[FIN] If wishes were fishes (Sunny&America)

[shibrogane]

Sunny found the girl sitting at the end of the public pier, a tackle box at her side and a fishing pole in her hand. For a long moment, she contemplated leaving. People didn't like smokers, but lately it was all Sunny wanted to do. She liked telling fortunes and being silly and her life didn't seem to allow for much silliness anymore.

...Still, the girl had bright red hair, and a cooler at her side, and it seemed like fun to talk to someone for once. Sunny approached, bare feet quiet on the planks but not silent. "Have you caught anything," she called when she was still several feet away.

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Like a child, America tipped her head back to look at the new arrival, taking in an upside down view of the girl with a grin. "Well..." she drawled, straightening up to grab her prizes and hold them aloft. "Got a floppin fish," a particularly gaudy flipflop waggled in her hand, it's cheap plastic heads rattling and sparkling wetly.

"And a McCool fish." A pair of sunglasses, one of the lenses missing.

She'd meant to try and help out her food expenses (not that there's be nearly as much as she'd though, bless Borr and Nasir both) with a bit of fishing, maybe some foraging in the forest if the permits weren't much. Despite the failures, though, she seemed pleased as anything with her catches so far.

"Do y'all get many bites out here?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunny stared for a moment, and then she giggled, hiding her mouth behind her fingers. "Truly, the homestead will eat well tonight," she said seriously, reaching over to take the sunglasses. Putting them on, she peeped out at the bay, frowned and took them off.

"I dunno," she said, "I haven't gone fishing for a while. There used to be all kinds of bass here, though. And..." She tapped her chin. "Cod, too. Cod was so good... Halibut and haddock and fluke... but I think cod's probably gonna be what you pull. If anything."

Last time Sunny went fishing, it was literally the eighteen hundreds. So what did she know?

She looked at the girl again. "Do I know you? You look kinda familiar?"

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

"Oh thank god, you know the waters," and never mind the in awhile. "If you've got some time, I could do with some tips?" America scooted over a bit, making room for the other girl to sit.

"Name's America, I'm new 'round here so I don't think so..." and here there's a pause, before she goes on, "...but you may have seen pictures of my mom around? Like old yearbooks or something. Leanne Baird, woulda been near forever ago, though."

Her eyes crinkled with a chagrined little laugh, "That's a bit out there, I guess. I spam Instagram a lot, so could be from there."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunny remembered when they'd named the country America. After some a*****e named Amerigo... She pillowed her chin in her hand. "I got nothin but time," she said, clambering down to sit next to America. (Hehe.) "You're gonna want light tackle..." Without asking, she pored over America's tackle box and made her selections. None of them looked super familiar, but there was one that looked pretty close to what she thought she remembered fishing with as a child.

"Leanne was nice," she said, meditatively; this despite appearing no older than America. "I mean, kinda wild? She played lacrosse the year ACHS went to State. I'm Sunny Shore, by the way." She peeked up at America through her tangled bangs, hands hesitating on the bait. "I guess you haven't heard of me?" It seemed weird to consider that someone hadn't.

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

"Sunny Shore," the girl sounded it out for herself. "That's a sweet name, like inviting in a nice day when you say it."

The words had so calmly casually, not at all affected, that America found herself nodding a long, taking it in as easy as the horizon before them. And so it wasn't until Sunny's question that she paused and the rest of it all sort of did a three car pile up behind it.

"I...I haven't heard that name before, hun, no. But you've heard of my mom?" There's a little bit of laughter in her voice, hesitant and pleased and mostly surprised, "Really?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Oh, good," said Sunny, sitting back on the end of the pier now that she had what she wanted. "There. Try that. I think it's what I used when I used to get cod." Before Sunday, anyway. Marienrode. The names were so confusing anymore. Too many of them to keep track of.

"No, I knew her. Not heard of her. I mean, we didn't go to school together or anything, but everybody comes down here to see the witch sometimes. I got to see her break some guy's foot for being a d**k." She sighed. "But I guess she left, at some point, if you didn't grow up here?"

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Taking the bit of tackle, America held it aloft to give it a good look, trying to store it away for later use even as the rest of what Sunny said tumbled over in her head.

