Immortalys

Chapter Thirteen: The Vega Household

Blainey, true to her word, took Willow and Friction to see the Restaurant Courtyard next. The Restaurant, which was about a five-minute walk from the ice cream shop, was built on the edge of the hill overlooking the lake, complete with several floors and balconies decorated with lights. As the three friends walked around the huge circular building, they heard fancy orchestral music emanating from the open windows. Friction stood on his toes to catch a whiff of the delicious food inside, his eyes closing dreamily.

"Parts of the Restaurant are indoors," Blainey explained to them as they ducked under a wood frame doorway covered in ivy, "and people can sit on any level they want to. Other parts are outside, and that is where the Courtyard is. It's just back here..."

Blainey led them through a garden path where dangling plants of all kinds swayed gently over large rocks; here and there came the sound of a bubbling fountain. Blainey heard a bird call above her head, but she didn't look up. The whole way here she had felt more distracted than usual. All she had expected that morning was to have a nice chat with Willow and Friction while eating their ice cream, and instead she was greeted with a revelation that almost gave her a heart attack.

Should she have expected such an announcement from someone she thought to be an ordinary friend? Now, every little thing she had done in front of Emperor Chasm seemed silly to her. She had been way too eager to ramble on about random things in front of him; her laughs seemed much too high-pitched and girlish in her memory... Why did he pick her to come to the feast with the Withouts, anyway? As she thought back to the conversation, she shook her head, annoyed with herself. Even after (and especially after) he had revealed who he was, her face had flushed with embarrassment at everything he had said to her. I'm so bad at this, she wailed to herself, he probably thinks I'm just a silly little child. She sincerely hoped she would be able to wisely use the remaining hours to mentally prepare herself to see him again. That very night she would be sitting up at the Front Table with the Withouts and all of the department heads and Altair Chasm...

"Honestly, I imagined him quite a bit different," Friction had said when they had left the ice cream shop. "I didn't see him in my head as a twenty-four-year-old ginger."

Willow had just given him a sideways look. "Yeah, I thought for sure he'd be older."

"I actually imagined him looking like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars," confessed Friction with a laugh. "I couldn't help it."

By this point Blainey had finally calmed down enough to talk. "What's Star Wars?" she had asked curiously.

Friction and Willow had just stared at her.

With that new humiliation, and feeling more self-conscious than ever, Blainey led her two friends into the Courtyard. She stared ahead as she walked over the cobblestones, every conversation and every word from the morning still too fresh in her mind. Her path hugged the tall hedges on the left until the three of them came to a wide terrace laid with shale. Finally Blainey turned around and faced her friends, gesturing over the edge of the terrace. "Here we are. This has always been one of my favorite spots."

Willow and Friction gazed over the dark iron railing at the lake, which gently lapped at the stones far beneath their feet. Behind them, laughter and music rang out from the friendly Restaurant as more customers exited the back door to find a seat among the lantern-lit tables across the terrace. Above all of their heads, long strings of lights joined the nearby trees and landscape rocks to the roof of the Restaurant, giving the whole Courtyard a relaxing and romantic atmosphere.

"It's even cooler at night," Blainey said, "then you can see all the little lights better."

"We should eat here sometime," Willow commented to Friction as her eyes followed a string of lights hanging high over their heads. "When we're not about to go to a feast, of course."