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“UHHHUHUGH.”
“Is something the matter, Lady Mera?”
Mera’ head snapped to glare at Indus from the prison ‘bed’. Probably not the wisest decision to move so much while recovering from her latest injury, but at this point the spite outweighed the pain. He looked worried about her. Why should he be? It was his stupid fault they got arrested.
Well, no, not really. It was the stupid kid doctor’s fault and the other stupid pink-haired moron’s fault. UGH, all she needed was the one stupid kid with the weird eyes! Why did so many stupid people have to be in the stupid museum that ONE NIGHT?!
She re-buried her face in her pillow, trying to ignore how much the mattress did not at all feel like any kind of mattress. “Who even cares?” her muffled voice croaked.
“I care! You are my master, after all!” Indus answered warmly, offering a smile she couldn’t see. Mera only had the energy to groan softly into her pillow.
Him caring didn’t matter. Him caring couldn’t get her out of prison, or get her the Arsene Amulet, or fix her broken arm, or take away her pain for FIVE MINUTES. And the only thing that COULD was…
“Mera Salamin?”
…out of reach. Mera looked up to see a blond, freckle-faced policewoman standing outside their cell. The same one that arrested them a few days ago. She glared at the detective with as much fury as her tiny, fractured body could muster, yet Percival King’s stone-faced expression showed no signs of change. Contest failed.
“You and Indus seem to have a visitor,” continued Percy, in a pleasant tone that reminded Mera of retail.
Wait, a visitor? Crap, was it her parents? No, it can’t be. They didn’t even bother calling her after she left…but there’s no one else it could be…!
“Oh! Did you hear that, Lady Mera? Someone has taken the time to visit us in prison! I wonder who it is!” Indus tried to encourage Mera, gently shaking her from the bed. She sighed, sliding off it with minimal energy.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
“Hello, Miss Bodyguard!” Indus exclaimed through the visiting booth glass, practically vibrating with excitement.
“Hi, Indus!” Molly Blyndeff responded with appropriate energy.
Mera stared from behind, dumbfounded, as Indus and Molly chatted away. Like they were old friends, catching up over tea, and not in a prison surrounded by cops and convicts.
What…what is she doing here? Mera tried to feel angry at…something, but her brain was too confused to generate any emotion other than “???”. Too busy trying to decipher why SHE of all people could POSSIBLY want to visit her.
What did she want? No one could be THIS nice, right? No one could possibly want to visit her in prison, especially after she tried to steal their epithet, right???
“Lady Mera!” Indus’ voice abruptly halted her train of thought (much like a BARRIER!!!). He handed her the phone. “The small bodyguard wishes to speak with you!”
Well, it wasn’t her parents, at least.
Holding the phone as gently as possible, Mera slowly sat down in front of Molly as Indus looked on from behind. Molly was…smiling at her. Sincerely. Big green button eyes sparkling as they stared at her, like they were trying to heal her just by looking.
WHY??? How?! Could she?! Be SMILING at her???
“Uh…” Mera hesitated, before putting on a front of contempt. Pretending she wasn’t screaming bloody murder on the inside. “Hi.”
“Hi. Uh…Lady Mera, right?” Molly asked kind of sheepishly.
Oh, goddamnit, she’s been talking to Indus. “Ugh, it’s just Mera,” she scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Um, okay. I’m Molly!” Molly replied with a smile, unfazed by Mera’s stand-offish tone. Contest failed.
She scoffed again, out of spite. “What are you even doing here anyway?”
“Oh, you know, I just…wanted to see if you were doing okay.”
“I’m stuck in prison with an epithet so powerful it breaks my bones on a daily basis, and I can’t even use it anymore,” Mera spat, holding up her eraser-cuffed hand for Molly to see.
“Yeah, sorry about that…” Molly wilted, a smog of exhaustion dimming her eyes; and Mera might’ve felt just a little bad. “Do you…want me to do the thing again?”
The little girl pushed her hand up against the visiting booth glass, offering Mera a soft, encouraging smile.
Mera hmphed, but she scooched forward and put her hand against the glass as well. She needed this more than she’d care to admit. They both closed their eyes, and a familiar ripple of glowing energy washed over Mera’s body. Slowly, her senses went quiet. Her thoughts went quiet. The pain in her broken bones dulled to a distant heat.