"Yeah, her family moved south when she was 'bout my age, all eighteen and graduated. She married Pa, had me, and then she died." This is the part she can answer easily so it's what she answers first as she cast her line, grateful for the reflexive calm of the act. "Sorry if you liked her. You look real young to have known Leanne, gotta say, but I'm glad you liked her all the same."

The little glimpses at the girl she'd been are soaked up with a need, like drops of water for a plant long thought dead, only to turn out to be a particularly hardy cactus. There's more to ask, but what came out was, "There's a witch out here?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Yeah," said Sunny. "It's me. I'm the witch." She was rather glum about it, too. "I'm sorry she died." It was different for humans than it was for her. Sunny wasn't sure she was capable of death, or what it took to get there. It'd be nice if she was, maybe.

She kicked her feet over the green of the water. "I do magic for cigarettes and a favor," she said. "Though it's been a while since anyone's done the favors. I dunno, I just haven't felt up to it lately."

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

"Well, dang," is all America had to offer for a bit. It could, of course, be some cruel bit of joke played on an outsider, someone maybe gullible, someone who maybe wouldn't know better. But she'd seen the lacrosse medal, curious and strange among the few other artifacts of Leanne's existence, not quite matching the gentle pedestal of the dead that her family had built around mourning and memory. It had felt truer, though, when she'd held it in her hand. This felt a bit truer too, and maybe that's what she'd been hoping to find here with her album and vague plans. A person, not an idol.

Besides, wasn't being a witch a Thing now? A bit of aesthetic instagram pics for some, with their crystals and candles and feathers all artfully arranged, a downright religion for others. So maybe she was a witch and America wasn't inclined to question that. There was no sense of funning coming from the other and believing in magic might be one thing, a story thing, a daydream thing, but believing Sunny felt like a simpler, easier thing altogether.

After a bit of thought, America finally answered, "My uncle, Sampson, he tried to do something like that in prison. Do stuff nobody else could for a pack and an IOU. He wasn't too good at it though, and I'm guessin' you are, if folks come down here to make deals n'such."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunny shrugged. "I've been to prison. It wasn't that fun." She watched the water by the bobber, flickered her fingers in an oddly incomplete gesture. "Been lots of places, I guess. Or the same place, lots of times." Or both. It was both.

The bobber dropped beneath the surface of the water, pulled by something. "It's fluke," said Sunny.

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

There wasn't time to question it, or figure out what sort of fluke the other girl meant. The battle was on! First steady then aggressive, never giving an inch unless it was to take another foot back, soon America was hauling the fish out of the water. Huge and flat and ugly as sin, undoubtedly a fluke indeed.

The girl had been laughing up a storm all the way, pleased and excited at the sudden catch. It isn't until her pocket knife's gone swiftly through its little fishbrain on the dock, that she looks up at Sunny in surprise. "You knew!" There's a sort of delight in it, childlike and admiring.

"Was that a witchy thing?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Sunny frowned, but then her smile comes back, tiny and shy at America's delight. "It was, kind of," she said. "I could show you something else, if you wanted to see."

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Placing the fluke in her cooler and dang wasn't that gonna be a nice little dinner? - America knelt to Sunny, wide-eyed and eager, hands straying together, up to her mouth, not sure if she should laugh or clap or be tense with anticipation, just sort of wavering between all three.

"Yeah! Would you? Only sort anybody ever tried to tell me was real was bible magic and that came with too many pages full of tiny letters and old men." And it wasn't like she was going to trust a book to tell her something important. The girl bounced a little on her knees at the thought of it. A few days earlier, she'd described herself as a frog at the bottom of a well, finally peeking over the side.

It was, maybe, a little more accurate than she knew.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"The bible," Sunny snorted. She'd read it. Maybe it'd even been true, once, but she knew what real magic looked like and it wasn't people coming back from the dead. She held up her hand between herself and America, fingers curling loosely. It didn't take even a moment of concentration to light her hand up in unearthly violet fire.

The flame smelled of ozone, and crackled like rise krispies in milk. "You can touch it, if you want," said Sunny. "It won't hurt you."

lizbot