An Uneventful Game of Life
Chapter One
Her Name is Jade Harley and this is Her Morning Routine
"-Lovers dance when they're feeling in love~"
A bright morning sun peaking around dull colored, moss green curtains caused a mass atop a cushioned mattress to stir and eyes like liquid emerald to flutter open.
The young woman's arm came to rest over her eyes, concealing them from the seemingly blinding rays of sun. She let her alarm continue to sing, lulling her into a sense of much needed security.
"Spotlight shining, it's all about us~!"
It seemed like the dreams would get more vivid with each passing night before the fated day. The young woman knew that it was all in her head, but each morning, she would wake with sweat coating her face and tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her dreams had never lied to her beforehand.
"-vry heart in the room will melt~ This is a feeling I've never felt, but o-"
At this point, the woman let her hand slip over the off button, cutting off the song with a quiet click.
"Well, enough of that," the woman stated cheerily as she wiped a sleeve across her face, sitting up with a stretch and a yawn; her mane of black hair pointed out every which way.
Upon starting to get the morning routine out of the way, the viridian eyed lass was nudged by the great head of a large white dog with a surprisingly clean sheet of paper in his mouth. "Good morning, Becquerel," she greeted with a bright, yet strained smile.
Becquerel, a large Great Pyrenees mountain dog that went by the affectionate nickname of Bec, gave a light whimper in worry for his owner, tail giving a light wag. Those dreams she was having must have been causing everyone in her house to worry.
"Don't worry Bec!" the girl cheered as she patted the dog on the head, swinging her legs up and over the side of her bed with ease.
Again, the dog whimpered, but this time to draw attention to the slowly wetting paper in its jaws. A dog could only keep something slobber free for so long. The woman quickly, but gently, took the paper and let her eyes scan over it quickly.
Ah jade, if you are reading this, then that means bec awoke you up from your slumbering castle of enchanted, yet slightly horrifyingly dreamy, dreams. *double pistol wink* ;) … Kicking jesus, that stunk as badly as a skunk spraying itself, sorry.
Ahem, anyways, you told me to tell you yesterdays dusk to inform you of the following:
Remember to put on your rubber bands! You said something about having much to do this day!
Dont trip. I… I dont quite know what you might have been getting at with this, but i shall deliver as I was told like the great page of hope I am! *stands in front of an amazingly badass volcano as it erupts dramatically*B) Strider has been trying to teach me and crocker the strange ways of his robust irony… But it might have been too ironic for me to get it completely and utterly…
Hm… I would jolly well like it though if he would at least have the decency to just log out of pesterchum rather than leaving his dickprince auto-responder to bicker with me like a winne the pooh trying to get some honey from the death trap that is a tree that it is exactly and obviously not a real honest to goodness human being.
Or maybe, what if it was a trick this whole time? What if there *isnt* an auto responder and that not-so-ironic kickerboker has just been messing with me to get my trousers in a twist this *whole* time! I will have to confront him about this- oh bother, look at this train wreck of a morning note! I just knocked the train right off the tracks and killed helpless families with my ranting! Oh the horror of it all!
Moving onward.
Dont forget your keys. That one should be self-explanatory, no?
Ahem, well, good morning sister of mine. :)
-Jake.
Jade giggled a bit as she got to her feet and laid the note onto her nightstand. Jake's hand writing was so difficult to read sometimes, and he was far too dramatic for his own good. It must have been the same was Jade herself had been, running around and thinking up crazy plot twists to her rather ordinary life.
With a pause, Jade gave a light frown. His handwriting had been fairly blurry- almost ridiculously so! Actually… the whole of her room was blurry!
The raven haired woman looked around, squeaking in surprise before letting out a sheepish laugh. Bec was sitting in front of her again, but a pair of oddly round spectacles were sitting gently in his teeth this time.
Had it been another family with another dog, the morning might have erupted into chaos about getting the seeing devices from the jaws of a playful canine. In other words, this was not a normal household and Bec was no ordinary dog.
Bec was at the ripe age of 26, out living many of his kind by over a decade and a half, and seemed to have an almost radioactively green, neon hue to his irises. Jade had always known Becquerel to be a strange dog, being able to do what many other dogs, no matter how smart, could simply never do. As well as he being at the same age as his owner.
When Jade was younger, she had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg in the forests that surrounded the quaint home she had grown up in. Though she had not explored into the forest with him, Bec had appeared almost instantaneously at her side, picked her up, placed her gently on his back and took her home.
When Jade cried over the loss of her mother, a woman of about thirty-two who had just given birth to Jake, the canine would be able to unlock her door and would then lay beside her for the young lass to cling and cry into his broad shoulders. Her grandparents seemed to have understood that Becquerel was like family. The household left an unspoken knowing that Bec was not a simple house pet.
To Jade, Becquerel was a good dog and a best friend… He was also her assistance dog when her narcolepsy struck, being able to somehow keep her awake, but that was a different tale all together.
Upon taking her glasses from man's best friend, the young woman gave Bec a scratch behind a large floppy ear, "Thanks Bec, silly me, I can't forget those now can I?" Jade then glanced around a bit, stumbling over to her nightstand on sleepy legs. Another note sat on the small desk under Jake's. "Ah, here is my remember list! See, I'm not the forgetful!"