The world turned to ebony.
Mera opened her eyes and gasped softly as Molly dumbed down her pain for a third time. “Uh…thank you,” she whispered. She glanced back at Indus, who shot a thumbs-up and an enthusiastic grin at his master.
“Um, you’re welcome!” Molly smiled so glowingly Mera nearly had to shield her eyes. Feeling more and more weirded out by the second, she tried to think of an excuse to stop talking to her.
“O-okay. Well, you checked up on me, you made my pain go away again. You can…go now,” Mera dismissed, somewhat disingenuously.
“Oh,” Molly responded. She looked a little disappointed at the dismissal, but didn’t stop smiling at her. “A-alright. I’ll come again another time, okay?”
“Whatever.” Mera rubbed her temple exhaustedly, now back to wondering why this random kid was being so nice to her. What was she, like ten? No ten-year old she’d EVER met was remotely as bearable as her.
Then, just before Molly put down the phone, a follow-up thought passed Mera’s brain.
“Wait, kid,” she interrupted. “You’re like, ten, aren’t you?”
“Uh, twelve, actually.”
“It’s Friday. Don’t you have school?”
“Ohh. Heh heh…I wish.” Molly mumbled out that last part, her eyelids lowering.
“What?”
“What? A-anyway, bye!”
The star-haired girl hurriedly set down the telephone and hopped off the visiting booth seat. Mera sat there for a little longer, more confused than ever.
The day after.
“Lady Mera? Are you awake?”
Mera muttered incoherently as Indus shook her out of her sleep. Every bone in her body felt stiff and sore, but she couldn’t find the strength to complain about it right then.
“Rrgh, I told you not to wake me up, Indus,” she groaned, struggling to reclaim higher brain function. The light of the early-noon sun shone through their cell window. Must’ve taken the wrong dosage of medication again.
“I am sorry, Lady Mera, but we must prepare! Today is the day we leave prison, after all!”
Immediately, Mera snapped wide awake, the fog of sleep inertia plaguing her shattering like a bubble. “Wh…what?”
“Only for a day,” Percy’s familiar, toneless voice clarified from beyond the prison bars as she unlocked the cell door. “Your friend, along with Molly, has requested that the three of you may spend a day together outside of prison. And given the amount of community service Indus has done as well as his exemplary behaviour thus far, the Sweet Jazz Police Department has decided to honour this request. Out you come.”
“Wh…h-how did you even know you could do that?” Mera turned to Indus.
“I asked the nice police lady after Miss Molly’s visit! I then requested to call Miss Molly afterwards, and she seemed happy to spend a day with us! See what happens when you ask for things, Lady Mera?”
Mera rolled her eyes at Indus’ attempt at a life lesson. That kid agreed to spend a day with her? Was she stupid? Was she planning something???
Well…she wasn’t going to say no to an excuse to get out of here. Even for a day. She stretched cautiously, trying not to dislocate anything.
“Sure, whatever. Let’s just go find that girl.”
“Thanks for bringing us all the way to the mall, Percy,” Molly said as she hopped out of the detective’s police cruiser with the two convicts.
“The pleasure is mine, Molly.” Percy gave the girl a warm smile, before it faded back into a neutral working expression.
“I’ll be right outside. Call me if you need any assistance, and all of you remember to be back by five sharp.”
“Okay!” Molly nodded before turning to enter the mall, Indus and Mera by her side. “So…do you–or I guess did you go shopping often?”
“Mm, no. Too many noises, too many people.” Mera stuck her tongue out.
“Heh, I get that,” Molly agreed.
“Why’d you bring us shopping anyway? Not like we can bring anything back to prison with us,” Mera scoffed as she absent-mindedly examined her long-since chipped nail polish.
“I know. I thought I could take you guys out for lunch and dessert or something,” Molly explained. “And I brought enough money for us to do something else, like…there are kiddy rides here. Do you want to have a go, Indus?”
Indus gasped, stars in his eyes. “I do! I do want to go on the kiddy rides!!”
