Having A Wonderful Time!
As the Saturday sun shone down on Riverside Park – the jewel of the Canterville Department of Natural Assets – it brought with it that perfect degree of warmth: enough that short sleeves are in order, but not enough to make even a moment outdoors unbearable, at least for most people. Calendar aside, it was still Spring, so the stifling humidity of the Summer had not made its yearly debut, yet the acres of fields and woods had already become awash in a sea of green, occasionally punctuated by the blooms of a late-flowering tree.
The best thing about a municipal park like this? It’s free to visit. That comes in handy for anyone who needs a respite yet has no money. Like the Dazzlings.
“We’re in the money!” Sonata Dusk insisted. To what or whom was, for everyone else, unclear.
Aria Blaze turned to Sonata with a look simultaneously baffled and angry. “Huh? What the hell are you talking about? No we’re not.”
A few feet away, Adagio Dazzle lay on her back on a (stolen) blanket on the grass, her impressive hair – ‘The Poof’ – serving intermittently as a secondary pillow. She gently lolled her head to face Aria and, without opening her eyes, said, “Pay no attention to the fool on the hill.”
“That’s easy for you to say; you always leave me to take care of her,” Aria groused.
“I’m gonna make my sister see I don’t need her watching over me!” Sonata insisted without looking at either of them. Instead, she clambered over the small knoll. Her butt stuck almost straight up, as if to make up for some nonexistent pointer-dog’s tail. Aria observed her out of the corner of her eye, wondering if they might all be better off getting her a collar and tags. And a rabies shot.
Lazily, Aria tilted her head in Sonata’s direction, only to find she’d gone out of sight. Perhaps she should have been more concerned… but she wasn’t. With all the speed of a Galápagos Tortoise, Aria got to her feet and ambled over the small rise. She found Sonata lying on her back, her big magenta eyes fixated on something, her face absolutely failing to conceal her joy.
Aria tried to follow Sonata’s line of sight. There was a small tree nearby, its leaves not yet fully grown due to the time of year. In its branches were several finch birds (what specific species, Aria neither knew nor cared). Sonata appeared to be fixated on one bird in particular.
“Little birdie,” Sonata mused as it flitted from one branch to another, “Why do you fly upside down?”
“It’s flying right side up. You’re looking at it upside down, dummy,” Aria said.
Sonata chuckled, ignoring Aria. “It’s amazing, the way you get around.”
“Not really,” Aria insisted. “I walk. And so do you…” She trailed off as she realized Sonata was crawling. “Sometimes.”
A cardinal darted through the air across Sonata’s field of vision. Her eyes eagerly followed it. Then she flopped gently down onto her back.
“These boots are made for walking,” Sonata said as she lifted her right leg, waving it in a matter not unlike that evil old man who shooed her and her sisters off his lawn when they tried to partake of the wild blackberries growing along his property line.
“No they’re not,” Aria countered, bored. “Adagio bought them because they looked cool. It took five months for them to not hurt like hell every time I put them on. They’re the worst.”
“But… sometimes I think somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone’s thinking of me…”
Aria’s eyes widened, mostly at the realization that Sonata thought about anything.
“And I think about how I’d like to be under the sea,” Sonata concluded.
“We lived on a rock,” Aria reminded her.
Sonata was undeterred. “Oh poor girl. So sorry for yourself.”
“Wh-what?!” Aria exclaimed as her left eye began twitching involuntarily. “Adagio, do you hear this??”
Adagio, for her part, continued to lay on her back contemplating the globs of condensed water vapour drifting far above her head. “All that we dream comes to shine in a silver lining in the clouds.”
Aria blinked. “What does that have to do with Sonata acting like a moron?”
Turning her head to Aria, Adagio gave her answer. “Sitting on the grass in the day, watching the clouds roll away, wasting time.”
“I think I might be losing it,” Aria said to no one in particular.
Adagio resumed her previous state of rest as she offered, “Let the music of your life give life back to music.”
“What?? Since when have we had the time or the money to listen to any music?” Aria snipped, “Besides, it’s not like either one of you idiots ever liked what I wanted to listen to. Do you have any idea how much those stupid pop songs you had us sing made me want to tear my hair out?”
