Night Lights and Dark Places

Chapter Six - Gift

Summer began its stubborn, stuttering transition into Autumn and both Tolly and James had adapted quite well to their new routines. When the leaves changed color, she discovered that he was not only willing to listen to her various gruesome experiences with human corpses, but he also enjoyed them and had a few of his own to share. Slightly more recently, she'd become rather irritable, and when asked, her response was an incredulous, wide-eyed stare. He'd later find out that it was due to an upcoming event that she attended each month, though she wouldn't elaborate further. Following the event, she was calm for a few days, and then she went right back to being prickly and exhausted when the encroaching storm of midterm exams peeked over the horizon.

"I wouldn't sweat it so much if it weren't for all these bullshit papers!" She exclaimed, waving a battered notebook in the air for emphasis. "My writing skills are shit, for real. Can you proofread for me?"

Reluctantly, he agreed, only to give up after being unable to decipher her handwriting. She was mercifully understanding so she read them out loud to him, the subject matter made all the more incoherent by her thick accent and intermittent unrelated tangents. Not long after, her occasional hostility had mounted into a near-constant aggravation, and she felt more and more comfortable expressing her growing resentment towards her professors, peers, classes, job, and the university itself, going so far as to wish harm upon the costumed mascot that had vaguely inconvenienced her in front of the campus bookstore.

To his relief, however, she never directed any of her ire at him, save for the occasional sarcastic retort.

He had spent his nights trying to improve his living space, quite fortunate that the two buildings he slept between were completely abandoned by their former owners, providing two spacious shelters to squatters and deterring human visitors trying to stake claim to his "territory." Rarely did humans approach that alley after running into him on multiple occasions, but animals, on the other hand, came by fairly often, despite a good majority of them being his primary food source. Two of his most favorite regulars were the cat he'd followed on his second night in the city and a large, friendly dog, both fed his leftover meat on a nightly basis.

That afternoon, as he slept, he received a surprise visitor. For the first time that he'd seen, a bird had come into his alley, and it was unlikely that he would've seen this bird if its corpse hadn't fallen onto his face. It lay limp and broken on the pavement beside him. Unlike the crows and pigeons that congregated on the city sidewalks, this bird was small and delicate, with sleek crimson feathers and a pinched face. The body was lighter than he expected, soft, and he held it in his hands with a strange sort of melancholy he had difficulty placing. Tolly's hair was the same color as this bird, and like the bird she was tiny, fragile, and buoyed by wind and whim. With the tips of his fingers, he pet the top of its head mournfully, unsure of what to do with it.

He didn't end up getting much sleep after that. Fortunately, her bus was earlier than usual that evening. She hopped onto the sidewalk with a huge grin.

"A good day, I assume?"

"No more papers until after midterms!" Tolly exclaimed. "I'm free, kinda! Still gotta study for exams"

"Does that ease some of your burden?" As they walked, Tolly leapt between every crack in the sidewalk, avoiding any unbroken stretch of pavement. The reason for it was unclear.

"Sorta. Too bad the holidays are comin' up, 'cause that's a whole other beast itself. Bogus." Though he didn't know what she meant, he did not ask her to elaborate. "You should come over to my place on Christmas. Me and my friend David got this tradition of puttin' on horror movies, eatin' shitty Chinese food, and gettin' absolutely shitfaced. It's a blast. Happy Birthday, Jesus!"