{Summary: It's Truce Day, and Arlo has no one to spend it with. unOrdinary UA [universe alteration].}
One, two, three, four, five, six.
Six was a new record, Arlo thought triumphantly as he watched ripples expand from where the stone had skipped along the water's surface. Not bad for a desert boy. Even Remi would likely have some difficulty topping that—and she'd lived all sixteen years of her life by a lake. Mildly pleased with his little victory, Arlo slipped out of his Sperrys and seated himself on the edge of the dock, exhaling through his nose and swishing his legs in small, rhythmic circles through the cool water.
Save the soft whisper of a breeze, the gentle splashing of the lake as it kissed the shoreline, and the distant quacks of mallards, Bartlett Reservoir was quiet—strangely so, since Arlo had expected that at least some families would be camping out for the holiday. But he certainly wasn't opposed to being alone; people were idiots, and idiots always brought noise and drama with them. It would have been exponentially more difficult to enjoy the picturesque evening through the pesky sounds of talking and shouting and laughing, and cars coming and going, and the smells of fire and cooking food.
And a picturesque evening it was. Reflected in distorted shapes and colors on the waters was a quintessentially Arizonan scene—though the sun had set behind the high hills over the lake, dowsing it in cool shade, the scrubby mountains across were illuminated a brilliant golden-brown, contrasting pleasantly with an immaculately clear and blue sky. It occurred to Arlo that it would have been a good idea to bring some dinner along, rather than wait until he got home—a warm, hearty thermos of leftover homemade ratatouille, maybe, or a classic American burger. That would have been nice, he thought. Just him and some food, in the sunset at the lake.
But somehow, at the same time, he was having a hard time convincing himself of that.
The solitude suddenly seemed very lonely, and not in a good way, as he realized that he had no one to appreciate the view with. Holden, normally his go-to for company, had family visiting from out of state, and so even though they had taken the same flight home, his sky-haired friend had barely had time to hang out or even talk since their arrival. Remi was the only other person he'd dream of contacting in a situation like this—and she, conveniently, was on vacation in Hawai'i. Both were probably eating dinner with their families, or at least preparing it, at that very moment—as a matter of fact, so probably were the people who would usually be at the lake right now. Everyone, in other words, was celebrating Truce Day.
Except for Arlo.
It made him angry—no, it made him jealous. Truce Day was an intrinsically family thing, and of all the things that had been handed to him on a silver platter, a normal, intact family had never been one of them. It was true that he had looks and power and money, but was that one small thing too much to ask? Fate thought so, apparently. The years when his mother was married to Grant were the closest Arlo got to experiencing holidays the way everyone else did, but Grant wasn't a father figure; he was just ... Grant, the guy his maman uprooted their lives in Toulouse for. Even despite having a baby together, it didn't last, naturally. Their disaster of a divorce ultimately landed her and Arlo squarely back at the starting line, and Truce Day, which she particularly hated for some reason that was still yet to be seen, went back to being her sulking while Arlo pretended he didn't give a damn. He wished pretending made it true.
Arlo pulled his legs from the lake and wrapped his arms around his knees, watching shadows creep up the peaks and devour the increasingly intense hues of butterscotch light. The sunsets in Wellston were never like this, and when they were visible at all, when it wasn't overcast, they were dull and flat. Colorless, almost, at least in comparison to the sunsets of the Southwest. Some horrible amalgam of emotions stabbed through his gut at the thought of Wellston. It had been his responsibility to protect the students there; they weren't just his subjects, they were his charges, both Rei and Headmaster Vaughn had stressed upon his ascension to King. And in his selfishness, he had failed them, seduced by the prospect of passing both his and Remi's onuses on to another before his term was complete. Of course that potential successor had had to be a feckless maniac that was now threatening to hurt the student he cared the most about, but the point still stood that Wellston was in danger now because he both followed the order of his own hierarchy to a tee and then contravened it immediately afterward.
