Aeguka

(Anthem)

By AANNR

"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."

~ Richard Bach

- Chapter 1 -

Saeloun (New)

At 10 a.m., Casey Kendall Barton found herself standing at the threshold of her room, brown eyes glaring, her jaw clenched, and her fingers white from the force of grip on her bags. Across the room, laying back on one of the two beds in the hotel room, was Rebecca Smith, a frivolous young woman with the attention span of a nat. A rather average girl for 20, Casey rarely found reasons to hate individuals. She believed herself to be tolerant and kind and understanding for a great many things and circumstances, especially for those who were different.

But to Casey, Rebecca was beyond the precipice of different. Rebecca was everything Casey was not. Where Casey endeavored to be polite and understanding and quiet, Rebecca practically sought to be reckless and unobservant and thoughtless.

Once, in the eighth grade, for example, when she and Rebecca were but in the beginning of their teenage years, Rebecca had a habit of shaving the bark off trees. When teachers asked her to stop, Rebecca would respond with: "I'm just cleaning the trees. They're dirty."

The teachers tried many times to teach her that the trees were actually alive and that the trees needed the bark to live. But Rebecca refused to listen. After months of striping the bark off of the trees, they all died.

And, of course, Rebecca cried, stating that she was psychic and that she knew that the trees were going to to die because of a tree illness and that she had done her best to save them.

Of course, this only one of multitudes of instances. It seemed to be Rebecca's calling to seek out every reason to be different. As trends came and left, she allowed herself to become completely obsessed with them. Casey could clearly remember Rebecca's grunge phase, her twilight phase, her fairy phase (where she came to school everyday in Kindergarten dressed as a fairy princess), and her feminist phase. Now, Rebecca was in a phase Casey and her friends had dubbed as the "Valley Girl Phase". And, as she stood in the little hallway that led to their bedroom, Casey watched as Rebecca talked on the phone and whined to her "bestie 5ever 3" that there would be nothing to do while they were Paris because "the French were boring".

Rolling her eyes, Casey stalked over to her bed and flung her suitcase onto the unoccupied bed on the far side of the room. As she did so, Casey barely caught the end of Rebecca's conversation. "Ya, my roomie's here. I'll text you later!"

Rebecca kissed the speaker of the phone and flung it onto the bed beside her. Casey pulled open her suitcase, watching out of the corner of her eye as Rebecca swung her stumpy legs off the edge of her bed (cringing slightly as she realized that Rebecca had been wearing her converse shoes on the pristine white duvet).

"So, roomie," Rebecca began as she, too, opened her suitcase and started putting clothes away into chest of drawers. "Where do you want to go first?"

Casey, beginning to be irritated by Rebecca's seemingly unconscious facsimilicious movements, hummed to herself as she put away her delicates into her own drawers. "I haven't really thought about it."

"Ya, me neither," Rebecca said, throwing her tee-shirts into a drawer and bumping it closed with her hip, causing the chest of drawers to shake.

Casey winced again, "You know, if you fold them, they won't be wrinkly."

Rebecca just shrugged her shoulders. "I really don't care," Casey clicked her tongue; that was another thing that Rebecca lacked: tact. "It's not like I'm here to pick up boys. I've already got one."

And social cues, because there was no way Casey was really even remotely curious about, whether or not, Rebecca might of possessed a boyfriend.

However, instead of the snarky comment lashing about in her mind, Casey only said "I see" and politely smiled.

"Ya," Rebecca shrugged her shoulders, continuing on with her one sided conversation. "He's pretty great." Then a wicked grin split across her face before adding, quite triumphantly, "In bed."

As Rebecca laughed to herself Casey rolled her eyes, a spike of frustration piercing through her body and finding herself desperately wishing to be anywhere else than here with the queen of ignorance and immorality.

Suddenly, Rebecca let out a ear-piercing screech, flinging her arms in the air and sprinting across the room to the bathroom, "I have to gooooo!"

When Rebecca finally disappeared into the bathroom and slammed the door closed Casey quickly pulled out her phone and called one of her friends.

"Where are you?" Casey asked when she was greeted by Charlie's customary "sup?".

"In the hotel room," Charlie answered. Casey almost growled in frustration when she heard the toilet flush. She felt tension coiling in her stomach like a snake, moving slowly through her organs, cold and slimy. "You have to save me."

Charlie hummed, a bit of static tapering the end of the sound just a bit. "Which room are you in?"

"309."

"Be there in two." The connection clicked off just as Rebecca came out of the bathroom, flicking on the overhead fan, her face beaming as if experiencing her own personal joke.

"I wouldn't go in there for a while," the teen laughed, jutting her thumb at the now closed door of the salle de bain. "You know, unless you can hold your breath. Because I definitely just detonated a sizable bomb."

Casey wrinkled her nose in disgust and bit her tongue to keep from retorting. She doubted that anyone else born in the history of the world had ever been as crass as the disgusting young woman before her. And as Casey stood there, she suddenly realized that there was nothing about Rebecca that she liked. And she knew, in that moment, that if Rebecca had even touched her, she would have cringed away and contemplated burning her entire outfit.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Casey was grabbing her purse and her jacket and practically sprinted for the door.

