Hydra Heart

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter 34: Call my girl the Kingfisher... I dove in her water, then she came out with something too big for her mouth. I put my beak to her fish ya kna mean.

Vesta had fully taken over Molly's whiteboard. "Look, are you getting this?"

"No, you look!" Molly insisted. "This movie isn't deep, you're making stuff up. It's literally just this old woman blasting lead at the goons of a guy who wants to blow up the world. Where is the subtlety in a villain whose end goal is to get a body count of a few bil?"

Vesta put her head in her hands. She growled, "How is this lost on you? The guns are obviously a metaphor for her commitment to her family and her pet bird! The villain represents poverty!"

Molly laughed in her face. "That's bullshit! Having this geezer pack heat was just

A marketing choice. Middle-aged women will freak out whenever old people do young people things. And, this villain is not poverty, the lighting director is in poverty. I couldn't see shit but fake gunfire in every action scene."

"She lives in darkness! It's a metaphor! There's power struggle!"

"Maybe a power shortage!" Molly poked Vesta in the guts.

Vesta sighed and went to the whiteboard on wheels. "Alright, fine. You did not like the movie. I get it. Sure. Now, hear this!" She turned over the board revealing another wall of text and symbols that confounded Molly.

"My skull," Molly griped. She lay back on her bed. "Professor, you can finish your lecture later. I need a beverage. Can I get you anything?"

"Water, please. Thank you."

Molly came back with two glasses of Serchi. It was an alcoholic drink which, like movies about old people doing young people things, was marketed at middle-aged couples who aren't excited with each other anymore. Molly enjoyed singing the drink's praises to other young people. They never reacted well, but always in the way she wanted.

Vesta took the glass and sniffed it. "Is this beer? I've never had alcohol before."

"Loser," Molly commented. "Just have one glass and complain about the neighbors with me. That's what people who drink this stuff do."

"Okay." Vesta sipped it and seemed to have mixed feelings about the taste. She looked out of Molly's window at the forest surrounding them. She joined Molly's imagination and saw the pesky neighbors who weren't there. "God, I hate that dog," Vesta commented.

"Bitch keeps the kids up all night," Molly concurred.

"Their windchimes, too. I would take the sound of the rock and roll--" She pronounced it with heavy spacing between the words "rock and roll." "--band a block over before listening to those wretched chimes."

"Lowering our goddamn property value. We pay taxes for police, can't some officer of the law just go in and spray some brain on the walls?"

Vesta smiled and stepped back. "Speaking of which, when should we get back to it?"

"Like, fighting people? I guess we should, considering we both have the ability to smack people around now." Molly tapped her chin. "Let's ask your mom. But, we gotta be firm with her. Even though you're more than capable-"

"Thank you."

"She's probably going to be hesitant to send you into danger. Can you blame her?"

"No, no." Vesta said. "Even if it is half a decade late, I have to show my mom that I am an adult and I know what I can and cannot do."

"That's the spirit." Molly affirmed.