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When Pearl came home from the agency, stepping out of the elevator on the sixth floor of her apartment complex, she noticed the two beat-up suitcases outside the door of the apartment directly to her left, which was agape. Her eyebrows arched with curiosity, because she hadn’t seen anyone new move into her level in awhile. Her building was pretty close to campus and thus saw a high turnover, sure, but she hadn’t seen many movers coming through her little cluster of doors recently. Her chunky sneakers clunked on the stiff carpeting of the hallway as she strode from the elevator and up to the door, leaning forward to peer inside hesitantly. It looked to be a similar floorplan to her place, a single bedroom with a small office space, a squarish kitchen and a decent sized living room that spilled into the dining area.
As she was looking inside, trying her best not to be nosy, but also unable to deny her curiosity, she saw a figure emerging from the bedroom door, hands shoved into the pockets of a varsity jacket with pale pink vesting, white sleeves and a ribbed white collar. A dark pink heart patch was ironed over the lapel. A white button shirt half-untucked from pale blue jeans beneath a fuzzy handmade-looking pink checked sweater vest. He had a, currently rather frazzled looking, head of dark curls and neatly cared for facial hair.
“Hello!” Pearl burst out before thinking.
“GAH!” The man jumped, getting a very impressive vertical as his voice pitched high, then he whirled around, chest heaving a bit, and yet when he spoke his tone settled into something surprisingly neutral.
“Oh, uh, hey?” His voice was deep and smooth.
Pearl pulled her hand from her black hoodie pocket to wave cheerful.
“Hello, hello there! You’re my new neighbor, I take it?”
The tiny wings upon her head, concealed by glamor, were fluttering with amusement at how easily he’d been spooked, but then again, his tone and response showed a quick recovery.
“Yeah, that’s me! I’m B.” He strode across his half-unpacked living area to offer his hand.
“Pearl!” She happily shook his hand, still smiling.
“Nice to have a fresh face around!”
B smiled, his expression easygoing and warm from the sharp surprise he’d pitched up earlier.
“Good to meet someone in the building, I hadn’t really seen anyone else since I started moving in.” He gestured awkwardly around at the scant moving boxes. Seemed he traveled pretty light.
Pearl continued smiling at him as she put her hand back into her pocket.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, the others who live on this floor typically don’t come home till after 5, but I’m kinda in the freelancer business on top of my other job, so I’ve got odd hours.”
B nodded understandingly. “Makes sense…I’m actually opening a shop near the main street past campus, so…”
“Oh, a shop you say? What sort?” Pearl asked, eyes lighting up.
Making friends in the over-city wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. By now she was well used to concealing herself with a mixture of glamor and oversized clothes, her jet black wings neatly folded into a tight coil against her back. Her dark eyes sparked with curiosity as she looked B up and down. He seemed relatively close in age to her, and friendly enough…besides, she hardly ever saw any of her other neighbors, and having the only people who’d come by her apartment be her twin brother, her cousin, or more recently the occasional visit from her best friends Gem and Impulse, well…she’d certainly like the excuse to have more frequent company.
“A yarn shop, actually.” B replied, beckoning her into the half-unpacked apartment toward the door to the small office space.
When Pearl saw inside, her clean freak senses went haywire, and she forced a long high hum through her teeth.
“Y-You’ve already got quite the set-up!” She exclaimed, because yarn, yarn, yarn was everywhere.
In wound cakes, skeins scattered about, dyed or un-dyed, some with knitting needles sticking out, crochet hooks were scattered over the desk that seemed like the only assembled piece of furniture in the room. There was even a torso mannequin and several foam heads lying around that might’ve been concerning in any other context, if they weren’t adorned with various knitted or crocheted pieces.
“Yeah, I always let my yarn stash get way out of hand, but this isn’t all just for me, I swear! Some of it is for stock at my shop…y’know, once I actually organize it.” B answered with a shrug, looking around as he shoved his hand into his jacket pockets.
“Organize?”
B looked down to see her bobbing her fists, bouncing up and down with stars in her dark eyes.
Her new neighbor took a half step back at the tangible enthusiasm radiating from her expression. “Um. Yeah?”
“You got anyone ta help with that?”
“…no?”
“Excellent.”
Three Hours Later.
“Done!” Pearl popped to her feet and threw her arms into the air.
B’s home office was organized from top to bottom. Not only had Pearl made quick work of assembling the cube-style shelving unit he had to organize all his yarn into, but she’d helped him rewind and color-code everything. Then she’d helped him come up with an organizational style by yarn weight as well as material, with room left for all his various tools and accessories, and now it was all settled into place. The place was practically sparkling.
B was sitting in his office chair, large, round, dark brown eyes sweeping over the impeccably organized room as he passed a crochet hook along the loops of a dark orange piece that was starting to curl into a sphere, though Pearl had no clue what it was meant to become.
“You…wow! You’re amazing!” B tugged the loop from the crochet piece he’d been working on while Pearl was organizing, considering after a certain point, he’d learned to just stop trying to get in her way.
Pearl felt the slightest heat flicker in her cheeks from embarrassment and chuckled, fingers carding through her light brown hair, passing over the two sets of tiny wings still concealed beneath her glamor.