Mera raised an eyebrow. “You have enough money for lunch and dessert? For all three of us? You rich or something?”
“Heh heh, that’s funny, Mera,” Molly chuckled, sounding completely exhausted. “Ahh…no.”
Mera turned to Molly and furrowed her brows as Molly reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out a handful of paper bills and loose change. “My friend is rich, though, so she gave me some extra money for today. Combined with what’s left of my allowance this week, we have a little over sixty dollars.”
“Aaand how much of that is from your leftover allowance?”
“Ahh heh heh, uhh…look, kiddy rides!”
Touchy subject, then. Mera rolled her eyes as Indus bounced towards the shoddily-painted rides up ahead and Molly started buying the tokens to ride them.
As Indus gleefully let loose on the rides, Mera stared at a supervising Molly from a couple feet away. Looking her up and down the way a property inspector might look at a collapsing old amusement park ride.
She still couldn’t get a read on her. Same deal as when Molly visited them a few days ago.
It was a few minutes and a couple of spent kiddy ride tokens before Molly noticed Mera lurking, and broke her sight away from Indus to face her. “Do you…wanna try too?”
She was smiling. Again . It unnerved Mera. It unnerved her that she couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling behind that stupid plastic smile.
She never had a problem reading or manipulating people. She fooled the museum higher-ups without breaking a sweat. She’d played therapists and psychologists like a fiddle. How was this twelve-year old girl giving her so much trouble? How had she managed to let a random child trick her out of taking the one thing she needed to end ten years of suffering?!
She hadn’t gotten the chance to spiral further when there was a crystalline CRACK, and Mera felt an all-too-familiar sting course from her shoulder all throughout her left arm.
“ OW! Watch where you’re GOING, NUMBSKULL! I JUST BROKE THIS ARM!!!”
The offending numbskull turned to briefly glance at a well-and-truly seething Mera with all the apprehension of someone who’d just woken up a dragon, before picking up his pace and jogging away.
Indus gasped at this indefensible attack on his master! Jumping off the still-moving kiddy ride and sprinting over to her side. Molly followed suit with an expression of panic painted on her face.
“Oh no! Lady Mera, my…my apologies! I couldn’t protect-”
“O-ohh no, oh no, is…is it…bleeding?? I–what am I–of course she isn’t–” Molly fumbled through her words, eventually electing to just stop talking and place her hands over the assaulted shoulder.
She closed her eyes, and a familiar hum rippled through Mera’s arm like tides on a beach, the pain washing away and ebbing into an ocean of tranquillity. Mera struggled to form thoughts as Molly’s epithet washed over her and drained all sensation from her body.
“Rgh,” she grumbled as her brain crawled back from metaphor to reality. Her arm trembled with effort as she slowly started to move it again.
“Okay…at least it isn’t broken. Well, broken any more than it already was.” She turned to the staring shoppers nearby with a death glare that immediately got them to continue on their merry way.
“Ah, if only you had your epithet, Lady Mera,” Indus frowned. “You could simply take some of my Stamina!”
Molly blinked. “Wait, she can do that?”
“Indus! Don’t just tell people that!” Mera hissed, resisting the urge to elbow him.
“But Miss Molly wants to help you, Lady Mera!” Indus insisted, looking upset. “Yes, my lady is able to steal the Stamina of others in order to heal herself! She most often takes mine, because I have much Stamina to spare.”
“Wow,” Molly whispered. “That’s pretty cool.”
Mera scoffed. Indus making a big deal out of her injuries was enough already. Now she had Molly making a big deal out of her injuries AND her powers.
“To you, maybe,” she said coldly. “For me, it’s the only thing I’ve learnt in ten years that makes my stupid power any bearable. And now, I can’t even use it anymore.”
She started walking away from Indus and Molly, glaring at her broken arm with burning contempt. As if it could make the injury disappear. As if she could make the eraser cuff on her wrist disappear, like she could make her epithet disappear.
“…even with these stupid cuffs on, I can’t escape it.”
Mera flinched slightly as Molly walked up and gently put a hand on her (non-broken) shoulder. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her messy, frizzled hair seemed to cast a shadow on her face, and she was staring into the middle distance with the tired eyes of a war veteran.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice gentle and creaky; like a parent opening your bedroom door at night to check up on you. “I know it can feel like nothing can make your life better. Like you’re trapped in a world that only ever hurts you, in a life that only ever hurts you.”
