Isolated (Stardew Valley)

Chapter Thirteen

"LISTEN, YOU MAY be a jock, but I refuse to play your little games anymore!"

Alex let out a yelp as he heard my voice, jumping a little too high for someone who constantly boasted about being fearless. He spun around. Realizing that it was me, he cleared his throat.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, a little too innocently. He tossed the gridball between his hands. Back and forth.

"You know what I'm talking about," I said with a pointed look.

It was nearing the end of Summer and while I had made amends with Sebastian, awkwardness still filled the space with Alex. Neither of us had mentioned the night that both played through our heads whenever we looked at each other. Neither of us had spoken a whisper about the trace of a kiss lingering on our lips.

I had seen Alex walk to the beach earlier today and decided that it was the perfect time for a confrontation.

Of course, the beach was place where many confrontations happened. If I looked ahead, I could see the ends of the docks where Sebastian and I had stood under the trickling rain.

"You mean how good my body looks now by the end of Summer? You flatter me a lot, little Juno," he replied with a flashy smile.

Annoyance simmered in me. It made me bring my hands up to grab the gridball from Alex. He was too surprised (and frankly, too conceited) to stop me. With as much strength as I could muster, I chucked the gridball as far as I could. It sailed over the sand and into the ocean, swallowed in by the seas.

"Hey!" Alex exclaimed and turned to me. "That was a pretty good throw."

"Are we not going to talk about what happened?"

"Talk about what?" I glared at him. "Okay, okay! But there's nothing to talk about. Is there something to talk about?" He was trying to play it off as if it was not a big deal, with his nervous chuckle and the way he scratched his head.

"I don't know... maybe the fact that you've been treating me weirdly ever since that night at the Saloon?" I suggested with a shrug.

"But nothing happened," he said slowly.

"Right..."

There was yet another moment of silence as neither of us spoke. And this has been what it was like lately: both of us trying to make small talk, trying to fill in the empty spaces with useless conversation.

"Have you ever wondered what that was?" Alex asked out of the blue. And there it was again.

I looked over to where he was staring behind us. It was the back end of the beach where together, the leaves sheltered a small area from the sun. And in the shade laid something I had never seemed to notice before.

Tucked in between scraps of wood and thick trees was a statue-like structure. From a distance it looked small, but up close it was the length of an adjacent tree trunk. An animal that looked like a bird was sculpted on it, looking over us, peering with its curious eyes. Embedded at the bottom of its feet was a blue gem, bright as sapphire.

I squinted to get a better look at it. This only made my head hurt, with a familiar yet faraway image flashing through my mind. Shaking my head, I turned to Alex.

"Since when was that there?"

"Probably some historical building that Lewis refuses to touch."

If I thought about it, similar statues like those were marked around town. There was one by the mountains near Robin's house, one in the desert. I think there was even one at the farm. All with different gems, different animals. What did they mean?