After You... (1st Draft)

Chapter 19 - The Marshes - part one

                        Chapter 19 – The Marshes – part one

I was holding onto that vote like this night would claim a victory. My hopes, fears and the potential to party like it was 2099 to the tune of a possible change coming into my life damn sure depended on it.

We travelled along roads filled with a mob of cars we knew were headed to the same spot. Gate-crashing music playing at various volumes zoomed past us out of open windows with screaming voices. There were these wild-haired girls that whooped by and flung their heads out of their window catching the windrush with wind-tunnel hair. A bit like those happy dogs you see hanging out with flappy ears pulling toothy grins at the world.

Our lanterns were collected in the back, something I later discovered was our requirement to show how many people had turned out for tonight. It was like a really inventive headcount, and of course to substitute for what Reggie said would be a total hazard if we had a fire. We'd all gone for mason jars and mine housed a dainty tea light, Kibbie's frosted glass was home to an LED. Hers was killer white, like she'd taken the moon right out of the sky and bottled the shit out of it. You couldn't even look at it for too long without thinking you'd either go blind or batshit crazy. Batshit crazy most likely. No, actually, I was thinking straight up blind.

I lay back glancing at a sky that was a dead-ringer for a washed watercolour canvas, from the dark blue above us to the gradual fade into a sky blue horizon, lit by streams of fire in the sky and all these streaks finding trails through our early evening. We were going to belong to this night, and the picture Kibbie took of us all in the car just before we headed off made it feel like we already did.

We got out to the sound of high-pitched bird calls and the faint sound of EDM colouring the air, to grassland with sweeping wild grass and low trodden turf. To singing towpaths, berried trees, and all the surrounding habitats along the marshes. The part of the marshes we arrived at was beautiful. It was probably the most varied rural part you could ever find this side of London. And besides, this was apparently the only place we could get away with an open air party crash without authorities clambering in speed to, in Kibbie's words, "make like Olivia Pope and shut this thing down".

Kibbie's off the shoulder, black printed T shirt skimmed her belly as her denim shorts frayed at the edges. She'd shadowed the ends of her hair with a temporary colour which haloed it in teal. It was so gorgeous amongst her myriad of coils, I honestly thought she should go completely green. It would work.

I passed both Darius' and Jackson's lanterns for her to hold as I held ours, and lifted the skirt of my maxi dress as it steadily skimmed the ground, adjusting my bra top through the long gapped armholes that dropped to just above my waist. This dress, it was just everything. Like seriously, free-flowing, drapey and a little willowy, but could still be strangely grungy with killer accessories. I wasn't wearing those though, just a long double-chain necklace with a fringed pendent. Black and silver, borrowed it from Kibb last minute.

Shit. Scrutinizing it now, maybe this wasn't the best idea? I had no doubt the ends would be frayed and discoloured by the end of the night, that's if we didn't find ourselves dancing in the open air until the small hours of the morning, or collapsed under a world of stars. Hell, I could already see more than a couple of them splintering around already.

Wandering along grass-edged towpaths, we stepped over logs and wooden sleepers as we grew closer to the waves of music carrying through the air and the voices lifting high with it. So many voices packed the atmosphere, singing piped along with the recorded vocals. They owned the air as much as the music did.

As we passed a canal, Darius manoeuvred himself to the edge of the water moving me to the inside of the towpath. I looked over at him as he did that, he was watching his step, but it reminded me of every time he'd walked along the roadside to keep me away from the curb whenever we went out together. He was doing all these instinctive little things he used to do. Habits were hard to break, but I can't lie, I thought it was sweet.