Mera scoffed indignantly. How would she know? …how did she know?
“I know it feels like everything’s been taken away from you,” Molly continued. “But…you still have Indus. And me. And…we care about you. Even when it feels like you have nothing left, that your life is meaningless, there are always things still worth living for.”
“Ugh, shut up,” Mera spat, closing her eyes and turning away defensively. Who did this kid think she was, spewing moral platitudes at her like she was Indus? She was the only thing that could make her life less painful. She was the reason she was stuck in jail, that the one thing that could take away her suffering was out of reach.
“Listen, kid,” she pointed warningly at Molly. “I don’t need any pity, especially from you of all people.”
“I…I’m not pitying you-!” Molly panicked suddenly. “I just…I know what-”
“Oh, save it! You think you have any idea what it’s like? To live in a world where you’re always hurting, and nothing can help you? To feel like you’re trapped in a birdcage for people to look at and pity and do nothing about? To be stuck in a life you hate, with no way to escape?!”
Molly flinched at the outburst. Her mouth slammed shut. She gripped the straps of her yellow backpack tighter and looked down at her boots.
“…right,” she mumbled, all energy in her seemingly dying out. “…what do I know?”
Mera glanced back at Molly.
Right, she’s only twelve. She sighed inaudibly to herself and turned away again.
Indus worriedly looked back and forth between the two girls for a second. He walked up and gently tapped Molly on the shoulder, making her jump slightly.
“Miss Molly? I believe we should head to lunch now,” he suggested. His tone was quiet and gentle, like it only was when he was consoling Mera.
“Huh? Oh. Right.” Molly choked out a dry, mirthless chuckle. “Let’s go, then.”
Molly walked ahead of the criminal duo, looking at the ground without so much as a whisper. Mera ducked behind Indus from shoppers in all directions as they followed her.
She sneaked another glance at Molly. That plastic customer service smile was gone. And yet, her expression remained unreadable as ever.
She wasn’t…mad, right?
If Mera was honest, she hadn’t considered that Molly could ever get angry. She came to prison to visit her and chose to spend time with her, even after she’d tried to steal her epithet. She always had that plastic smile plastered on her face, unless she was busy being worried about Mera.
She had no idea why, but even so. There was no way something as stupid as just raising her voice could've made someone like Molly mad, right?
“So, where do you guys want to eat?” Molly suddenly stopped and looked back at the duo.
Mera stopped in her tracks and looked around. They’d reached the mall’s food section.
“Uh…” Mera contemplated her choices…she rarely ever ate out. Especially before she left home.
“What about there, Lady Mera?” Indus pointed out a restaurant for her.
The Colours of Coriolis. It was something of a big restaurant chain, and though Mera had only ever been to the one near the Desert-Taiga border, she liked their food better than any other place. Indus knew this.
“Sure,” she nodded, letting Molly lead them in.
As soon as they found a table near the restaurant window, Indus flipped open a menu and began happily perusing the restaurant’s selection. Mera didn’t bother to do the same; she already knew everything she liked from Colours. And to her surprise, Molly wasn’t touching the menus either.
“Hey, kid,” she prodded the girl sitting opposite her, trying her best to soften her tone (and not doing all that well, honestly). “Do you…not want to eat anything?”
“Oh, uh…” Molly seemed taken aback. “I-It’s alright. I already bought lunch.”
Mera blinked, dumbfounded as the tiny child in front of her pulled a granola bar out of her hoodie. Even Indus looked at Molly with concern, like a teacher who just heard one of their students tell a dark joke.
Mera shook her head. “No. No, you are not eating a freaking granola bar for lunch. Come on, kid, this is a fancy restaurant. They serve Desert, Taiga, and Island food here. There’s gotta be something you like.”
She tossed the menu over to Molly’s side of the table. Molly politely pushed it back to Mera.
“No, no. I-It’s not that I don’t want to eat the food here, it’s just…”
“Come now, Miss Molly, you are a growing bodyguard!” Indus said adamantly. “You must have enough to eat for lunch! How can you defeat your enemies in combat if you are malnourished?”
