A Scale of Sapphire

Willow’s POV

It was still dark out when I woke up, the first rays of dawn slowly creeping over the horizon. My shift at the diner yesterday had kicked my ass, so once I got home, I basically just collapsed in bed. At least I had today off. I was going to brew myself some tea, bundle up in at least 12 blankets, and become a vegetable for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, my brain had other plans. About two hours into my morning recovery coma, a couple brain cells rubbed together. Then a few more. Then a couple after that. Until enough of them gathered together, sparked, and I had a thought.

I was worried about Aiden. We’d been friends since elementary, and he’d always been such a bright, vibrant personality, but lately there’d been something bothering him. He was always sleeping in, he barely seemed to be taking care of himself, and whenever we would meet up he’d drift off and get all distant. To be fair, he was always kind of out there, but lately it had been getting worse. You could call his name three times and he still wouldn’t even react, and sometimes when he finally did react, it almost felt like he was flinching. Something was weighing on him, I just had to figure out what it was.

To be perfectly honest, sometimes I have a tendency to catastrophize things a bit, so my first assumption was that he had some kind of personal issue with me. I didn’t think I had done anything to make him feel uncomfortable around me, I didn’t think I’d said anything of the sort either. It’s not like he was transphobic either, so it couldn’t be that. When I first came out to him a couple years back, we actually bonded a little over just how obvious it should’ve been. How I’d always be some kind of princess or lady-knight when we played pretend as kids, or how I’d rush through the menus to pick Daisy before he could in mario kart, or how in our very first D&D campaign the two of us played as a pair of twin sisters, or how we both wanted to be sailor scouts for halloween in 3rd grade, or how…

Oh…

We both really wanted to pick Daisy, didn’t we? Most of the things we talked about back then was stuff we both shared, wasn’t it? I knew I shouldn’t assume, and I definitely shouldn’t try to force some kind of epiphany, but the spaciness and the weirdness did start around puberty, didn’t it? 

Either way, my friend was hurting, and I intended to find out why. Whatever the truth was, I’d be there to support them however I could. Maybe I was wrong and it was something way simpler, but I’d try my best to help them either way damn it!

I extracted my arm from its cozy prison, grabbed my phone, and tapped out a message.

Willow: Hey, A. Are you finally awake?