see the fishies {open}

[Courtney Ross]

At the moment, Courtney had what felt like a wicked cross between a sugar rush and the flu in a milder strain. She felt too excited to be believed but she also couldn't really get her eyes to focus and wasn't exactly thinking. In the back of her head, she figured that this had to be a side effect of using too much power doing something she had no idea about. But it had seemed so right, and it felt so good. This was a more than reasonable price to pay for a second of flying and the knowledge that if she tried, she could. This was exhilarating this was thrilling and as she hung on to Sai, Courtney could feel her mind slowing just a little, letting her struggle her way to thoughts.

"Careful?" Courtney giggled, hanging on almost lazily. "I am being careful I'm terribly careful I know what I'm doing." Everything lurched and Courtney did too, a very small part of her brain hoping that she hadn't hurt Sai, pulled him forward or made him uncomfortable. She was feeling too wild, and it would be weird and awkward if she had most of her wits about her. Since she didn't, Courtney was just having fun. "I am soooo careful... I'm not hurting you, am I?"

"Okay?" Courtney asked back, looking and Sai's face and only seeing one. Oddly enough, he wasn't spinning at all. "I'm better than okay I'm happy I'm..." She almost fell. "I'm dizzy." Maybe sitting down actually was a good idea.

"Sitting." Courtney said, practically falling. "Sitting right here... Wow. Everything is still spinning." She flopped backwards, closing her eyes and pressing her hands to the ground, hoping that would help stop the spinning. If not, she could still make sure that she didn't fall. You couldn't fall when you were flat on your back, now could you?

Eyes closed, Courtney tried to cement her memory of that second, focusing on the brightness of it all. It had been like the world was made of glow sticks and jewels, making everything shine in odds with itself, and there had been millions of everything. Compact eyes meant that the images didn't even try to align in her brain, and were just scattered around her vision. Most importantly, she had been flying, and that feeling had to be remembered forever.

"Oh Sai, I wish you could have seen it." Courtney said, eyes still closed as it felt that the world was rocking very slightly. "I was flying, and I wasn't just flying, I was the butterfly." She tried to find words, tried to think. "I was me too, but it was like I was in it, like I had wings." She spread her arms out around her, illustrating the idea of wings and laughed softly. "I was flying, just for a second there." And then her brain came to a giddy but illogical, improbable conclusion.

"It must have been you." Courtney said, opening her eyes and looking at Sai, seeing that the world was spinning less, almost still. "I've never even tried to do anything like that before and I do it once near you and it just works... You must be my lucky charm." She smiled, thinking of the fish nearby, of the green green grass, of wings. "You must be, Sai..." And at the moment, in her mind, there was no other way for any of this to be true. Sai being there had helped, had done half of it somehow and as the world tried to slow, Courtney tried to focus in on his eyes, to see it the were spinning too.

[Saiichi Jun]

"Of course, always careful. I didn't mean to imply you weren't."Sai corrected, though he didn't think he needed to correct himself. He did it as a way of pacifying her. As for her movements, they definitely weren't pleasant and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He instinctively placed his hands on her stomach, hoping to push her backwards and keep her upright, even if he tumbled. It was mildly flawed, what with her holding onto him, but he didn't know what else to do. And then, to his great surprise, he was still on his feet, perhaps mostly by luck. And that made the fact that it'd happened at all okay in his mind. With the crisis averted, he dropped his hand back to his side.

"No, you're not hurting me,"Sai offered reassuringly."I'm okay. Don't worry." He'd silently endured worse, and growing up with a brother who thought nothing of becoming violent was, in a moment like this, not such a bad thing. Fortunately, it'd been many years since his brother Daichi had physically fought with him. Whether this was just because they didn't have as much time together, or whether they'd really matured, he didn't know. It could even have been that Daichi was a bit scared of his kid brother and of the power he had.

"Dizzy,"Sai repeated. Now he felt like he really had to watch her- her being dizzy sounded disastrous since his beat assessment of Courtney, so far, was that she was a bit more accident prone than the average person.

