Rising Shards

Stella frantically checked her purse for the fifth time in a minute as we waited for Zeta.

“Evy. I think I might have forgotten them.” Stella sounded like she had lost golden tickets that would get us on a train to a magic world where we’d be given a trillion dollars and everything we ever dreamed of, which maybe was a bit too anxious for day passes for a museum, but anxiety is a difficult beast to wrangle even on one’s best day, so I tried to just be gentle about it.

“They’re digital tickets, aren’t they?” I said.

“…oh. Right.” Stella said. She dug into her purse again. “I brought my phone, didn’t I? Hold on…”

“It’s in the cup holder,” I said, pointing to the cup holders between our seats.

“Thanks,” Stella said. “Genuinely don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Same here,” I said. “I might be geeking out a lot at the museum, so if it gets too much, please don’t leave me.”

“Oh no, I am fully here for you geeking out,” Stella said. “If Zeta hates this, I’ll at least get to enjoy you being a huge nerd and probably learning a bunch from you!”

“I can’t see her hating this,” I said. “In my mind, worst case scenario she’s just bored.”

“Yeah, I suppose. But if she’s just bored, that doesn’t really help her with her feelings, you know?” Stella said. “I just hope the pride stuff lands with her and helps keep her spirits up.”

“That’ll probably be good for us too; I can’t remember the last time I did anything pride related.” I said. I knew there was some events I had been to, but it had been a while.

“When’s the last time we had sex?” Stella said, barely making it through her joke before bursting out laughing. It hit full Stella deep gut laugh territory quickly. I didn’t fully join her in laughing until she started wheezing out something like “Because…because we’re gay so…so the pride…you doing…me is…” The way she hit her own funny bone so hard was pretty infectious, to the point we were both gasping for air when Zeta finally showed up, and we both struggled to explain why we were laughing without repeating Stella’s joke. I think Zeta was more worried she walked in on us sobbing in unison and that something terrible had happened; once we confirmed it was just the giggles she seemed to get less tense.

“So we’re going to a museum today?” Zeta asked as she buckled up.

“Uh huh,” Stella said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I don’t know if you remember this one, you were only three or four when I took you.”

“I don’t really remember going to any museum,” Zeta said. “Oh! Except for that TV one.”

“TV one?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Zeta said. “They were giving away these Tower of Hate and Love placemat thingies, and I wanted one really badly, so Stella took me to it.”

“One of the suburbs that’s like ninety percent farmland had this small media museum and they were doing a Tower exhibit.”

“Is that the one in Iho Vinai?” I asked.

“No, that’s not really a museum, is it?” Zeta said. “It’s kind of wild that Tower has so many origins in the area.” I kept my eyes on the road, but I could picture her eyes sparkling as she talked about her favorite show. She spent the entire ride over talking about Tower of Hate and Love, and I could tell by Stella’s grip on the handle next to her door that she was wondering if we should have just gone to this TV museum again or taken a trip to Iho Vinai.

Zeta seemed like she was in good spirits as we walked up the stone stairs to the museum. It was an older building, but it had been renovated a few years ago, so the architecture was a mix of almost ancient looking pillars and stone walls and modern structures that looked like someone combined two museums in some kind of time traveling fusion experiment. We paused at a pair of big stone fangs at the entryway.

“Wowza,” Zeta said, patting one of them. “Can you imagine having fangs this big?”

“You’d have to be a giant to carry these around,” Stella said.

“I bite my lip enough with the ones I got.” Zeta said. Right as I remembered that the fangs were actually part fountains, a burst of water came from one. “Eek!”

We only got misted by it, but Zeta’s tail was poofed up and Stella started panicking like her sister would flee back to the car and our mission would be an immediate failure.

“I’m so sorry,” Stella said, once again sounding anxious in a tone that suggested she’d fumbled a priceless artifact that would make us billions.

“Huh?” Zeta said. “It’s fine? Just scared me a bit is all.” She patted her tail, trying to make it be less poofy, but shrugged when it stayed in startled mode.

To try and calm herself down, Stella went ahead to get our tickets scanned at a booth. I tried to find a snack booth, because I remembered there was a frozen banana stand that was pretty good near the front entrance, but I had no luck finding it.

“Can you imagine having fangs that spray water out?” Zeta asked. “I wonder if mine can, what with the watery storm powers, you know? Dr. Diast, do you think I could?”

“There are some Cani with fangs that spray stuff out, but it’s a huge pain, so they usually get caps for it.” I explained. “You’d probably know by now if you could, but as you know, Cani traits can be unpredictable in that regard.”

“Don’t I know it,” Zeta said, patting her tail again.  

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