LCU, landslide, part 2

October 2083 - LCU, fall semester (part 2 of 4) - Dallas Deppiesse is 19, Fenton Dyer and Iris Barton are 20. (Lucy Harris is 17.)
* soundtrack for all parts, "Landslide," by Fleetwood Mac *

The residence hall at Takemizu Academy has an ancient wishing well hidden among some trees, but Dallas won't touch it. He refuses to touch it! Because the first and only time he touched it was the first day he got here - the first hour he got here, before he'd even unpacked his bags - and this is what it told him: "The time will come for you to make a decision."

What the hell is that supposed to mean???

He also didn't know that a swarm of bees had taken up inside it. The coin he tossed disrupted their sleep, and in the space of seconds, they woke up and rushed toward him. He was stung thirty-two times.

They've been haunting him ever since. He was tasked with collecting ant specimens for a biology project, and instead what he found were more bees. Hundreds of them. He was stung fifty-four more times, covered from head to toe in bright pink welts.

He just can't seem to catch a break in this godawful place. And it's not just the bugs.

His roommates here at the Academy are Fenton and Iris, who also come from LCU. They're fine people and all, except that they love to brag about their love life over cereal in the morning.

"Did you know," she says, "That there's this fountain in the plaza, and they say if you do it there, your love will be blessed for eternity?"

"You know," Fenton says. "I think it's just a kiss - you just have to kiss there."

"Oh, really?" she says. "Well, either way."

He was allowed to bring his ants. And he brought a few dozen pictures of Lucy, and his friends and family. He misses them all so much. Though, it's quiet here, and that was the point. There isn't much else to do but focus and learn.

Though it's all that quiet, all that focus, all that lack of distraction that makes him realize that it's so hard to ignore the fact that Iris is not ugly! She's not even a little bit ugly. She's not annoying, or mean, or smelly. She is, in fact, quite attractive.

Maybe he's just lonely. Or maybe it's just the fact that she always seems to be talking about it, in all its various forms. Either that, or it's that he can hear them doing it, through their paper-thin walls, and the noises she makes, when they're doing it are really very vocal.

Or that everything she says seems to be twisted into something bordering on pornographic.

"You must be really good with your hands," she says.

He almost chokes on his salad. "What?"

"Oh, Fenton told me you aced that interspace mechanics course," she says. "And in your first year. That's really impressive."

"Oh," he says. "That."

"I mean, congrats and everything," she says. "That one was so hard."

She said, hard.

Cold showers don't really work. Not really. Sometimes they do for about the length of the shower itself, and then it's right back on the brain again, maybe even faster, as the warm blood rushes back around his body, heating it all right back up.

He misses Lucy. A lot. He thinks about her in the shower, and when he's alone in bed at night. He thinks about her when Iris is making her love noises, which are so voluminous through the ridiculously paper-thin walls. Lucy's sounds are nicer, softer but not necessarily quieter. Sometimes he can hear her sweet sighs so clearly in his ears, as if they were etched into his memory, so real they seem to share the same space with the noises Iris makes. Which only leads him to imagine the both of them, images flashing through his mind, entangled, touching, kissing.

No, that doesn't help either. Useful, yes. But in the longterm, no, not helping.

But mostly, he just misses being with her. He misses her smile and her laugh, the smell of her sweet perfume, and nuzzling his face into her hair to kiss her neck. It's night for him, which is also about the time she's getting ready for school every morning. They talk every single day at this time.

She tells him about her first weekend on campus with Summer. "Was it fun?" he asks.

"It was okay," she says.

"It's probably different than here," he says. "It's quiet here, but you know, that's kind of the point."

"Yeah," she says. "It wasn't quiet there."

"Beau said congrats," she says, staring at her naked finger.

"Oh, Beau was there?"

"Yeah, of course he was. And April. And Vicky too. It was so weird."

"That is weird," he says.

"But it was okay," she says. "She didn't try to beat me up or anything."

"It kind of sounds like fun," he says. "So what did your parents say?"

She still hasn't told her parents yet. She told him she wasn't wearing it at home, not as long as they still didn't know. She keeps the ring tucked into her bra when she's home, nestled safe beside the cleavage of her left boob, dear and close to her heart.

"So everybody knows?" he says. "Everybody but your family."

