Chapter Text
There is nobody on the pier except a lone figure of a girl with orange hair, watching the sea.
The sky was grey, overcast, its usual brilliant blue hidden by swathes of heavy rainclouds. The ocean she was staring out at was churning, white-foam-tipped waves crashing in a shore that had become all too familiar.
It is about to rain.
This would usually annoy Sonetto to no end - she hated the rain, hated the dreariness of it, hated the cold it brought and the way it seemed to make the whole world greyer.
But under these circumstances... She's relieved.
Well. More hopeful than relieved, but it's better than the nothing she's had the past few days.
She doesn't like the rain, but the girl she is waiting for loves it. Hell, the first few times they met, it was raining.
She's had a quiet hope in the back of her mind since she remembered that a few days ago.
Maybe the rain will bring her.
She knows that isn't how it works. If anything, the rain might make it even harder for a ferry to arrive at the pier of this tiny town.
Still. This is the only scrap of hope she has gotten since they got here, and she will hold onto it, however small and faraway it is.
It might get crushed as quickly as it was created, but isn't it still a blessing to have it at all?
Tiny drops of rain start falling, blown into her face by the wind. Sonetto decides that shelter would be nice, before the storm comes.
She finds an empty bench underneath the roof of a similarly empty shop by the pier, close enough to see any ships if they arrive. She decides to stay here for the duration, fiddling with the edge of her coat and continuing her self-appointed vigil.
Just because it's raining doesn't mean Vertin will come back, she reminds herself. She isn't some mythical being, summoned by storms and thunder.
(Even if she did believe that, it was only for a while, years ago when they were younger and things weren't this difficult.)
It's already late evening; she'll have to return to the others soon.
She will not come back tonight, like she hasn't come back during the past few nights.
Sonetto grips her borrowed umbrella in a tight fist and stares out at the windswept sea, bare of life save for the swell of the waves.
Vertin will not come back, even with the inevitable storm on the horizon.
Sonetto waits for her anyway.
---
The first time she meets Vertin, it is on the school field in middle school.
There is a crowd, students all rushing to get back into the main building as the rain starts pouring harder on them.
It was supposed to be their sports day. A whole day dedicated to watching kid athletes do things like race and play football or whatever they did. Sonetto never did pay attention to this particular event; she wasn't interested in sports.
Everyone had ignored the rainclouds gathering in the sky for the sake of the activities. The teachers even let everyone stay outside when it started drizzling, expecting the rain to leave as fast as it came.
How wrong they were.
Everyone around her was laughing, yelling to each other over the rain. Students held hands with their friends, splashing into puddles on accident as they ran back to the school hall.
Sonetto, unlike these kids, is alone. She lost Matilda and X in the crowd earlier. She can't turn back around to look for them, since the crowd around her keeps moving, forcing her to move forward as well.
Despite the fact that she's at least a little taller than most of the people in the crowd, Sonetto still gets pushed around. People bump into her - shove and push her - almost make her trip and fall into the wet grass underneath their feet. Nobody stops to apologise to her.
She wants to give up. She wants to just stand still and let the crowd pass her, let all these kids run past with their wide grins and their friends that didn't lose them. She wants to wait until everyone's inside except her, so she's alone in the field with the rain.
She stares down at the ground so the rain doesn't fall into her eyes and she slows down-
-but then, not even a minute later, there is a hand in hers. It's tugging her forward. "Don't just stand there," a voice calls to her, bright even through the storm.
Sonetto tenses and tries pulling away from the stranger without looking at them. Her attempts go to waste. Whoever it is has a firm grip, and they don't let her slip away.
She decides maybe talking to them would work, so she looks up.
Through the rain and her blurry vision, Sonetto sees a girl with straight, silvery-blue hair, untied and spilling down in pale waves down her back. She notices how cold her hand is, right after she sees the many bracelets on both her arms.
She knows this girl. She's seen her before: in the halls, sitting alone in the field while she was going to class, in the library.
All those times Sonetto's seen her, this girl has never turned back to look at her. Not even when she stared at the back of her head for the full ten minutes it took for her to pick a book she wanted at the library.
(Sonetto still remembers what she picked: a thick textbook on marine life, with a whale on the cover and a title in gold. She doesn't know why she remembers that.)
She had never turned to look at her before.
But she does now.
The girl turns, sees the stunned look on Sonetto's face, and she smiles at her before turning back to the crowd.
