Night descends upon us and yet, as usual, the stars don’t shine brightly the way that they did last summer when our bonfire roared under clear, sparkling skies. I think of that night now as I sit on a patch of cool earth in the dunes above Dollymount Strand surrounded by rusting cans and the sun-bleached wrappers of discontinued chocolate bars.
I remember the balmy air of late July, how I didn't even heed it until now when the night is still too cold to sit out in yet we all pretend it isn't. Anyway, it’s too late to point it out to the crowd that's already gathered here, drinking and playing music from a speaker that crackles every time the bass gets too loud, so I sit as close as I can to the flames without climbing into the pit with them, and let their heat lick over my skin.
I share a few beers with a big, severe looking boy next to me for a while. He's got silver spikes protruding from his lip, and high cheek bones that make his face look kind of gaunt and hollow like a Tim Burtonesque character. We called him Lurch at school, because he’s also about six foot five and rake thin, but tonight I learn that Lurch’s real name is Rob, and actually, Rob is a very nice person.
He talks to me about music for ages, about his drum kit and how the neighbours keep complaining to his parents about the noise. I tell him that I’ve always wished I was musical but I have absolutely no sense of rhythm. I’m kind of a loser like that, despite my dreams of being that guy with the guitar who impresses all the girls, but I have long since accepted that I will settle to be a humble music-recommender instead. Jen still keeps all of the silly mix tape CDs I made for her in primary school in her room, and it gives me an inexplicable sense of worthiness whenever I spot them.
Never once during my conversation with Rob do I tell him about the Lurch thing, though it crosses my mind several times. What seemed so funny once in the confines of my little group seems kind of obviously mean now, but I suppose I never took the time to think about it before.
Katie is nice too, the girl with a stammer who snorts when she laughs, which is often once she joins in our conversation, because she seems to think my stories are very funny, as does Rob, and I have to tell them not to laugh so hard because it only encourages me to put myself in more situations that might be entertaining to retell later on. They think that's funny too, but actually, I am being serious.
Still, I know they’ll love that one about the time I was using the desert as a toilet and a military helicopter flew overhead, convincing me that my great aunt’s busybody neighbour had called the FBI to report me for public urination, so I make sure to tell it in the most energetic way I can. It’s easier and way more fun to reveal embarrassing things about myself when I’m drinking, and by the time I have finished telling it, I toss my empty bottle to my feet where four others already lie. I hadn’t even realised I had drunk that much, but who cares when I feel this good.
“Jesus, you’re so funny,” Katie says once her giggles have subsided, “I can’t believe we all thought you were an arsehole.”
“You thought that?”
“Not really,” Rob assures me, “We just thought you were… like, a bit…”
“...of an arsehole,” I finish, and he’s clearly being polite so he denies it, but he shouldn’t bother, really, because I already know how I am. I'm aware of the things I’ve said and done to other kids for the sake of relieving my crushing, constant boredom, never really thinking about the consequences beyond ‘it will be funny’. Maybe I should say I’m sorry.
“Nah you’re right, I’m kind of a horrible bastard,” and I laugh at myself, which gives them permission to do so too, albeit awkwardly.
“You’re not, you’re not,” Rob assures me, “You definitely weren’t the worst of the guys in our year…”
I want to ask him who is the worst, purely for the satisfaction of hearing him say that it’s Fitzy, or Murphy or Breener or any of those other awful, rugby wanks, but I don’t because someone coming through the grass has derailed my train of thought.
“What’s she doing here?”
I have interrupted Rob and now he’s blinking in surprise as he turns to where Leah, fucking Leah, is approaching us.
“Uh, she comes to talk to Evan sometimes,” he explains, “just for like, a few minutes usually and then she heads off. Do you know her?”
“Yeah.”
I watch with a clenched jaw as she and Evan disappear into the darkness for a few minutes, and pop open a brand new beer bottle as Rob and Katie chat as I sit between them having lost all of my sense of fun in an instant. I’m also drunk, if not very much getting there judging by the slightly blurry flames that dance exotically in front of my eyes. I have a dim thought that it’s probably a good idea to stop drinking if I plan on seeing Jen later. I doubt Michelle’s parents will be too pleased if I show up steaming drunk at their door…
“Oh my God, Jude, I didn’t expect to see you here!” Leah is back and standing right over me. I don’t even bother to look up at her face, and instead just stare at her ratty Vans that I’m almost certain are the same pair she wore when we used to hang out two years ago, and they were ratty back then.
“Yep,” I say. She sits down so closely to me in the sand that I can smell her distinct, Leah smell. She doesn’t smell bad, just like an unpleasant sensory memory.
“How are you?”
I clear my throat, “Are you buying drugs from teenagers now? Is that what it’s come to?”
“Oh, I thought you already knew how Evan and I knew each other.”
“No.”
“Well, mister policeman, it’s just weed,” she pulls the baggie I saw earlier out of her jacket pocket, “We can even smoke some together now if you like.”
“Weed makes me sick.”
“I remember that! Ha!” She offers it to Rob and Katie who both decline and exchange alarmed looks over our heads.
“Are you going to sit here all night?” I ask her, and even to my own ears it’s unbelievable how rude I am to her, but I don’t care, she deserves it, and it’s not like she even seems to register my tone anyway, she’s always been completely oblivious to what people think about her. She’s that person who hangs around at the party for way too long and keeps bringing up conversations that everyone stopped talking about ages ago.