"Not all my family," she says. "Sarah and Sam both know. My grandparents, and Melissa."

"I told you you didn't have to answer me right away if you didn't want to. I didn't want you to be ashamed of it."

"I'm not ashamed," she says. "That's not it at all!"

"Then what?"

Her voice crackles, which only sounds amplified over the cell phone connection. "My parents aren't like yours."

He can hear the way she breathes, deep and full of sighs, when she's trying not to cry. He's made her cry more times than he ever wanted to, and each one of them has been over this stupid school. He hates this, being so far apart and so helpless, because how can he make her feel better again from all the way across the planet?

***

Just before their midterm project is due, Fenton catches something. The last thing he knew, he was talking to a ninja who said he was going to teach him "a trick" - Fenton now realizes this might have been a hoax - and hours later, he was in bed, fighting off nausea and trying with all his strength not to pass out. The locals say it's just the regular flu, but it's nothing like these three student-tourists have ever seen before. Fenton resigns himself to bed for the rest of the week.

Iris hasn't even talked about sex for days, and that usual dubious twinkle in her eyes has been replaced by worry. "Maybe he didn't get all the right shots or something," Iris says. "I thought we got all the same ones, but maybe we didn't."

"He'll be okay," Dallas says.

"I hope so," she says. "I don't even know what I'd do if something happened to him."

But they have a midterm project to finish, and Fenton's portion of the project will have to be done on his laptop in bed, while Iris and Dallas cover his end of the research.

The project is in Asian History 101, and they wander out into the village to meet people and learn about the local customs. They're both courteous and polite, so the villagers don't mind answering their questions.

Dallas learned from one of them how to tend a zen garden. It takes a steady hand, sound mind, and lots of practice, and the raked stones are meant to symbolize the soothing ripples of water. It reminds him of the lakeshore back home, his bedroom window open and falling asleep to the gentle waves of Lake Michigan crashing across the boardwalk. He misses it so much.

"It's freezing out here," Iris says.

Dallas hadn't even noticed it was raining. It's fall here, just like it is back home, but the weather is so different. It's misty and mild, but the dew leaves a chill on the skin at the same time. It's nearly November, and at home everything would be dry and crunchy, waiting for the first snow.

They have some warm rice for dinner. The rain has stopped, but the grass still smells wet. It's hard to realize how far away from home they are sometimes. Being here, with two other LCU students, ones who even knew some of his friends back home, he could easily imagine he was just in some themed park in the city. But he's not. And he can't just drive home to see his mom, or walk across the street to dip his toes in the lake. And he can't see Lucy, he can't smell her, he can't hug her or kiss her.

Fenton and Iris never met Lucy, even though they knew Beau and April and Tyler from their classes last year. "What's she like?" Iris asks him, after finishing her rice, gazing out across the quiet village.

"She's my best friend," he says. "And the most beautiful girl in the world, at the same time."

The bus back to their residence halls only runs every half hour, so they sit down to have some tea while they wait. The warmth feels good as the night cools off.

"I thought Fenton might ask me sometime," she says. "He hasn't though. We've been dating three years."

"It's probably more normal that he hasn't yet, at our age," Dallas says. "I don't know, I just wanted her to know I meant it, that I was coming back."

She smiles at him. "You're a sweet guy," she says.

She's nervous, and it makes him nervous. It's too dark for him to read her eyes.

But she starts to laugh then and puts down her teacup, breaking the tension. She rises, reaching out to the tea pot.

"I should take some tea back to Fenton," she says. "It might make him feel better."

*******

(footnotes: part 1 // the engagement // on Japanese rock gardens)

notes: the bees and that exact fortune really happened to Dallas the very first day he was there! Before he'd done anything else - I sent him to toss a coin, and he got fire and bees and a fortune that read, "The time will come for you to make a decision."

Dude, creepy!

Because you're probably curious, Dallas and Iris do have three bolts (about 91) together. He's higher with Lucy (105), and she's higher with Fenton (120/30-something), if that makes you feel better about them being cooped up in such close quarters ;)

And I finally tried out that photoshopped tears tutorial over at simhaven, on that second picture of Lucy. It's so subtle you probably didn't even notice, lol! But I was quite ridiculously proud of the way it turned out. I think it's much more useful and realistic than any of the tear masks I've seen.