"Careful,"Sai's voice came out as something close to a scolding as she basically fell to the ground. Even when she was sitting, he was a bit worried The tone surprised him, and it showed on his expression."I- I mean, I don't want you to fall." He had to cool it. Sai was used to caring about people, it was showing that he cared which wasn't familiar. And he didn't really want her to think he was angry- he wasn't. There would rarely come a time when one would find Sai really mad, and this certainly would not be one of those times. He bit his lip, trying to clear his head, while sitting down. Though she was laying, he was content to sit beside her, to watch, really. He wasn't against laying at her side, and it would have been more comfortable, but he couldn't see her as well if he wasn't sitting.

When she changed the subject, he was more than willing to go with it.

"Yeah, your lucky charm,"Sai agreed before adding, with a grin,"I'm glad to be of some help." Assistance, that might have been a better word in his last statement, but he'd learned that help and assistance were similar things, so Sai didn't seem to notice. As for her gaze, Sai wasn't sure why she was looking into his eyes, but he met her gaze without explanation, continuing to grin. The look didn't unnerve him in the least, despite the fact that he did not understand any message she may have wanted to convey with the look. Maybe she didn't mean anything. But who stared into a person's eyes without some message they expected you to catch on to? Sai found that a hard question to answer.

"I hope you aren't giving me all the credit- I mean, it's not me, uh, flying with the butterfly?"Sai still wasn't sure if that was her way of saying he was doing something else or not. If she was, that wasn't so bad.

[Courtney Ross]

"You're okay." Courtney said dizzily, almost thinking. That was good, the thinking. She really needed to work on that at the moment actually, the thinking. "Not hurting you... That's good, everything's okay." She felt that she needed to say these things out loud, just so she didn't get it confused in her head whether or not she had managed to say anything. Courtney also felt like she had to just talk in a situation like this, someplace where she was so at odds with herself, so dizzily different from the way she usually was. "Its all okay..."

When Sai told her to be careful, Courtney smiled in her head. He sounded so serious, almost demanding, like when she was little and tried to reach for something too hot, the way her mother would warn her hands away. Sai sounded near protective, which was silly, because she was silly and barely knew him and things were not normal at the moment. Who could be protective is such a very strange state of mind? She could hear him sit next to her and it felt just nice. It was a nice day, she was laying in real grass, there was a perfectly friendly boy right next to her and the spinning wasn't as bad. This was great.

"Lucky charm..." Courtney sang, her brain switching to autopilot and dredging up a faint childhood tune. Heart stars and horse shoes, clovers and blue moons... Pots of gold and rainbows, and a red balloon." She stretched out her arms. "They're magically delicious!" Even as she sang, she could feel it fading, the spinning and the whimsy and she came to her senses, just the slightest bit. "Ha, what am I saying?"

"I'm not saying you were flying too." Courtney tried to clarify, a happy tone still in her voice. "But you were here, you must have helped. I never try things like that on my own..." Courtney let a snippet of her brain wonder where that butterfly had flapped off to before she went back to looking at the sky. The grass almost tickled her skin and she felt so relaxed.

"Sai." Courtney started, looking up at a lazy cloud that could have been ice cream or a dragon or the Madonna, depending on which point she focused on. "You and me, are we friends?" The cloud was leaning towards dragon, but for some reason, Courtney suddenly wanted to know her status with Sai. She was being far too bold, acting like a whole other person, and she could worry magnificently about it later. "If we aren't, I'd like to be..." The cloud reverted back to just a cloud and Courtney's eyes fell on Sai's once more as she sat up, rocking slightly as the dizziness washed over her. "That is, if you want to."

[Saiichi Jun]

"I'm perfectly fine,"Sai assured."Everything is great." Honestly, Sai wasn't sure what to say beyond that. It wasn't quite perfect, but he didn't want her to think he wasn't agreeing with her. It could be worse. But if the mood did not begin to get a bit more normal, a bit happier, he wasn't sure what he would do. He didn't want to downplay whatever had just happened, but he wasn't liking the way things were going now. He wasn't willing to get up or anything, it just wasn't something he was enjoying. At all.

Sai burst into laughter, burying his face in his arm to muffle the sound a bit. Hearing her sing, no less a song he hadn't heard in years, it was great. Even though she asked what she was saying, he went on laughing. He didn't have it memorized himself, but he'd heard it, and he loved the cereal itself. Cereal was a necessary part of his life as a child and during his teenage years. Likely, it would be an important part of his life forever. Only when she spoke again did his laughter subside, his gaze shifting to her as an amused smile remained at his lips.

