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 Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:46 pm
It was too hot outside, in Uziri's educated opinion. Sitting on the stoop outside her house, resentful to be alone and ignoring the fact that she didn't even have to be outside in the first place, she sulked. Squinting up at the sun, she wondered what Da would say if she decided to just stare at it. After a good ten seconds, she gave a squeak and toppled from the step, rubbing her eyes frantically.
"BAD IDEA," she said, loud enough to notify the entire block.
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 6:32 pm
Shye strolled up the block, bouncing a thin book against his legs every few steps just because he could. This wasn't the way they had walked when they got off of the bus, but when they turned around to head back Deph had insisted they go some way where 'those damn humans couldn't stare.'
The little boy knew he shouldn't be out by himself, but Mama was Very Sick and Deph could be considered an adult, if you didn't have anything against little flying gray men. Still, it probably had been a bad idea to go out alone.
The two were within earshot but still quite a distance away when Uziri made her cunning observation, and Shye looked over at her in amazement. How had she known what he had been thinking?
"I KNOW IT WAS," he replied.
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 6:42 pm
"THEN WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME," Uziri yelped, still rubbing her eyes as she stumbled blindly back against the stoop. Muttering curses that surely would have gotten her mouth washed out with industrial-strength soap had Isaiah heard them, she blinked and squinted warily.
"...who's there?" she demanded, looking at the tree that she had mistaken for the speaker.
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:16 pm
"Me," Shye said, stepping closer. "I'm Shye." He continued to walk toward Uziri's house as Deph silently rolled his eyes and landed out by the street, taking a seat on the curb.
"I don't think our bad ideas are the same." He waved a hand in her direction. "I'm this way. Are you blind? They have operations for that." Part of the reason Deph had even volunteered to take Shye to the library was to stop him from watching Discovery Health.
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:42 pm
"Hnnf," Uziri replied, leaving off rubbing her eyes long enough to look at the new arrival. Her sun-dazzled eyes widened as she stared at Shye.
"You're new. And a boy," she notified him solemnly, the skulls on her necklace glowing vividly. Boys were good. They were usually so much more interesting than girls. "I ain't blind. I was lookin' at the sun, but then my eyes started meltin'. So I stopped."
Without even acknowledging his companion, and gracefully ignoring introducing herself, Zee took Shye's hand and proceeded to drag him along with her.
"Let's go find mud."
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:10 pm
"Yes I am." His eyes darted from Uziri's face to her glowing skulls. Shye was pretty sure eyes couldn't melt, but before he could protest he was being dragged off on a mud expedition.
"Mmkay," he agreed. "Where're the hoses? Or puddles maybe?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:19 pm
"Good question," Uziri answered agreeably. "Dunno 'til we find 'em."
She lead Shye along confidently, certain that somewhere a glorious stretch of grime and stinking wet sludge would be waiting for them. When all her usual haunts turned up nothing but parched cracked earth, she sighed in disappointment.
"Crud."
Ever an opportunist, she abandoned the idea of playing in mud. She let go of Shye's hand to tap a finger to her chin thoughtfully, looking around for inspiration.
"Guess we could go tease the big dog down th' block 'til it chases us an' tries to eat us," she said offhandedly, still thinking. "What d'you do fer fun, anyway?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:10 pm
What did he do? Besides building sandcastles, accidentally menacing innocent squirrels, jumping off couches, watching stuff at the zoo and going to the circus? Temporarily pushing his mother's mysterious illness out of his mind in favor of this unanticipated captive audience, Shye said, "Well, there's this."
He held out a hand and squinted as it lost its puffy kid-ness and became as flat as his wings. "I like to practice, but I guess it's not fun, huh. Dunno." His hand slowly regained its original mass. "Never teased a dog before. How'd you do it?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:47 pm
Uziri whistled through her teeth; which was more to say, she made a high-pitched sound and pretended she had whistled.