“If I skip lunch, I can save the extra money for groceries later,” Molly explained matter-of-factly. “Especially since my allowance this week is pretty much out, heh heh…hnnh.”
Indus gently nudged Mera again, gesturing discreetly to a withering Molly.
She looked at the little girl across from her, who at this point seemed to have given up smiling entirely. There was a deep, exhausted sadness surrounding her, like an orphaned kid at a funeral. Or a child, stuck in her room, waiting to recover from an illness that didn’t exist.
“Hello, can I take your order?” A waiter suddenly appeared beside their table.
“I will have two servings of naan, please!” Indus requested.
“Squid ink pasta and a black coffee,” Mera said, as casually as if it were instinct. The waiter scribbled their orders into her clipboard.
“Alright. Anything for the kid?”
“Oh, um…” Molly looked away. “I’m fine.”
“Do not be silly, tiny warrior!” Indus tsked and nudged Molly from across the table, then turned to the waiter again. “We will order an extra plate of naan for her, please!”
“Okay, your order will be with you shortly.”
Mera looked at Molly again. The unmistakable air of sadness returned to her as soon as the waiter left.
What was she supposed to do? She barely even knew this girl. Heck, it was her fault that she was still suffering from her stupid epithet. She didn’t owe anything to her!
…but Molly didn’t owe anything to her either, did she? And she still kept trying. Trying to help her. Mera groaned under her breath.
Okay. Let’s get this over with.
“Okay, Molly,” Mera called the girl by her name for the first time, which caught her attention. “What’s going on?”
“Huh?”
“What’s going on? Something’s clearly been bothering you. I mean, you’ve spent half the day with that fake smile plastered on your face, and then the other half looking even gloomier than I do. You’re refusing to eat lunch if it means saving money, you weren’t at school when you visited us yesterday morning, and when I said Indus was ‘free labour’ back at the museum, you responded with, and I quote, ‘You sound like my dad.’ Care to explain?”
Molly turned her eyes away from Mera. She folded her arms on the restaurant table and buried her chin in them.
“That obvious, huh?” She sighed. Her voice sounded completely dead; like a retail worker during off-hours or Mera when she was being sarcastic. Completely out of the ordinary for a kid her age.
“I’m good at reading people.” Mera shrugged, internally patting herself on the back. “So what is it then? Crappy family?”
“Oh, no, no. My family…” Molly hesitated, her eyes dimming again. Lost in a distant memory. “…my family was good. Once. We own a toy store; my dad made the toys, and my mom ran all the business stuff. But…”
Molly’s big green button eyes started to glisten, tears welling up and shining in the restaurant lights. “But then Mom died. And there was no one to run the store. So I…had to take over.”
Mera tilted her head. “ You had to take over running the store? What about your dad?”
“Dad doesn’t care about any of the business stuff. My mom took care of the finances and ran the cash register because she liked that kind of work. My dad only likes playing. That’s why he makes all the toys. But now Mom’s gone, and Dad can’t handle the finance stuff. If he took care of the money, he’d spend it all on junk! And then we’d have no way to buy food! Or pay any of our bills!”
Molly coughed out a single, teary laugh. She sniffled a little and wiped her face dry before continuing.
“A-and not just the business stuff, I have to run the register, too. Because he’s always ‘busy’ making toys in the basement. And I have to cook for us too, and wash the dishes, clean the house, do the taxes…everything. A-and my sister is supposed to help out, but…”
Mera leaned as far back in her seat as she could. “But…?”
“But she doesn’t care, either. She spends all her time in her ‘dream bubbles’ that she makes using her epithet and gets mad if I bother her. And I have to do everything myself.”
“How…old is your sister?” Mera asked, cautiously.
“Uh…seventeen this year.”
“Both your living family members are years older than you and they’re the ones making you do everything???”
“That sounds quite illegal!” Indus commented.
“Well, we’re both still attending school. I’m supposed to go on even days and run the store on odd days, and my sister does the opposite. But like I said, she doesn’t usually bother to actually be at the register. So everything still falls to me in the end. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I guess that’s why I wanted to try and help you. Because I…”
Because you saw a bit of yourself in me,” Mera finished digesting what she’d heard. Molly nodded.
