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Of Falling And Hostesses

'A picnic? Seriously?'

'Yeah. Why not?'

Blue rubbed her nose thoughtfully. Felix smiled at the familiarity of the gesture and ran his bony fingers slowly through his hair. Blue twisted her mouth into a strange kind of smile.

'I suppose I just never pictured you to be the picnic type. Too...romantic, I guess.'

Felix looked affronted.

'I can be romantic, you know! I bought you roses yesterday!'

Blue rolled her eyes and pressed her lips to his. She spoke into his mouth.

'Sorry.'

'You're forgiven.'

He spoke grudgingly, but with a trademark ever-present smile in his words. Blue stroked his cheek and whispered to him.

'So. You still want to go on that picnic?'

He smiled back at her.

'Yeah. Alright.'

Sitting in the shade of a large oak tree an hour later, Blue sat back into Felix's chest and decided for herself that life was perfect. The sun was shining, her boyfriend was smiling, and she was sat in the warm with a cold beer and nothing in the world to worry about. Apart from an insect bite on her calf, she felt completely worry-free. Apart from the insect bite. That was driving her insane with how itchy it was. And how much she was dying to itch it. Apart from that, she was completely at peace. She clenched her fists to stop herself scratching. She concentrated on her inner serenity and slowly fell asleep. Damn the bite.

Felix lazily surrounded Blue with his arms, allowing his eyes to close. He could see through his eyelids, the redness of summer sunlight. He allowed his whole weight to be supported by the great oak and slipped into a soft nirvana, with Blue comatose in his lap. He softly stroked her downy black hair and kissed the top of her head gently, stealthily extracting the bottle from her fist and took a couple of swigs before allowing his eyes to close and fatigue to overwhelm him.

As a couple they were somewhat odd looking. He was every bit the student, from surfer hair to battered trainers. She was an extreme - bright blue-tipped pigtails, thick eye makeup, eclectic choices of clothing. She never went anywhere without wearing scarlet lipstick, most of which now adorned Felix's lips, and his right hand, long bony fingers, had the Chinese symbol for peace tattooed on the back of it. Lying together, they seemed to fit like pieces of a jigsaw, but a very strange jigsaw. Peaceful, they were happy.

Blue awoke suddenly, with that terrible sensation of falling. She looked round at the dark purplish expanse around her. It appeared that she was falling. She looked behind her at Felix - still sleeping like a baby - and closed her eyes on it all, trusting that when she reopened them it would all have gone away.

Felix didn't wake up until they landed.

They landed in water. Cold and wet and, by the feeling of the slap to Blue's face, teeming with unknown life. She let out a cry of utter terror, and it mingled in the air with Felix's shouts.

'Blue! Blue! Blue, Blue are you ok?'

Felix screamed her name involuntarily, a combination of hearing her cries, the cold water and his own terror. He swam, thrashing madly, towards her, and took her hand under the water. Together, shivering and quivering, they shakily made their way to dry land. As Blue, holding onto him as if she feared that he might simply melt away, skidded onto the beach, Felix caught sight of two people (at least, he hoped they were people) in the distance. He pointed to them wordlessly and she clutched his arm tighter. She hissed at him angrily.

'Felix! What the fuck are they?'

'Mormons.'

'What?'

He blushed.

'Never mind.'

She blinked twice and shook her hair like a dog. He thought she looked sweet.

He led her to a large flat rock and they sat together in silence, sharing the warmth of the sun and combining their body heat. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up. He knew that the two figures were drawing closer. He laced his fingers between hers and breathed shallowly.

Blue looked up suddenly, at the two women standing in front of her. They were very blonde and busty, dressed as airhostesses from the 1950s, with matching doll-smiles and doll-hats. Blue, with her messy hair and mismatched clothes, felt quite shabby beside them. Felix was looking at them with the kind of cool detachment that made her sure that he was thinking thoughts that were anything but cool. She punched his arm and smiled up at the stewardesses.

'Can we help you?'

With perfect timing, the hostesses shook their head. Their blonde hair swung together and then apart and their dangling earrings, each adorned with the letters AZ, clinked with clinical timing. Blue frowned.

'I'm getting a really bad vibe from you people. What do you want?'

