E: Flash Feb'15: Thais and Esper

“Thank you for doing this for me,” Esper said, smirking with one hand holding the neck of her guitar, the other glistening with rings on each finger.

“I don’t know why you were afraid to ask.” Thais paced the length of the room, however small it was. She had a headache and the heat wasn’t helping. “It’s for me too.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Esper interjected. “I just figured you would say no. But I asked because sometimes you surprise me, and you did.” She smiled and strummed, displeased with the sound she changed the formation of her fingers against the strings and tried again.

There would be no sense in saying she would have done it anyway, not now that they had already done it. It would be pointless to start a fight.

They had for the first time since leaving their hometown, broken into a home and made themselves comfortable. Neither of them were lacking in balls, but they couldn’t afford to be caught.

At the end of the day, in Esper’s words; “Fuck it, I’m tired and want a real bed to sleep in.”

And so they found one.

Thais stopped and propped herself up on the window sill, clutching the other side to keep from falling.There was no glass on any of the windows, utterly defeating the AC. They hadn’t thought it through fully when they smashed through them, and now they were paying for it.
She fell into a silence, thinking of Alejandro.

Esper took her time to find her pitch and when she did, she felt centered.

“Want to match me and sing a little song?” She asked, still strumming lowley, keeping rhythm.

“What song?” Thais turned her whole head to look at her.

“Hmmm….” Esper silenced her guitar by lifting her hand to her chin and scratching. “Lost Stars?”

“By Adam Lavigne from that movie?” Thais lifted a brow.

“Why did you just say that like you didn’t recognize the song?” Esper laughed.
“It used to be your favorite and we both know all of the words. ” Esper laid a pillow between her back and the wall and let herself sink out of posture. “C’mon let’s do it.”

“Okay,” Thais said and dropped from the sill, setting up camp on the edge of the bed sitting indian style. “Count us off.”

“5, 6, 7, 8!” Esper’s hand became a blur of sparkle and movement as she played, her voice stretching out and intertwining with Thais’.

The sound of human howling is one of the most beautiful sounds to ever hear, and right now, they were just as well a pack of wolves in the night.

And they had every light off in the little hut up in the hills, looking down on the town in the summer heat, a winter home for an old widow who may or may not have died before returning.

A string of bittersweet luck for the girls.

Their voices escaped the windows and reached the ears of nothing and no one other than their own.

“This,” said Thais once they were done, and feeling enormously better, “is why I said yes.”