That smile makes Sonetto think, for a fleeting moment, of the rising moon: bright and beautiful, shining through the dark that is the storm.
Then she thinks of how this strange girl is completely soaked, her hair dripping wet and dripping water into her eyes, and yet she still seems so... unbothered.
She looks ethereal.
Sonetto has read stories of gods and goddesses, of great deities in myth who control things like the sun and the moon and the weather.
She remembers the description of one of them, from a book she was reading from before she ever saw this girl. A goddess of the rain, brilliantly graceful even in the worst of storms.
Sonetto wonders, briefly, if she's just been saved by a goddess.
---
"God, there you are!"
Sonetto turns her head towards the familiar voice. Running through the now heavy rain, holding onto her bag and umbrella for dear life, is a very ticked off looking Regulus.
"Have you seriously just been sitting here in this weather?!" she says in lieu of a greeting, disbelief clear in her tone as she arrives under the roof Sonetto's bench is under. Regulus mutters curses as she shakes out her umbrella, trying to get it more dry.
"Hello, Regulus," Sonetto greets. Just because Regulus didn't say anything doesn't she mean doesn't have to. "You didn't have to come looking for me."
"Too bad!" the lion huffs, glaring at her. "Do you know how worried me and Druvis were when we woke up and couldn't find you?"
Right, she left much earlier than usual today. She should have left a note or something. But surely they both remember where she goes every day, by now?
"...I'm sorry." She isn't really that sorry.
"You're lucky we both know where you go every day," Regulus says grumpily, taking a seat next to her. So they do know. "We would have reported you missing otherwise. Have you eaten?"
"Yes." She has not.
Regulus glares at her again and rummages in her bag before taking out two paper bags. She hands one to Sonetto. "You're such a bad liar."
Sonetto accepts the bag in silence and peeks into it, seeing what she got her. It's a waffle, folded in two, with chocolate filling. It's still warm.
"Where did you get this?"
"The diner across from our motel, now hurry and eat."
Sonetto takes a reluctant bite. The chocolate sauce is gooey, warm, and the waffle is soft. Her next bite is much less reluctant.
"You know," Regulus says slowly, biting into her own waffle, "you don't have to wait here every day. Vertin will come when she can."
"She will," Sonetto agrees in a murmur once she's swallowed her bite. "But I don't want her to arrive and be alone."
"She won't be alone," Regulus says, faintly confused. "Lilya and Schneider are with her, aren't they?"
Sonetto hums noncommittally. That was true. She'd still rather have it be herself who was with Vertin, though. She still didn't trust Lilya and Schneider much, especially since the brunette kept flirting with Vertin when they first met.
"Look, Sonetto," Regulus says more firmly. "You can't spend all the days we have here just... waiting by the pier. This town's not that bad, you know?" She eats the last of her waffle before continuing. "There's a decent diner and a pretty nice library - mind you, I've never gone in there, but-"
"Thank you for your concern, Regulus," Sonetto says calmly, cutting her off. She keeps her eyes trained on the paper in her hand, now empty since she's finished the waffle. "I will keep waiting, no matter what you say. I do not mind it."
Regulus sighs, deflating. "She isn't going to come quicker because you're waiting for her," she says quietly, crumpling her paper bag and putting it into her bag.
"Maybe not," Sonetto murmurs, folding her own bag neatly and tucking it into her pocket to throw away later. She hopes absentmindedly that it won't stain her clothes somehow. "But Vertin told me to wait for her, so I will."
Regulus doesn't say anything for a long while.
Then the pirate gives her a lopsided sideways smile. "You're like a puppy," she says faintly, staring at the rain. "Waiting for its owner to come home."
Vertin's called her something like that, too. She follows Regulus' lead, staring at the raindrops as they fall from the sky. She wonders which will fall into puddles and which will splatter on the pavement alone.
"...I'll take that as a compliment."
---
By the time they're both inside again, their uniforms are soaked through. Much to her disdain, Sonetto realizes that her usually neat hair is messy, swept by the wind and dripping wet from the rain.
She glances at the girl. She's still holding her hand even now, as they walk to join the other students. Unlike Sonetto, she looks ecstatic.
Her hair is just as messy as Sonetto's, dripping water onto her already wet uniform. She looks a little like a cat that fell into a pool, but she's smiling like this is the best thing to happen to her in years.
How are you like this? she wants to ask her. How can you go through the exact same thing I did and still look so glad about it?
"Thank you," she says instead, her voice a little too soft for her liking.
