Hard Luck Hermit

Tooley shouted something, but Corey could not hear it. The winds that sparked the entire festival were howling louder than ever before, and the bells hung as part of the ceremony were adding an extra layer to the cacophony. Anything they tried to say, no matter the volume, got lost in the din. To make matters worse, the blustering gale made it difficult to even walk. Corey had been bowled over once already, and he didn’t need to be able to hear to know Tooley was laughing at him. She’d stopped once the wind had knocked her down as well, at least.

To escape the winds, most of the festival crowds had huddled into buildings or hidden within rocky crevices, but Tooley and Corey were late to the idea, leaving them very little room. It might have been possible to elbow their way into one of the larger crowds, but neither was particularly keen on jamming themselves into a crowd of a hundred people. They liked a little personal space.

After struggling upwind for the better part of a cycle, Tooley and Corey finally found a crevice that was entirely unoccupied, albeit only big enough for the two of them to squeeze in practically nose to nose. Luckily they were both each other’s exception to the rules on personal space. They’d been a lot closer than this plenty of times.

“When we get back to the Wanderer I got to grab some of those earplugs you guys use when you’re firing the ballistic guns,” Tooley said. Even though they were practically rubbing noses, she still had to raise her voice to be heard. The small amount of cover could only do so much about the howling winds and ringing bells.

“If I’d known it was going to be this god damn loud, I would’ve brought some,” Corey said. “They should fucking warn people about this, I saw some little guys getting blown away earlier.”

“I know, Corey, I had to dodge them,” Tooley said. Some unfortunately lightweight aliens had gone shooting down the canyon thanks to the hurricane-force winds, and Tooley had been forced to sidestep them.

“Hold on, I’m going to try and check the weather, see when all this calms down,” Corey said. He awkwardly shuffled until he could grab his datapad out of his pocket and tried to hold it up, but did not have much room to work with. “Hold on, let me try- no, that didn’t work. Could you like, breath in for a second, try to draw your chest back?”

“Do folks where you’re from have retractable tits? Because I assure you mine do not work that way.”

“Just give me some room to work with here,” Corey said. “I need to be able to see the weather report and there is not a lot of real estate in front of my face.”

“Just use ‘em as a shelf,” Tooley said.

“Use what?”

“The boobs, Corvash,” Tooley said. “They’re already there and being squished very uncomfortably, they make a perfectly good surface to put something on.”

“Uh-”

“Don’t get bashful on me, Corey, you had your dick inside me a few cycles ago.”

That was a compelling argument, and Corey made use of the boob-shelf to get a weather report.

“Oh, okay, says this is a pretty common thing every sunset,” Corey said. “Canyon’s so long the sun is still up on the other side of it, makes the air warmer, yadda yadda yadda, it gets windy. Should be done in maybe a quarter of a cycle.”

“Ugh, a whole quarter cycle?”

“We could move, if you want,” Corey said. “Adjust positions, at least.”

“Every possible change we could make would be worse,” Tooley said. She let out a deep, frustrated sigh and then looked out at the festival decorations. “Only change I want to make is to go and rip those damn bells down.”

“I think that’d get us exiled. Again,” Corey said. They were banned from a handful of planets. “Those are for dead people, Tooley.”

“Yeah, well, dead people can’t hear, so-”

Tooley stopped herself mid-sentence, looked around, and pursed her lips. She was stuck face to face with Corey, which made it very hard to not make eye contact, so she closed her eyes instead. After a second, she leaned forward, tapping her forehead against Corey’s in the gentlest headbutt she’d ever given him.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“We’ve been wandering around these bells and shit all day,” Tooley said. “Did you want to put one up for your mom?”

The whole festival was meant to be a celebration of the dead. For Tooley, who’d never lost anyone she cared about (but lots of people she didn’t care about), such a celebration was meaningless, and all the ceremony surrounding it was nothing more than colors and noise. Corey, on the other hand...

“Oh. It’s fine. No, I don’t,” Corey mumbled. “I thought about it, but...nah.”

“Are you sure? It seems like your kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I don’t want it to be my ‘thing’,” Corey said. “I’ve spent enough time mourning my mom. I’m a grown man. It’s time to stop getting over it and start being over it.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works, buddy.”

“I know. But I figure I can fake it ‘til I make it, you know?”

“I’ve heard worse plans, I guess,” Tooley said. “From you. Repeatedly.”

“Very funny.”

“Got to entertain myself here somehow, Corvash, we’re stuck in this crack for at least the next twenty drops.”

“We could just talk about the festival,” Corey said. “There’s a lot of shit we still haven’t done.”

“I’m just here to find out when I can get my hands on one of those gliders,” Tooley said. There were people high above even now, soaring on the gale, rocketing through the skies on the roaring winds.

“You know, I’m not sure your piloting skills transfer to a glider,” Corey said.

“Shows what you know,” Tooley said. “I’m going to kick ass. Do a barrel roll and everything.”

She did end up finding the gliders, and even executing a barrel roll, but doing barrel rolls or any other kind of tricks was against the rules. She did one anyway. She’d been banned from entire planets, getting banned from one glider rental didn’t bother Tooley in the slightest.