Wow, that delay went on longer than I thought. Mostly due to personal incompetence (No, really. I went somewhere for the past week and forgot my sim-writing flash drive, leaving me stranded. Ugh).
This part was going to be longer, but I reached a good point and what to show I've been doing at least some work, so here's the first part of part 5. I'll be working on the back half ASAP.
Part 5, A: Perspective From the Journal of Ferrus Alchimia After … Last night, terrifying, wonderful last night, already strange and twisted with the dimming memories of the full moon, going back to school, doing practical lessons, feels almost like a let-down.
Though it is nice to take class outside, I guess. And Mom?
She is having all sorts of fun with the science department’s equipment. I could hear the zapping and the screaming all through my studio lesson. I didn’t see her back even when I returned, she was doing so much science. Not sure what she was actually accomplishing, though… What was she studying?
Sadly, her notes at this point indicate she was studying things like ‘the inner soul of Jupiter coursing through the river of the sun,’ which I think may have been something about how electricity is conducted through either molten gold or her own blood. Maybe both, and regular blood to boot.
I will also admire her restraint for not trying to sample Ferrus for this – Not that this comforted her poor fellow science majors. But I’m sure most of them were willing, or her notes would have mentioned more resistance, if you’ll allow the pun. 
On the other hand, it was a little comforting, doing something as ordinary as studying for midterms. I think I’m prepared, but Diane has some catching up to do.
Anyway, as for results…
We all passed with flying colors. This called, in Diane’s opinion, for a celebration! Well, it usually does, so… Not a surprise. Anyway, we have a pool, so why not have a pool party?
Because it is raining and no one wants to swim would have been a good reason, but oh, well.
I was a bit too anxious to really be looking forward to it, but then… Well, something odd happened.
”Hey, Kid,” said Amethyst.
For a moment, I thought I’d finally done it. I mean, the full moon was the night before and that drives Mom and me a little loopy… What if I was stuck?
Eventually, I felt the need to answer this sad creation of my miserable
“…Why are you calling me a kid? Weren’t you born, like, half a week ago?”
”It…Um… May have been less. Magical Space-Time Damage from… I don’t know.”…Yup, I’d gone crazy. I could see no other explanation.
”But anyway… My kind has ancestral memory, so… I’ve got thousands of years of dragons backing me up. You’ve got… Well, you don’t even properly have ancestors, do you?” That last comment… You’d expect it to be spiteful, but it was delivered sort of sadly. To someone who has memories from their family… Would I be like an amnesiac to her?
”It’s just you and her. …And… Well…”“There’s my brother,” I pointed out.
”That’s not what I was going to say, though. And you…Need help. You’re lonely. You’re lost. There’s something wedged in your heart you don’t know how to give a voice to yet… And until you speak it, you’ll never be happy, because that’s who you are.”I… I can’t say that’s not true. I have been troubled lately, but… What am I supposed to say? I don’t know what I feel myself.
”So, let me help you with the party, OK, kiddo?” Amethyst smiled brightly, fangs gleaming.
”My natural empathy can’t stand for you to be like this.”‘Kid,’ again. But I nod.
“Well, OK…”
”Great, great! Just let Ame take care of everying!”
And she began to work magic. I’m not sure I can describe what it felt like – just sort of tingly, mostly, but the sensation I get before a party, where my internal organs all seize up and I want to run to a corner, vanished into nothing but a worried little voice in my hindbrain.
”And kid? …When you work out what you feel, don’t just hide it away in your head, like, forever.”It was actually a nice party. I made friends with a teacher of mine, and even talked to some people.
Diane gathered up a bunch of people and started jamming and flirting. Nothing unexpected, really, and it made great music.
I even met Nicholas, which was not as awkward as I was expecting. Possibly due to draconic magic. He’s a nice guy, and we debate the role of art in politics for a while – I consider art a reflection of the human condition, and thus dangerous to bind to political masters. He considers the political landscape part of the human experience of the time, and that art’s power
We will have to agree to disagree.
And then he said…
”Diane invited me here… But I guess she’s, um, busy… ” And with a little sigh added something that made the universe click together inside my head.
”I guess she’s moving on already.”
And I felt sad in that moment, because I understood that sigh and I understood his worries. I understood me. And I felt sad for him and Diane and… And myself.
Because surely, with all these guys around who she likes and cares about and they’re good at art and music and can keep up with discussions on the discourse of gender or the like… There’s really no reason to keep me around. I’m not that much to look at and I’m not very smooth and I’m about as politically-motivated as wet cardboard and I’m not sure, aesthetically, about post-modernism…
I honestly don’t know why she’d like me to begin with, but it’s easy to see it as a big fish in a small pond thing – and surely, here in this great ocean, that sort of thing’s… I’m… Not worth much at all.
