Gleaming Stones of the Sun

V - BLUE SEEING RED

Chapter Synopsis:

Christine becomes friends with Lucas easily. Jenny says it's fate.

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September 2017

As far as I could remember, my life had always been odd.

Maybe not Robby-weird, but weird enough. Jenny even confirmed this statement as I called out to her when she was sitting on my dining table one fine evening, scowling at an online fanfiction (she claimed that she didn't like the cheesy ones, but she kept reading them anyway), "Hey, Jen!"

"What?" she yelled back.

"Do you think my life is weird?" I shouted again.

"Not really!" she shouted back-which made me stare at her from the living room couch not nine feet away.

"Wait," I frowned at her, "you don't think so?"

"Nope." Jenny said this with a cheeky plop on the p. "I think it's an enormous cluster-fuck." And she laughed boisterously as she would every time she managed to make fun of me.

"I walked right into that one," I muttered to myself.

"Damned right you did." She was still laughing, wiping tears from her eyes. "Too easy, Christine, too easy."

"Whatever, Jen."

"What brought this on?"

I shrugged nonchalantly.

But Jen, being the part-time Oracle of Samas that she was, narrowed her eyes and saw through my flawless nonchalance. "Is this about Lucas?" When I didn't say anything, just continued munching on my seaweed chips, she exclaimed loudly, "I freaking knew it! I called this crap from minute one!"

I knitted my eyebrows, puzzled. "What crap?"

She huffed impatiently. "You and Lucas, honey. What else? It's fate."

"What?" Now I was scowling at her. "No, it's not."

"God, grant me patience to deal with stubborn-asses on daily basis. Of course, it is, Christine. The both of you have each other's soul-streak. Your souls are bound to each other. What other proof do you need?"

"Have you been reading Twilight fanfiction again?"

"It was one time!" she shouted in outrage. "One time!"

"It's not about Lucas," I told her with deliberate slowness, in case she couldn't understand English, "It's my life in general."

"Your whole life in general as of late is Lucas."

"That's absolutely untrue."

"Oh yeah? Then, what have you guys been doing this past month?"

I opened my mouth, planning to rebuff that statement, then finding that I couldn't because she was right. The thing was those past few weeks was a strange time for me. The day after I'd shouted at Lucas that I didn't want to have anything to do with him, I'd expected him to leave me alone, only to find out that it wasn't at all what he did. In fact, what happened next was the total opposite.

When I arrived at school with rolls of papers for art project (Jenny's, not mine), he was there as I was huffing and puffing, trying to open my locker. Without even a word of hey he took the rolls of papers from me and gestured for me to open my locker impatiently, which I replied with a wordless scowl. After I'd finished putting the papers away, he rolled his deep violet eyes at me and said, "Strong and independent young woman."

I kicked him on the shin, making him yelp.

"What's that for?" Lucas rubbed his shin, though I was pretty certain it was due to surprise more than pain. I didn't believe he was even capable of feeling pain, not after the spectacle he'd done with Robby.

I gave him a bored look. "For being an ass."

His eyes glinted silver menacingly-or it would be if it didn't remind me of white pearl under the sun, which was to say: pretty. "You know, Christine, all of the people in this school has zero respect for me. Their insolence is unbelievable, but the level of yours is staggering. Who kicks a god in the shin? Who does that? Didn't I tell you I'm a god?"

"You did," I agreed empathetically, "and I do."

"I'm a god!" Lucas shouted indignantly.

"You keep saying that like it's supposed to mean something."

"Because it does!"

I gave him the most unimpressed look I had. "Not around here, it doesn't. Now I have class, Lucas, if you'll excuse me." I saw the sour look on his face as I passed him by, but right at that moment, I felt something-something so heavy that I couldn't ignore it. The feeling was an overwhelming sense of disappointment with a tinge of frustration.

I froze on my step then, watching Lucas, but his scowl was aimed at the floor. That expression looked uncomfortably familiar-I recognized it as one I usually wore after I'd spoken with my dad: my face when I'd tried my best only to be brushed off. I couldn't have that. I couldn't stand the thought that I'd ever made anyone feel that way.

