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“This way, please.”
March is quick to pointedly follow, grimacing when she gets too hasty with her steps, her foot dragging through a murky puddle. Just when she’d gotten such cute new shoes, too! The half-off deal made her squeal with joy when she saw them listed online, among the many other items she’d bought so rapidly that her credit card service had called to ask if there’d been fraudulent activity under her account. She frowns at her shoes. It’s not like she can’t clean them later, but the fact that they were dirty niggles at her.
“Is something the matter?” comes a smooth voice, causing her to straighten and look up.
“Huh? Oh, no, I just–” March starts, speeding up when she realizes that she started lagging behind while rueing her shoes, only to walk smack dab into the umbrella her companion carried, sending droplets of water collecting on its surface to douse her already-soaked form, with her nose facing the brunt of the collision. “ Ow !”
The umbrella shifts, moving to her other hand, as Acheron pulls it away to give her a pointed look. “It’s best if you follow closely. The rain shows no sign of stopping.”
March darts under the reprieve of the umbrella, bumping Acheron’s shoulder as she pulls the umbrella towards her, resisting the urge to shake out her hair. “I know, I know, you’ve just got such long legs that let you walk so fast I can barely keep up, you know? Like, have you ever noticed the difference in pace between you and most other people? It’s like you're in a scene from a movie that’s been fast-forwarded or something with how quickly you can move, honestly.”
Acheron blinks at her, then the drab horizon in front of them, engulfed in mist as they walk on endlessly in any hopes of finding their way out of the downpour that plagued this dreamscape in particular, which just had to be the one March was stuck in after getting separated from the other Astral Express members and the group they picked up in Penacony, save Acheron, apparently.
(P.S. to the Universe, but pretty girls can’t be soaked for so long! Being all soggy and gross while trying to be a cute girl just doesn’t mix!)
Finally, she answers. “No.” Just “no,” March laments. What is she supposed to do with that? She’s used to starting up conversations when things get awkward, but this girl hasn’t even given her a crumb to work with, not unless she wants to start pulling out a bunch of questions: ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Why do you always carry around that sword of yours?’ And, exasperatedly, the one she always found herself wondering, ‘Why do you look so emo?’
“No? So you’re always alone?” March shuffles under the umbrella, nudging against the warmth of the other in the process, who bristles at the contact—is she that allergic to other people? “No buddies to tag along on the journey?”
“I suppose not.” Acheron looks at her then, damp bangs shagging across her violet eyes, somewhat disarrayed. It was a surprisingly cute look on her despite the cool, battle-hardened vibe she had going on. “Why?”
“I mean, doesn’t it get lonely? Galaxy ranging and all on your own?”—never mind the fact that March didn’t even really know what Galaxy Rangers really did, but still. “I mean, yeah, it’s weird how Stelle is so obsessed with trash cans and scavenging them like some sort of raccoon, and yeah, it’s annoying how Dan Heng—he stayed behind this time, by the way, so you didn’t see him—can’t get his head out of books, but I can’t imagine either of them not being there.” She shrugs. “It’s no fun to go somewhere new if you don’t have friends to explore it with, you know?”
Acheron gazes off into the distance again, always so quick to stoicism. March watches, searching for the tick of an expression. She didn’t offend her, did she? “But that’s just me. You probably have your reasons.”
Then, a shot so picturesque March wishes she could whip out her camera to capture: under the frame of the umbrella, something glazes Acheron’s steely gaze. Tender, fleeting, terrifying, the chiaroscuro of longing—March learned that word from Mr. Yang after one of his many art rambles—chips itself into the shadows of Acheron’s features, the hard planes of her nose and her high cheekbones begetting the tender fan of her eyelashes when her eyes screw shut and the quiver of her lip before it flattens as quickly as a flit of illumination from a firefly disappears.
March knew few things about this woman and even fewer about the whims of the world they were stuck in, half-drenched and shivering, but one thing she could tell: under the patter of bone-chilling rain falling on them like daggers, a stark-red umbrella as their only separation from the cold that was all-consuming, Acheron was achingly lonely.
“Acheron?” She takes great care enunciating the syllables, the falling sound of ‘A’ to the hard curve of ‘che’ and the round ending of ‘ron’ all pulling together into one name shrouded in mystery greater than the fog that prevailed in front of them. “Are you okay?”
The other woman doesn’t reply. March isn’t surprised. Most people wouldn't want to become touchy-feely so quickly, especially someone as drawn in as her. Still, she sighs. “Do you think we’ll be able to get out of this soon?”
“I can’t afford you a proper answer,” says Acheron. “Are you concerned for your companions?”
“It’s hard not to be, with how confusing Penacony is,” she replies, shaking her head, “I’m just lucky I have you by my side, even though I’m sure the others can live a few hours without my gracious presence.”
A slower blink than usual, the intoning of a hitched breath; March has learned to pick up on these things, made to scavenge for any information she could pick up with how often people like to shun her out of things. The indication that Acheron is surprised at someone saying they like being in her company saddens the pink-haired girl.
“Your hands,” she says, glancing at March’s that clench and unclench, vying for heat.
March lifts them, shrugging once more. “Oh, uh, well, it is pretty cold out here. But, I mean, it’s nothing to worry about, really.”
She points at a spot on the umbrella’s handle. “Place them here.”
March obliges, “Here?”
Acheron places her gloved hand atop March’s that clutches the metal handle, reddened from the chill. She doesn’t smile, but her next words come soft. “Yes.” She pinches the pad of one of March’s fingers. “The proximity should keep them warm,” she says, as though the pink-haired girl’s cheeks aren’t burning now, melting away the cold.
She stutters a thank you. Acheron says nothing in return. This time, she doesn't mind, staring off in the other direction to avert herself from her.
Still, through the rain, they trudge, brushing against each other like the positively and negatively charged ions that Dan Heng made a point of explaining to her once, stowing away the information she’d gathered from this like with everything she learns, shuffled away in the ever-extrapolating manila folder of her mind, wondering if Acheron would still want to hold her hands when they weren’t at risk of falling off of her wrists.
(P.S. to the Universe: maybe pretty girls don’t mind being caught in the rain so much if it means another pretty girl will hold their hands. Just maybe. Next time, they should be sent to a meadow nestled under a sunny sky, fit with a picnic with a bunch of yummy food and a camera full of film to take cute photos. And no cute shoes have to be soaked in sacrifice for it!)