“Jude and I go way back,” Leah explains to Katie beside her, “I met him when he was, what,” a nudge to my arm, “thirteen?”
“Twelve.”
“We used to be friends, back when he was fun.”
I scowl and she drapes herself over my shoulder with an effortless laugh as though she somehow believes this is our usual banter, “I’m joking, he’s still so fun! And cute!” She tries to grab my face and I shake her off insistently so she settles for fisting a hand in the front of my sweatshirt to hold me hostage instead, “Isn’t he, though?” she presses poor, sheepish Katie who explodes in a ferocious blush. “Would you say he’s the cutest boy at school?”
“I- I don’t know,” Katie stutters.
“Well guess what! I got to be the lucky girl who took his virginity!”
I rip her off me but she comes back at me with more grabbing hands and tickling fingers, “Ooh! It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it Judie? Oh, isn’t it?”
I wrench her off me with finality and clamber to my feet, my heart beating, my stomach queasy, “Leave me alone, okay?” I bend down to swipe my beer bottle out of the hollow I made for it in the sand and even then she tries to touch my hair. It infuriates me. “I’m serious! Piss off!” I spit.
“Oh God, mister grumpy!” She says as I stagger around the bonfire to get away from her and everything that she represents. I’m definitely drunk now, it's in my sluggish movements, the way my eyes drift unfocussed from person to person, but being drunk is preferable to remembering Leah as vividly as I would if I were perfectly sober.
Right now, it is just snippets of an evening three years ago that play through my mind. The week I turned fourteen, and the hard, frozen November ground by a swing set. The things I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do but thought knew I should by then, and Leah, and the heat of her skin, the smell of her sweat, the hyper fixation I had on that piece of bark mulch I felt tangled in her hair which somehow became the strongest memory of all, something that I still associate with her when I feel the sharp dig of something in my palm.
When I don't see her I don't think of these things, so I circle the bonfire until she is invisible, obscured by the roaring flames and swallowed by the darkness.
Anyhow, the Robin fan dragons I was talking about, more info under the cut (also can you tell I like imps)
The first Robin who's also the most authentic was found by Setanta and the Tempest Brigade. Robin had been sitting there for a while, lacking his memories until the merry band of idiots took him in and made him their main tactician. He became close friends with Daraen who bears a resemblance to him one couldn't quite call familiar, but more eerie than anything. He collects history books and is the only really good cook in the group. He is the parent Mordecai and Morcant recognise.
The second Robin, who calls herself Daraen, woke up surrounded by the Tempest Brigade and was taken in like her doppelgänger. She stuck mostly to him in the beginning since they both shared issues concerning their identities but later she fit into the group perfectly alongside the physical bruisers and fighters. Where there was a fight she was sure to fight along, wether through casting, swords or arrows. She has a love for all things pink and birds, and became the the second tactician for the Tempest Brigade.
Robert is the pale third Robin. He initially woke up imprisoned by Glasir's city guard who had found him in a perimeter patrol, apparently lying in the middle of an impact hole that looked as if it could have only been caused by a meteor. Although Robert doesn't feel much he had woken then with a victorious feeling in his chest he couldn't place. He was later put in service of Glasir's city guard as their vault keeper and accountant. He has no humour, is incredibly stoic and was the one who asked every Robin in his direct company to come up with a nickname for themselves so they could differentiate themselves. Once in a while he helps out the Glasir city guard planning operations within the city's bounds.
Rob is the fourth and unluckily enough woke up in the middle of the Shifting expanse. After wandering for a few days she finally ran into a wandering caravan who gave her a lift to Glasir were she was first brought to the city guard. They took note of the similarity in their names and Robert took her under his wing for a bit to figure out where she came from while trying to piece together his own scrambled memories. In the end she became the familiar caretaker for the city guard, hesitant to speak too much. She is a talented scribe and poet but always too afraid to share her work and often spends her time making lists of everybody's eating habits and the stock of food in the kitchen so it can be restocked.
Rho was the fifth Robin to arrive and as opposed to the others was seemingly summoned. She woke up with only a memory or two of people she felt she loved and an empty, mournful feeling in her heart. She had been summoned by religious followers of the Lightweaver in the city of Lux Laterna and although they did not call for her exactly they still took her in and found her to be a cheerful and uplifting presence. She eventually left the city to travel Sornieth in an attempt to figure out the to her new world. She's a stalwart optimist and dotes on every Morgan she meets even if they don't recognise her. She also has the weirdest and most foreboding dreams out of the Robins.
Reflet was the to their knowledge, final Robin of the six to arrive. He was initially found by Jupiter and Juno of Clan Canephora and ended up serving as their tactician for a while. He ended up feeling a desire to see the world as he recognised this world but knew it as one that met a more desolate fate. Despite a foreboding feeling nagging in the back of his head he couldn't help but feel joy seeing the world he once knew, not destroyed by an enemy he could barely remember but in nightmares. He set out and when he finally arrived in Glasir he was met with the sight of a perfect copy, namely Robert. This caused him to turn himself into a pearl catcher via a scroll and has felt like a wrong copy ever since. He knows a lot of spells but is not good at using them in practice an collects frogs.
