How's Tokui?
After being away for so long, Wires runs into an old friend and is confronted with the reality of change.
Written circa 2009.
"How's Tokui?" asked Pika, and Wires couldn't help staring at her a little bit, because after six years, people tend to forget about details like that.
Wires had run into the purple chimera in a Starbucks, in a Barnes&Noble, and she had recognized him immidiately. She had greeted him by sneaking up behind him, and saying "Boo!" as if they were teenagers again, and that kind of thing was acceptable in social situations. But he supposed things like that never occured to Pika. Even after six long years.
They'd bought coffee and talked for a few hours. About how college was going for him, about his classes, his new job. She rested her coffee on her battered laptop as she listened, paws fiddling idly with a straw wrapper. She dodged the subject every time he asked how she was doing. Her talk was mainly about old times. She'd told him stories from high school, most of which he had forgotten, as if they had happened yesterday. Some funny stories didn't seem as funny to him, partially because he barely knew the people involved anymore, but they still seemed to crack Pika up.
The last time he had seen her was a few months after their high school graduation, lurking around his house as he packed boxed into the trunk of his beat-up car. She'd looked oddly sad as he drove away, and she'd been sitting on his fence as he left, footpaws idly ripping foliage from between the cracks in the sidewalk.
He vagely remembered their conversation, she hadn't known he was leaving, off to a college out of state. He'd been going to major in computer programming and technology, a field he was good at, but not neccasarily one he liked.
"When did you leave?" she'd asked, her tail moving in a catlike, attentive sway.
"Last week I moved into the dorm." he'd responded, his tone a little strained. He was messing with a box that probably weighed more that he did, and the inside of his fucked up car's trunk was sagging.
"Nice roommate?"
"I haven't met him yet, he moves in in a couple of days."
"How's Tokui?" she'd asked. He wasn't sure how to respond. Tokui, his girlfriend and Pika's close friend, was sad that he was moving, of course. She had landed comfortably in a city school with a good record. Nothing special, but not quite mediocre. So she stayed in the city while he moved to Pennsylvania, to the school in the middle of nowhere. He sometimes sensed that she was slightly mad at him. For leaving, and for living out the life she had wanted, surrounded by nature.
"She's fine." he responded simply. Pika had responded happily, awkwardly. Then she watched him pack for another fifteen minutes, and her bright green eyes had watched him drive away.
Now, just like before, she watched him eagerly, waiting for a response. Looking at her, just fully looking at her, he came to the startling realization that she had not changed at all. Her fur looked faded, her clothes tattered and she was moving as if her joints were sore, but she was still the same Pika. Her tail still wagged with the same canine cheer as she asked about her friend.
Once again Wires was unsure of how to respond. Of the few high-school relationships that had survived, his was not among them. He and Tokui had tried the long-distance relationship thing. Texting, e-mail, phone calls. But eventually the flood of information slowed into a trickle, then it simply ran dry. The two of them just stopped communicating. There was no breakup, no goodbye.
He looked again at Pika, unchanged, eternal. No. She was simply stuck, stuck in a youthful past of penis jokes and idle gossip. She was still wearing the same red bandanna for her dead dog, and the same glow-bracelets she'd had since high school's freshman year. He looked into her grinning face, the slitted at eyes staring expectantly.
As Wires walked out, Pika came with him, her pads silently hitting tile, then concrete. She was going off somewhere to get beers with friends, and asked if he would come. He declined, since he had a sneaking suspicion about who those friends were...there are some aversions that even time can't cure. She looked dissapointed and walked him to his train station, watching his back sadly as she dug in a plot of dirt near a lightpole with her footpaw.
Safely inside, Wires took off his jacket, hanging it up on the coatrack. He motioned towards the television, about to turn it on, but then looked back to his phone. How long had it been? Four years? Five? He swallowed his apprehension.
"Hello."
"Who is this?" the voice on the other end was harsh and annoyed.
"It's Works-in-Wires."
"Wires? Wha-"
"You'll never guess who I saw today!"
"...who?"
"Pika!"
"Oh...really? How is she?"
"She's fine."