I was going to talk to her, right then and there – to say something, though I can’t imagine what… But by the time the set was done and the last strings of music were dying away, I couldn’t think of what I’d say. The moment was gone, and I thought I’d missed it.
The party was a great success. And Diane came up to me afterwards.
”Hey, you were great tonight. I’m sorry the room was a bit small for everyone to play…And that I was kind of distractible tonight.”“G-great?” No, wait, don’t get distracted. If… If I want to be happy with Diane, I have to tell her this. I’m not a genius like Mom, but I’m not stupid.
“Hey, can we go talk? It’s important.”
What am I going to say? I mean, besides all that stuff I thought. What exactly am I asking for, really? Well, I guess I have to wing it.
The rain is pouring down and it feels like it’s cooling me off. My mind is racing with worry.
At the time, Diane was mainly thinking that the party was out of this world. Ah, to be a social butterfly, and easily focused on simple pleasures. “Diane, I… What am I to you?”
She blinks, jolted out of her consideration.
”What?”“With everyone else around…Well, that is…With all your options…” I see her brows draw close in worry. “I love you. A lot. And I know you love me, too. But… I have no idea what that means to you. You love me and everybody else – and I know that I can’t…compete. So I need to know – what does our relationship mean? Am I… Expendable?”
”…What?”“Because I’m not sure… How happy I could be, thinking that one day you’d put me aside. For someone else. For no one else… I… I don’t know many people. I’m still trying, but… You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I know I won’t –“
”Where did you get the idea you were expendable?” She looks at me like I’ve grown a second head.
”You’re going to live forever. You’re the least expendable guy in the universe.”That wasn’t what I meant at all, and I knew she knew it – her blue eyes had an oceanic sadness, and she shook her head and pushed onward.
”Me? I’m expendable. For better or worse, I don’t have anything like a destiny. I need to taste everything I can taste, change anything I can change…Because …”It was unthinkable that she could be expended – I didn’t have a destiny so much as a plan for me my mother had made – and she’s hardly fate. But Diane? Diane’s going to matter, even if the graveyard will be full of irreplaceable people. That’s the course of history – everyone who really mattered, the world has to keep going without.
”Because you’re going to get that chance, too. You’re going to last forever and you’re going to have to go on like I never existed. Otherwise, your heart will just get broken.””I couldn’t do that,” I say, simply. It’s not that I’ve never considered it – or, at least, I think I have – that one day, she’ll be gone, and I’ll be alone, stretching out into infinity. I think about things all the time. But that makes it all more precious, and… “I’d have to become a different person to do that. I’d have to become someone who you didn’t help make – someone you didn’t pull out of himself, someone you didn’t encourage, someone who didn’t spend his whole life being around you, someone who isn’t awed and inspired by you – I’d have to get rid of all of that, to even pretend you never mattered, much less never existed … And that I’ll be that person, forever… That makes you more precious to me.”
I feel set free by saying this, whatever
”Well, you’re the same for me.” She crosses her arms like I’ve annoyed her somehow… But then again, her face is warm and blushing.
”…I guess I never let you know that, huh? I… Well, I never thought… I thought ‘love’ was enough, but…” She, normally self-assured, fumbles. I can’t blame her – I don’t know what I’d say, either.
”But that’s something I didn’t think about. That you’d need to know it, to be loved, I guess.”“I think I do…”
She takes a deep breath and looks me dead in the eye, a big smile on her face. The moment I see it, everything else fades, and I am pulled into the round contours of her face, the shadows formed by her brows that make her eyes shine with brighter light. I am pulled into it, as Pygmalion was into Galatea, who he made…And who made him different from what he was. I am pulled into, just for a second, a world with a certainty. In the end, nothing changed. In the end, everything changed. It was all a matter of perspective, the perfect single point to which all the lines of my heart converge.
I am going to be OK, and I know it in that smile.
”You’re irreplaceable to me, and don’t you ever forget it, Ferrus. I need you like I need my right arm. I – I’m not sure what that makes ‘us,’ but… You’re special. You have been, all along...And no one -- or ones -- could ever change that. Dummy. But… I guess I’m a dummy, too. For never saying it.”She adds in that last bit, and I can’t help but laugh at ‘us,’ just a little.
“I…I should have asked sooner. Come on, let’s go in. I’m soaked,” I pull her to her feet and find that she – that I – am so light it’s nearly ecstatic, light as the rain shimmering in strings down from the sky, streaking the air with glimmering light.
I feel foolish, but… You know? It’s OK. I’m allowed to not be perfect, and she’s allowed to not be perfect.
And that’s just perfect.
Well, at least until I’m sculpting and I can’t get the hair to stop looking blocky and then my life will be meaningless. One step at a time.
