BrynLeretu Habitica 01-15-2021

Written by BrynLeretu

[Finish the story][At your birthday party, you receive a very special present….]

“Hol-y ess!” I say with quiet fervour and wonder as I finish extricating the gift from its greyish-white paper, its elegantly understated black and silver box, its plethoric layers of periwinkle tissue paper, its nigh infinite layers of violet tissue paper, the shoe box that, in a bygone era, held shoes, and the violet and silver wrapping paper that bears the tag “To Adela, from Sandra, Martha and Line.”

My eyes are wide as I hold the gift with both hands; it’s small enough to hold in just one palm, but I don’t dare do so lest I break it. And if there’s anything that my twenty years have demonstrated, it’s that I am decidedly not a careful individual. The source of my wonder is a peridot that looks both like an onion and a budding flower, and somehow has little bits of amethyst embedded throughout as well. Overall, it’s reminiscent of a Swarovski sculpture, but probably ten times as expensive.

“I can’t believe it,” I say, my voice still low and hushed. “You shouldn’t have.”

I put the gift on the table before looking at my friends, who must have pooled their financial resources to get me this. Sandra’s smiling a smile so wide that it could split her face in half, Martha’s playing with her fingers as if they were in a finger trap and Line both rolls her eyes at the two former and smiles at me simultaneously.

“And yet we did,” Martha mutters, looking up at me and putting her hands down on the table.

“Do you like it, at least?” Sandra asks me. She rubs her face.

“Of course! It’s just…”

“If you’re worried about the cost, then don’t worry,” Line says, cutting me off. “Add, this is the start of your Terrific Twenties, or Terrifying Twenties depending on who you ask. Us girls already turned twenty and to be honest, it kinda sucks. So we got you this thing in the hopes that your twenties would suck less.”

“Even so, we’re four uni students. What’d ya do to get this, steal it from a jewellery store?”

“Why d’ya ask?” Martha says loudly. Line and Sandra both glare at her, which causes her to slouch.

“Uh…” I say.

“We, uh—” Sandra says.

“We kinda did steal it,” Line tells me. “Not from a jewellery store though.”

“I stole it during physics class,” Martha blurts out.

“Wait, what?!” I say, widening my eyes.

“It was three days ago, and I had no clue what to get you for your birthdaaaaay!” Martha puts her head back and pulls some of her auburn tresses.

“We initially were gonna get separate gifts, but the other night Marms crashed into Line’s dorm with the onion while she and I were kissing,” Sandra says, looking at Martha strangely.

“Yeah, and she was all like, ‘Here’s Add’s gift from all of us. Don’t ask any questions, et cetera et cetera.’ Very suspicious, but I didn’t ask any questions because she was distracting me from my favourite hobby besides whining about how much my life sucks.”

Line says this before looking at Martha and adding that she also reeked of who-knows what at the time.

“I smell?! I grew up on a pig farm! Have you ever smelled pig manure before?! That stuff stinks like ya wouldn’t believe!

At any rate, Adela, that day we had some experiments to conduct, so we went to the lab, which is where the onion is.

“We weren’t experimenting with it, but it was on display in a plexiglass case that could only be opened by retina scan. And the professor said it could manipulate space and time, which I figured may have some practical applications in your day-to-day life, Add.

Anyway, when they weren’t looking, I snuck out of the physics lab and had Art cover for me. Then I snuck into the chemistry lab and randomly grabbed a bunch of specific chemicals and made a smoke bomb in fifteen minutes, which in retrospect makes me glad that I had a closeted mad scientist for an intro-to-chemistry professor—”

“Can you even say that?” Line asks.

“‘Closeted?’” Martha answers.

Line nods and then sighs.

“I figure, yeah. I mean, I came out as pan to all of y’all a few months ago.

Anyway, I snuck back into the physics lab, asked the prof where the pencil sharpener was, used the bomb, stole the onion and interrupted Line and Sandra’s makeout session,” Martha finishes.

“I’m still pissed at you for that,” Sandra tells her.

“It wasn’t on purpose, Sandra,” Martha retorts.

“It was 8:00 on a Tuesday night! You know that Line and I kiss and whatnot on Tuesday and Wednesday nights from 7:30 to 8:30, Marms! When else can we fit that into our schedule?!”

“Do you know how this works?” I ask Martha before she says...well, anything, really.

“Nope!” she says, shaking her head with such vigour that I fear for her cervical vertebrae.

“OK. I’m just gonna touch it in various places until it reacts.”

“That’s what she said,” Martha mutters.

---

Three hours later, I’m in bed, albeit not asleep, after about an hour of studying for a German test. Instead, I’m turning the onion in my hands and watching it scatter the little light in my surroundings like madness itself. That’s when my moderate case of butterfingers kicks in and I drop it.

I curse before remembering that I dropped it on my duvet, which must have softened the landing quite a bit.

''Phew. What a relief.''

I grab the onion with my left hand, my pinky finger on the very tip of it when all of a sudden, it emits an olive green glow.

I gasp and back up a bit before tentatively reaching for it, despite my remaining shreds of common sense telling me not to….