The stewardesses exchanged glances. It was the first time Blue thought she'd seen them look in the least bit uncomfortable.

'It isn't what you can
Do to help us
But rather how we
Can heal your distress.'

Blue was indignant.

'What distress?'

The stewardesses exchanged another glance, identical to the one before. Blue began to seriously consider the reality that they were fembots.

'Why, the distress that you must feel -
You're in a foreign land
You cannot understand the truth
You might think it's been planned.
We are sent to welcome you
To tell you what you need
To explain all that's happened
So that you may proceed.'

Felix broke his silence.

'Foreign land? We're in a foreign land?'

'Yes, good sir, you are.
The land of Verse
An ancient land, a great one
Where the peoples are diverse.'

Blue clenched her fist, bitten nails digging into her palms.

'Could you ladies possibly stop speaking in fucking rhyme?'

Felix placed a calming hand on her arm. She shrugged him off. The hostesses looked distinctly confused.

'We...can't stop
We cannot even try
It's where we come from
We'll take you if you like.'

Blue found herself feeling oddly sorry for the women.

'Well, can you at least speak one at a time?'

The stewardess on the left smiled.

'That I can do
We weren't born like this, you know.
But the rhyming, that's our nature.
Rhymeville's our home.'

Felix sat up a little straighter and nudged his glasses further up his nose, to rest on the spot where he'd broken it.

'Rhyme what?'

The stewardess on the right pursed her lips and replied.

'Rhymeville is the capital city.
It's over towards the west.
We will take you if you'd like it,
Though it may not be for the best.'

Blue pursed her lips in a perfect imitation. Felix stuffed his fist into his mouth to stop himself laughing.

'Why wouldn't it be for the best?'

The stewardess on the right glared at Blue, looked worriedly at her counterpart and replied shakily.

'The terrorists:
They haunt the town.
No one can stop them,
No one can keep them down.'

Felix stopped laughing a little, but continued to snigger somewhat. The hostesses gave him supremely dirty looks.

'Terrorists? Poetry terrorists?'

Snobbishly, one of the women re-pursed her lips and spoke.

'Indeed, poetry terrorists
Haiku, they call themselves.
Many wouldn't agree -
Would call them Satan's elves.'

Although Blue would concede that it is incredibly hard to find a rhyme for 'themselves', she couldn't stop herself giggling, schoolgirl-like, at the thought of a parade of pointed-eared Lucifers. The hostesses glared at her and resumed speaking in unison, in haughty, offended voices.

'Rhymeville is over the hill to the left
Take the second right
Trust us, your vocabulary is so bereft
It would be better to go at night.'

An indignant Blue was perfectly willing to show them exactly what she could do with her 'so-bereft' vocabulary, but as she tried to rise Felix pulled her down by her scarf. They watched the stewardesses turn on their heels and leave, identical rears swinging back and forth.

Blue shifted slightly onto Felix's lap and blinked like a startled deer into his eyes.

'So. What now?'

I a smooth movement he leant down and planted a firm kiss on her lips. A rouge flush spread across her pale skin, illumining her cheeks and making her look more like a doll than usual. He broke away and pulled in a breath.

'So. What now?'

She giggled. She sighed. She considered.

'Now? Now we wait. And at night we go over the hill to the left and take the second right and pursue danger and adventure among busty blondes who speak in rhyme. No?'

He was somewhat stunned.

'Really? You don't want to...try and get back home?'

Blue rolled her eyes and pointed to the ocean they had just swum from.

'You want to go back in there, go back in there. I'm going to stay right here and dry off and then tonight I'm going to this Rhyming Town, or whatever, and I'm going to rhyme and chime and have fun.'

His lip twitched a little.

'My sky Blue baby - you wouldn't go off and rhyme without me, would you?'

She traced his lips with her bitten-down fingertips and stroked his baby hair.

'I might do,
Without you.'

He prized her fingers off of his lips and pressed them against her own, restricting her ability to speak.

'I refuse to listen to any more rhyme than I need to. So you can stop right there.'

She pouted and kissed him, before reaching into her pocket and busying herself with lipstick and a mirror. She rubbed her nose. He just smiled.