Chapter 24: The Shah of Snowfall
So, scene’s windin’ down a little, got my gifts, s’all good. Gettin’ a chance t’ spend some seconds on just, like, spendin’ a bit more time with new folks, you dig?
For example, this cool chick. Introduced ‘er last time, but not like a real long look. But she’s Diya Gandhi; not clear down to the Ts and Is on when she came to town, but hey, things come and go, you know? And she says to me,
“I like the look. This was a pretty great party!” She gives me a quick once-over. ‘S hard not to fidget, keep your cool -- least, it is for me. I don’t wanna assume for you, dude. It’s one thing if your mom says she likes the look, an’ it’s another if you like it -- and that’s really what matters, but, and I’ll say but as many times as you want here -- It’s different when someone else says it, you dig? Means they’re pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down.
“Yeah?” ‘Cause I’d definitely want another good party, ‘f I figure out what that’d be. Not a lot, I like seein’ people happy, but it’s kinda a lot, you dig? More on that, kinda, later.
“Yeah! Good music, your mom makes a killer cake. It’s got me pumped!” She fist-pumps the air and gives me a big slap on the back.
“Well, drop by any time, arright? ‘M always glad to have new buds round here; my pad’s your castle, you know?”
“Sounds good! Well, have a good birthday. I’m going to start working off today’s cake. Or tomorrow’s, whichever.”
‘S nice to have some new pals from it, too. Our school’s got an elementary and high school section, you know -- but while I’ve got some pals in the high school, you’re never not in need of pals. Even Mom’s got my back here.
“I need a best friend, not someone my kid’s gonna get close to. Would you mind helping me out there, Ulrike?” Mom asks her; she probably actually invited her to the party for the sake a hangin’ with her...But. Uh. Why’s she need a friend like that? Ka-san’s Mom’s real best friend.
“Of course! We’ve been friends since you moved in, so that’s just fine!” Ulrike answers, giving her a big hug.
“Thanks. It means a lot. You stay safe now, OK?”
Well, that’s a wrap on the party. So, what next?
Next, I wanna figure out my home inside my home, my castle...Uh, where I’m settin’ up my easel, you dig? An’ that’s a tricky one. The house is real busy downstairs; everyone’s breathin’ down my neck, and it’s got no time to take with this stuff. But paint can only dry at paint’s speed, you dig?
There’s upstairs, natch, but man. That is not a pad up there, outside a’ my room. Not yet. And that’s a major vibe harsher. Just… It aint alive. So, gotta work out where, then… An’ after puzzlin’ about it f’r a while, I land on kinda unlikely spot: the shed.
Got plants growin’ in it, got a lotta space… The light tumbles down through those big bay windows, smooched and glistenin’ from the frost-ferns. It’s nice. Quiet an’ peaceful. Little cold, but what isn’t here? It won’t bother ol’ Kite.
While I’m there, though, I gotta worry ‘bout those little fellas. The plants, I mean. See, here’s the thing. They’re mostly OK, right? But they haven’t needed waterin’ in a while, and, trip, man, that can’t be copacetic!
So we’re puttin’ ‘em outside the shed for a bit, see if that’ll jog the water cycle movin’ again. Sorry for the cold, plant-dudes.
By the time I’m done all that, everyone’s just about left. Stuff’s back t’ a normal it hasn’t been before. ‘Course, I don’t wanna chain myself to the easel -- you only draw stuff ‘bout the stuff you draw that way, you dig? So back to the living.
In this case, the living means someone’s gotta watch over our little wolf. Can’t call him a cat, his hoodie don’t agree with that: wolf it is, you dig?
I mean Magpie, of course. Hard at learnin’ stuff about blocks.
“Whatcha buildin’ there, bro?”
“Towa,” he answers. “It wi’ tall.”
“It’s gonna have some height t’ it, huh? Groovy. Want me to stack some a’ these jacks, get some a’ that height rolling?”
