Ariel put her teacup down as she thought about things.
Yes, she could see where Hazel was coming from. But on the other hand, her eyes had been too blue recently, with no promise of letting up any time soon.
She cleared her throat. "I had wondered..." she ventured while gazing up at the moon, "when you would return."
Hazel finished taking a sip from her own teacup and frowned slightly at Ariel's tail. It had been silver and shiny a few weeks ago- so shiny in fact that the last time Hazel had come to visit she was forced to wear sunglasses, at midnight, which resulted in an awkward reveal of her new eye-shadow- but now it looked dull, like old silver spoons used too many times without proper cleaning. She squinted. Was that a bruise?
"Hazel!" Ariel snapped her fingers and flicked her head back, forgetting that her long red hair was now short, thick, and unable to swish sexily over her shoulder. She paused for a second, then sighed.
"I'm thinking," Hazel said, and took another sip to bide time.
"How long does it bloody take? We haven't seen you in forever, you never come to visit like you said you would. Dad is giving himself a hernia trying to come up with new ideas to tempt you back down. I mean, what is it all for?"
It was! Right near the end, a small, dark green discolouration, barely a lump and hardly noticeable unless you were practiced in the art of 'avoiding eye contact'.
"I mean it!" Ariel said loudly, and it came out harsher than she had intended. "You do know we're not supposed to live up here? We have lives... down there..."
Well this was going grand! First Hazel disappears into some unnatural land where people have legs and eat meat on a stick. Then she drags Ariel up as well, claiming that life was better with electricity and dry hair. The horror! The audacity! And now she comes here, eyes blue as those sciaenochromis fryeri weirdos that hang out under the coral fountain, claiming that she won't ever return because she met some foxes in the woods and they built her a tree-house.
"It's not really about me," Hazel said vaguely, knowing full well it was. "It's about the changing tides an-"
"Oh don't be all philosophical on me! That's bullcrap!"
"Come on Ariel, how can I possibly walk into the ocean when the tide is going out? It's impossible! Time consuming! Not to mention painful! Shells aren't soft up here."
"What nonsense!" Ariel laughed once. The idea that shells could be anything but soft was too hilarious to fathom, and it made Ariel nervous. "You stay up here because of the weird creatures and that boy, we can all see it. We watch you from puddles and dew drops-"
"I stay up here for the profiteroles," Hazel said so solemnly and with such intense, that the tide of pure resentment and anger and possibly even hatred and most likely deep admiration that had been swirling around Ariel for the last four days, threatening to spill out in a wash of tragedy, stopped instantly, leaving her still, and quiet, and almost hollow.
"Marlo is nice, too," Hazel mused. "I like feeling his heart between my fingers. It's very wet," she added, to which Ariel nodded wholeheartedly.
"I miss the feel of hearts," Ariel looked back up at the moon, as if she had once held its heart in her cold, pale hand.
Hazel smiled despite the shocking taste of yet another sip of tea. "When you're dry and warm it feels even better." Her eyes fell on Ariel's tail once more as she swished it lazily through the water. The bruise winked wickedly up at her and she tried to remember who Ariel had mentioned the previous time they met. She took a sip.
"I tried it with Drew the other night-"
"Ariel..." Hazel said suddenly, too distraught to even continue her own thought process. "You simply must stop making tea when I come to visit. It's atrocious!"
~ there's no time to waste on giving up
