Dizzy On The Comedown

[VoltTurtle]

Marceline slammed the driver's side door of her father's SUV behind her, her keys jangling in her pocket as she stretched her arms towards the sky. She let out a contented sigh, finally happy to be outside of the car's interior and off the road. Thanks to her dad lending her his car and Beryl's suggestion for a summer activity, most of Beyond Human had successfully arrived in Mountain Foothills Park for a hike down a local trail. The park's forests surrounded the little lot they had arrived in, and the sun was shining down on them from overhead. The weather was comfortably warm, and a gentle breeze was sweeping the area. In the distance, the sound of birdsong filled her ears, giving the day a pleasant ambiance.

She was excited, it wasn't often that she got out of the house and enjoyed the great outdoors with anyone besides her family and sometimes Dolly, and it was a beautiful day for a hike, too. Which made it even more unfortunate that Roxanne couldn't make it, since she ended up having to cancel on them when her parents apparently demanded that she spend the day doing something else entirely. Marceline didn't know exactly what it was that Roxanne's parents wanted with her, but she did know when it came to them it was better not to ask questions. At the very least Alexander's adorable guide dog—Montague—was able to fill in the void that Roxanne had left behind.

She leaned down to catch a glance of herself in the rear-view mirror of her father's SUV, admiring her own appearance. Her pastel pink hair had been neatly tied back in a high ponytail, something she only ever otherwise did when her dad took her out to the gun range. Her outfit was different too, instead of wearing her usual duds for a hike, she had adorned herself with a short-sleeved, nondescript pastel pink shirt, a pair of pastel purple short-shorts, white ankle socks, and her plain black tennis shoes. All that was missing was her school backpack, which currently sat in the boot of the car, filled to the brim with trail mix and water for the hike, more than enough for all three of them and Montague too.

Once she was finished admiring her own reflection like the mythological Narcissus, she quickly whipped her phone out of her pocket, grinned, and struck a pose, snapping a picture of herself. Without wasting another moment, she tapped away at a message to her girlfriend.

~*~

❤❤ Dolly ❤❤

YOU: got to the park safely!
YOU: (view 1 attached image)
YOU: I think I look cute like this :3
YOU: love u, btw!~ <3

~*~

When she finished her business with her phone, she slipped it back into her pocket, before circling around the SUV to the back and flinging open the tailgate to retrieve her bag. Knowing her own incredible appetite well enough, she'd definitely need the trail mix more than anything else, but staying hydrated would be important too. Especially if Alex or Beryl didn't happen to bring enough water of their own, though Beryl would likely know better, given that she suggested the trip in the first place and how outdoorsy she was.

"Berry-Bear!" She called out, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "What trail are we going down again?"

[Cicada]

((Time does not particularly separate unique instances, less than memories do.))

"A trail is, hm... a suggestion? An implication of locality that doesn't have to be made explicit."

Beryl was slow to drip out of the car's side door. The speed of honey off a dipper, a dollop of Beryl, bit by bit over the ground. She'd taken up all the seats in her row by some logical arrangement of limbs too long to comfortably slot into the many topological oddities: armrests, aisles, so on. It'd been another unfortunate attack, in all its dimensions from timing to locale inconvenient? Inconvenience was, in and of itself, a feature minus particular impediment onto Beryl's life however, impediment of the sort that could arrest her odd vector of forward momentum that often intersected many of the same points it had covered ground in times prior. Inconvenience was not necessarily felt by the conscious mind, the same sort of mind that put the soles of its shoes to pavement.

Marcy and Alex looked fetchingly distinct, unique as any vessel of life was wont when it fell into the expanse of reality that Beryl could comprehend at any one time. All the remainder that she wished she could ferment the connection with into something flavorful. Beryl was dressed as was usual, in items of clothing that were among many other things that hadn't particularly changed about her in some time. The shirt was slightly too short due to happenstance, or whatever one was supposed to call unwanted growth spurts that seemed to defy typical timing... Beryl applauded the originality! It was supremely in character, whatever that was supposed to mean.

She hugged to her chest a sack, which she briefly put down long before any of the thoughts about where specifically it belonged (on her back, perhaps, when it had the requisite straps) could make themselves anything besides scarce in the many odd poetry of her mind that refused to be about anything in particular. A backpack was too humble and earthly a concept, save for the more sober thoughts in her mind that liked to exist when there was nothing else to take up space like clown balloons.

The sack should've had... some amount of everything they needed? Infinitely and asymptotically close to the actual amount they needed, because the actual amount needed could always be the word more. 'More' was a cruel word. At least, on her own lips. It sounded friendlier when others said it, in varying amounts of intimate whisper.

"I know many paths between two of the trails on the map. Friendly and fairly unexplored. Sierra and I enjoyed such haunts, once upon a time."

It was an old name that sparked, lit the tinder of memories that were supposed to remain undisturbed like fallen leaves.

Among other such names. Beryl recalled, at some point after it would be assumed she should have given its immediacy and urgency, the state of Rosalind. Odd to think that things could rot and decay in real time, long before the actual aspect of life was void from the body. A camera operating at an unusual shutter speed- which Beryl thought was a technical concept that made sense, in so far as she could remember long ago whimsy- would have captured the sag of the fur in slow motion, the energy and color slowly escaping Rosalind's eyes as the pain began to overwhelm. Beryl could feel her oldest friend's pain, but only in an abstract sense. It was an entity she couldn't interact with any further, she couldn't weigh it, or measure it, or scoop it up into her arms and take it elsewhere.

Rosalind would probably be dead within the month. Beryl reflected that Montague and Rosalind had met before- she wondered if the passing of one would imprint onto the spirit of the other, even if they were only familiar by scents that had long stopped existing when one had begun to wilt to where even Beryl's human nose could notice the subtle differences. Beryl reflected, opening another mirror into the infinite corridor of her thoughts bouncing endlessly for no discernible reason, that she wondered how Rosalind's spirit would move on. She'd always imagined that drifting into the void carried the whole of the person with it. What remained was just some form of spiritually symbolism, given life by those left behind.

"Send her a picture of the four of us," Beryl quietly suggested, speaking to be heard without the requisite intent. "But probably don't send it to Roxy. She might get upset."