“No!” He’s not sayin’ it meanly, just… Real firm-like, but I’m buggin’ out, too! “You watch.”
“So I’m standin’ back and gettin’ an eyeful of your very tall tower?”
Now he nods, laughing, an’ any worry I was havin’ about that takes a back seat.
“And clap!” He insists, demonstrating.
“Course, course…” Well, he can take it away, yeah?
“It does that vestigial organ I call a heart good,” Mom says, steppin’ out of the doorway. “Seeing my favorite boys having a good time together.”
“Mom!” Magpie says, the goal for a tall tower for me to marvel at gone to the wind for a second, so he can glomp onta Mom’s leg. She pats his head, rufflin’ the hoodie’s ears.
“Hey, Mom. What’s up?”
“Nothing, actually. I just thought I should apply myself a bit more to...This.” She’s flashing a vampire tome for a second before takin’ a seat.
“I’ll get to a new one soon enough. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to teach something interesting.”
While she’s flippin’ pages, the tower gets built. I clap, and we all just have a totally crazy time.
Oh, yeah, got a thing to tell ya: since she got to level 3 in a coupla’ careers, Ka-san figured she’d go back to her first job, drumming up cash fer sims left behind. Lotta things can leave a sim behind, so it’d probably come to an awful lot of cash, or somethin. But it was always what she likes best, she said. So that means she’s got some early mornin’ work to do while I’m stuck listening to the man. ‘Course Mom’ll come, an’ she’ll take Magpie out with her. So here’s the riff:
“We’re up high!” chirps Magpie, when he’s done runnin’ around the top of the building the suits wanted Ka-san to speak at.
“Yeah, San Myshuno’s architecture is all sorts of bizarre, kid. Wanna see all the people look like ants?” Mom’s got to watchin’ him while everyone else just does their thing.
“Ants!”
While she’s showin’ him the side of the building (I don’t really dig the city, dig? There’s sort of a press an’ a grind a’ folks, an’ you can’t just stop an chill or hang with people, an’ you don’t got that bright air you get with some far-out space… Trip, sorry, dude), Mom’s got her ear tilted to Ka-san’s speech.
“Hellooo, San Myshuno! Well, I guess this isn’t a concert. But it’s a wonderful city, isn’t it? But what about the people for whom it’s not wonderful? Without guidance, the students of its schools are… unable to… make paper flowers…”
Trip, man! She was digging right down to something spotty, my poor Ka-san. Someone in the crown really needed to pipe up!
“Uh, Miko, babe? You sure you’re OK?” At least Mom could wave her down, whispering it mid-speech.
“Fine… Fine… I’m. I’ll be OK! You watch Magpie, alright, Kest?” Ka-san whispered, before trying to continue. Mom wasn’t sure, watchin’ for a moment just about on the loose wig, you dig? But Maggie’s tugging at her, and Ka-san just waves her on. She’s gonna keep on rolling.
“Yes, flowers -- children are the flowers of our future, after all! But what fertile soil have we manipulated for them in simnation? What about people whose life is a series of challenges, starting from rags to peaches? …Peaches. That’s not right. Um, well... Or, what about emotionally? People disconnect from each other, a generation left behind by its predecessors!”
While this drummed up some fire, it’s not like Ka-san could keep going forever. The city’s warmer than the countryside, sure, right, I dig, but up high? Not that much warmer.
“What we…Um, What we need is… A warm fire…Where we can have… Maybe a nice nap…And then… Pickles...” She mumbled, eyes droopin’ as the cold dug on in an’ the fever pushed her down. Man, that’s gotta shave off a cat’s lives, right? Mom pulled her aside after that, speech of no speech -- well, a lot of crowd ditched then.
“I don’t want a wifecickle, you know! Don’t get so caught up in trying to rabble-rouse that you literally, not metaphorically, but literally, freezing to death.” Mom tells her as she puts a sweater ‘on her; Mom’s got, like, 5 hands in these stories, dude, since she was on calling a guy for some meds.
