Ruination (reupload)

Autumn Leaves

Life goes on and changes, but one thing remains the same.
Life remains unfair.

Life tends to speed by at an unbelievable pace when one doesn't have to spend each day dreading what the next one might bring. This fact became ever more apparent to Mariana as she and Holiday grew closer, the days seeming to blend together the longer they were together, her outlook on life taking on a generally rosier hue. Now this wasn't to say that things were perfect for either of them by any stretch of the imagination, but just having someone to lean on and talk to was enough to make things bearable.

The bullying Holiday got for being, as Brent had so eloquently put it, a fairy, didn't stop, but it did at least deescalate over the following weeks once the two stopped hiding their friendship from the public. With the redhead spending most of his time by Mariana's side the two were even further ostracized by their peers, not wanting to attract the kind of attention that more 'hands on' discrimination would incur, the vitriol the two faced from the other students escalated into physical violence far less often.

With something else not to focus on, Mariana quickly learned to keep the glares and whispers from occupying the forefront of her mind. She developed a tolerance to the snide comments, the offhanded remarks, and the thinly veiled insults; within a matter of weeks simply ignoring those who disliked her came just as naturally as breathing. Of course, none of the other students or staff went out of their way to make life easy for her, but she was determined to show them all that she was more than capable of rising to the occasion no matter what they threw at her. Despite their varying degrees of open bias against her, Mariana's teachers did actually score her fairly for the most part, and her academic prowess earned her, if not their respect, at least their begrudging acceptance of her. Her English teacher actually allowed her to work with the other students when there was group work, no longer suspecting that she would just leech off of their work; and while her math teacher was still acting like an insufferable jerk who often went out of his way to act as obnoxiously as possible in an effort to humiliate her in front of the class, even he began giving her some form of reluctant praise when she got things right.

As for her relationship with Holiday, the two of them now spent nearly all of their spare time together. However, due to their particularly unusual and complicated friendship, having someplace where they could regularly get together without the threat of being harassed wasn't very easy. At first they tried using one of their houses, but neither could get anywhere near the other's room without receiving a disapproving reminder of how inappropriate it was for two people their age of opposite genders to be alone together in a bedroom. The common areas around the houses received too much traffic, and anywhere outside that thin bubble of safety just drew too much negative attention if they hung around for too long. This meant that rather than settling down in one spot, the two fell into the habit of taking regular walks around the neighborhood and the nearby woods.
Just as they'd gotten into the habit of taking these long afternoon outings, the two finally found what they had given up looking for. It was a small babbling stream not too deep into the trees near their neighborhood, close enough to get there and back with relative ease, but far enough in so that the drees drowned out some of the sounds of civilization from the town. Upon seeing the quiet bank, the tall shaded canopy of the trees, and the crystalline clear water of the stream, Mari knew that the two of them had found someplace special. In a burst of childlike excitement she immediately declared the spot their official 'hideout', and immediately talked Holiday into driving her to the hardware store to buy what they needed to build a small little base for themselves.
With absolutely no experience with carpentry or woodwork, the resulting creation looked like something which had been lovingly and painstakingly assembled by someone without access to opposable thumbs. Even so, it was something that the two of them had made together, and despite its questionable integrity they were both proud of it. They came back to that spot every day after school once they'd finished their homework, sloughing off the expectations and restraints of their lives and simply enjoying the other's company. Sometimes they acted more like children than adults, rolling up the legs of their pants and wading out into the stream in search of some kind of treasure; other times they were more relaxed, sitting in their little shed with Holiday's head resting in Mariana's lap while she read aloud from one book or another which she had procured from the school's library, they'd have to stop occasionally as an unruly lock of hair broke free and fell in front of her eyes, Holiday always reaching up to fix it with a soft smile and a teasing remark about rubber bands. They would stay until nearly sundown basking in the soft sound of the stream before heading home, only to do it all again the next day.