A sigh escaped Blaze's lips as the lavender cat spaced out into the reaches of the universe. Her elbow rested on the iron beam of a fence surrounding the lake she was observing, a small body of deep green that had since frozen over with concrete ice due to the harsh arrival of winter. The same could be said for the endless field in which the lake was contained, where once fresh and bright green grass lay concealed and suffocated beneath fluctuating layers of plush snow. The gaze of the moon offered a delightful blue glow to the colorless piles.
"Where is Silver? He said he'd be here on time…" Blaze muttered, the tip of a fuchsia boot screwing into the snow covering the trail that led to the fence. Another sigh.
It was almost New Year's, and Blaze had written her resolutions down; she'd stuck them somewhere she'd always find them to stare down her guilt if she wasn't keeping up. One of those resolutions was to pull Silver up and out of the dreary friend zone she was sure he'd trapped himself in. Blaze herself wasn't great with expression; she wasn't an artist, not a writer, not a musician, but a fighter. Her greatest compliments were only those of violence, and thus, a full smile was rare. Poor Silver could probably count those moments on one hand. Blaze, eyes sodden, shrank with a shrug.
ooo
Blaze sat alone on a swing, the seat an unappealing maroon that dug mercilessly into the sitter's behind. The chains were covered in a thick, plastic film meant to enhance the user's grip, but only offering a ride stiffer than that of a racecar. The gold of the young cat girl's eyes was as dull and dirty as a muddy rug as she served a solo audience to the groups of orphans playing games with one another. She couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable as she made repeated eye contact with one of the funnier-looking kids, a hedgehog of greyed white fur with a snowy scruff stretching round his neck and between the duo of long, pointed quills on his back. Their eyes, she recalled, were the same: gold and alone. He flashed a smile and beckoned the lone feline toward him with a swish of his hand.
Blaze, astounded, sat bolted to the seat, jaw agape as she peeled her eyes away from the hedgehog's gaze. She desired to move, but she couldn't complete the transaction with her long legs, as if her mind had been severed from them. The cat became even more solid as the hedgehog, with a shrug of his shoulders, made way toward the vacant swingsets of the rundown playground. Blaze swore the sun had instantly become hotter, but it truly was the blush of realizing that a new person was approaching her!
A friend?
ooo
Blaze choked on the frigid air of the park, her mouth now a cave of dry rock that could crack at the slightest trigger. After recollecting herself, she leaned forward just a bit, enough to see a perfect mirror of her lavender face in the cloudy ice of the minor lake. She cocked her head to the left, to the right, placed a finger to her lower lip and carefully slid it down; she hoped she looked presentable to Silver, if he ever showed.
I look good, if I do say so myself, she thought, a slight smile carving one side of the part of her gentle, faint pink lips.
ooo
Blaze sat in the corner of the cozy main hall of the orphanage, a tiny little home graduating into disrepair. The rock-solid, crimson carpet hurt her rear, but the sofas were all taken by the more respectable and deserving kids that were fortunate enough to never worry about avoiding certain cliques. They could always arrive first and keep their seats. The feline's sunny eyes were deep in the scripture of a novella, which left her wide open for the gopher ball that slammed into the jewel centered on her forehead.
"Spot on!" the boy, an ebony cat himself, giggled with his fellow feline cohorts. A disgruntled groan fled Blaze's lips as she rubbed the small, red bead in her forehead. The throw hadn't hurt, but it left a bothersome itch. She slid down in her discomforting corner and hid her face behind the body of the book.
"Hey! Leave her alone, she's not part of the game," boomed the voice of none other than Silver the Hedgehog. The nerd that'd chat with Blaze every day out on the swingsets of the playground! Blaze peeked over the pages of her book to watch the issue unravel.
"So?" replied the black cat, a snobby snarl carrying with his prepubescent voice.
"She isn't playing, so leave her alone," Silver combatted with a smirk as he tossed a ball. It hit square on the kid's forehead.
"Frickin' nerd!" the black boy laughed as he retrieved the ball for a return hit. Blaze rolled her glossy eyes and resumed her reading.
A friend.
ooo
Blaze peered up at the night sky. It was a navy deeper than any ocean, filled to the brim with its own party of glowing organisms, more bright and ferocious yet beautiful than anything any ocean on the planet could contend. She analyzed every little dot she saw, tried to draw a few constellations out of the melting pot of whites and reds and blues; she ended with a collection of Blazes and Silvers all over the infinite atmosphere. How odd.
ooo
Blaze had been convinced to hang out with Silver and his friends. He'd offered various weekends before, but the girl had always put him down, afraid that she wouldn't add much and knowing that she wouldn't - couldn't - fit in. Until this certain weekend, a weekend bringing particularly arid summer weather that provided an excuse to slide around and wilt in cool waters all day long.