If dog's could roll their eyes, Bec most certainly did.
The rather petite young woman picked up her other note, carefully sweeping off the many colorful rubber bands into her other palm. Each band stood for a different kind of importance so she could remember things.
The other note stated simple phrases in colors matching the bands: "remember to catch the bus at 8:20" in bright red (very important), "bec needs a bath when you get back home from work" in yellow (Important, but can wait), "walk home with jake at 3 after his soccer meeting!" in dark green (Jake's favorite color.).
Jade gave a slight smile at her colorful bands and wrapped the appropriate colors around her fingers. "There!" she chirped, admiring her handy work. A red band was in the middle of her index finger, just above a black band, this one symbolized her dream, jungle green on her ring finger near the base, and yellow on the second segment of her pinky.
Bec gave a light bark of approval before nudging the young woman toward the bathroom, giving another bark. His owner had wasted enough time!
"Ha ha, I'm going!" Jade laughed as she let the large dog push her toward the bathroom. "I'm going! Geez, no need to push me boy!"
After taking a quick shower, or as quick as one may take a shower with hair as long and thick as Jade's, and changing into a clean set of clothes, Jade took moment to look herself over in the mirror. The puffiness from her earlier tears had gone down and she could pass as relatively normal.
The woman was not the most beautiful of people, but one would not have called her ugly either. High cheek bones, thin, pink lips, wide green eyes and a bucktoothed smile, along with a few freckles from her time in the sun as a child. Her figure was small, petite even and not especially curvy or filled in anywhere.
Makeup was usually never an option, unless there was perhaps a pimple. No one liked to look at pimples and it was a nice confidence boost when people were looking into her eyes rather than a red dot in the middle of her forehead.
For now though, there would be no makeup because there was no such red dot.
After a moment of quick double checking, a quick run through with a brush through her mess of hair, and a "do I have anything in my teeth" peek in the mirror, Jade left her room with high confidence.
Creeck!
"Wha-uuph!" Smack!
High confidence suddenly crashed onto the floor as Jade's foot got caught in her doorway and caused her to land face first onto the wooden panels of her two bedroom apartment. This also happened every morning.
"Good golly, Jade! Are you alright?" Jade suddenly found herself pulled up to a sitting position as her younger brother gave her a quick once over for damage. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Jade squinted her eyes a little bit. "…Two- no three? No, wait, make that two again if you're not counting thumbs."
The two siblings laughed quietly. Jake was at the age of sixteen and held a real soccer player's form, but shared the dorky looks of his sister. If Jade were not so young, others may have believed the young man to be her son, with their startling resemblances.
The young lad had been placed in Jade's care when he was eleven years old, after their grandparents had passed away peacefully in a hospital, hand in hand. It had almost been too good to be true that they had passed away at the same time, but at least one of them would not have to spend the rest of their time missing the other. Goodness Jade missed them. They were practically her parents after her mother passed away when she was nine and a half.
"I thought I told you to be careful about tripping!" Jake chuckled as he helped Jade to her feet, standing a few inches taller than her. "I wrote that contraption of a letter!"
Jade gave a sheepish smile as a reply. "I only remember something about a train wreck and dying families," she giggled, the green eyed boy frowning a bit in response.
"Did you have another of those plumb rotten nightmares again?" Jake asked in all seriousness, eyes narrowing a bit behind his rectangular lenses.
Jade's giggles died a bit as she walked around her younger brother, making her way to the kitchen. "Yeah," she replied with a smile plastered to her face. "But I'm starting to get used to them, so there's no need to worry, alright?"
Jake believed not a word of it, but he simply replied with, "Hey, look, if we ever actually meet this chap, I'll give him a bit of good ol'English bam bam pow!" The boy made two guns with his hands, pretending to shoot them before giving a light wink.
The young man seemed to always wake up to the sound of a thrashing Jade in the other room and gasping, as if she were sobbing over the death of a loved one. It pained him to know that he could not even offer an ounce of help.
Jade snorted a bit as she laughed, a hand coming up to quickly cover her mouth, but that only succeeded in making her laugh that little bit harder. The young woman reached out a hand to ruffle the top of the young man's head. "You don't have to worry about me Jake! Yeesh! I'm a big girl! I'm you're big sister; I'm supposed to help you! Not the other way around, silly!"
Jake bit back a reply as quickly as it came to his tongue. Getting Jade to speak about her problems was like trying to get a turtle to change direction after it was fully intent on going over to that side of the road. "Yeah, okay," he stated.
Bec simply watched the pair with knowing eyes, tail beating a soft thud on the floor happily. The two siblings glanced toward the dog, both reaching out to pet his massive head. It was Jake who drew his hand back with a gasp, suddenly spinning around with dramatic reflexes. "Bloody hell, what in time square is the time?"