"Oh, that wasn't that big a deal," the girl says, shooting her smile in Sonetto's direction. She squeezes her hand before letting go. "Anyone would have done the same."
That's not true. Sonetto chooses not to tell her that.
"You look very... happy about being sopping wet," she mumbles in an attempt to joke.
The girl laughs. "I am," she says cheerfully. "I was hoping something like this would happen. I knew about the rain, you know. Found out earlier today."
"How?" Sonetto asks. She thinks she knows the answer already, but for some reason she doesn't want this girl to leave and stop talking to her.
"The rainclouds," she expects her to say.
"The Hyla arborea," the silver-haired girl says instead, and Sonetto has to stop herself from saying "huh?"
"It's more commonly known as the European tree frog," she continues. "There's a few living in the woods by the field. Sometimes they come too close to the fence, so I catch them. And release them right after, of course."
"Oh," Sonetto says, stunned yet again. "...how can a frog tell you about rain?"
"The Hyla arborea croaks a lot when there's rain coming," the girl explains, shifting back and forth on her feet. "I was already out on the field this morning, before anyone else. I heard them."
What a strange girl, Sonetto finds herself thinking, not for the first time over the course of the conversation. Is that what she does when she's alone? Look for frogs?
"That's interesting," she says, and she realises that she actually means it.
"It is, isn't it?" the girl says with another smile. She runs one hand through her wet hair, looking up at her bangs with eyes almost the same shade as her hair. "I really feel like I should know your name by now."
"... Sonetto." She clears her throat a little, noticing a few freckles scattered on the girl's nose and under her eyes. "I'm Sonetto."
"I'm Vertin," she replies. Her smile grows a little wider. "Hello, Sonetto."
"Hello, Vertin."
"Doesn't 'Sonetto' mean sonnet in Italian?"
She blushes faintly. Once again, she doesn't know why. "It does, yes."
"Do you like poetry, then?"
"...yes."
"I like it too," Vertin says, her smile returning. "My favourite poet is Emily Dickinson, but we never learn about her poems in English lessons, do we?"
"No." Emily Dickinson. Sonetto makes a mental note to try looking for a few of her works when she can.
"What a shame," Vertin hums. She doesn't sound particularly sad. "That's why I always skip English."
"..."
This girl is the exact opposite of her. Where she is punctual and the perfect example of a model student, Vertin skips class. Apparently regularly.
Her parents wouldn't approve of her talking to someone like Vertin.
So why does she want to talk to her, knowing the consequences if she gets caught?
"Hey, that's Isabella!" Vertin suddenly says, perking up. She waves to someone in the crowd, then gives Sonetto one last smile. "I'll see you around, yeah?"
"...Maybe." Hopefully, she doesn't say.
"Great," Vertin says cheerfully, rushing off. "See you!"
Before Sonetto can reply, Vertin is already gone, as quick as if she was never there at all.
---
Sonetto is lying on her back in bed, staring into the dark of her motel room. She occasionally gets to watch light tilt across the wall and ceiling as cars drive past.
She and Regulus had waited at the pier for what felt like hours. Sonetto knew the pirate wanted to leave, to run back to the warmth and comfort of her room, away from the storm and the sea and the boats that never brought the girl they were looking for.
She had wanted to leave, but when Sonetto said that she wanted to stay until the last ferry came, Regulus had stayed anyway.
She could have left. And yet she didn't.
Despite all her teasing and her bravado, Regulus was a kind person at heart.
She reminds her of Vertin, in a way. She was quiet and aloof on the outside, able to stay emotionless even in the most tense situations. Underneath that, though, was kindness and a deep caring for other people.
That was something she had always liked about Vertin. Her empathy. Sonetto often wonders how many people she's helped by being thoughtful and kind.
She wishes she was here right now, so they could talk and fall asleep with their hands brushing against each other like before, so Sonetto could fall asleep knowing that there was at least one person in the world who could save them if it came to ruin.
Turning over in bed, Sonetto curls into herself, covering herself in the blanket in an attempt to hide from the light and get some sleep.
The pillow smells like a mix of detergent and pine. That doesn't help distract her, but maybe she can imagine that it is Vertin she's sleeping next to, instead of empty space where she should be.
Sonetto closes her eyes. She replays memories in her mind, of a girl with silvery hair and a warm laugh and freckles she thinks she could spend the rest of her life missing.
She misses her.
Sleep is a long time coming for her tonight.