That's What Bein' A Friend Is About

That's How Much I Think Our Friendship Is Worth

“Why are we still out here?” Lloyd complained, shielding his eyes from the sun and watching the air warp in heat waves around him. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking, but he knew it was too long for his liking.

“I told you on the plane!” Ninten insisted. “There was a cactus out here, it wasn’t like the others!”

Lloyd glanced over the barren desert landscape. Still no cacti. “We’ve been out here for hours looking for the cactus, Ninten!”

“Well, we gotta find it and learn the next melody!” Ninten insisted, like it should’ve been obvious.

Ninten’s enthusiasm made Lloyd's heart flutter… as usual.

What was he supposed to do with these feelings now? He wasn't going to lie to himself again, especially now that Ninten knew about them. But he also knew that Ninten very clearly didn't feel the same way. The movies never showed anything like this. If a boy fell in love with a girl, and he told her, she either liked him back or she got mad at him. What about when someone was nice about saying no?

Hopefully getting a concrete answer from Ninten would make this all go away soon. For right now, he would keep the thoughts inside his head, and just keep his daydreams in line… because he didn't feel like it was right to make up romantic scenes, even if they only featured an imaginary Ninten--and because he constantly feared that Ana would catch on. The last thing he needed was for someone else to know about these feelings.

“Ninten,” Ana sighed.

Ninten glanced over at her, squinting from the sunlight. “Yeah?”

“Doesn’t a melody need to come from something that makes noise?”

“Hey, we don’t know if that cactus talks!” Ninten defended.

“He’s got a point,” Lloyd said. “I’ve seen semi trucks stare him dead in the eyes before. Trucks aren’t supposed to have eyes in the first place… or mouths.”

“Thank goodness we’re not dealin’ with those things anymore!”

Ana looked absolutely exasperated under the layer of sweat on her face. “Am I the only reasonable one here?”

“Aw, c’mon!” Ninten groaned. “You played a haunted piano, and you’re still not convinced?!"

"It wasn't haunted, it was affected by evil. The same evil we encountered in Easter, in fact."

"Ya mean the one that Weird-ified us? But that piano didn't have the crazy eyes!"

"Something about it worked with the Weird-ifying force. It's difficult to explain, but…" Ana sighed and glanced up at the sky like it would help her find the words. "Oh! Dissonance. Lloyd, I know you're not very musical, so I'll explain."

She stopped and held out her right hand, fingers spread. Lloyd and Ninten stopped to watch her--Lloyd was trying to ignore the heat radiating through the soles of his shoes.

"In music, there's logic to the notes. The differences between each note are either a half step or a full step. Playing two notes at once can sound very different, depending on how many steps are between them.”

Ana held her index finger and thumb up against each other, distant from the other fingers.

“Let’s say this is a half-step. These two ‘notes’ are almost the same, just a tiny bit off. The sound is meant to be unsettling.”

She folded down her index finger and touched her thumb to her middle finger.

“This is a full step, but it still doesn’t sound nice and neat and happy. Both of these combinations so far have been dissonant, which means the notes sort of fight each other.”