>>9791>>9792Twentieth day of spring. As soon as the sky is covered in stars, the childish gem refuses to sleep and finds it a nightmare to fall asleep. She kills time by bouncing on her bed imitating a trampoline, thinking about everything that the stupid Fluorite deprives her of at night. She neither needs nor wants to sleep! Adults don't know anything about anything. This is a stubborn and persistent thought installed in his head even when he stops jumping and turns his back to the mattress of the bed.
Her disgust and frown do not repel the gigantic yawn that escapes her shortly, on the verge of falling defeated at the hands of insomnia, she sees through the small window an unmistakable...
—Firefly!– she tilts her head, surprised. —Firefly?–
He rubs his eyes with his hands and sharpens his gaze, he can swear that Mrs. Fluorite told him about bugs that glow in the dark, not that size, nor expiring in real time in the academy garden, of course. With her hands on the window lintel, she stuck her nose out, open-mouthed, and contemplated as much of the specimen as she could, sparkling like an eliograph exposed to the sun. A thousand questions bombarded his head, detonating into a single directive. The urge to see him face to face.
Before the idea of sneaking out of the academy could gain strength, the presence left where it came from, leaving as bewildered as a childish Dumortierite can be. For a long hour she found herself unable to unfreeze her eyes from the glass, the anxiety of meeting the cryptid again kept her up long enough for fatigue to put her to sleep without her even realizing it. Her subsequent memory is of reluctantly and irritably attending Fluorite's classroom, paying little to no attention to the endless herbalist essay. His encounter with a never-before-seen organism fueled an insatiable curiosity about it; everything seemed like a waste of time compared to going to the nearest forest for clues to its whereabouts. That or at least the slightest bit of evidence to show that her anecdote wasn't the product of staying up late at night.
If she paid even the slightest attention to the class, she would present a discreet disagreement with the absent Topaz and Almandino, she hates flowers to death, they always invade her navel and the inside of her elbows, forcing her to clean herself so as not to end up as a traveling garden. Brogelias, begonias and some reckless sunflowers adopt as homes the handfuls of soil that lodge in their bodies as the weeks and months go by.
He shows no interest in the lesson until his future accomplice makes an appearance. The person who will definitely collaborate in the task of stealing a weapon from the storage room and going in search of the fluorescent beast. Rutilo, his treasured little sister. She still ignores much of her rank as an older sister. At first she addressed her existence from another clumsy responsibility with which Fluorite fined her. In the first quarter of the year, other gems and their relationship of "sisters more sisters than other sisters" exemplified that the existence of a younger sister is not a condemnation of others but a personal obligation. Just like Andalusite repairing them or Fluorite teaching. For Dumortierites, older sister is synonymous with mentor. Since he understood it, he has decided to teach and help Rutilo in everything he can. After all, she is not one, not two, but THREE weeks older. It's like an eternity, she's definitely fifty times more experienced and stronger than her little sister. No one would convince her otherwise.
And her lesson today will be to avoid the older gems, all in order to avoid being pioneers of the most severe punishments that Fluorite can think of once she discovers that they went out at night to blindly search the forest. This is what he plans to tell her as soon as Mrs. Fluorita closes the class and passes the eraser on the blackboard, if it weren't for Rutilo informing him of the good news.
—Sis-ma-ni-ta—
His greeting dissolved into syllables, in each one he took charge of ironing the edges of Rutilo's uniform with his hand and tucking in the collar of his shirt. I would comb it if it weren't for the constant danger of damaging it with some false move.
—One minute, one minute—He raised his index finger, trying to calm Rutilo's spirits. —Tell me first, even if I do ugly things, would you still love me? Little sister, even if I steal and escape, would you follow me? would you do it? Should you?–His eyebrows arched downward slightly, as if weighed down, forming a tiny wrinkle between them.
Indeed, he was preparing the ground to know whether or not he could count on Rutilo for his little misadventure. Once he received a yes or no, he would take her by the hand, letting himself be guided to the place agreed upon by Topaz.
>>>>>>>
Crouched and hunched over, the twinned flow of the lake was the little that kept the uncomfortable silence at bay, the Dumortierite exclusively dedicated a timid glance to the sister who was twice her size and tripled her knowledge, Imperial Topaz. Impatient, it was Rutilo who dared to break the ice with a reasonable question. One that was not expected from her, being most of the time modest and impeccable in her manners.
—Is Cianita no longer here? Did you go on vacation? Can I go?–
Credulous, she intoned a series of innocent questions, bringing her index finger close to her chin. For Dumortierite, non-existence is an unknown phenomenon; it does not fall within her range of possibilities. Breaking? Yes, sleep? Sure, die? It barely enters your vocabulary.
In the following, she remains on the sidelines, digging in the ground with her nails to catch a worm and tie it to her big toe, eager to attract one of the jellyfish that Topaz told her about. His activity was not productive enough for him to turn a deaf ear to the exotic relationship that Chrysocola had with the aforementioned Kyanite. One of his eyebrows flies over his forehead, not fully reasoning what Topacio strives to introduce, explain and exemplify.
—Chrysocolla and kyanite were like me and rutile? like this or closer?
She cheapens the idyll experienced between the gems by comparing it to her own simplistic fraternal bond, in part it is not entirely her fault that she is unable to process the type of relationship professed by Topaz, Dumortierite was never driven to spend 24/7 with a specific sister. He clearly reserves his preferences for Rutilo, but it is not the type of unconditional and lovey-dovey affection of the aforementioned. Dumortierita wants more than anything for Rutilo to be independent, not dependent, thinking that if one of the two disappeared they would leave the other eternally melancholic gives her a bitter spoonful of fear.
Her way of loving Rutilo is, strictly, that of a sister. And it seems that she came to the same conclusion when she seemed disappointed.
—Hug—
The word seems the closest thing to a sigh of relief escaping your lips. The initial "a" is a harmonic note, it resonates like a guitar chord in the middle of the night. The adjacent "b" is a soft murmur, a whisper of intimacy that approaches the ear. The "r" is a vibrating sound, the heartbeat of one of the wild specimens once shown by Fluorite. And the final "o" is a warm compliment, a flood of sunshine in the final days of the bloody island winter.
Want one!
—Will you give me a hug?—
I consult with my eyes on Topacio, what better candidate to receive her first hug than someone who is versed in giving them? Once he learns about that ritual, he will secretly share it with Rutilo. Unfortunately the presence of a third party in discord frustrates all their plans, the glaucous Diopsio makes an appearance, calling into question the teachings taught by Topacio.
Dumor greeted him, bowing his head abruptly. For a moment he thought he would get into trouble, correlating the hugs with a negative taboo. Immediately discovering that this type of brotherhood between gems is very normal in the adult world.
Initially timid, Diopsio dodges the question, only to confirm Topaz's various suspicions a second later. For her part, having her instructor busy, she decided that she would rehearse that hug in her own way, directing her gaze at her little sister.
—Do you know how to give it?—
She inquired, ending up nervously avoiding eye contact. It's like a girl longing for something she doesn't know or understand, you could perfectly refer to a hug with a punch in the face and she would receive it totally willing.