The Flower and the Dragon

[WILL BE REWRITTEN] Ex-Chapter One

'Had the walk home always been this quiet?"

Along with the sound of rustling leaves and cracking gravel, a single drift of evening wind swept over large patches of grass. They looked like verdant, tangled knits lodged in the cracks of sandy asphalt. A couple of flowers had even sprung among the mossy grass here and there, but the way home was still just a winding path of dirt, some coughing AC's along the side of neighbors' houses, and a pair of squeaky boots to break the silence.

"When was the last time I whistled?"

I muttered to myself between whispers as I shook off some dust that I'd kicked up onto my skirt, gloved hands awkwardly patting down the fabric.

I had tried whistling a few times, but that always got the neighbor's dogs barking until dark. I even tried to do it quietly. The two of them almost ended up leaping over the brick wall.

I halted my hands' haphazard smacking to check out my skirt—there were still some remaining patches that were visibly dust, but at least they were fainter. I squinted to get a look at an oddly large one.

Was that a shoe sole imprinted on it?

A pale, cheeky face curtained by bounds of blonde curls popped into mind.

"Karin... you owe me a skirt." My voice came out in a sigh, although it sounded like it was caught in the middle of a giggle the more I looked at it. The ridges of the sole were so clear, Karin's shoe designer signature also found its way onto it. It looked a little like the knots of grass that speckled the road, out of place in the middle of black cloth.

I cocked my head to inspect it at a different angle, but I just couldn't make anything out of it. Instead, I felt a smile creeping up, tugging.

Somehow, we always end up fighting as soon as we see, or even hear of each other. Of course, we do go long whiles without having much contact, so a fight seemed to be in the right place. A test of growth, or "skill", as she called it. Every fight made a difference for me, like learning to be patient, and not just ramming myself into a fight—her heels were one of my main motivations for that. The fights I'd have with Karin were really just some of the many for me to "get stronger".

Thinking about it, they all seem so far, but, now we've both gotten older, and that won't change because it's something we can't control. It just comes down to a matter of: we've changed. Why do our meetings have to be the same, and why is fighting the only way we keep coming together? Is fighting really the only way we define our friendship by? Thoughts buzzed in and out of my head like the fans that blared from nearby windows, nagging and shrill like the cicadas that cried out as Karin and I tumbled down the estate's grounds not so long ago. Again, my worries returned to a question of fighting, and again, I didn't have an answer for them.

I held one last glance of Karin's shoe imprint before continuing my trudge down the way home, suddenly reminded of how squeaky my boots were.

They were noisy, but at least they always snapped me out of whatever worry I was caught up in—and that was always during these walks back, when I questioned myself the most.

Another gust of wind picked up, and with the lull of silently chirping crickets, the weight of the thought finally started to lift.