An uncomfortable silence filled the air for a moment. Mera looked at Molly as the little girl wiped the tears from her face, Indus doing his best to console her.
This… sad girl. Mera could finally read her face. The face of someone who was stuck in a cage, whose wings had been clipped for everyone to look at. Who had given up trying to leave.
In a way, she saw a bit of herself in Molly, too. A little girl who thought they had no way of escape.
Finally, she spoke.
“Well, that’s stupid.”
“Huh?” Molly looked up, confused.
“I mean, that’s stupid!” Mera snapped. Indus nodded in agreement. “Your family is making you do ALL the work because they can’t be bothered to do it themselves?”
“I’m not quite sure if you’re saying my story was fake or my family is stupid??” Molly said sheepishly, kind of shrinking in her seat.
“Oh, your family is stupid, alright. How are you okay with any of this?”
“Do I have any other choice?” Molly asked matter-of-factly.
“You know what I did when I had enough of my parents? I ran away. When I got fed up with feeling like I was trapped in a birdcage for everyone to stare at and pity, I snuck out in the middle of the night and ran straight for Desert Country.”
Mera relayed this story like it were a fairytale epic. Molly remained doubtful.
“So you’re telling me to…run away?? I know it’s bad and all, but…they’re still my family, and-”
“So what? You’re just okay with it, then?” Mera waved dismissively. At this point, some of the other restaurant-goers were starting to stare at them.
“Take it from the expert! If something hurts you, even if it’s something close to you, you can’t just stand there and keep smiling like it doesn’t matter! If you’re stuck in a situation that’s hurting you and you just pretend that everything’s fine, it doesn’t matter who’s there for you or what things are worth living for; you’re just going to keep hurting until the day you die.”
Molly sighed. “I…I know. You’re right. But…like I said, they’re still my family. They’re the only family I have left. I know they were nice, once. They’re just…going through something really rough. Kinda…like you?”
Mera exhaled softly. Go figure, the girl who tried to help her even after she tried to steal her epithet would be sentimental. She thought about what to say for a moment.
“Well, you’re going through something rough too, right? Rougher than them, by a long shot. I’m not telling you to ditch them and run off to who knows where, you’re twelve , you’re barely even a person. But you can’t tell me you’re just…fine with all this. Aren’t you even a little bit angry?”
Molly shrugged again and tilted her head. “I-I can’t…be angry. It’s not nice. My sister is always angry, and her epithet always ends up destroying stuff when she gets mad…”
“Isn’t that just more reason to be pissed? Why shouldn’t you get to be mad at them? You’re going through things WAY worse than they are, because of them! That’s not fair! So what if it isn’t nice? You think I care whether or not people think I’m nice?”
“I can confirm, she does not!” Indus cheerfully added.
“You can keep hiding how you feel, fine,” Mera sighed, her tone softening again. She turned to stare at her reflection on the restaurant window.
“But as long as you keep caring about being ‘nice’, as long as you keep pretending you’re not angry, you’re never gonna be happy, either.”
Molly opened her mouth to object, then closed it again. She lowered her head, fiddling with her fingers, silently contemplating Mera’s words.
“I hate it,” she mumbled, finally.
“Yeah?” Mera prompted her further.
“I hate that I always have to do everything myself,” Molly continued. Her voice was quiet, yet rumbling with emotion. An emotion that’s been buried deep within her mind for 2 years. “I hate that nobody knows how to help me. I hate that my family doesn’t even talk about what happened!”
She looked up at Mera, emerald pupils tempered with contempt. “I hate that my sister hates me! And I hate her too!”
“That’s the spirit!” Mera smirked, for the first time since she was arrested. Molly was angry. And Mera could tell she was happy about it.
“And also, you were kind of mean to me at the museum!” Molly pointed at Mera. She was kind of yelling now. “I’m pretty sure all that fire resurfaced about two years’ worth of repressed trauma! Wow, I’m realising that there was a LOT of fire back at the museum that night!”