“Sorry, sorry… I could have finished, probably.” Ka-san chuckles as the world goes back from spinning, only gettin’ met by Mom’s mondo serious eye-roll.
“Yeah, no. You were halfway to an ice block. You can finish after you get warmed up.”
I’da been with Mom there, but hey -- Ka-san’s a tough lady, I guess. Next speech went better, at least!
She’s been putting in a lotta work lately, too! Ka-san’s been putting those chess pieces in their place, marchin’ em along to Level 8 logic, makin’ that another one for the books.
Anyway, you wanna know what your old buddy Kite’s up to? That’s sweet, man.
Nothin’ much, really. After school I spent a slice of time just sort of wanderin’ around the yard, watchin’ the snow shine. We got the garden back here now. They’re all bedded down for the winter -- even the ones that ought to be chillin’ in the chill, heh. They’re growing, sure, but they don’t want to ask for anything. Keepin em all outside overnight didn’t do a lick. I’ll relate some t’ that. But unlike me, they probably should, you dig? I’ll keep an eye on ’em.
After that, Mom invited over the club. Not the family club, right, but like a bunch of dudes she rounded up. Membership’s change a little since last time, since, y’know, time’ll do that, you dig? Yeah. An’ rather than just smell the paper in the homework book, it’d be better t’ talk and work, least in my sense of it.
“What do you think about the future, Kite?” Asks Mizuchi. I’ve always dug those earrings she’s got, you know? So I made a point to remember her pretty well.
“Donno; might be like a dandelion for a while when I’m done with school, you know? See where the wind takes me, put that in a painting somewhere.” Much of it as you can.
“I’d like to be a bride. Find someone truly special, who sweeps me off my feet…” She smiles a far-off smile.
“No kiddin’? Sounds great; I’ll drop back for it.” Wonder what sorta folk she’d like. Prob’ly someone colorful, huh? But then, trip, man, get this, she says:
“And then, we’ll crush my enemies, see them driven before us, and live on a big estate!”
Crush her enemies? Trip, that is all sorts of not groovy, you dig? I mean, look. Some people and you, they just can’t work out, I dig, I dig...But doesn’t that just make everythin’ worse? It doesn’t balance.
“Can’tcha just be happier than they wantcha to be? Then you’re happy an’ you showed them?” Like, I get spite, sure, but don’t that just reason out better?
“Kite, you’re really bad at vengeance. No, you have to punish them for real! I’ve got a list of people, I call it my dung list. There’s my grandma, and my third-grade teacher, and those people who ring bells...Anyway, I’m sure my husband will have a list. It’ll bring us together!”
...So. That’s when I decide that:
“I am not chill with the chill here, you know? So. Splittin’ indoors!” Man, I can just get all kindsa hung up on… Uh. Walls. An’ Ceilins. And not talking ‘bout the list a’ people you wanna crush like you’re a cartoon bad guy, you dig? Not you-you, you’re cool, dude. Sorta a generic ‘you,’ yeah?
So, hey! Lemee get ya introduced to a cat. Christian Bheeda, one a’ the Bheeda bros. He’s more of a “dog,” than a “cat,” I figger, but eh, let’s just go “dude.” He an’ Gulliver, his twin, they’re both in the scout troop, you dig?
“So how’s the work grindin’?”
He sighs and takes just a tick to swirl it around in his head, before popping out a shrug.
“It goes.”
“Better’n it staying, right? Go, run, be free, homework, my dude! Fly ta distant lands!”
That gets him to break the long face (not really, ‘course, cause he does have one a’ them) and give ol’ Kite a laugh. That’s the ticket.
“I’ll second that. Trouble someone else for a while, huh? I’ve got better things to do with my life, like mulling over what to do with my life and needing more sleep.”
“Ah, the man speaks th’truth. I think I know what I wanna do with my life.” When I say that, he goes all wide-eyed, like, what, that’s such a hard-sell thing? Well, kinda. I’ll send him up with my own shrug. “We got a firepit out back recently-like, so why don’t we get things heated up, you know?”