"Come on, Blaze! We'll be late if you don't hurry up!" Silver's loud and scratchy voice called down the girls' hallway of the orphanage. Blaze hid a shameful blush. She could hear the whispers of the orphan girls a mile away. And not only would they poke fun at her, but Silver, too, had all but laid himself out in the middle of the road. With haste, Blaze performed a majestic half-twist in her mirror, checking out her violet t-shirt and the ivory leggings she had a million pairs of. With an accepting sigh, she threw on her signature purple mantle coat and shuffled out of her microscopic room.
xxx
Silver most often hung out with a small group of hedgehogs himself, three others, to be exact. Blink, their ring leader, was a magnificent cyan color and never found without the two red rings found on the index and middle fingers of his left hand. The other two were identical twins, Frosten and Breezy, that shared bleached fur and fluorescent pink eyes.
"Blink, Frosten, and Breezy - meet Blaze. Blaze - meet Blink, Frosten, and Breezy," Silver introduced with a bright smile. The other three hedgehogs, to Blaze's surprise, smiled acknowledgingly and let her tag along.
"I'm up for some adventure! How about it?" boomed Blink's obnoxious, purposely-deepened voice.
"Not today, Blink," Silver shot down. "I think we should have a nice and relaxing-" he was interrupted by the timid voice of Blaze.
"I say let's go," the girl agreed with a subtle smile. She noticed a gentle smirk of Silver's own in her peripheral. The young group of kids bounded off to nowhere in particular, but "nowhere" remained particularly near the public pool just in case they got heated.
"Hey, Blaze, you have fire powers, right?" Blink asked with a whitened smile of no good. Blaze gave a bob of her head. Silver swallowed his nerves at the question.
"Well, what are you waiting for? I wanna see your fireballs," Blink laughed as he began throwing tiny chunks of soil and rock into the air for Blaze to scorch into fine graphite. This went on for a few minutes, until the group got bored and grew a penchant for greater reaction. Blink pointed out a picnic table located in the small public park located near the pool club.
"I've got it," Silver assured as he dashed toward the table and effortlessly levitated the whole set with his telekinesis. A powerful cyan glow carried the weightless bench set over to the small gathering of mischiefs. "On three, Blaze," Silver said with a grin.
"Right," she nodded as she readied her arm for yet another fiery launch. That's when everything went to hell.
Silver tossed the table set a few feet higher than it had come; Blaze blasted it out of commission with ease. However, when the dry wood was embraced by the sphere of wicked flame, it exploded with a loud crack! and scattered splinters this way and that, including some that pricked into the arms of Silver, Blink, and the twins, Frosten and Breezy. A couple bounced off Blaze's white-striped, fuchsia high-heels.
"Ow!" Blink cried out while Silver and the twins grimaced, turning their faces away from the shower of obliterated wood and iron legs.
The kids in the pool screamed and twisted their faces toward the spectacle and cherry Blaze, who'd since turned away and fallen to her knees, lavender hands covering her large, pointy, and drooped ears. Regardless, she could still hear the strong voices of the orphanage mothers, two left to tend to the pool kids while a duo, dressed in matching white robes, hurried toward the wincing four hedgehogs and the petrified cat.
"Are you alright? Are you alright? Who did this?" the mothers demanded. Blink, displaying his wood-decorated arm for the world to see, directed an uninjured left hand toward Blaze's curled form.
"S-she did it…" he stuttered beneath silent breaths. The mothers rushed to Blaze's bundled figure. The lavender cat's stomach tightened in a double knot.
"You're responsible for this, Miss 'the Cat'?" the older women inquired simultaneously. With terror but responsibility, Blaze lifted her head to give another nod of shy, hindered silence, but before she could finalize the act, Silver intervened.
"No, Mrs. 'the Dog'," he said. "I am the one responsible for this," the boy confessed. Blaze, eyes wide as the golden arches, stared up in awe at the ivory hedgehog. Her hero. "Blink only had a chance to glimpse before it happened. I threw one of the picnic tables in the air and crushed it with my powers," he admitted, offering up a guilted smile and lifting the hat off of Mrs. The Dog's head briefly.
"You, Mr. 'the Hedgehog', will have to pay for this!" Mrs. The Dog chastised with a disappointed, ten-foot pointer finger to his long, sleek hedgehog nose. "Ten hours of house chores!" she barked.
"Aw, man," Silver grumbled and pouted, glancing at Blaze's enormous eyes. He offered the fastest half-smile the world had never seen before apologizing to Blaze and lifting her to her feet. He hung his head to the polluted and dead yellow grass and returned to the group of hedgehogs.
A friend!
ooo
Blaze shook her head and screwed her eyes shut. A chill was picking up with the stirring wind; if Silver arrived any later, the wind was exactly who he'd be talking to. Though he wasn't quite late just yet. The feline slipped a heaving breath and loosened her figure, her back curving a bit to comfort her thick thighs. They were the opposite of her chest, a tiny thing that made only an A-cup.
I can't believe I made such a big deal out of my chest when I was younger… she mused, the tug of another smirk pulling the ends of her pale lips. She was then reminded of the day she'd been forced to throw up the topic of her chest to Silver, when he'd insisted she confide her issue in him. He'd tried his best to console her, said sweet words to her, but in the end, he still looked like a perverted chump, blabbering on in an awful attempt to correct his oversteer by insisting he rarely noticed girls' chests.