“Sorry, got a little carried away there, didn’t I?”
“Are you kidding me?” He set the crochet piece alongside the fuzzy ball of yarn on his desk and stood up, gesturing toward the shelf.
“This would’ve taken me…to be honest, I probably would’ve never done it.” A warm chuckle hummed in his chest, and Pearl felt a smile tugging up her lips again.
“Oh yeah? In that case, you’re welcome!”
“That’s more like it…hey, let me see what I can scrape together for dinner, ok? I was able to go to the store earlier!”
Pearl grinned. “I won’t say no to free food!”
B seemed delighted by that. And Pearl beamed in response.
And she hoped perhaps this would be the start of a grand neighborly friendship.
The Next Week.
KNOCK KNOCK
“I’m a’coming!” Pearl crowed as she snatched an overlarge black hoodie off the back of her desk chair and rushed toward the door, swinging it over her shoulders. She folded up her wings and concealed them beneath it, fastening the zipper up to her chin. Glamor gleamed red, tracing a circle around her pupils and then a fog, like heat-haze on tarmac, descended over the two sets of tiny wings atop her head. When it dissipated, the little wings were gone. Then she yanked the door open. There was B, with his favorite pink varsity jacket on, hands tucked behind his back. He looked rather harried, but there was a wide smile on his face.
“Hey! Sorry, I should’ve texted ahead when I thought to stop by!”
“Stop by? You live across the hall!” Pearl replied good-naturedly, beaming.
She and B had really hit it off.
The man was working on opening up his yarn shop, it would be along the market street near campus where it ought to receive plenty of foot traffic, and that was only a single shuttle stop ride away from their apartment building. Pearl had gone along with him once to see the site, and had even volunteered to help him with furniture assembly as deliveries came in. The place was all set to open the next week, and B had been frantically getting the last of his stock and other odds and ends prepared for the big day.
“True, but still.” B shrugged, then, with a flourish, he revealed what he’d been hiding behind his back.
It was a crocheted orange frog. With black plastic eyes lined with sewn yarn to give it the appearance of having bulbous whites, and Pearl immediately let out a chortle of delight that tittered from her chest.
“Oh my stars! Look at ‘im! He’s so cute!” She exclaimed, reaching out and making grabby hands. B grinned as he passed the frog to her, and she immediately held it up in the air, running her fingers over the soft chenille yarn and the pleasant little bumps the rows created.
“You like him?”
“I love him!” Pearl exclaimed, hugging the handmade plush to her chest, dark eyes sparkling.
“Is he for me? Is he?”
“No, I just brought him over to show you…of course he’s for you.” B replied with a roll of his eyes, and Pearl grinned.
“Thank you! You didn’t have to do that! Awww, he’s just the cutest! I love him! He’s gonna sit right next to Tilly!”
“Tilly did look like she could use some company, I can’t believe you only have the one plushie. For shame.” B commented, folding his arms over his broad chest, and Pearl gestured toward him with the orange frog.
“I’m very picky! And this lil guy totally makes the cut!”
“I’m honored.”
“You should be!” Pearl puffed her chest self importantly, then the two of them devolved into giggles. She held the frog up in front of her face, with his bulbous eyes pointing toward B.
“I’m always watching!” She said in a cartoonish voice, stoking another round of laughter from B, who began to slink backward toward his door across the hall.
“Always watching, Pearl!”
“That wasn’t me, that was the frog!”
“Oh, sorry.”
They laughed again.
B straightened up from the playful crouch he’d assumed for the joke, and turned to unlock his apartment door. “I’ve gotta get up super early to go to the shop, I wanna finish labeling all the stock I’ve got.”
“I’ll come by after work!”
“Really?”
“A’course! What else are neighbors for?”
And at that, B’s dark cocoa eyes warmed, and when he smiled it seemed to land with a touch more depth than usual.
Pearl liked it.
“Thanks, Pearl. Have a good night, ok?”
“You too! Nighty-night!”
Pearl stepped back into her apartment with her new plush frog, excited to introduce the new companion to Tilly.
B, for his part, unlocked his own apartment door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. Immediately, he slumped against the solid door and groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Stars, this is harder long-term than I thought…” He muttered to himself as a fog formed over the top of his head, and his eyes glowed a pale pink. Then the fog evaporated, and out from the concealment of glamor emerged a set of dark brown, silky-furred bunny ears. They were tall, almost twice the length of his head, and both of them flopped over forward from his exhaustion, a glamor fatigue headache hitting him hard as he let out a long, slow exhale.
Moving up here certainly hadn’t been the easiest call.
Then again, it wasn’t like there was much traction for a handicrafts store in the under-city. B had examined that route. Besides, fresh air and sunshine? It was well worth the price.
And there was Pearl, who was already shaping up to be an amazing friend.
She’s pretty cool…
He was glad he’d come up here, even if it meant hiding his ears, and his fluffy cottontail, beneath overlong jackets and glamor haze.
He strolled across the living room and tossed his jacket onto his couch, then pushed back his curtain to look out at the nighttime city skyline, and craning his neck let him see the stars.
Yeah.
Well worth it indeed.