"That's weird," she said, nodding her approval. So Shye was a boy with wing-things, and he could flatten himself? Remarkable. At the question, she wiped her nose with a tendril of her shadow-aura and shrugged.
"You poke 'em," she said, nodding sagely. "Or you call 'em names. Oliver, this one time? He, he tol' me I shouldn't, but I did anyway, and I stole the dog's bone, 'cause I wanted it and stuff, and he chased me all the way through the yard before his collar choked him. He made a kinda "YARK" sound and I thought it was funny."
Slightly breathless from her recital, Uziri wiped her nose again and blinked at Shye serenely.
"Wanna try?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:33 pm
Well, that sounded like what you would do to tease a human and make him chase you. Shye said so.
"That's how I'd tease a person too. Didn't know it would work on dogs." He nodded. Good to know. "I guess we could..." At the sight of Uziri's snot-wiping floaty cape, whatever Shye had been about to say was forgotten.
It was so hard being the best and most awesome kid on the planet when you discovered new things every day that were so much cooler than you.
"What's that?" he asked, reaching a hand toward Uziri's aura. He didn't come anywhere close to touching it, but he kept his fingers out, pointing toward the girl.
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:00 pm
Uziri glanced over her shoulder at the hazy aura attached to her back as one tendril obligingly wrapped around Shye's hand.
"I dunno," she said mildly. "But Da calls me octopus 'cause of it. It's like...um. Shadow. But....tentacly. Tentacle-shadows. One time I poked Da in the eye with it and he said a lotta bad words, it was really funny. You have rainbowy hair, by the way," she added, nodding her approval. "I know a girl named Taji, an' her hairs all rainbowy too."
Blinking and turning around abruptly, Uziri allowed her microscopic attention span to shift to a new subject.
"C'mon, betcha a dollar he'll try to eat us'n chase us'n go 'YARK' again," she said, skipping down the sidewalk.
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Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:00 am
Shye nodded and followed without skipping, sneaking a glance at his aura-touched hand every couple of minutes. Was it going to fall off now?
He finally looked up and noticed he was falling behind. Jogging forward to catch up with Uziri, he slowed his pace when he reached her side. "Maybe I'll know a girl named Taji too one day. That'd be cool." Shye had seen someone with hair similar to his at the zoo once, but this girl couldn't be talking about that one. It would be too weird.
On the subject of dollars and betting, Shye kept silent. He didn't have any dollars, only a bus pass, and he needed that to get home. "'Kay," he said instead. "Where is he?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 8:57 am
Uziri nodded absently, clearly listening-but-not-listening to Shye, her attentions set on finding the dog. They finally stopped in front of a rather run down house with a surprisingly well-kept lawn, a doghouse visible amid a riot of colorful flower beds off to the side.
"There he is," she said conspiratorially, pointing. The dog was large. Very large. It was a mongrel mutt and was afflicted with an unfortunate underbite that made its crooked teeth jut out from its lips, and it seemed to have a problem with excess saliva. Uziri grinned wickedly as she spotted a much-gnawed bone resting next to the dozing dog. She wanted that damnable bone. Couldn't exactly say why, but she wanted it.
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:51 pm
"Drooly," Shye said, making a bit of a face at the dog's overall nastiness. Normally he didn't mind getting dirty and banged up, but spit-on was a different story. Soggy wings weren't much fun at all. "What now? he asked. Might as well let Uziri figure out what they were doing next. He wasn't even sure he knew how to make it back to the spot where they had met without her. The bone barely registered, being as close as it was to the drool.
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:35 am
"Now...now we sneak up to it," Uziri said in an undertone, tugging Shye's hand and creeping across the lawn. "And hope he don't wake up, 'cause if he bites he don't let go."
The potential of losing a limb to the monstrous mongrel seemed to only heighten Uziri's inexplicable glee, and the closer they drew to the ugly dog the more pronounced her joy became.
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