"Where are you going?" Rebecca called out after her.

"Out!" Replied Casey, trying to be purposefully vague. She didn't need the young woman somehow 'accidently' finding herself within the same block.

Once she was through the threshold of the hotel room and had the door closed behind her, she grinned up at her best friend.

Charlie was a six and a half foot monster of a girl. With thick legs and broad shoulders, Charlie was one of the those girls that not even a man would want to tangle with. Casey could remember several occasions where the taller woman had physically persuaded gentlemen of their class into doing what she wanted. But this was not to say the tall young woman wasn't feminine. She was, ravishingly so. It was just that Charlie also had a penchant for getting herself into trouble and a habit of breaking a few bones to get out of it.

Most people were baffled at their friendship, especially as they got older. Casey and Charlie were complete opposites in style and ideology and appearance and hobbies and habits. Where Charlie was rough and attractive and boyish, Casey was average in looks, leaning towards, what Charlie liked to dub, "the sassy, chill librarian". But, to Casey at least, it was their differences that made their friendship work.

Casey didn't understand why she wasn't rooming with Charlie. They all had their pick of roommates and it was acceptable for people of other classes to room together, but when Casey had brought the subject up with Charlie, the taller girl had explained that she was already rooming with someone else because that person wasn't comfortable sleeping with anyone else.

And of course, on the outside Casey had smiled and said 'okay!', but on the inside, Casey had felt that something was off. In that moment, the world had shifted a bit to the side - kind of like when someone drops the video camera on the floor, leaving the video slightly slanted.

Charlie smirked as they quickly turned down the hallway to the elevator, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "The girls are waiting down the lobby."

Casey groaned. 'The girls' were a group of Charlie's lackeys Casey found equally stupid and intolerable - Casey momentarily debated returning to the hotel room feigning sickness. Charlie laughed, her blue eyes twinkling as her mouth screwed up sideways. "Come on, Case. They aren't that bad."

"When you have to use 'that bad' in a sentence, it automatically implies that they are 'that bad'." Casey cringed a bit, knowing that she was beginning to sound a bit whiney. "I just kind of wanted to spend time with you."

"We are. We'll be together throughout the entire thing!" Casey rolled her eyes and tugged at her purse strap. "Come on," Casey glanced up to Charlie's fist extened.

Casey held her breath and glanced over to her best friend and giggled a bit when she saw Charlie wiggling her eyebrows in a suggestive and flirtatious manner. "Fine," Casey replied, bumping Charlie with her shoulder playfully.

"Great!" Charlie exclaimed as the doos of the elevator slide open, an automated voice calling out the etage of the hotel. "Where to first?"

"Perhaps one of the museums?" Casey managed to grind out as the harem of females flounced their way to them, giggling and flipping their hair in completely stereotypical way. Charlie's friends were of the promiscuous and daring. Casey, a more conservatively isolated person than most, could barely tolerate their abrasive natures. It was true that she was, indeed, rather tolerant - but when faced with such aversive, confusing people Casey found that it was hard to relate.

Charlie's smile widened a bit, as if she knew what Casey's answer was going to be before Casey, herself, did. "Sure. Alright. Sounds like a plan, Stan." As the young women with tight jeans and low cut shirts had finally sauntered their way to stand before Charlie in slavering worship, Charlie announced that they were going to a museum.

Almost immediately, the girls' smiled dropped and resounding cry of anguish resonated through the lobby. Casey felt a blush of indignation creep up her cheeks as Charlie explained that no, she wasn't going anywhere else and that she was quite willing to go alone without them.

"But we want to be with you." One of the girls towards the front cried - one of the more worship-y ones named Bianca.

Charlie just smiled a crooked smile and responded, "I guess you'll just have to deal, then." The Charlie grabbed Casey's shoulders and steered her towards the exit, her horde of groupies close behind.

Casey, having had scouted out the nearest museum before arriving at the hotel, was quick to navigate through the Paris streets to reach their destination. When they arrived, Casey was rather pleased with herself. It was a nice, humble museum that housed some of France's more forgotten artists' works. Almost radiating with excitement, Casey managed to drag Charlie through the front doors of the building and start touring around.

Charlie's group dispersed as soon as they were through the doors, leaving Casey and Charlie alone to look at the paintings. As they surveyed the art and decor, Casey pointed out random facts that she had learned by researching the artists before hand. "And you notice how exceedingly simple his style is?" Casey whispered to Charlie as she stood back, admiring the craftsmanship of the painting. "Do you see how simply minimalist it is?"

Charlie shrugged and tilted her head to right, her green hair falling into her eyes. "What is it even supposed to be?"

Casey hummed for a moment, taking a moment to ponder the question, letting it percolate in her mind before answering. "Minimalism is supposed to be subjective and up to interpretation."

"Ah," Charlie grunted, sounding neither impressed nor awed. Casey sighed, turning her attention from the painting towards her best friend, catching her stifling a giggle at something one of her cohorts were doing just a few feet away.

