Elementia

Chapter 5

A few hours later I was still there talking with Caspian.

      "Man, I just can't believe we almost got caught," Caspian said.

       "Yeah, I know. I never thought I could be so scared," I admitted. "We should be way more careful from now on."

       "I agree. Should we make that a promise?"

        "Sure. I promise to be more careful when meeting you. Your turn."

        "I also promise to be careful when meeting with you," Caspian vowed. "So...what happens if we don't?"

         "I imagine we'd go to jail."

          "Yikes."

    *~

The next day I had off from school, so I decided to visit Agni. I sent a simple 'Had no school, going to your house,' to Agni. When I reached his orange-tinted house, I started looking for the back entrance, which was usually unlocked. Immediately, I went to Agni's room and flopped onto his bean bag chair. A few hours later, I heard the front doors being unlocked. I stayed in Agni's room, waiting to scare him when he came in.

He opened the door, and walked in nonchalantly. It wasn't until I greeted him that he realized I was there, causing him to jump a little. I laughed as he regained his composure.

"Dude, I was so scared," Agni chuckled. "I didn't know you were coming today."

"Well, I felt bad that we haven't been having our normal meetups. So, I thought I could surprise you by coming here."

"Well, I certainly was surprised," Agni smiled, then looked at his phone. "I just got your notification now. So, what do you wanna do?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Well... I was thinking maybe we could FireSkate?"

The corners of my mouth tugged downwards, immediately.

Last time I tried to FireSkate was years ago and I couldn't stop falling. Agni and my old friends had to help me and it was humiliating. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of Agni yet again. Though I knew Agni wanted to skate.

"Sure, that would be fun," I sucked in a breath. I wanted to make sure Agni would be able to do something that he likes, even if I don't like it.

"Really? Don't you hate FireSkating because of that one time-"

"If you like it then we should do it," I said with finality.

Agni paused for a minute, thinking. "Ok," he said, "Let's skate!"

*~

Agni and I found ourselves at a skating rink that was dimly lit but had colorful lights. We paid for our FireSkates separately.

I had many thoughts in my head, most of them telling me not to fall in front of Agni. He had finished putting on his skates so he walked over to me. It seemed that he had noticed that I was nervous about skating again so he smiled and held out his hand. It was a thoughtful gesture, one that proved that we had been friends for a long time, so I took his hand. No words were spoken but we understood each other well. Together we skated the skating rink a few times, with surprisingly few falls.

It seems I had gotten better since my last skating incident. Of course, I was far from professional. Though at one point, I stopped worrying about falling down. It was at that point that I realized there was an awkward silence hanging above Agni and I. So, I made small talk.