It took Jade all of four minutes and thirteen seconds to yelp in delayed terror and proceed with the other daily routine of running around like headless chickens and getting absolutely nothing done, because someone just had to find Jake's cellphone and Jade's laptop. Both of which were sitting neatly on the coffee table by the couch in the living room, the location of the items having been where the duo had placed them the previous night as to not be running around in the morning.
If was amusing how life could throw a very obvious curve ball, yet it could still be missed because people simply forgot to look.
"Alright Jake, are you ready for the day?" After locking the apartment door behind her, Jade placed her hands on her hips and looked her younger sibling up and down.
Jake gave a thumbs up. "Spondiferiously so!" he replied, Jade giggling as a reply as she patted her pockets.
"Now, I just need to remember where I put my keys and- oh! Thanks Bec!" the raven haired woman gently took the keys from her said companion's mouth and rubbed him behind the ears. "Yeesh, I would have locked myself out a hundred times if you didn't help me out pal!"
The large dog stood in front of his owners with a bright lime green vest on his back that read Service Dog in bold lettering and held many different pockets for holding important things, like Jade's cell phone and wallet for example.
Jake gave a bright grin, turning as he gave a wave. He needed to get going or he would miss his bus. "I'll see ya after classes Jade!" he called before sprinting off like the adventurous spirit he was.
Jade gave a happy sigh as she waved after her brother. It seemed like only yesterday he had first stepped foot in her home and was attached to her at the hip. "Five years passed like a flash, huh, Bec?" Jade sighed as she glanced down at the Great Pyrenees at her feet.
Becquerel gave a quiet, but sharp bark in reply. Hurry up!
"Alright, alright!" Jade laughed, walking toward the bus stop. "I'm going!"
Upon getting to her destination, Jade was almost immediately bumped into by another person exiting a coffee shop. "Oh- Oops!" The young woman clutched her laptop to her chest with one hand as the other adjusted her glasses. "Sorry about that!"
"No prob," her bump-ee replied nonchalantly, his own hand coming up to adjust a pair of sunglasses sitting high on his nose.
Jade's emerald eyes traveled up and down as she studied the blonde in front of her. He was quite the looker, she admitted. Tall, lean, confident looking, a thin face, scruffy, short cut platinum blonde hair; he might have been the perfect heart throb in a high school drama with his looks.
Jade, not being able to keep a girlish grin from taking her features at the thought was called back to reality by a teasing tone asking, "Like what you see?"
The young woman gave a light squeak of realization as her face pinkened, eyes quickly going back up to the man's face. She tried to see his eyes through the tinted glass of his sunglasses, but before the raven haired woman got a chance to say anything, a deep rumbling sound caught her attention. A green gaze was met by both of the young people looking down at Bec- whom had taken a liking to the man's foot and sat on him happily.
The rumbling sound came again as Bec seemed to give the young blonde a warning stare. If the young man was fazed by the gesture, it did not show in his facial expression as he glanced back up at Jade. "…So, what's his name?"
"Oh, what?"
"Heh," the young man chuckled, gesturing to Bec- The dog of which growled again, though it seemed halfhearted. "Your guard dog here."
"Oh! This is Becquerel."- A gasp-"Bec! Get off of the man's foot!" A fluffy tail wagged a bit before promptly, removing its owner's rump from the blonde's shoe. Jade gave the young man a bright smile, though very sheepish. "Sorry about that! Bec isn't usually like this!"
It was so difficult to read the man's expression behind those dark sunglasses, but Jade could not help but try and look for his eyes again. A light smirk was given as a reply, "S'all good, miss…?"
"Oh, um, Jade!" Jade sputtered out quickly, holding out her hand for a shake and another bright smile. "Jade Harley!"
The young man nodded a bit as he gave her hand a quick shake, "Dave."
Jade giggled a bit at the lack of last name, believing herself to be just the slightest bit too outgoing. "That's a pretty cool name," she chirped childishly, giving the name a try. "Dave."
Dave cracked what might have been a grin, though it disappeared as quickly as Jade could blink. "My name has to match my appearance, doesn't it?" The blonde gestured to himself. "Short and to the point."
Another giggle escaped the young woman's lips, "Whatever you say, cool guy."
"So I'm cool now, eh?"
Jade's face reddened a bit as a blonde eyebrow rose from behind his sunglasses. "…Opps! Hee hee, walked right into that one didn't I?"
Before Dave could reply, Becquerel gave a light bark; his muzzle pointing up the road at a large vehicle coming in their direction. Jade gave a light gasp as she brought up a hand to glance over her colorful reminders. "Oh- The bus!" Emerald eyes went back to meet tinted lenses as an oblivious smile came to the owner's lips once more. It was slightly disappointing that she could not see his eyes. "It was nice meeting you, cool guy!"
The young man gave a light wave as a reply before Jade quickly spun on her heel to catch the now stopping bus. "See ya around, Harley," he said.
Jade did not think anything more of the encounter as she boarded the bus and took a seat, grinning as Bec took a seat beside her. Silly dog.
The young woman would soon learn that there was no such thing as a coincidence when it came to Mister Dave.
Disclaimer: I don't own Homestuck.
Author's Note:
Please review. I'd like to know why people are following this XD
Yay for updates at one a.m.!