Leaning forward and around the taller teen, Casey saw at on the other, one of the frivolous young women posed in front of the picture, pointing her finger up towards something on the painting. Charlie erupted into laughter when she heard the automated shutter sound of a camera go off, "I'll be back. I need to see this!"

Charlie quickly strode over to them, with what Casey guessed was a large smile, and high fived them each. "Man. That's quality entertainment," she remarked as one of the girls showed her the picture. Casey stood on the very tips of her toes to look over the taller teen's shoulder. Within the smaller, illuminated box there stood the young woman, pointing with her index finger to the subject's nether-regions. Casey immediately felt peeved that the girls were taking valuable art and disgracing it in such a lewd manner - she felt a bit embarrassed because of her country. 'No wonder everyone else hates American tourists,' she thought. 'We're disgraceful.'

And before she could think to stop herself, Casey felt sliver of anger slip out. "No wonder everyone else hates American tourists." She immediately regretted it because Charlie froze beside her, the lopsided grin that had been plastered to her face was replaced by a small grimace, as if she were being prepared to be punched.

One of the girls rolled her eyes, snatching the phone from Charlie to shove into her pocket, "What do you know?"

Casey realized that she was standing on the precipice of some kind of decision. One side she could back down and apologize - and it was honestly the smartest thing she could have done. And on the other she continue what she started, because, honestly, she was sick and so, so tired of Charlie's gang of bitches always nipping along at their heels. So Casey squared her shoulder and folded her arms over her chest in defiance. If they wanted to play 'who's the baddest bitch?', then Casey would play. "Apparently more than you."

The other girl narrowed her eyes, the eye makeup slathered on her lids making her look intense and dangerous. It almost unnerved Casey the way the girl managed to look like a cat and suddenly, Casey felt like a mouse that had taunted its number one predator.

"OKAY!" Charlie stepped between Casey and cat from hell, clapping her hands together with a ridged smile hanging on her face. "Lets all just-"

"But Charlie~" the cat-girl's glare was radically replaced with a comical pout, her face scrunching in a way that suggested that the girl was trying more to cry than to plea. "This place is dumb!"

The other girl, the one who had featured in the grotesque picture initially, nodded in agreement. "This is super boring."

Casey scoffed, "Only to the uncultured is this place anything but a place of historical treasures, right Charlie?"

"Um," Charlie starts, rolling her shoulders backwards and stuffing her hands farther into her pockets. "This is kind of boring." Casey's heart dropped into her stomach in disappointment; she'd really thought that her friend, her best friend, would appreciate the beautiful paintings and sculptures with her.

"Oh." Charlie's mouth pulled in a half apologetic smile.

"Yeah, sorry Case, but this isn't really our scene," the cat-girl-bitch commented from the right of Casey.

Casey cringed at the girl's use of her best friend's nickname. Only Charlie had ever had the gall to call her 'Case' - it was a private thing, something too sacred to be touched by mere acquaintances.

Half expecting an outburst, Casey glanced at Charlie out of the corner of her eye and was shocked to see that she was yawning.

The slippery snake in her gut tightened more, turning to led as she realized something had changed (whether it was in her or in Charlie, Casey couldn't begin to fathom), but suddenly it was right there. In her face and waving and screaming 'guess you don't really know anything'. And then Casey suddenly felt heavy. Casey could feel the gears in her mind moving, processing the information that had just punched her in the gut.

But Casey knew Charlie. Or...at least she thought she did.

Charlie had been Casey's best friend since they had been put in the same kindergarten class, when Charlie had heroically defended her from being viciously picked on by Mason Pilton. They had been together through everything. It had been Casey that had held Charlie through every one of her breakups. And Charlie had camped out with Casey outside of Barnes 'n Noble when the last book of the Harry Potter series had come out. But now, as she was faced with the inevitability of graduation and standing on the precipice of adulthood, Casey realized that everything had changed. Sure, they were still best friends (Casey could recite by heart Charlie's favorite bands and knew the psychological reason Charlie had a fascinating desperation for funkily dyed hair), but Casey also was suddenly hit with the knowledge that her best friend, the sister that she never had, had went and grown apart from her without even realizing it.

She didn't know this Charlie: the Charlie that was all impropriety and bad-choices rolled into a tall gorgeous body that, frankly, Casey wasn't sure she would be able recognize in any other circumstance.

Casey shook her head, red hair flying from her braid and shrugged. "That's fine," she muttered, ripping her eyes from Charlie's apologetic gaze. "You can go ahead and go somewhere more exciting, I don't mind."

As Casey turned, she watched through her peripheral as Charlie was grabbed by her friends and steered to the exit where the rest of the group was lounging, playing on their phones.

Disappointed in Charlie, Casey walked to the other side of the museum, desperate to put as much distance between her and the circumstance as possible. If Charlie was content to be with those uncultured harpies then Casey wouldn't stand in her way - and when Charlie craved to be around more civilized humans then she could seek Casey out. Because Casey, amongst every other emotion rattling inside her, felt done. Done with the harpies. Done with the rudeness. Done with Charlie. Done with everyone.