“Ah! That’s my bad,” Mera laughed out of guilt and embarrassment. She glanced over to see a very confused waiter standing awkwardly to the side of their table, holding their lunches in hand.
“Uh,” the waiter tried to find the words. “Is…is everything-”
“Everything’s fine, none of your business,” Mera snapped, returning to her cold, snippy default state. Balanced restored to the universe. She pointed to the watching customers. “That goes for all of you busybodies, too.”
“Indeed!” Indus agreed.
“Yeah! But, also, sorry for the noise…” Molly shrank and hid under the hood of her bear hoodie. Her face flared up in embarrassment, but she was smiling. Sincerely. Mera let out a satisfied sigh.
With a new breath of levity introduced between the trio, Molly, Mera, and Indus finally began eating their lunch.
“Hey, Molly,” Mera offered the child her coffee, as a joke. She watched as Molly took it graciously and downed it with a straight face.
“Wow, you really are a retail worker.”
“So, anything else you want to do?” Molly looked back at Mera and Indus as they walked through the mall. She’d bought an extra coffee to go and was drinking it intermittently.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to save money or something?”
“Yeah, but…again, this is my friend’s money. And I wanted this to be a good day for you!”
Mera scoffed lightheartedly. She shook her head. “You’re really too nice for your own good.”
Molly shrugged. “Maybe, but…it’s nice to be nice, isn’t it?”
Mera looked around. She did want to do something else before going back to prison, but…what was there to do? It wasn’t like she could buy anything.
“Oh! Look, Lady Mera!” Indus pointed something out. An ice skating rink up ahead. “I recall you saying you used to love ice skating!”
“Oh, really?” Molly’s eyes widened innocently. “We should go then, right, Mera?”
“Uh…well, I…” Mera hesitated, unsure if she wanted to show Molly that side of her. She never told anybody about her hobbies other than Indus.
Oh, who was she kidding? Of course she wanted to go. Ice skating was the closest thing to running she could do without breaking anything. It was the closest thing to being truly free she had.
“Yeah, alright, let’s do it.”
As they walked, Mera hissed under her breath as she dodged out of the way of a distracted shopper. The mall was getting more and more crowded as the day went on. Her eyes darted between the mall-goers when she felt someone take her hand. Molly was next to her.
The little girl closed her eyes as they continued walking, and a dulling glow flooded from the hand she was holding, all throughout Mera’s body again. A little protection aura courtesy of Molly.
“Thank you,” Mera whispered again. She wasn’t particularly used to holding hands. Or any kind of contact, really. Any kind of pressure considered normal for other people was uncomfortably rough for her, the kind that felt on the verge of pain.
But Molly was gentle. Impossibly so, like a low tide. Possibly even gentler than Indus. Maybe it was her epithet, maybe she was really just this gentle, who knows.
Maybe, just maybe…she could get used to this.
“Look, Lady Mera! I’m sliding!” Indus said, skidding across the ice rink with his hands on his hips and ramming straight into the wall like a glitched video game character.
Mera rolled her eyes, skating past Indus with professional grace. People watched as she zoomed around the rink at an awe-striking speed, almost as if she could fly. She smirked: pridefully, genuinely.
It’s been too long since she’d done this. Since she had been free like this.
Guess she had Molly to thank for it.
She looked back at the entrance to the ice skating rink where Molly was struggling with her own skates, hugging the railing on the walls for dear life. Chuckling to herself in amusement, Mera zipped over to her in an instant.
“So, guessing you’ve never done this before, huh?” Mera crossed her arms and smirked.
“N-no! I don’t usually have time to go anywhere, and ice skating is a bit more dangerous than I’m usually comfortable w-with…” Molly stuttered, keeping her gaze down at her unsteady feet.
“Oh, trust me. You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced this,” Mera stated confidently, nevermind that her own limited life experience might’ve made her a little biased. “Just hold on.”
Carefully, Mera lifted Molly’s hands from the railing, holding them in her own. Immediately, so Molly wouldn’t have time to lose her footing again, Mera took off, guiding the little girl as they skirted around the rink and past the other skaters.
Mera had spent years training every single thing she could possibly do despite her fragility. She used her strength to swing Molly in arcs behind her as they skated, the momentum of each turn balancing the inexperienced young girl like a centrifuge.
