The River’s Bend Off Ita Walk: Thirteen
Much as the alarm clock, it was the steps on wood flooring that woke Chizome every morning.
Forcing her from blissful, enchanting dreams of knights and video games from all those fancy, horrific corrupting devices called consoles.
This particular day was in the throes of a sweltering, heavy handed summer season where the air rippled like miso or the wide bath of beef bone in a Christmas broth hot pot.
"Sumi. Sumi," called her mother, rapping on the paper of her slide away door.
"Mmhmm," she moaned out, hardly cognizant at that exact moment. "Mmm, mm I'm up. Up now."
With a single band she got her hair in something of a ponytail, slid effortlessly into her uniform, a very drab and brown second skin. With layers. And a pair of mostly useless rectangular reading glasses that made her look completely geekish.
But it was so funny she couldn't help but grin at the sight.
Breakfast was onigiri that morning. Eaten savoring every bite, hoping her mother could hear just how much her daughter loved it, and a solemn prayer of thanks to a kind lordship above once the bowl was empty.
Mother headed off to that mind numbing, evil company of parasitic tech-obsessed drones she called work. What all the adults, called work.
The only fit seat for an imagination like hers was at the window. Her reflection something of a constant, dearly departed companion as she looked out everyday to the barren grounds kicking up dusts and dunes twittering in the air like the desert gales from a treasure adventure game on the school computers. Older models, and less powerfully ensnaring and intransigent.
Setting her bag down she settled for hours of dubiously useful lecture material. However her first course was not the most dull in the world. In fact, even if Ondo would laugh the morning Civics elective could even be fun every sparse occasion.
Her notes were primly organized, meticulously made, perfectly copied when needed. Any fool would dismiss her as a simple bookish girl.
Which was just as they'd agreed things would be.
Life endured on, past the cell tower, past the sea, and from the carving of a mighty river under the main bridge, life continued. For the time being.
At the South end of the building, where her math course was just before lunch was where she could see the structure teasing her.
Jelly pops and Berry phones spying with their camera lenses, her own galaxy cased phone laying heavy inside her own skirt's pocket. Often cold and often going unused.
Constant blabbering or wishy-washiness over the texts on miniscule screens.
She hardly deigned to eat lunch in the classroom. Often wandering the school seeing if she could find a new haunt each day.
Today she found the Ivy Seat nestled away among the charming little tomato and thyme garden. A stone fountain filled to the brim with fresh sugar water for hummingbirds to lap up. The bench old and full of splinters but somehow solid.
A quiet reprieve of the chaos and noise from Infested fools.
She sent a message, certain Hawa would be by her side at once. He always had been.
Since that one world-altering day.
When they had found a discarded "cell phone," in the river.
While chasing a bullfrog.
The wind picked up in a sudden gust, crisp, dogged air hinting at a sharp tinged fall.
Hawa soon messaged back.
\\At your beck and call, strawberry or chocolate to please the fair princess?//
A toad princess.
Obviously strawberry.
Chocolate being much too rich a flavor to settle on the tongue for black bean onpan.
END
*Jelly Pop, an old cell phone model. Flip phone. Look up Operation True Love on Webtoon or the WebToon YouTube channel*