a/n [This is probably a horrible idea, but whatever. No one will read it. Hopefully. (Lils, I'm looking at you.) And, warning, this has absolutely no plot what-so-ever. Like, none. At all. It doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. Turn away while you still can. Also every section ends with dialogue and it's driving me insane, but whatever, deal with it.]
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Under a dome of stars, where the air is stiff and silent, a lone girl hammers the last nail into a wooden frame. She steps back, hammer and tools left forgotten on the ground, to admire her work. As of now, it's plain. A mess of wooden beams, really. To anyone else, they'd see a pile of junk, or a child's mess. But the girl smiles, because she sees the walls and the ceiling, the memories to be made.
She reaches into her back pocket, grasping for the phone with the black and white case, and is met with full bars of service, an anomaly. Quickly, she loads Skype.
Johanna: on your way?
Lils: almost there
Johanna: did you bring them?
Lils: of course
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The first thing off the spacecraft is a pile of blankets and a startled scream. The blankets rustle, then one falls off the pile and a face appears, eyes alight. Next comes a hand, and the blankets are ripped away, one by one, until a girl comes running out. Feet scurrying over undisturbed dust and the roughness of the moon, no one questions where the laws of gravity and space have gone.
But, looking carefully at the ground beneath the hugging girls, one might notice that the footsteps have been carried away by a breeze, or that if one squints, one can see walls painted with glittering stars. The world is nothing more than an illusion.
The girl from the spacecraft steps back, laughing. "Guess what? I ordered hundreds of them. Hundreds!"
"You dwark, I said thousands!" Johanna exclaims, but she can't stop her excited smile. "And did you buy the pillows, too?"
"There'd be no point in life if I didn't get the pillows," she says, faking hurt in her voice that her friend would doubt her so.
Johanna grips the skirt of her dress to keep her from doing something stupid such as squealing or jumping up and down, or tackling her friend. "Can we get started right now?"
"Yes!"
Both girls go running to the spacecraft, laughing, tripping over uneven ground. Fake stars twinkle around them as they pull blanket after blanket from the craft, and pile them around the frame of their fort. Then as Lils finishes unloading, Johanna starts laying the blankets down as a patchwork floor. As the latter starts winding fairy lights around the beams, the former sprinkles the ground in pillows, not forgetting to pile them up in some places as makeshift furniture—she knew she forgot something, but in the grand scheme of things, how important are chairs, anyway?
In the end, they both back up, looking up at the king of all forts, their fort, and smile. It looms above them, tall enough that Lils couldn't reach the ceiling if she was jumping on the biggest pillow pile, and it's big enough to house six average sized guests plus three dogs. But the best part is the colors. Blue and yellow and green walls for the outside, all in different shades and patterns, with the light shining through the thinner fabrics. The inside is reds, yellow, and oranges—happy colors—and the pillows, every single last one of them, are purple.
When she can't contain herself any longer, Johanna runs forward, through the two purple blankets that make for a door, and collapses on the pillows in the main room. She lets herself collapse under them, until she's immersed in the darkness except for sole foot sticking out into the open air.
When Lils walks in the room, giving a slight sigh when she sees her buried friend, Johanna says, "Could you buy some more pillows at the store? We're out."
Lils just sighs again, but grabs the craft's keys out of her pocket. "You're so lucky we need furniture as well."
"Love you!" Johanna calls out, squirming under the pillows until she can peer out to watch her friend's departure.
"Yeah, yeah, sure."
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When Lils comes back, arms loaded with bags of Boosts, Johanna shuffles out of the pillow pile to greet her. Lils blinks, caught red-handed with her load of candies, and Johanna glares.
"Where's mine then?"
Quick as a chipmunk, Lils drops her Boosts on the floor and fishes out an Alter Ego chocolate bar from the bag over her shoulder. It flies through the air, and Johanna catches it, looking at uncertainly.
"Just one?"
This time, Lils tosses her the entire bag, and Johanna grins, already tearing open the first package. Her mouth stuffed with chocolate—letting it melt tastes so much better than chewing it—she attempts to say, "Did you buy the furniture?"
But Lils picks up on the incoherent words flawlessly. "Yep. And I grabbed a few things from the pantry as well."
"More than just candy?"
"Mm hmm. Flour, sugar, butter, vanilla—"
"You just want me to make cupcakes, don't you?"
Lils laughs. "I'll bring the oven in!"
"You better have brought bowls and stuff, too!" Johanna calls after her friend.
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They're sitting back to back in the makeshift kitchen, leaning against each other. Both girls are silent, content with the smell of warm chocolate in the air, while they skype back and forth, iPhones and iPads alight.
Lils: have you written our moonfort adventures yet?
Johanna: i'm too busy talking to you dwark
Johanna: besides, we don't have any adventures up here
Lils: nerd
Lils: down here, you mean
Johanna: whaetver
Johanna: wait, i mean, ugh
Lils: haha whaetver
Johanna: shut up
Lils: shut down
Johanna: youre impossible
Lils: elbissopmi
Johanna: did you just
Johanna: why
Lils: yes i did just
Lils: what
Johanna: where
Johanna looks up from her screen after Lils doesn't reply, and swivels slightly, not so much that Lils will fall, but enough so that she can see her friend.
"You didn't reply," Johanna accuses.
"What?" Lils turns, too. "Yes, I did."
To prove her point, the girl shows Johanna her iPad, and sure enough, there at the very bottom of the conversation, Lils wrote 'when', but looking back at the phone, the word still hasn't shown up.
"Ugh," Johanna groans. "I hate technology."
"Agreed," Lils says. "We shall throw it all into the sun!"
"But, then what will I write on?" Johanna collapses onto the floor in exasperation, clutching a hand to her chest, but Lils just rolls her eyes, shoving her to the side.
"Paper, maybe?"
Johanna sits up immediately, her eyes narrowed in mock disgust. "Ugh, paper. You're so old-school."
"Whatever." Lils pushes Johanna back onto the floor, and the girl squeals as she falls. "I think my cupcakes are done."
"You're cupcakes?"
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Lils doesn't even think twice when the older girl suddenly sits up straight in the air, claims that the world is ending, and falls dramatically over Lils. Instead, she readjusts her book so it's over Johanna, and continues reading. Johanna sits up, squints at her friend, and falls again, this time sighing even louder.
"Do you mind?" Lils asks. "I've just gotten to the good part."
"I am having an existential crisis, Squish. I don't care about your book!"
"Well, I'm sure the book isn't too fond of you, either."
Johanna sits up once more, but before she can fall, Lils puts a hand up and stops her. "Yeah, yeah, loud sigh, I get it. Why don't you go look at the stars and ponder life?"
"Do you think the stars are out yet?"
Finally, Lils puts her book down and stares at Johanna. It wasn't that long ago that the two of them were painting the ceiling and walls with black and splattering them with glitter and sticker stars afterwards. She must realize that none of it is real, right?
"You dwark."
"No, no," Johanna says. "The real ones."
"The real ones?"
The only passage to the world outside has been boarded up and plastered with caution tape. This here, in this room, is the only stars they have in the entire well. Sure, they're are view stars shoved in with the time zones, and the sun room is technically one giant star, but to see the night sky alight? Impossible.
"Do you want to add a few more lights onto the ceiling?" Lils asks softly.
"Can we?"
"Yep, and we can make any constellation you want."
"Can we make one of us?"
"Duh."