The crunching of felled snow whispered to Blaze's perky ears as someone approached her in the cold. A hedgehog - it was Silver! Blaze knew that crown of five quills from anywhere. She promptly locked away her smirk and faced him.
"Hey Blaze-"
"You're late," the cat girl cut him off. Silver drew a frown and groaned.
"Only by a minute-" he tried to add, only to be hushed once again, this time by a gloved finger. Blaze blew a melodramatic huff. "I brought you a gift, Blaze," Silver said.
"Oh - uh, I… thanks," Blaze said, snowy muzzle shaded in sakura. "Could I see it?" she asked, shuffling just a few inches nearer her best friend.
"Sure thing," Silver said as he dipped his hand into a pocket of his ebony, collared coat. His glowing hand revealed a black box covered in felt, a tiny, golden flame emblazoned on the lid's center. "I thought it'd mean something to you," he uttered, handing the miniscule box forth. Blaze caressed it in both hands; she admired the thought behind the solitary flame of gold before slipping the lid open with finesse.
Inside the container was a platinum locket, a necklace whose chains met to hold a three-dimensional mold of the fireball symbol. Blaze lifted the contents from the case and hid it in a pocket of her own coat, a black collar that twinned with Silver's own, a holiday gift to him the year before. Her jaw hung slightly, golden eyes analyzing the genuine art piece. It certainly carried an air of significant expense with it; Silver was most definitely entrapped in a friend zone, confirming her suspicions all along.
"Silver, this - it's amazing," Blaze fumbled, unable to describe the gift entirely. "I love it," she assured with a gorgeous grin.
"It's the least I could do, Blaze," Silver cooed with a smile of subtlety.
"Would you mind putting it on?" Blaze asked. With a nod, the young hedgehog grasped the unclasped chains of the locket and crept around the cat's neck. While he fidgeted for a moment, Blaze held his middle with her slender arms. Her face hovered just slightly nearer to his chest until he completed his task and pulled back with care. He paused to admire the woman before him, his rich eyes scouring her body head to toe.
Gee, she looks real beautiful tonight, he thought. "So, ah, why are we out here in the middle of a freezing field, friend?" the hedgehog's solid and cool voice shattered the silence.
"Oh, right," Blaze mumbled, a playful roll of her eyes pairing with a quirky smirk. "Silver, I've been meaning to tell you something for awhile, now," she started, hooking his attention and reeling him in for the catch. "I believe it's time we took our relationship to a new level." Blaze's eyes captured Silver's shock in a deadlock. This time, her face managed to avoid combustion; she was absolutely certain of her decision. She just needed Silver to make his own.
Silver gasped. He felt the blood sprinting to his tan muzzle. Had he let her on too often recently? He'd rarely thought of Blaze as any more than his best friend; when he had, lewd things happened, followed by days of hopeless, head-bashing regret. Yet here she was, putting him on the spot!
Blaze thinks of me that way? he asked himself. The fire eating his face was but an itch in comparison to the magnitude of the situation. Would it work? he furthered. Here he was again, second-guessing another decision he'd been handed on a silver platter, ironically.
"Silver..?" Blaze chuckled, lifting a limp arm to squeeze the other. Silver held a finger before her, chin down in deep space. The feline's head backed itself a bit.
Silver closed his eyes, gave another chance for thought to himself. He recalled the times he'd befriended Blaze in the orphanage. She'd seemed different each time they met; he summed the fluctuations up as various alterations of her character. She'd never seemed whole, not until they'd aged quite a few years; standing here now, Silver reflected upon how much she'd changed. First, she'd offered less answers to him, a clever tactic to make him grow himself, too. Second, a focus on the issues that really mattered; the problems of the heart were her intentions, not superfluous social standards. Third and lastly, Blaze had opened herself to others. But Silver had still read more of her book than anyone else. And now that he'd summarized his notes, he concluded that he desired more.
"Blaze," he started all of a sudden. His voice was softer than a fluffed pillow. "I'm sorry I shoved that finger in your face," he apologized.
What in the heck? Blaze puzzled. The answer was here. Took him long enough.
"And I'm sorry it took me so long to answer you this; years, in fact. I've realized we've grown so much together in all our days, like a knot of vines," he professed. "I think we're meant to be permanent. Without you, I wouldn't have escaped my naivety and want for innocence; without me, you wouldn't have budded," he pressed on. "Without each other, we are and would be incomplete," he said. "I think we should up this relationship a nickel, too," he agreed at last. The spark that flickered upon Blaze after his words would remain with him forever.
"You darn nerd, all I needed was a yes," Blaze giggled as she slithered her arms round his collar, pulled her body as close to his as it could go.
Silver let his arms settle around Blaze's middle, his hands pressed firm to her lower back as they gave a cyan glow brighter than ever before.
"Keep that talk up and you'll be looking at a wife, Silver," Blaze warned.
"I'll keep on up, then," he retorted. Blaze giggled.
"Let's get the heck home."