Rising Shards

Stella had been beet red since I introduced her to a colleague, and maybe kind a called her my wife, then my future wife, then my soulmate. It wasn't like I was lying, it was just a topic we hadn't talked about yet. And one I drunkenly blabbed out.

But I'd definitely thought about it before. We'd only been together a few months, but they had been going well enough, why wouldn't I think about what comes next? I wasn't sure if I was ever the marriage type, and I didn't know if Stella was, but the conclusion I came to after some late night contemplation was that calling her my wife sounded nice.

But throwing that out there in the middle of an art gallery visit while drunk was a potential point of chaos. Because now I had got Stella off her game while I was a few drinks in, and I needed her on her A game to wrangle in her younger sister who was still in hyper mode.

We had reached the center of the art exhibit, a very delicate looking statue of a giant hefting a comet, likely the beginning point of the artist's scifi narrative they told through their work. The giant did not look like he ever remembered his leg days. It was probably perfectly safe and the statue was likely not that heavy, but standing under a statue with thin legs holding up a giant comet was a bit unsettling. Especially standing near Zeta as she inched forward, someone with a history of having mishaps that ended up wrecking things, with one even being art installment related. There weren't any barricades between us and the statue, making my worry grow.

In spite of her past incidents, Zeta didn't seem to care or remember them, watching people reach forward to touch the statue's shins for some reason looking like she wanted to do the same.

"Say, remember that memory vision thing we watched a bit ago?" I asked.

"Which one?" Zeta asked. "Oh, the statue one? This does kinda look similar..."

In some work with the River and Lyric trio trying to find more about Zeta and Stella's parents, we had seen a vision of their father's past where he was accidentally responsible for a statue's collapse. That was a wildly different scenario than any of Zeta's, but I couldn't help but wonder if it ran in the family.

"Just, maybe...how to put it..." I didn't have enough drinks to be completely incoherent, but my speaking was requiring a bit more effort.

"She means to be careful," Stella said.

"Careful of what?" Zeta asked. "This thing looks way more sturdy than that memory one. Watch!"

Zeta reached forward the instant we were in touching range.

I shouted, "NO!" maybe way too loudly, stopping Zeta in her tracks like a cat about to get up to mischief. She crossed her arms.

"Fine, whatever," Zeta said.

I winced. "Heh, er, just...be careful is all, bud."

Zeta crossed her arms. I feared that shouting at Zeta ruined Stella's embarrassed mood about me calling her my wife, and couldn't look her way. I didn't think that going somewhere to help Zeta finish an assignment would be so stressful, but here we were.

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