A Scale of Sapphire

Aiden’s POV

“Do you think they have those shirts in like a 5XL?”

 

…

 

What? My head couldn’t process what was going on, I could hardly think, let alone speak!

 

…

 

“Look, I don’t really know what happened, but my head really hurts. I had a crazy dream just now, and whatever happened to me absolutely destroyed my shirt.”

“So you’re not going to kill me?”

“Wha-? No! Why would I do that?!?”

“Because you tried before..? Unless there was some other tall buff bull lady chasing me around earlier.”

She paused for a few seconds. She looked at me closely and scratched her head.

 

…

 

“So that wasn’t a dream!?! You threw me through a wall!”

“After you started chasing me!”

“I mean yeah, I guess, but you give off a vibe, like a really weird vibe, and after the head achey LSD times, I guess I just got real mad at the nearest vaguely threatening thing… sorry. It was just all too much, and I guess fight or flight took over… from the look of things, the same happened to a lot of other people too, and they probably handled it just as bad.”

What started out defensive slowly petered out into a quiet sadness. Things did look really bad. The streets were empty, with only the new massive plants and a permeating stench of decay. How many people had died? How many people had let instinct take over and force them to hurt someone? How many people had managed to escape? To hide?

Having someone to talk to at all was probably a luxury most people lacked right now, I wasn’t going to take this for granted.

“Sorry for throwing you. I was pretty freaked out too.”

“No worries, you were right, it was my fault. Are we… are we cool then?”

“Yeah, we’re cool. Let’s see if we can’t find you a shirt.”

Together we walked back into the restaurant, looking for any garment big enough to replace her ruined shirt. As we were crossing through the dining area, she glanced in my direction.

“My name is Erica by the way. It’s good to properly meet you”

“Oh, right! My name is Ai-” The words died in my mouth. For some reason, I couldn’t find it in myself to say my name. It was funny, it just hadn’t sounded right lately, hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard even though a few years ago it didn’t bother me at all. Now though, I had a chance to start fresh, with one person at least, I guess I didn’t want to let that go.

“It’s… uh… you can just call me A for now. Good to meet you too.”

We arrived in the back and started digging through the shirts, looking for the largest they had. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any 5XL shirts lying around, but they did have a single 3XL, which seemed to serve well enough. Erica got herself dressed, packaged up some veggies of her own, and we both met up outside once again.

“So A, what are you planning? Do you have somewhere to go?”

“I moved pretty far from my family for classes, so looking for them doesn’t seem like an option. I think I’d like to try looking for my friend Willow though. She’s always been pretty capable, and definitely super outdoorsy. I kind of want to try heading for her place.”

“I’m kind of the same with the whole family thing, mind if I come along? Can’t hurt to have some company on the road.”

She reached down and patted the top of my head. Maybe she wasn’t as tall as I first thought, but she was plenty tall enough to do that. Probably about 8 or 9 feet. It’d be useful to have her with me, but more than that, it’d be really nice to have someone to talk to.

I smiled up at her.

“I wouldn’t mind one bit.”