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001
shoes
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Crystal bites her lip and limps cautiously toward a small boulder, then sinks to the ground, clutching her ankle. She nearly lets a curse escape her lips, but stops herself. Obviously, she should not have gone hiking in this pair of shoes. Toms may be wonderful for the poor children of Orre and Almia, but they just don't offer the necessary support to her feet.
"Super Serious Gal, are you okay?" she hears. Stupid Gold. Stupid Gold and his inquisitive side. Of course he wants to know why she just walked away from him. He'd be brilliant as a scientist, she thinks wryly, with the way that brain of his is always whirling and coming up with new ideas. Too bad he's busy fooling around like some punk kid all the time.
"Erm. Yeah. I'm fine," she lies as tears well up at the corners of her light blue eyes. She has her back to him. That way, he can't decipher the obvious lie in the way she winces and her fingertips turn white from pressure (because she's gripping the rock like it's all she has to hold onto for life).
He starts babbling happily then, obviously believing her little white lie. She sighs and smiles slightly. Despite herself, she's willing to put up with a lot from him. Despite herself, she listens to his ranting about the latest radio programs (she's never heard of any of them) and chuckles at his outburst about gambling.
"Why do you waste your money gambling?" she asks, wanting to continue the conversation. "You could just save it."
"Ah, but where's the fun in that?" he replies. Such a kid. "It's so much more fun to risk it all on a game of pool! Especially when I know I'll win."
She sighs, putting a hand against her swollen forehead. "Only because you cheat…"
Even though her back is turned, she can see his roguish grin in her mind. "Aw, c'mon, Crystal. Put yourself in my shoes! Imagine how you'd act if you had no money."
She snorts, rubbing at the long tendon between her foot and her lower leg. Obviously strained. "I would get a perfectly reasonable job. Because that's how normal, respectable people make money."
He walks up behind her, but thanks to his quiet running shoes, she doesn't hear a thing. She nearly jumps out of her track suit when he puts a hand on her shoulder and just barely squeezes, just enough to make her edgy. "Eh, but I'm not a respectable person, am I… Super-Serious Gal?"
She flushes bright red and turns away. "Let's just keep going, okay? I have to get home soon." Anything to get away from Gold and his inescapable grin. She ignores the red-hot pain in her ankle and hurriedly hobbles away.
At that moment, the worst pair of shoes in the world couldn't have kept her from hiking down that mountain.
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Author's Note: This piece is the ninth part of the ten-portioned series 'Boxes of Chocolates'. Each encounter is a private love note, and each of the separately–published stories will cover a different shipping. Each chapter is a different drabble about the shipping; I'll do five per story, possibly more.
The full list: SpecialShipping (Ambiguous), AgencyShipping (Menial), FranticShipping (Tenacious), ChosenShipping (Exploitable), PanderShipping (Retrospective), CommonerShipping (Parametric), FeelingShipping (Harmonic), OldRivalShipping (Stoic), MangaQuestShipping (Vivacious), and HaughtyShipping (Loquacious). I'm perfectly well aware that the publishing format I ended up deciding on is annoying, but I figured that dividing it up by shipping would be the best way for everyone involved to pick and choose which ones they would like to read, without being 'exposed' to opposing shippings.
Please take a look at the others, if you like this one, and enjoy. (For the record, they won't be published until I actually finish writing the first drabble for each of them. I didn't want to spam the forum completely, so… just keep an eye open, I guess. They'll be in the order above.)
Also, I should mention that these aren't necessarily sequential. I write what I can, based on the theme I'm given.
