Here's the second chapter of the story; I'd been planning to update sooner, but life, the pesky little thing, got in my way. I had to write some essays and stuff for school. No where near as much fun as this.


Melody Jane, it seems to me, is a liar. She says she has no friends; I find that very difficult to believe. I've known her for approximately two hours and thirteen minutes, and, I have to say, she rivals Starfire in her level of enthusiasm for life. To top it off, she was as willing to listen as she was to talk.

"So, how are your parents?" she asked off-handedly, fiddling with a thin black ring, studded with tiny sliver crosses, that was on her left hand –a promise ring, she'd told me, but not only in the conventional way. Along with promising abstinence –"Like I could handle a kid anyway."- the ring represented a promise she'd made to herself. She hadn't said what it was, yet, though, and I was getting curious. The question, though, had shot a hole right through that.

I winced, and she looked over, apologetic. "That bad?" she asked. "You don't have to answer, if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine. Dad and I sort of… decided to go our separate ways." I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck as I looked at the imperfections in the table. I was sort of surprised the waitresses hadn't kicked us out yet, but, then again, the lunch rush was long over. "As for mom… well… she's… in a better place now, as they say." I looked up at Melody Jane, who was watching me with surprising interest.

"Well, you still call him "Dad," which is a good sign for your relationship. Working on patching things up, I take it?" I shrugged. "As for me," she continued, still fiddling with her ring, "my mother and father got divorced when I was younger. All I knew of my dad was his voice, until a little under three years ago, when I turned eighteen and my mother kicked me out. Turns out he wasn't worth knowing anyway." She shrugged a little, trying to pretend the event that had lead to that decision wasn't as big of a deal as I knew it must have been. "As for mother," she said, eyes narrowing a little, "well… we don't get along so well. She's one of those nutters who demands perfection or declares damnation. No happy middle ground for her. Obviously, I'm just not good enough for her." I let out a whistle.

"That sucks." She smiled crookedly.

"Not really. I've sort of been a disappointment to her my whole life." Her smile got wider, and she put the ring on her finger. "Mother was in the church choir, you see. Wanted me to take it up, too, which is where I got the name." She raised her eyes, making amused contact with me. "My little Melody," she said, raising the pitch of her voice to mock her mother. "She'll have a voice like an angel." She laughed, shaking her head. "My voice is awful," she chuckled. "I'll tell you, when I sing, it ain't no sweet song."

I laughed. "You've gotta tell me, what's the other promise that the ring's for?" She looked at her hand for a second, taking off the ring and spinning it between her fingers. She sighed, slipping it back on.

"If I tell you," she said, reaching into her pocket, "you've gotta take a picture with me." She held out a little digital camera, a grin much like Starfire's lighting up her face. She turned the camera on, looking down at the display screen, setting it up so she could scroll through the pictures. She handed the little camera across the table to me. "Scroll through 'em, you'll see the last few towns I been to."

Being careful not to crush the little red camera –just because my hands looked human didn't mean they were- I started to scroll through the pictures. The same pair of brown eyes stared back at me from every frame, though her companions and location were different every time. The first one was of her in front of a pizza joint, her arm slung around a tall young lady with black hair, and eyes that matched her own, only a few shades darker. The girl, who was wearing a skeleton jacket, was waving at the camera, grinning back, and the shot was wide enough that Melody must have asked someone else to take it. The two had hair almost reaching their elbows, so she must have gotten it cut after this had been taken.

The second was much like the first, Melody standing in between two Asian-looking girls, the three of them raising the bar. The tallest wore a headband in her dark hair, and the shortest had her arms crossed over her chest, mildly irritated as Melody used her as an armrest, although Melody herself was in the same position. The plaid-wearing bottom "bar" was clutching a Canon camera, likely waiting to have the same picture taken again. The three were posing in front of a small pond, and a duck had just taken off as the picture was being snapped.

In the third, a young man wearing Aviator sunglasses stood next to her, grinning like a monkey. The sky stretched out behind them, bright and clear and cloudless. She was putting bunny ears behind his head, smiling crookedly. Her hair was shorter in this picture than it was now, like this was when she'd gotten it cut and it had grown out for a month or two. He was leaning towards her, faking like he was going to push her into the large cactus that stood proudly behind them.

Another was of the red-haired drifter and a girl with long, messy brown hair who had a pencil tucked behind her ear. She was standing a little too stiffly as Melody jovially hugged her, and her eyes were wide with surprise. One of her hands was in the process of coming up to block her face from the picture, but whoever had snapped it was just too quick.

"So," Melody started, breaking me out of my thoughts on who these people were, what stories they had to tell, "will you take a picture with me if I tell you?" I smiled back at her.

"And make it into the camera of fame?" I asked, waving it around a little before handing it back to her. "Of course! Walk and talk, I know just where we should take it." She nodded, and, since we had already both paid, we stood up and left the little diner. She waved to the waitresses before we left, then turned to me.

"The promise," she began as we walked, "is one that I made to myself." She pulled off the ring, looking at it quietly. "My mother, she never helped anyone but herself. Everything she did was about her and her image, and what everyone would think of her." She slid the ring back on. "She bought me this ring and make me promise to wait until marriage, not because she cared about me, or about my future husband, but because of what would happen to her reputation if word got out her little Melody had hit a sour note and got pregnant." She sighed, spinning the ring on her finger. "So, I made that promise. But, I made another one, too. I promised myself that I'd never be like her, that I'd try to make other people's lives better, that I'd make as many people smile as I could." She smiled a little at the declaration. "And I promised myself that my life would make one sweet song."


I'm also working on dialogue a lot with this story; three new things all at once: Cyborg, first person, and (too much) dialogue.

...SnowFallsSlow...