The Search

The sounds of simple town life filled the air, surrounding me thoroughly, and filling me with a sense of safety I hadn't felt in months. Or maybe safety was the wrong word. Sameness, or security, maybe. The predictable humdrum of it all was, at its core, something I found peace in. I tried not to draw attention to myself as I walked down the sidewalk, but even my best efforts wouldn't save me from bored housewives' gossip. I was a new face, and a memorable one at that.

The people in this area, and many of the towns surrounding here, were tanned white folk used to beach days and predictability. They generally had light skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. Sometimes they'd mix it up with a blue or hazel eyed child, or a blonde. I think it has to do with the Migrational Period from hundreds of years ago. Similar people banded together to form communities, and it stuck over the next few centuries. I remembered learning about it, but no real details stuck with me. That was a job for Mianna.

The weight of eyes glued to me as I walked was a conundrum I'd learned to deal with early on in life. I didn't fit in anywhere, not in the south, with the fair skinned redheads and softly tanned blondes, or the west, with the dark skinned, silverhaired people with a penchant for being extraordinarily large, or far north, where I was now, or to the east, where human oddities usually originated from. My mother, before her passing, had told me I was special, but never how. Never why. At times, I'd resented her for it, for falling in love with whoever my father was and having me, the strangest human to date. In the end, however, I knew I could never blame her for following her heart.

Mianna, bless her, offered to hack into whatever mainframe necessary to find out who my father had been, but I declined every time. She meant well, but my curiosity would never outweigh my desire to keep her out of harm's way. I'd met Mianna during one of my mother's business trips, back before she became too sick to work. She'd been collaborating with Mianna's father on a pet project that never came to fruitation, but despite that lack of progress, she later told me she was glad she'd tried, if only so that I could make a friend.

Mianna, for lack of better words, was an asshole. She made up her mind quickly and dug her heels in on whatever choice she'd made. The day we met, she gave me a studying once over, before declaring me a right fit for friendship and inviting me to play with her building blocks with her. Despite my best efforts to replicate her complicated brick tower, she eventually grew frustrated with my lack of success and knocked mine down to rebuild herself. I hadn't minded. Since then, we'd been as thick as thieves, which was why I was headed to see her now. I'd been out exploring an Unmarked Zone for the last several months, and I missed her crude and crass company. We had a system for sending each other messages if there were to be an emergency, but I hadn't received any news during my time out, so I assumed she was as well as she always was. I would bet all the money I'd made on thia particular venture on whether or not she was making someone's day worse as I walked closer to our usual meeting spot. She had a habit of rubbing most everyone in just the wrong way. Not me, though. She was my best and only friend, and I'd never choose differently.

True to her abrasive nature, Mianna was at our regular coffee shop meet up area, harassing a stuttering and terrified worker who'd accidentally given her the wrong drink. Before the situation could escalate, I moved in with the precision only someone who'd known Mianna for years could have.

"I am so terribly sorry for my friends behavior," I exclaimed, wringing my hands for theatric effect, "She's been having a rough go of it all lately and there's been so much pressure for her to find a suitable husband, or wife for that matter, and she's just been so frazzled! To think that so much could rest on one ladies shoulders, oh how it must ache to know that only someone with perfect records could please her father, and we can't even mention the expectations of her mother! Please forgive us both, and thank you so much for your help."

The employee immediately changed from upset to sympathetic, and I knew my old trick had worked it's inevitable magic. I was so used to unwinding the effects of Mianna's chaos that I had it down to a science. Mianna was not, actually, in a time sensitive ordeal of trying to find a suitable spouse, but it was one of my favorite spiels to evoke some sympathy instead of anger. Her aggressive approach to everything meant that unless I wanted a fight, I would need to diffuse the situation, and nothing worked quite as well as my story spinning prowess.

Mianna grabbed half of our refreshed order, while I snagged the other half and paid the poor employee. As soon as I turned around, she stalked to our usual booth in the back corner, frightening the hell out of an elderly couple in the process of leaving. Mianna's angry face could clear a room in seconds. She dropped into her usual spot with a resounding huff, chucking the bag of foodstuffs haphazardly onto the table. I settled in opposite her and raised an eyebrow at her while I sipped my coffee. Her hunched shoulders tensed even more as the minutes went by, until suddenly she sighed and relaxed.

"Thanks for swooping in to save me. Again," she said, stirring her straw in circles around the inside of her cup, "I got a little bit..,"

"Violent? Aggressive? Downright hostile?" I shot at her, playfully. Her eyes flicked up to mine, and caught the humor in them.

"I was going to say carried away, but thanks for clearing that up," she snarked, opening the bag of food and divvying up the contents. We passed the time easily, with me telling her about the things I saw in the Zone, and her telling me about her latest projects and ideas. When the sun started to set, we moved to the nearby hotel we always stayed at, and spent the night catching up. I'd have to report back in tomorrow with my boss, and she'd have to go back to her father's company where she worked, but as always, the night before belonged to us.