She would let go of Molly, letting the girl slide across the rink like a polar bear cub across an ice cap, before catching her again. Molly was so gentle and lightweight that Mera didn’t even have to worry about breaking her hands in the process, swooping her straight back into the motion like a hockey player handling a puck.
They danced and circled around awestruck skaters, swiftly, elegantly, like a pair of raptors following each other through a forest. Mera felt slightly embarrassed at the attention, but pride was swelling in her vain heart.
Molly was a surprisingly fast learner, too. In minutes, she was skating with one leg up in the air like a ballerina, following Mera’s movements and balancing herself in time. Soon, they were spinning around each other.
After another dozen minutes or so, Mera could swing Molly across the rink like a hammer toss, and Molly could steady herself upright on the ice with relative ease. The little girl chuckled, nervously but excitedly, as she slowly got better with each movement.
“See? What did I tell you?” Mera laughed, swooping up Molly’s hands once more.
“Y-yeah! This is…fun! I’m having fun!” Molly exclaimed, as if the concept was something foreign to her. Bittersweet in a way, but that barely mattered now.
It was nothing spectacular, especially to someone with Mera’s Proficiency, but Molly’s eyes sparkled with wonder all the while, her weird button-pupils looking almost like constellations in an ebony-green sky.
Mera had to look away again. To concentrate, that was. One wrong move and every bone in her body could break three times over from hitting a wall or a stray skater.
But suddenly, a hum of protective energy started to wash over her body, and Mera looked behind her to see Molly was laughing. Laughing in pure, sincere, childlike amazement, her epithet pouring out of her soul along with the emotions.
“It appears you two are getting along, Lady Mera! Good for you!” Indus called out from afar, standing perfectly still in the middle of the rink, watching the two girls in satisfaction.
“Shut up, Indus,” Mera snapped in embarrassment. There were other people here! But the other two continued smiling as brightly as they always did. Contest failed.
Oh well. It didn’t matter. Not right now. Right now, nothing mattered.
Right now, nothing could hurt her.
“We’re back, Percy!” Molly called out to the police officer, who was standing in the exact same spot as they saw her a few hours earlier, her police cruiser right beside her.
“And just on time, too,” Percy added cheerfully. “Well, it’s time you two returned to your cells. But I hope today has been a satisfactory experience for all of you.”
“Yeah,” Molly smiled. “I think it was.”
“It was indeed!” Indus agreed as the convicts stepped into the backseat of Percy’s police car.
Mera scoffed, putting on a face in front of the detective. Just when she needed it, though, her snark was nowhere to be seen. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Wonderful,” responded Percy. She started up the car as soon as Molly crawled in with her. “In that case, perhaps you can arrange for another outing such as this one sometime in the future. Provided you are on your best behaviour until then, of course.”
“Sure,” Mera said as casually as she could. She sneaked a glance at Molly. The little girl was smiling back at her. Not with her unnerving plastic customer service face, but a completely sincere smile.
“That would be nice.”
They reached the prison again, after a deeply discomforting half-hour car ride. Mera sighed as she stepped out of the vehicle.
Well, she was always going to have to come back eventually.
To her surprise, though, Molly stepped out as well. The starry-haired girl ran over and tackled Mera in a big bear hug, and a familiar warmth embraced her. The pain and discomfort of the car ride evaporated with her sensations as she wrapped her arms around Molly, accepting all the feelings into her system.
The world turned to ebony.
When the numbness passed, they let go of each other.
“Thank you,” Molly mumbled, barely audible. “For today.”
Mera scoffed. “Don’t mention it. You probably needed it more than I did.”
“Eh. Well,” Molly shrugged. “Birds of a feather…gotta stick together, right?”
“That’s not the saying, but…yeah."
“If you ever want to do this again, you can always ask me, okay?” Molly asked again, as if to make sure Mera got it through her skull this time.
“Yeah, yeah, alright.” Mera put her hands up and did a ‘back off’ motion. “I got it…thank you."
Mera watched as Percy’s police cruiser left for Molly’s home. She’d find a way to get rid of her curse someday.
For now…maybe this was good enough.