“That’s more an evening than a life, Kite,” he answers, but it’s not like he’s not gonna follow me. Got his winter hat on an’ all.
“...Hmmm...Yeah, but a life’s sorta just a series of evenings and mornin’s, nights and days; so I’ll spend my life on some firewood cracklin, you dig?” If he didn’t, I guess that’d be cool, but he nods all the same.
...Just hit me. Guess I really couldn’t get outta the cold that long, huh? Woopsadoodle. We end up chucking the logs in, watchin’ the snow melt around the rim as the fire gets going, but not before we call out at the back door,
“Bonnie, wanna make the scene?” ‘r, I do. Christian’s gonna ask it as ‘you want to come with?’, an hey, different beats, right?
“Maybe later,” she calls back, from where she’s catchin’ a flick with Uncle Johnny.
“You can go join them if you want,” Uncle Johnny’s sayin’ t’ Bonnie. She’s hit her teen sprouting up, too, an’ it turned out nice for her, if you’re askin’ me. Not yer magazine chick look -- nothin’ so square ‘s’all that. Think he’s real proud of her.
“Maybe in a second. You’re not just trying to get out of listening to me talk about Mrs. Havarshire, are you?” That bein’ the Math teach. Got ‘er for 5th period, kinda needs to learn to just. Get a cool, you dig? Bonnie sighs and shakes her head.
“Never, never.” Uncle Johnny sinks on into the couch. “So, you were saying about snacks?”
“I’m just saying, she can’t yell about snacks in class if she’s going to have class before lunch! It’s unfair!” She sighs an flipped her head on the back of the couch. “And then there’s the homework. I can do the math without writing it out, so why should I?”
“You can do that? I don’t know where you got those brains.”
“Mom,” the answer pops up in a flash, dude.
“Yeah, sounds about right. But you can just write it out after you get the answer, right, if it’s really as easy as pi.” Uncle Johnny grins his big, just launched a pun grin.
“...I’m going outside.” She launches up to ditch the joke.
“Have fun, Bonnie!”
‘Course, while she’s joining on in, Mom’s gettin’ up to the business. I didn’t know right away, you dig, but things get around here. Not sure how I feel.
She went an’ had a word out front with Mizuchi.
“Look, let’s you and I be honest. You need to go,” she said, cool as the snowfall.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Look, this club needs to be full of people who can get along with Kite -- his friends, his comrades, so on. Especially so on, but not totally. Still. You’re never going to be that person,” she said, pointin’ a pair of fingers at her, eyes agleam under the edge a’ her hat.
“...Who says I can’t?”
“Well, it’s kind of an alignment thing. Look, he’ll never ask you to go, that’s not his nature.” An that’s kinda wierd to hear that Mom said, ‘cuz she’s got my number. I wouldn’ta, not if she didn’t want to; I figure live and let live, you dig? ...But I think Mom had my back here, too. I donno what I want to make of that. “Besides, you’ll be happier with a different group, where you have a future -- a chance of catching a man who understands your needs.”
“...I suppose so,” is what she said, before leaving the home. Trip, man.
An’ that’s why she never showed up t’ the bonfire. Our last member -- heh, at least f’r then, I guess -- showed up instead.
“Sorry I’m late,” explains Star as she pops a chair. “You know, I didn’t think this would feel so nice.”
“The fire? Yeah, I sort of expected the snow to be putting it out… You think we could roast marshmallows on this?”
“Got a drawer of mal’ supplies there, I think. But hey, cats’ve been sitting like this, all round a fire, since before they had anythin’ else; it’s somethin’ that’s always been good.” Looking up above, the sky’s full a’ snow, but the clouds’re just a thin veil an the starlight’s fallin’ through, white as white’s white -- the light an’ the snow, all one bundle of white, all tumblin’ down onto the fire’s reds an’ gold.
