The Quiet Ever After

A Lawn of Leaves and Grass - 8

Ryan strode by in the evening. Axel sat alone in the driveway trying to sketch one of the many mountains from the Starlit Plane in chalk. He wasn't great at drawing, or even writing, but the outpouring of whatever was on his head onto a canvas—preferably a large one—him pass the time.

"Playing with chalk?" Ryan asked, hands in his pocket. He couldn't have looked like more of a tool. No, that wasn't true. He lacked snobby lips. Just a jerk, then.

"Sure," Axel said. "Though I wouldn't call it playing."

"You don't have a TV?"

"I have two, actually, but neither is showing anything I want to watch right now. Nor are they streaming anything I want to watch."

"Never took you for an artist." Ryan tilted his head. "Still don't. Your colors are completely off."

A trite remark slapped itself onto Axel's lips but he ignored it. It was something Ryan would say.

"But I guess you need to be able to impress the judges by any means necessary," he said, putting his hands in his jacket pockets. "Maybe you can color in some grass."

"I'm guessing you're not too impressed with my lawn?"

The two front yards couldn't have looked more similar. Ryan, perhaps, took it easier on gardening in the flower bed.

Much of their relationship was based on how one did something first and the other followed, though quite often the case was such that Ryan followed Axel or Kyle. This wasn't always by design or want, of course, just by happenstance. Ryan joined the lacrosse team and then Kyle did. Ryan got his learner's permit and then Axel did. There was a perception, among their friends, that there was some sort of unspoken rivalry. In truth, no such thing existed.

Ryan did ask for powers similar to Axel from Faustus and Jericho—he didn't realize they were demons at the time...and didn't know their true names so it wasn't obvious they were evil—but Axel followed suit by training, like Ryan did, in the Starlit Plane.

One thing Ryan's house didn't have, that probably gave him an edge over Axel, was a tree. Ensuring the grass line didn't impede over the tree was one thing, but the tree was old, growing without care for what was in the way. Roots had crept up ever so slightly and caused some issues for Axel, not to mention the leaves constantly falling all over the place at any given moment.

Ryan had a more open space to work with while Axel had some tricky places to navigate. It gave an overall nicer appearance from a view across the street but could pose issues that old men with nothing else to do could point out.

"I'll take my chances against the old man," Ryan said. "I can still win, even if you are helping him."

"It's really only the backyard."

"As if I would believe that."

"You can choose not to. I'm surprised you care this much unless you are just trying to spite me. Let me guess, once this is all done you'll go back to doing whatever? Let the lawn die off? Bet that'll look great next year to the judges. They'll remember that, trust me."

"They're not that petty."

Axel almost guffawed. "Yeah, you're definitely new around here. One guy still holds a bit of a grudge against me because I accidentally spit on his lawn."

"That's rather rude."

"I had phlegm!"

"Disgusting." Ryan rubbed his hands together, gesturing to Axel's art project. "Well, I'll not keep you, then. Do whatever you can to think you'll win this competition, even if it means stapling your name onto someone else's trophy."