I cleared my throat until he looked back to me. I was a head shorter than him and, at that moment, it felt so right-the feeling was so intense I almost bailed because of the utter rightness of it-but I set it aside. Instead, I told him, "Um, thanks for helping me. You're actually not so bad, Lucas. Just, you know," I gestured a tiny little thing using my index finger and thumb, "a tad bit uptight. Maybe we need to work on that."

All of a sudden there was this lightness surging inside me, filling me up with a dizzying joy I almost burst with it-and it confused me for a second where the feeling came from, because it sure didn't feel like mine-but then I saw Lucas' grin and it looked like a light at the end of a dark tunnel full of longing and ache.

When he let out this husky, bashful laugh the light grew brighter and brighter until I was enveloped by warmth, so much warmth that it felt like coming home. He said, "You're welcome." And it was irrational how much I wanted to hold him in my arms, but I wanted to, I didn't even know why, so I told him I'd see him later before I did something stupid like actually hugging him in school hallways.

He came along with me during lunch break, not even bothering with a greeting, and I didn't question him at all. I just let him tag along, even as Jenny, Henry and the others threw me an odd look that I ignored, asking Lucas what he wanted to eat and what he was usually doing at home after school. He was still smiling as he ate and talked to me (he apparently liked playing his Nintendo Switch on his spare time. A god playing Nintendo. That should be a hell-I mean, heaven-of endorsement). His eerie light blue hair started to float at one point until he caught himself and it limped back down.

Lucas was there when I was going home, waiting in front of my locker, and I wondered if he didn't have anything better to do, at least until I realized that he probably didn't have any other friends at school carrying the reputation that he had, so again, I let him tag along. It wasn't until I opened the driver's side of my car that I realized he was still smiling at me. I asked him, "What?"

He cleared his throat. "It's nothing. It's just. You said earlier: we need to work on that. It's pretty nice." Maybe he could see from my face that I didn't remember whatever it was he was talking about because he was shrugging and threw a careless "See you tomorrow." over his shoulder before running back to school.

When I got into the car, I found myself shocked by how easy it was to spend time with Lucas. It felt like we'd been friends for years instead of hours.

Days and days after that passed basically the same. Lucas came with me whenever he didn't have a class and sat with me and we would talk about unimportant things. He didn't talk when I was bantering with Jenny and Liz as I usually did unless he was being spoken to directly-which was weird. He even came by to my house, knocking, on weekends like he knew I'd be alone anyway and we'd watch a marathon of Greek god series which was, as he pointed out, very inaccurate, but entertaining nevertheless.

The only time he wasn't with me was when there were phone calls from Silla, the head of his godly family, which he picked up with scrunched face and hung up with a long sigh each time.

"Godly chores?" I asked him from where I was sitting on the couch, which earned me a bark of laughter I couldn't help but smile at.

"They are chores, alright."

"Poor, Lucas, being forced to wash his own godly laundry."

The god flipped me off.

I looked at the time. It was almost midnight. "You'd better go now if you want to catch that beauty sleep you told me about."

He chuckled this time, shaking his head. "Christine, you're incorrigible." Then, he disappeared with a brief whirl of cold wind without a word of goodbye, which bothered me at first, but not anymore after he began knocking on my front door the next morning each time.

When he had nothing else to do, he would help me do my house chores or even help my aunt cook-which my aunt approved delightfully, murmuring something like, what a great young man.

A combat god helping out domestic chores. Imagine that.

For the past few weeks this had become a routine and I couldn't even begin to comprehend how it was possible to feel so at ease so effortlessly, I started to get paranoid that this was just a calm before storm, that I was just waiting for the shoe to drop.

I didn't tell this to Jenny, who was looking so smug, saying, "Thought so."

"We're just hanging out," I told her.

"Sure, you do."

"And anyway, my life is weird enough as it is."

"No, it's not. Christine, you can't-" When Jenny stopped abruptly, I got the prickly chill on the base of my neck that I had every time a prophecy was coming. Jenny opened her eyes then; they were shining white like a pair of flashlight. From her mouth came the overlapping voices, speaking in ancient language, "Daughter of a blessed curse / Open eyes to faith and lies / Accept the shield and converse / Your destiny or your demise-just brush off any chances coming toward you just because-whoa, the room is spinning. Did I just spout out a prophecy or something?"

I buried my face into my hands and exhaled a long, long sigh.

*