golden wings melt like blue slushies // JJ Maybank

-Life's like this, I'm thankful, Warm sun, good vibrations-

Icarus sipped her drink, a caramel and strawberry bubble tea from the smoothie shop that had apparently decided to test the limits of what counted as a smoothie.

A song played over the speakers of the café, something she recognised from the speakers the man with shiny died hair played as he roller skated down the pier. She shook that thought away and moved out of the queue, to the window at the front where she could sit on a stool and watch all the dogs walk past.

Dalmatians strolled down to the beach with their owners and she pulled out her sketchbook. She flipped to the empty pages at the back and found her thick inky pens to start on another henna design, the last a faded brown on her tanned skin, swirling fairy wings and a few stars. It was a nice one she'd painted onto a little boy's arms a few days ago.

Her boots that she was pretty sure were actually Popes [they had the same sized feet, which meant he now had to deal with odd shaped left shoes as well] kicked against the legs of her stool and she chewed on the edge of her pencil, then began scribbling out the basic circle of a face.

The grey lead circle had a cross in the middle, for reference of where the eyes and lips and nose would go. Then there was a neck and shoulder blades and that was about where Icarus's anatomy skills ended, so she popped some bubble tea bubbles that tastes like strawberry syrup between her teeth and went back to the sketched-out face looking to the side. The drawing grew a nose that she smudged with her hand accidentally, and then sharp eyes that she tried to make glint and glitter using her chewed on eraser [Captain, or John B. She couldn't tell at this point].

A puffy little white dog trotted past, licking stolen ice cream off its jowls, and Icarus drew the mouth. It looked off, so she rubbed it out and started on hair instead. Spiked up tufts that she didn't colour in with her pencil fell over the light drawing, and she took another sip of her drink, finishing the mouth into a thin smirk.

It took her a moment, as she finished drawing the collar of a certain second-hand store blue jacket, for her to process it.

Icarus slammed her sketchbook shut with a yelp and nearly fell backwards off her stool.

"Ig's, hey, we gotta go out on the-" Pope stopped where he was and blinked once. He looked down at where Icarus was sitting cross legged on the deck of Summertime Sadness, Captain stretched out in the sunshine beside her. "Are they my shoes?"

"Is that my scrunchie?"

Pope stared at his wrist for a second, where a whale shark patterned scrunchie sat next to one of the many beaded leather bracelets Kiara had given them all. "Why do I even have this?"

"I'm dying."

"She says, you don't want to get this way, street walk at night and a star by day?" Pope asked hopefully and sat down opposite Icarus with a frown. Captain hopped up and proceeded to stretch himself out across his lap, tail thumping out.

Icarus banged her head back on the railing of her boat with a groan and opened her brown eyes to the sky and the sun, which quickly burned spots of light in her vision. Her eyes watered.

Her chest was heavy and tight and far too loose all at the same time, but it wasn't the sort of heavy and tight and far too loose that meant she'd forgotten to take her medication and someone had touched her by surprise and her thoughts were starting to form into scenes in her head and her throat was clogged up again and her nose was stuffy even though that was impossible now.