charming :: [5sos|1d]

[wuhn] :: [spee-king]

~dedicated to stwhyles because wow, rooftop, wow~

"'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...'" - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.

To be thirsty in a desert is the most terrible situation in which a man can find himself. To be thirsty without water; thirsty without shelter; thirsty without shade is to suffer until one can only beg for death to end his misery. The lips swell and so does the tongue, said her grandfather. The ears hollow until sound has gone, and the brain; don't get him started on the brain.

At first, she did not know desert heat. Now, she knows nothing but it.

At first, she knew only the spray of the waves. She knew the moisture suspended like curtains beneath the hanging leaves. She knew to stand back from blades cutting coconuts. She knew to look and not touch the hatchling turtles in their journey towards the waves.

In summer, she knew beignets and jazz quartets and river rides. She knew plantains and crawfish and étouffée. In summer, she knew Creole and mom and in winter she knew Hawaiian and dad.

All of Mom and all of Dad made Gypsy.

All of Mom and all of Dad together made Gypsy move.

So Gypsy knows the desert, now.

The desert can kill a man, said her Grandpa. It's funny, he would chuckle, because the desert can kill a man and there's a whole slew of birds and foxes and other little critters living there just fine. It's funny because the desert's full of life-it's a home for the living and I swear we humans think it's the home of the goddamn Devil.

The desert's only hard for those who can't adapt, said her Grandpa in a much softer voice since her Grandma had fussed at him for cursing and hated when he said the devil's name in her house. Those little animals and plants scurrying and living out in that wasteland have accepted the sand and mountains and rocks and dirt, and you've got to do that, too, if you're ever going to survive. You've got to accept and you've got to adapt, her Grandpa told her when she was six-when she'd first left Oahu and when she'd first learned heat-and that, he said, was the reason he moved to Vegas.

"Because of the devil?" Gypsy'd asked and her grandpa nodded his head and slapped his knee and laughed until her little eyes could see the fillings in his teeth.

"That's my girl, Gypsy; because of the devil."

When and if Lucifer fell from heaven, she swears he landed in Vegas B.C. and declared it home even then for the wayward souls, unlucky sinners and desperate thieves he decided would be hot enough to party with him VIP when they took an express-line straight to Hell.

At least, that's what Gypsy's come to believe, mostly thanks to her grandpa.

She sits, cross-legged on the top of the vent, cool air flowing between her thighs as her laptop fries her skin and she punches the backspace with an excessive force, the loud tap-tap-tap's falling to deaf ears as she allows Alien Ant Farm's cover of Smooth Criminal to drown out the world.

She's listening to her 'I hate everything' playlist on shuffle because as she sits in her grandparents suite and can't wrap her mind around why Stanford, let alone anyone would want to know how her education has contributed to who she is today when her brain is churning out anxiety and late nights and caffeine addiction for answers, Gypsy can't think of anything and Gypsy is frustrated and so Gypsy pretty much hates everything.

It doesn't help that she's stuck in her grandparent's motel since Dad's in Afghanistan and Mom's all packed for China and neither of them trust her enough to let her go with her friends to Australia.