"Maybe you should try it more often. I have a hard time with my own power, though - at least sometimes. And I've been practicing for years."Sai stated,"I think that if you've got any sort of control of it, any way to influence an outcome, you're doing better than me." Sai was smiling, almost chuckling. He wasn't one to put himself down unnecessarily, but his power had been a cause for many amusing incidents. He was not that great at it in general. Illusions were a tricky business in general. And the side-effect influenced his personality in a way that sometimes bothered him- sure, he was calm, he was easily distracted, but sometimes he had a hard time with reality because of his power, beyond what most would experience. He also blamed his trouble with grasping logical concepts on his power, whether his power had anything to do with it or not. His thoughts were interrupted by her speaking. Her words, and really her question, didn't take much consideration; the answer was a simple one in his mind. Of course the answer was one of an affirmative nature.

"I would be honored to be your friend, Courtney,"Sai agreed, his tone cheerful again. But sitting up seemed to be a bad idea. Though he couldn't feel the dizziness she was experiencing, he could see the facial expression in reaction to it. She looked more comfortable laying down, that was. So he promptly dropped from his sitting position to his chest, his elbows digging into the ground as he rested his chin on the palms of his hands. He did keep his gaze on her, despite the shift in position. He was going to do his best to get his way by example. If she chose not to follow his lead, he wouldn't fight that choice. But he wasn't going to ask her to lay down, either. There was something ... Inappropriate all around about it. And he wasn't even going to go there.

Sai kept quiet as he let himself get wrapped up in his thoughts. His gaze drifted up to the sky to observe the clouds she'd been watching before she looked to him. He had to smile to himself, making sense of the different shapes above him. While she saw a dragon or a ice cream, he was convinced that it was ice cream. And then he wanted some- bad. The cloud looked so puffy, so yummy. And the way it was set against the blue background that was the sky- well, Sai was amused.

[Courtney Ross]

Sai was laughing, that was a great sign. People who were laughing were happy people and Courtney liked happy people, especially around her. A little bit more happiness seemed like it could only help, really, and Courtney smiled widely, not noticing the dizziness for just a moment. When she did, however, she tried just to hold her ground. This was probably just what happened when she did new things, she was probably just tired in a really accelerated manner. And Sai was laughing, she really shouldn't be thinking , she should just enjoy the happiness.

"Yeah, try it more often." Courtney said, thinking distractedly. Could you really think distractedly? How exactly would that work? "I've... I've never really tried anything much before, you know? I always had to keep it a secret, so everything is just small stuff and accidents and pretending I know what I'm trying to do... Heh." She shrugged her shoulders awkwardly, wondering what Sai's power could be. "I'm really not good at anything useful though, just... yeah." Her power had only made her more withdrawn than she already was, and maybe slightly more eco-friendly, but nothing too world shattering. It was like talking to bugs was something that already suited her, and she just happened to chance upon said power.

"Th-thanks." Courtney said, a little surprised by Sai's formal declaration. Maybe it was just him, but no one had ever said that they would be honored to be her friend before. It seemed so much more, like it wasn't just a kind of deal where he could be seen in public with her or - lurch - remember her birthday, but something deeper. Making friendship and honor made it seem more noble, more real, like there was a more genuine feeling behind it. "I'm... really glad." Did she need to say she was honored back, like some kind of verbal contract? Though for Courtney, it would probably sound wrong. Was she thinking too much again?

Seeing Sai lay down, Courtney returned to the ground as well. It was calmer on the ground and more stable, much calmer that sitting up. The fish were sure to be enjoying the day, finally swimming around... Oh yes, the fish! The reason that there was a pond that she knew her way to. Even though that would have made a good topic, Courtney really didn't feel pressured to talk or fill the blank spaces with words about nothing. She could feel the vertigo wearing off, but she didn't want to chance moving again, she just wanted to lay there and soak in the afternoon. After all, this had been a great day, tripping aside. Courtney had managed to make a friend and learn a new trick and its side effects and she had even managed not to completely panic.

"Good day." she whispered mostly to herself. "Pretty good day."



(This can be the end, unless you want to tie it up more neatly or you have somewhere else you want this thread to go. I personally think its about finished.)