“And yet, they lacked the essential features of nice chairs and marshmallows,” adds Christian, turnin’ his hands this way and that. “Life was nasty.”
“And brutish and short?” Bonnie asks while I’m stargazin’.
“Well, I wasn’t counting that. After all, we’ve reached ‘heartbreaking and long,’ now. But at least we can enjoy roasted marshmallows.” This gets a nod or two from Bonnie. I’m not sure it’s gotta be heartbreakin -- or long, really. Like, trip, I get what he means, we’re addin’ up days longer’n the past, but… Time’s not somethin’ that moves evenly, you dig? It gets hung up, it falls out, it flashes along. And sure, there’re gonna be rough times, not gonna say that… But… I wanna believe there’s heartmendin, too. Before I’ve gotten that all pulled together an’ worded out, like I can do nice an’ pretty for you here, pal, Star pipes back up.
“Not that I’m not loving amateur philosophy hour, but isn’t it weird to have a pool installed in winter?” She points next to us, to the new pool.
“‘S not that bizarro, just kinda funky. Trip, it’s not like it’s got no use; looks far out at night, anyway. Mom sure felt like it, why fuss an’ run around about it,” is the best I can answer. I mean, it does. Got those pool lights. This gives Bonnie a sparklin’ look in her eyes.
“Oh, yeah? If it’s not weird, then why don’t you try using it?”
“Yeah!” “Swim, swim!”
Now that’s a hoot, right? Right in the dead of winter, snow stickin’ on the ground, an’ they’re wanting me to go take a dip, aint that a trip? ...But it aint like I can’t get back out, so you know what? A guy’s got to live a little sometimes, too.
“You know what? Gonna go for it.” I say, throwin’ off my coat onto the chair. An’ then, like, five other layers of threads.
“You maniac,” whispers Christian, watchin’ on saucer-eyed. Just straight-up starin. Man, I’m not even gettin’ going.
“He’s gonna do it!” Bonnie shouts back at her old man. Guess he came out of the house t’see this, huh?
“Well, he has always been interested in being chill!” Uncle Johnny shouts back. I’ve already gotten on the brink, dippin’ my feet straight into iceville!
“I’ll buy you lunch if you don’t chicken out before you get all the way in,” offers Bonnie.
“Why I’d wanna do that? ‘M gettin’ in the spirit of the season.” Gotta be smart about it, but it aint like the water’s gonna kill me, not in a heated pool with peeps five minutes away. But this is, like, winter’s winter, man. The absolute ever-living winner of winter, shah of snowfall feelin’. “Get real deep, deep hung-up on cold.”
There’s a round of hootin’ when I actually get in the water. Maybe a bit of a chant.
But the water aint that bad, you know? Brisk-like, like swimmin’ in crystal or somethin. Not gonna live here, but y’know, it really aint worth the deal gettin’ made out of it. Cool in a great many senses of the term, the pool’s heated melting the snow down t’ the glassy surface of the water.
“OK, whatever you’re thinking about, get back up here before you freeze,” is Uncle Johnny’s official-type note. “Well, at least you’re doing fun dumb teen stuff.”
“Aww, what a drag. Arright. Mind throwin’ me my coat?”
I mostly dry myself off on the fire itself, gettin’ warmed up there.
“Kite Avyan,” announces Star, risin’ to her feet. “I hereby annoint you our first official member of… The Polar Bear Club!”
“Here, here!” “Here, here!”
“Now that’s some cred I’ll wear with pride, my dudes. An’ sniffles.”
“Is that your sniffles worn with pride, or cred worn with sniffles?” Asks Christian, giving a pat on the back f’r applause.
“Whichever, prob’ly.”
“You maniac,” he repeats.
“He’s a maniac I owe lunch!” wails Bonnie, over it all.
An’ all the dudes, cats, dogs, homies, and assorted peeps an’ I just get to joke about it f’r a while yet. The world gets to melt down like snow around the fire.
