the new year

fifty-eight

"Just tell us already tree, I'm gonna piss myself in anticipation if you don't," Elias hurried her. He hated the fact that they always got so nervous about things like this because they were all so talented and had no reason to be nervous, their family and friends were their biggest supporters minus Oak's very own fanboy, Harrison.

"Fine, fine, sorry," Oak replied a rushed apology with her hands up in a surrender position "We were thinking of calling it lasers," She finally told them, her eyes darting quickly down to her ring cladded fingers, lifting and rotating them anxiously. She didn't know why she was feeling so anxious about telling them considering they were her best friends and she trusted them with all of her being, it's just in the band they had never really done anything like this before and it made it more nerve-exhilarating.

"Shit me, I'm so excited!" Harper squealed so high-pitched the rest of the group wouldn't be surprised if dogs all across Manchester could hear it, it was enough to shatter all of their eardrums.

"Obviously, you decide whether or not you speak Nepali or Dhivehi and for you Eli you can speak Greek or you can speak one of the other languages you know," Joe interjected, adding more information with a playful roll of his eyes at the end.

"Listen here, blondie, it isn't my fault I'm highly intellectual," Elias joked back with a scoff and another flip of his hair, which was pretty short in all honesty so it didn't really work in his whole favour.

"I mean I am also an intellectual," Joe defended himself, pushing his glasses down the bridge of his nose so he could look the brown-haired man in the eyes as he said it.

"I don't doubt that Joseph but you can only say three words in Swedish," Elias quipped back playfully making Joe act mock offended as he gasped dramatically and placed his right hand on his heart like Eli's words had just stung him. Eli knew it wasn't true, Joe was actually pretty good at Swedish, he learnt how to speak it because of his granddad--honestly, Elias wouldn't even question him if he said he was speaking it but wasn't, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

"That's not true actually, I know many a word, I am basically fluent. . ." He continued to defend himself jokingly, he knew a lot of Swedish he just rarely spoke it nowadays. "So du kan stänga fan," Joe said in his best Swedish accent, he mainly used it to insult his friends, which wasn't nice but they always had great banter. (So you can shut the hell up)

"I have no idea what you just said but I am offended and therefore prépei na me afíseis móna," Elias responded just as dramatically acting like he was fake crying as he told Joe to leave him alone in Greek, all of them often did this to confuse the others. Oak had picked up bits of all of their languages but not enough to form a coherent sentence, the only language of her friends' she was more confident with was Greek and the only language she really knew was parts of Italian because of her job.

Just as Eli said his beautiful words in Greek a middle-aged man who was retrieving his dog from walking up to the group caught wing of the conversation and turned his nose up in the air and spat out his words "You sorts of people disgust me!" The venom behind his tone was rather frightening.

They all knew where this was going already, there wasn't that many people who would bother saying anything so when someone did it often wasn't for a good reason. "All you immigrants coming into my country and stealing our jobs," He said with such toxicity, pointing to himself like he was a victim of something. Nobody's taking your job if you didn't have one in the first place. "If you live 'ere at least speak in fucking English, you uneducated pricks. . ." He hissed out his words, still glaring at the group like they were nothing but dirt on the ground.

Oak cleared her throat and stood from her position brushing her trousers down from the grass that was probably there and then extended her hand to him politely "Hi, I'm Oak," She introduced herself to the balding man who was grabbing hold of his dogs collar tightly almost choking the poor thing. The man looked down and Oak's outstretched hand and turned his head away like the thought of shaking her hand repulsed him and she guessed the reason was because he assumed that all of the people here weren't English, disgusting human.