Flower Skip [commissioned by dawn_bat]

[alexconall]

Lily sat in the driveway of her house, a box of sidewalk chalk beside her. The unicorn hadn't come out right. The dragon wasn't coming out right either. She wasn't even gonna try drawing a fairy.

"Lily?" said a girl's voice. "It's me."

She looked up. The girl standing there, brown as Lily, looked familiar, and so did the woman next to her, but Lily wasn't sure how...

"Lily Azarola, the famed visitor to the fae," said the woman, and she sounded familiar too. "I am Sasithorn. I would speak to Jasmine, if I may."

"Kamon is my name," the girl said. "Want to play a game?"

Kamon! And Sasithorn's frown was probably because Kamon was being a little rude. Lily tried to think of a way to answer in polite fairy rhyme: "Sasithorn, she is home, but I don't know if she'll come—" That was really bad. "Kamon, I remember you. Yes, I'd like to play with you." And that was cheating.

Sasithorn looked amused, though.

Lily ran inside without shutting the door. "Jasmine, Jasmine!" she shouted to the computer room. "The fairies came back and they're asking for you!"

"Asking?" Jasmine said as Lily skidded into the room. "I doubt that. What do they want?"

"I don't know but Sasithorn's here to talk to you," said Lily.

"Oh, her," said Jasmine. "I haven't had time to open the newspaper yet—why does last year have to come back and bite me today?" She drained her soda and minimized her work session, and Lily followed her back outside. Jasmine stopped on the porch, and Lily went around her to go sit where she'd left her chalk.

"Sasithorn," Jasmine said, eyeing the woman, and fell silent.

Sasithorn frowned again. "I would speak with you on a matter of mutual benefit. Kamon and Lily can play while you decide whether to commit."

"Join me for a pot of tea," Jasmine said. "We will speak, then we will see."

Kamon came over to sit by Lily while Sasithorn went inside with Jasmine. "Want to be horribly rude?" she asked.

Lily shrugged. "I don't care. I want to draw. You can draw too if you want."

Kamon eyed the chalk, then the chalked drawings. "Want to play flower skip?"

Didn't look like Lily was gonna get to draw in peace. "I don't know flower skip. Wanna play hopscotch?"

"Hops? Scotch?" Kamon asked, confused. "We're not old enough for alcohol games...at least I'm not." She looked at Lily suspiciously.

Lily stared right back, with no idea what Kamon was talking about.

A minute later Kamon looked away. "Okay, I'll draw with you," she said.

"I'll play hopscotch by myself," said Lily. She picked up a stick of chalk, dug in her pocket for the penny she'd found (all the day you'll have good luck), and drew a hopscotch board. Lily tossed the penny from Start and it landed in square one: hop over square one and land with left foot in two, left foot three, one foot each in four and five, and so on till Home, then hopped back on the right foot. She collected the penny once she got back to Start, then tossed it into square two.

Kamon watched, eyes wide. "That's flower skip," she said. "Only the course's different. Here, let me show you." She grabbed her own chalk, went down to the blacktop road for a pebble, and came back up the driveway to draw a big flower with lots of numbered petals in a spiral. Lily watched her hop around the flower, avoiding the petal with the pebble.

"That looks like fun," Lily said. "I'd like to try."

She lost her balance trying to hop over her penny and land in one of the small petals, but when she got up, they were both laughing.



Flower Skip by Elizabeth Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.