the petal feels like a petal; like any other flower, every poppy and tulip he's picked and poked at as a child. curiosity unsated, but daring fed, nagi inches out further, his worn sneakers slipping on the incline, straining for a closer look at the source of the glow.

and then he hears the snarling.

"wha—"

by shimmering light of the flowers, the arcanine charging towards him is a spotlit menace of motion-blur. and, just as predicted: nagi flinches, raising his arms in front of himself in instinctive self-defense. poor, unthinking, unsensible instinct, that possesses him to raise both arms, instead of just one.

he tips. catches himself uselessly one arm, slides a few inches — and rolls, ass over tea-kettle, down the rest of the slope.

he ends his twelve-foot somersaulting act at the base of the incline, with his cheek against soft and eyes blinking blearily up at a bleary mass of grass and flowers. his glasses are — somewhere. not on his face. piss.

sitting bolt upright, he glares (squints) at the blurred form of the arcanine. (is it the arcanine? it's red.)

"what was that for?"

maverick noah ryder

☉

“well, she scared the shit out of me,” he snaps, tone clipped and curt, before he bites down on his tongue. dumb as all hell, remember? you knew what you were getting into. he drags a hand down his face with a sigh. “‘m fine. serves me right for dangling off there, anyway.” [break][break]


eyes narrowed, nagi squints until the blur of colour in front of him coalesces into the vague shape of a man. he raises fingers to his face to push his spectacles into place — and ends up grasping at air and poking his index finger futilely into the bridge of his nose. [break][break]


“shit.”[break][break]


he pats the ground around him. his frantic palms come up empty.[break][break]


“... did you step on anything on the way down?” something hard, made of glass and metal, and would crunch satisfyingly underfoot if stepped on. “think i dropped my glasses.”


[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] maverick noah ryder [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

and there it is! that unmistakable satisfying crunch of nagi's fragile hopes being ground into the dirt. [break][break]

"great. perfect. fantastic." [break][break]

nagi drops his face into his hands and muffles a tea-kettle screech into the flesh of his palms.[break][break]

under the glow of the crystablooms, the warped metal and glass of his spectacles glitter — little blurry stars in the dirt. he reaches under maverick’s raised foot, and picks them up, with a ginger caution that would have been better-served five minutes ago. a lens pops out of the frame anyway.[break][break]

he holds the mangled remains up to the light: cracks spidering across one lens, nose bridge bent to hell; one hinge broken clean and another lens missing. an art installation to spite his face.[break][break]

is this karma? this has to be karma. this is an instructional lesson on what happens to disobedient, rule-breaking children who try to poke weird flowers in the park. with the way the night is panning out, nagi wouldn’t be surprised he ends it by stumbling, half-blind, into a ditch and breaking his neck.[break][break]

he turns to maverick, and asks with the low, dry monotone of someone already resigned to a premature, ignominious death: “... do you have any tape? or glue?”

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] maverick noah ryder [break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]

no glue, no tape, no hope. the corpse of his old companion cradled in his hands, nagi speedruns through all stages of grief and lands, ass-first, in acceptance. sure, why not, it was an elderly, infirm pair of glasses to begin with. he'll give it a funeral when he gets back to the motel.[break][break]

he takes maverick's hand, and lets the other man guide him to his feet. even without seeing maverick's face, nagi can hear the guilt brimming in maverick's voice. he purses lips, petty vindinctiveness warring with his own self-knowledge that it was a mishap of his own making — until he breaks the stalemate with a quiet sigh. [break][break]

"it's fine. i probably would have rolled down the hill, anyway." he shakes out his stick arms for emphasis. "your arcanine just... sped things up."[break][break]

he squints up the hill. [break][break]

"... i, uh, might need help getting back to the harbor, though."[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] maverick noah ryder [break]
i think we're good to end it with your post![break]


[attr="class","pkspr pkmn-litwick"]