SUGAR AND CINDER

The car comes to a stop, just outside a frozen yogurt place. The empty drink cups and plastic bags in the back seat scrape against each other, and the driver exhales. She sits for what feels like a minute, two hours, five hours, three days, 5 minutes before taking out the key and grabbing the handle.

She's got to get out of this car eventually, she thinks. Her familiar agrees, destitching its ink from her skin.

Cinder pops the door open, just in time for a car to zoom past, shaking every cup, emblazoned with a comical Italian man, receipt padded with advertisements, and unpaid parking ticket asking for money than she's ever had loose.

For just a moment, she entertains the idea of chasing it. Her eyes follow that coupon into the windows of the Jujuice shop she's parked in front of, meeting the glance of a cashier, and she sighs again, shutting the door and reformulating her plans for dinner.

Cinder rolls her eyes.

Cinder sticks her tongue out, right as Ether flicks out its tongue, as it has every few seconds. Ether responds by yawping, baring its fangs and gesturing towards the windows of the Juju Ice juice store. Inside, a woman looks at her watch, the universal symbol for wondering where the fuck someone could possibly be. Even if she's on time, Cinder is now officially... running late. Cinder quickly pats down Ether's head, pushing its ink back into her skin, its head merging seamlessly with her skin, its borders becoming line art and blocks of color sewn beneath her flesh.

The juice store is shockingly warm, considering how cold juice tends to be. The cloak almost makes her seem overdressed. She looks around for the person she invited here, as hard as she might be to miss, but she hears her first.

Cinder swivels on her heel to face her, catching first sight of her bright blue hair. It gradates, a light blue that grows darker as it distances itself from her face, as if she's a part of the sky come down to meet her, Cinder thinks.

Cinder is more aware of her voice than she's ever been in her life. She sits at the table across from her, and fidgets uncomfortably in the seat, trying to figure out how her cloak is most comfortable when sitting in a wiry chair and failing.

Cinder pauses to recall her username.

Sugar swirls her drink, kept in the same kind of cup that crowds the back of Cinder's car.

Sugar tries to get a good laugh out of it, though Cinder can tell it's kind of forced. Ether coils around Cinder's arm, as if groaning at her half-joke. Cinder fidgets in her chair, her cloak still not comfortable to sit on. She wants nothing less than to look Sugar in the eyes after that, so she gets a good look at the cup and for a moment, she thinks the comical Italian man winks at her.

Sugar launches into a rant, encompassing every kind of work she's had in the last months. Cinder, in turn, leans forward, listening intently, her cloak unwadding itself beneath her as she listens to Sugar name each and every horrible boss she's had.

Ether squirms along Cinder's arms, its tail knotted between her fingers.

Cinder centers herself and thinks for a moment. And then another moment.

Ether relaxes its vice grip around Cinder's fingers and Cinder sighs.

Cinder tells her joke, and Sugar lets out an uncharacteristic cackle and spits out her drink.

Cinder stops to do the math in her head and thinks for a moment.