Time Difference

32. Marmalade

"Do you want to wake up?" Jungkook was whispering very quietly. Why was he being so quiet?

"No. Yes. Maybe." I tried to move but I could not. "I don't know, what time is it? What day is it? And where am I?"

That last was too much for him and he laughed, and of course that woke up Sun and Moon and they started bouncing on me and partially fixed my momentary lapse in memory. "So I've figured out where I am." Sun had a habit of nuzzling into my chin and rolling her body sideways into my arms when she woke up. Moon would lay his head down over my legs to make sure I did not forget about him, but then I was stuck between Sun trying to get me up to play and Moon holding me down. "I think I'm up."

"You fell asleep. It's still Sunday evening, not too late. Do you feel okay?"

"I'm fine, this isn't about the blood. I'm still tired from all the running around yesterday after class. Should we take them out?"

"Sure, then maybe you want dinner."

"Sounds good to me. Around the block or -,"

"How about the courtyard?" There was a garden on the first floor enclosed in a fenced wall. It was easy to let them off leash and run around there safely, so often that was what we did. I wasn't usually here late. The sky was darkening and although it was cloudy there were a few bright stars visible. "I've never really thought about why famous people are called "stars." It must be ... because us regular folk look up to them. Like, follow their light?"

"I suppose we can Google it," Jungkook offered.

"You know you're a star, don't you, Jungkook? You work so hard to attain perfection, okay, I know, self-improvement. Sometimes I wish you'd be more less unattainable. You're already too perfect, unreal, sometimes I'm not sure if you're an angel or a dream. Which is more likely? You're already mythological." I tapped my feet into the grass beneath me, the blades were moist with dew. "You were always special, but you transformed one day, not the you know, but the other. You're so far beyond the rest of us in skill, in talent, in potential. And you're honestly, totally the best person I've ever met. You're going to be a real star one day, real figurative star that is. Transformed and transfixed into the sky. You'll always be too good for the world."

"I hate to argue with you," Jungkook said, throwing a precisely aimed Frisbee which the two fuzzballs ignored to chase each other around the outside perimeter, wrestle, and finally return to him after tugging it back and forth between each other for a few minutes, "but I am none of those things. Aria, I'm just me." He looked down at me, it didn't help that the full moon was throwing a lunar halo into the sky that he stepped in front of as he turned to speak. He had the audacity to stand there and argue with a glowing halo over his head. "I'm real. Not a dream. Not perfect. Not the best at anything. Please don't put me on a pedestal far away from you. I'd have to jump down to reach you. If you're honest, I might have to claw my way up quite a ways to be on your level. It's not flaws or perfections, it's just being human."

"How is saying you're beneath me any different from me saying I'm beneath you? If you're real, and human, then certainly I am. Certainly," I muttered again, putting away the mental measuring stick that would dispute everything Jungkook had just said that was supportive about me and dismissive of him.

"So, I'm not too good for this world. My place is here just as much as anyone else. And you also belong here. And the people who think some of us are too good for the world, maybe we don't get to decide who is too good for it, or who isn't good enough for it. Maybe we struggle together, and if we're lucky, we make it easier for someone else to be here."

"When someone installed that little bird bath fountain were they thinking it would eventually be a dog water bowl?" The dogs were just tall enough to reach the water's edge to lap and were splashing all over. "No, I don't suppose Yoongi, or did he?" I looked back at Jungkook who stubbornly refused to solve this particular mystery. "Does that concave sundial work in moonlight?"