“Oh Lord, it’s a game. Sometimes you’re cool; sometimes you’re lame,” Adagio said, still concentrating on the sky.
“Ooh! I wanna play a game!!” Sonata suddenly popped up in between them. “How about tiddlywinks! Or hopscotch! Or…” she trailed off as she wracked her brain trying to think of another thing to play. Maybe that one with the bean-bag she saw on the puppet show?
Adagio nodded sagely. “Well, when you get your life prescription from your favourite quack, you know that it is written. You know what it can mean.”
Sonata, snapped out of her contemplation, stared at Adagio in rapt awe. “I do!”
Aria slapped her forehead. “If you can read a doctor’s handwriting, then you must have some sort of mystical powers even Equestria doesn’t.”
Sonata nodded. “I can take sad songs and make them better…”
“Please,” Aria snorted, “Even when we still had our powers, your caterwauling was only good for making babies cry.”
“I can stick my head in the microwave and give myself a tan,” Sonata insisted.
Aria opened her mouth to lob another insult, but found herself unable to find one appropriate to the occasion, leaving her pointing at nothing, mouth agape.
“Y’know what? Go do that. Please,” she finally groused.
“It seems now, all they want to do is fight,” Adagio said to no one in particular in a singsongy tone.
“Why shouldn’t I? She’s stupid. This is stupid. It would be a better waste of my time to go back to that stupid school.” Aria said.
“Hanging ‘round the water fountain, playing the fool,” Sonata replied.
“Really?” Aria asked, incredulous. “You, who obsesses over tacos, can’t remember how much grape juice goes in punch, and has to ask for help putting on your own clothes half the time, are calling me a fool. Adagio, are you hearing this?”
“Just relax. If you bug the poor old cop over there, you’ll get the axe,” Adagio said, lazily gesturing in an indeterminate direction.
Sonata chose that moment to add her two cents or, considering the source, a wooden nickel. “Why’d I have to go and get myself decapitated?”
Aria groaned and turned to her right to see, standing about twenty feet away, a policeman in uniform. He was tall and reasonably trim with peach skin and a shock of blue hair sticking out from under his cap. He may or may not have been looking at them; Aria could not tell thanks to his aviator sunglasses. Perhaps he was angry at them due to a nearby ‘Keep Off The Grass’ sign that the girls were blatantly ignoring. But then, so was everyone else at the park, the policeman included.
“Do this, don’t do that. Ha! We’re not doing anything, so what right does he have to complain?” Adagio mused aloud.
“Ugh. I hate cops,” said Aria. Rather pointless of her to say, since the others already knew this and agreed.
“Well, not everyone can manipulate the little piggies like I can,” Adagio said, her eyes shut, gesturing to the breeze.
“And what did your efforts get us, huh?” Aria asked, her left eye beginning to twitch involuntarily.
“To be honest, not much beyond a reprieve,” answered Adagio with a sigh. “It may have been almost sort of my fault perhaps, that time with the sergeant. I thought he was a man, but he was just a little boy like the rest of them.”
“Tougher than leather!” Sonata chimed in.
Aria’s eyes widened at that outburst, then narrowed. “Y’know what? No. No. Screw this. Screw you. I can’t take either of you idiots anymore. I’m out of here.”
Adagio chuckled to herself. “The little things, they always get you down, huh?”
Sonata looked on in dismay as a dozen birds alighted from their perches in the tree and made off for destinations unknown, driven away by Aria’s primal screaming.
“Why does this always happen to me??” whined Sonata, distraught at the loss of her avian friends. Alas, her cry fell on deaf ears, as Adagio had chosen that point to take a nap, lulled into a satisfied sleep by the sounds of anguish.
After she had finished thoroughly destroying her vocal chords, Aria stomped away from the scene, fists clinched.
“Ugh. This is the worst. I feel like my life has been taken over by some sadistic hack writer who just wants to see me suffer,” she grumbled croakily to the sky.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there!” Sonata called out to her departing sister.
Aria responded with the most emphatic middle finger she could give as she stomped away from the park and her sisters down the heavily-trafficked street, briefly noting a nearly empty burrito restaurant, and disappeared into the vast urban jungle.