Approximately 300,000 milliseconds later, Retta forgave Mireh, who reclaimed her title as Retta's best friend when she bought her a candied apple. Another rule of the universe: Retta's friendship can be bought, and she's none too picky with her bribes.
The girls were climbing the lantern-lit steps up the hill, each of them with a healthy snack that had been transformed into a cavity-producing product. Temera was deep in thought as she licked hers:
“Nine kids...I can't imagine having that many.”
You're still on about that?
“Is eight your limit?” Retta teased.
“No! That's also way too many!”
“Really? 'Cause you strike me as a The-more-the-merrier type when it comes to kids.”
“No, I—If I had just one, I'd be fine with that.”
“I'd kill myself if I ended up having nine kids,” Mireh said. “I'd also wanna know what I was doing that I ended up with nine kids.”
“Mireh, do we need to have The Talk?” Retta asked. “When a man and woman love each other very much, they—”
“Shut up, you know what I mean.”
The girls reached the top of the hill, which was almost like walking ten meters up from Times Square and finding yourself in a forest lit by fancy paper lanterns.
“Which Founts are these?”
“Happiness, Leisure, and Fortune, I think,” Mireh said. Retta ran up to the Fount for happiness, and Mireh called out to her. “You know that none of these are for good grades, Retta, right?”
“Yeah, and?”
“I think that's the Fount you need to visit the most.”
“Don't act like you're a straight-A student!”
“No, but I can't complain about straight-Bs, can I?”
“I'm a straight-A student.”
Brag about it, why don't you?
“Oh, please, Mireh, there're far more important things in this world than getting good grades,” Retta said as she perused the selection of colorful paper laid out before her, and Mireh and Temera joined her with her perusing at the Fount.
To finally explain, Founts were stands or tables prettied up to resemble altars dedicated to a single theme, and these makeshift altars were all over the park.
As Mireh continued with her perusal of the colorful sheets of paper, of which there were too many designs to choose just one, something occurred to her. “Retta.”
“Mireh.”
“How come we're at the Happiness Fount?”
“For happiness. Duh. What else would we come here for?”
“That's not the question I'm asking,” Mireh said. “The question I'm asking is, why we're at the Happiness Fount and not the Friendship Fount? Does our friendship mean nothing to you anymore?”
“Sorry, beau, but I'm over you, 'cause I found someone new. (Gasp!) I could be a poet!”
“Please don't...”
Temera had put Schildkröte/Nathan/Beelzebub down and picked up three different sheets with three different designs, and her eyes went from one, to the next, to the next, back to the first, and rinse and repeat. “I can't decide on which one...”
“You may take as many sheets as it'll take to make your wishes come true,” said the Keeper, the “keeper” of this Fount, who resembled a Venetian dressed up and at the wrong festival.
“Is it possible to make an Aim Butterfly with three sheets?”
“Of course it is. Here, let me show you,” and then the Keeper who read the festival address wrong showed Temera the art of making an origami butterfly using three sheets of paper.
Mireh, who was watching, decided that sticking with one sheet was her best course of action. Retta, on the other hand, took Temera's three sheets as a challenge, and she decided that no fewer than five sheets was necessary for her little paper insect.
“Do you really need that many?” Mireh asked as she watched Retta try and fail to transform five flat, colorful pieces of paper into a single folded butterfly.
“No,” Retta admitted. “Four would've been enough, but I've come too far to go back now.” Guess three folds done was coming too far.
“Uh, whatever you say,” and then Mireh resumed creating her insect made from dead trees, referring to the convenient instructions conveniently hanging up for people like her who had practiced origami precisely zero times since the last festival.
Temera finished first, since she had the assistance of the Keeper, who nearly lost her mind when she saw Retta using five sheets at once, which must have been like turning around to find your toddler playing with a chainsaw.
Temera, marker in hand, pondered what wish(es) she was going to write on the butterfly's wings.
“Don't know what to wish for?” Mireh asked.
“I know what I want,” she said, “I'm just trying to figure out how to word it.”
“You're one step ahead of me.” Mireh knew what she wanted out of life, don't get her wrong. It was just that her wish list wasn't full of things she could obtain within the next five years before the next festival, which was how you were supposed to write your wishes. Otherwise, it was like asking your dad who worked at a gas station for a Ferrari for your birthday.
What do I write?
That was the question of the night, and maybe of the century.
It was so easy making a Christmas list as a kid: It boiled down to saying, “I want toys X, Y, and Z.” But anytime you make a wish, whether you're writing it down on a paper butterfly's wings or tossing a coin in a fountain, you wish for something like better health or more money or a bigger house—aka, things most people won't get.
So was that what a wish was for, Mireh wondered. You can go to the store and buy a pressure cooker if you really want one, but you can't go to a car dealer and drive off in a Lamborghini if your job's paying you minimum wage.
You buy what you want but wish for what you can't have.
And if that were the case, what did Mireh wish for? What did she know, deep down, no matter how much she denied it, that she would never get her hands on, that she could never get her hands on?
“…”
It was hard to say. After all, Mireh hadn't yet decided on which college she was going to. Gotta let the girl graduate from there before she realizes that wishing for happiness is perhaps the ultimate wish.
She knew she was wishing for something. But what, she didn't know.
Not yet she didn't.
Mireh wrote down her wish for something, and Retta finished with her Butterfly once the Keeper managed to salvage it from the catastrophe she had forged.
“This turned out quite nice,” the Keeper admitted, as though she thought it was going to become an abomination that had to be cremated before another soul laid eyes on it. “You've got a great eye for design on you.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.” The Keeper handed Retta a marker, and she wrote her wish down in not ten seconds flat, a feat which Mireh could only wish for.
“What'd you write down?” Mireh asked, trying to sneak a peak at Retta's atrocity turned beauty.
Retta cupped her winged invertebrate in her hands to hide it and moved it out of reach. “Not telling.”
“Since when are you so secretive with your secrets?”
“A girl's gotta have one or two secrets, even from her best friend, doesn't she?”
Retta had Mireh's curiosity piqued, but knowing her, Retta had wished for something like coupons to her favorite pizza place and knew that Mireh would make fun of her for it.
The girls surrendered their wish-baring Lepiodoptera to the Keeper, and she added them to the collection of Aim Butterflies behind her, which was quite the collection that was divided into two groups: one where the Butterflies had been strung to tiny paper unlit lanterns, and one where they hadn't. The girls' went to the unstrung group for now, but they would be joining the other soon enough.608Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9QyyHYXvVE
