"Hey, didja ever hear the story 'bout the guy who walked for twenty years?"
Allen looked up from his book like a startled rabbit with long, golden ears. The voice had come from nearby. He looked left and found nothing. After that, he turned a look right--
--into Ravi's mouth, which resembled the shape of a D laying sadly on its side. Allen blinked his good eye (the other was wrapped in bandages) dumbly; Timcanpy twitched a wing, curling its tail around itself to create a not-quite-fashionable crown on top of Allen's snowy white hair. It took Allen a moment to realise that while chins were the part of people his eyes were used to meeting (it was tough being short), they usually weren't the top of someone's head.
It took him another moment to realise this phenomenon occurred because Ravi's head was upside down.
"Twenty years?" he wondered, sounding as dumb as he looked, distracted and surprised but not so inconsiderate he wouldn't answer at all. How did Ravi--?
No one had been in that chair a few minutes ago.
"Ummmmmmmm, well, it was more like two." The other boy's bangs dripped from his hairline like red fire, distinctly lacking the headband that usually ran flame control. Ravi's back arched over the back of the chair as if he was a nondescript coat that had been forgotten for years, not important enough to notice but always present. One of his hands dangled down his side, clutching a small black book. "But twenty sounds more impressive, don't it?"
Bookman would have slapped him for his grammar.
The redhead's mouth curled up at the corners like a crescent moon. Allen found himself captivated by the know-it-all grin. Finally, he answered, "I don't think I've heard it."
"Yeah? Well, it reminds me of you." Allen blinked again and parted his lips to speak. Ravi was one step ahead of him and interrupted before a sound ever came out. "So I'll tell ya!"
They hadn't even known each other for a week.
"Starts off with the guy's family. Good folks an' all, but they go off an' get all kinds'a crazy illnesses that nobody's ever heard of. Eventually, they catch one they can't get rid of. It's a slow-acting disease. The guy's distraught an' doesn't know how to handle this one. He's just a kid himself."
Allen wondered if Ravi's head was starting to fill with blood for how long it had been upside down.
"Sixteen, ya know? Sooner than you know it, half'a the whole town's fallen to the sickness."
He also wondered how long Ravi was going to hold that book. The whole position looked uncomfortable.
"Mind you, this is somewhere where it snows a lot -- a little place between here an' nowhere. Not on any maps. No good doctors. No good cures."
Ravi paused, as if waiting for something. While dumb, Allen was wise enough to read the cue and polite enough to take the bait. "Is it a fictional story?"
"Nope! One-hundred percent true!"
"How do you know?"
"Heheheheheh, that's not important. Hey!" Ravi lifted his other hand, still grinning like a red devil. "You're distracting me!"
Despite himself, Allen nodded his head, smiled, and waited for the rest, silent as a the twitchy golem on his head.
"Anyway, a team of able-boded men assembled. They took their best snow dogs and piled rations in packs they wore on their backs, starting off for the nearest town which was one-hundred forty-five miles away. If ya figure it, they were walking at about two miles per hour. They were the smart types. They knew walking at a fast pace would be their folly and technically it'd only take about three days, but you've gotta consider the time it took for them to sleep. All in all, it should'a taken 'em roughly four days to reach their destination. Maybe less."
Ravi paused. Allen interjected obediently: "Should have?"
"Ja! Nobody came back."
"What happened to the village?"
"That's where the kid comes in. The adults failed, right? So late one night -- against his parent's wishes, by the way -- he stocked himself with a hunting knife, as many rations as he could carry, warm blankets, and set out for the other town. He was a bit dumb. Didn't know how to navigate the stars. The most he had was a general direction of what side the sun should be on while he was traveling during the daytime. He got lost a lot."
Another pause. Ravi's grin became more fierce.
Allen's white brows furrowed. This story reminded Ravi of him? "What happened to him?" Suddenly, he was a lot more interested in the story than he had been before. He turned his body all the way around to face his company's upside-down face, leaning forward. "Did he find the other village?"
"I thought ya'd ask: Nope! He never found it. He didn't think to keep track'a the days. Along the way he was attacked by malnourished wolves an' white bears, but he was good. If he'd been a complete idiot he never would'a lived. He became really good at getting outta trouble, living, an' learning the stars. He didn't know any of the real names for 'em, but he made up his own. Eventually he came across another town. Imagine his surprise: two years, six months, one week, five days, seventeen hours, and forty-three seconds had passed since he set out from his village! He inquired about the illness that had struck his town. Turns out the crew came back with help after all. Communication was shoddy an' they'd been delayed by three snow storms."
Allen stared. Ravi grinned. A pair of golden wings wiggled on top of Allen's head, as if tittering at a joke.
After a brief silence filled with hesitation, Allen asked, "Did he go back?"
"Nah. Once he learned his folks were all right -- there were no casualties -- he went off into the wilderness and was never heard from again. Officially, anyway."
Silence.
It didn't have time to stretch longer than the last. Ravi raised his free hand to the side of his head. "He was a bit... y'know." He clicked his tongue, extended his index finger, drew circles in the air beside his ear, and whistled a high note that fell, not much unlike a falling star. "Mad. It's amazing what happens to ya when you're alone for a long time. Y'know that cliché 'You'd be surprised at the things people can do when they don't gotta look at themselves in a mirror every day'?"
Allen looked like a cross between 'ruffled' and 'stumped'. "That reminds you of me?!" He didn't mean for his voice to be as loud or high as it was.
"Well, I didn't say it all reminded me of you." Ravi's cheerful expression lit the room like a small sun when he stood from his chair -- but he'd stood too quickly: he nearly toppled over. His palms hit the table top in such a haphazard manner it was a miracle he hadn't lost his grip and found himself engaged in a brief romance with the library floor. "Whoooooooa!" He puffed, "Easy, easy--"
When Allen rushed from his own chair as quick as a rolling river, reaching his hands out of reflex even though he was too far out of range and far too late to help, he chirped an abrupt "Ow!" and winced his eye half-shut. "Hey," His gaze turned upwards as his mouth turned down. "Tim, stop it!" As he looked at Timcanpy, who had a mouthful of his hair, twitching its wings and stamping one of its front feet, he remembered Ravi and imagined his company's vision must have been blotted out by dizzy black dots.
Allen tipped his head down and lowered his arms, mouth curved into a small smile again. He didn't say so, but what just happened had been amusing. He closed his own book and picked it up, tucking it beneath his shoulder. "Are you okay?" He asked, crouching to pick up the book Ravi had dropped.
Timcanpy sucked on a lock of white hair nonchalantly, a small golden box of teeth and agony. No one in their right mind would have told it 'No, you can't eat that hair' and expected to keep their fingers.
Ravi shook his head out. "S'all right, s'all right, 'm okay." When he turned to Allen, he grinned and lifted a hand, thumb out in the universal sign of 'No, really, everything's great', sporting a look of perpetual bedhead. "Don't worry! I can handle it."
Allen's smile widened. He got the impression Ravi would say that even if he'd hit his head on the corner of the table and put his other eye out. He offered the black book. Ravi reached his hand out to take it.
Once his fingertips touched the cover, they both had the feeling they were at the beginning of a strange, albeit exciting friendship.