.

I blinked at her, trying to read her face through the material of her hood, but catching only a glimpse of redness on her cheeks. She continued, “Gardening is rather fun, if you’re into things like that. The flowers, the fresh air. Lots of time to think as you dig your hands into the mud. If you listen really, really hard, you can hear Earth whispering.”

And then things got deep.

“I listened. Stories and tales. The trees were old, much older than you or me. Some are even as old as our race. But the flowers are always young. So vibrant and strong, but they’re only there for a season at most. Then you have the rocks. They whisper the quietest, and they’re older still. But all of them, no matter how strong, die eventually. It got me thinking. Our life is short, really, really short.”

I nodded. The air was bitter, but sweet. Tiny puffs of fog escaped us with every breath, washing back as we coasted forward accompanied by only each other and the clack of our feet on the pavement. “So, you try to find happiness despite knowing all of that?” I said, giving in to the crazy. I mean, nature talking to her? Earth magic was a thing, but come on!