The trees swayed above him as he lay down on his back under an oak.  Soon enough the storm would be sweeping in, pounding the woods and the meadow, howling over the lake.

And I’m wearing a white shirt.  Whatever shall I do.

He’d probably freeze in his sleeveless tee and cutoffs, but it was better than being stuck in the house with his brother.  Aidan was a bloody jerk, and he was being more jerky than usual today.  Tal didn’t know what his problem was, and he didn’t exactly care.  Maybe he’d scared off another girl, maybe he’d been stabbed in the back by one of his wasted friends again - it always had the same result anyway.  Aidan came home, grabbed a sixpack from the fridge, and sat on the sofa glaring at everyone who passed through and snarling insults.  Apparently mocking Talic made him feel better, since he’d gone to the trouble of getting up and following Tal into the kitchen while he made lunch just for the purpose of telling him what a stupid, dense, gullible geek he was.  As usual, Tal had ignored him as best he could, slamming a sandwich together and grabbing an apple, then left the house until his brother was in a more human mood.

Maybe he should go swimming in the lake.  Dance with death, since the storm was about to hit and the lightning would be happy to strike a convenient body of water.  Nah, that was more his brother’s style.  Tal’s preferred method of tempting fate was teaching his computer how to sing Aidan’s full name, which he hated, to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

Heh.  He just about killed me.  Good thing I know all the fast exit routes and can climb trees.

Really, though, he thought he remembered a time when his brother wasn’t such a prick.  He’d teased Tal, of course, what big brother didn’t tease his little sibs?  But he hadn’t picked on him like he did nowadays.

Oh well, whatever.  I don’t wanna think about him today.  I’ll just watch the storm come in.  Of course, not thinking about him was going to be interesting when Aidan was the reason he was out here with the storm.  Fine, I’ll think about that stupid song I can’t finish.

 

You know I’m no good at moonlight and roses

but you keep looking for my romantic side

Never believe me when I say

Racing down the wire is all the love I need

Dancing with the sparks at near light-speed

It’s the greatest thrill I’ve ever known

So give it up, leave me alone.

 

The problem was, choruses were easy; verses were hard.  He always ended up with pretty good, polished choruses… and maybe one and a half verses.  Keagan, now, Keagan was the one who was good at lyrics.  Tal could whip a tune out of two pieces of bark on a leaf, but Keagan had a way with molding words to say things they’d never said before.

I’m about to get really wet here.  I could stay under this rather tall oak begging to be hit by lightning and get half-drowned in the process, or I could walk over to Keagan’s house and cadge some of his father’s scones.  Get Keagan to straighten out the damn tangle in the next verse.

Gee, this takes a lot of thought.

He’d gotten most of the way across the field when the first blast of rain smacked him in the back, riding fierce gusts of wind nearly horizontal.  A high yelp escaped him as the icy water soaked the back of his shirt within three seconds, and he broke into a run.  Long grass slapped its load of water onto his bare shins and he snorted irritation like a horse.

A few yards later he was under the tree cover, which softened the impact of the driving sheets but also dumped water in large handfuls on his head instead of small drops.  Glumly pounding on, Tal mused that it was really just typical, all in all.  It had looked like a fairly safe day when he’d come out to the field with his sandwich – cloudy, but no danger of rain.  Now there was a bloody tempest sitting on him.

Most of the way to Keagan’s house was along a sidewalk with trees growing beside it on one side.  At first Talic was amused, in an irritated sort of way, to find that this meant that he got the full benefit of the large clumps of water on his head with none of the shelter from the wind.  Then he was just cold.

Five exceptionally long minutes later he stumbled up the front steps and banged on Keagan’s front door, shivering.  Keagan’s sister answered, a tall girl with lengthy blonde hair and a cell phone permanently attached to her ear.

“Yeah, hang on just a sec – who is it?  Oh, hi Talic.  Key’s in his room messing with that system of his.  Try to get him to eat something, would ya?  Yeah, as I was saying…”

Nodding, he gratefully escaped to the back of the house, where Keagan lived in the electronic squalor of a technophile’s wetdream.  Talic knocked on the door next to the “Authorized Personnel Only” sign, and waited for acknowledgement before poking his head in.  Last time someone’d walked in on Keagan without warning they’d nearly been electrocuted by disconnected wires from the amp-system he was working on, which were trailing across the floor.

“Right, right,” came the muffled voice from inside.  “I know, I’ll eat soon – waitasec, who is it?”

“Me, you nut.  Is it safe?”

The voice was clearer, as if Keagan was actually speaking towards the door now.  “Yeah, sure, just don’t step on the chips.”

Talic carefully pushed the door open and looked down at the floor, which was covered with an interesting array of little tiny metallic things.  Keagan was a hardware person, while Talic couldn’t tell a transistor from a capacitor – or even know if you needed one to build a computer.

“Right, I’ll just walk on the ceiling then.  What the hell are you making now?”

“Oh, just something I thought of.”  Keagan leaned back where he sat on the floor surrounded by multi-colored wires, coded chips and general tech-mess, looking up at Talic inquiringly.  “I realized it wasn’t Cathy cuz I didn’t hear the stream of babble into her ear parasite.  Wow, you’re soaked.  Go grab a towel before you come in here.”

“Oh, good point.”  Yes, better not to get water on that nest of electronics.  Talic trotted down the hall to the bathroom, stripped out of his shirt and hung it over the curtain-rod to dry, toed off his sandals, then toweled off and hung the towel up.  Keagan’s dad was always thrilled at how neat Talic was, and Tal liked getting baked handouts.

“Whassup?” Keagan asked as Talic gingerly picked his way from doorway to chair, toe by toe. 

“I wondered if you had the time to go over some lyrics with me.  I got the first verse and the chorus…”  He sprawled in the molded plastic and metal chair, raising helpless hands.  “Well, you know the story.”

“You know what you want to say, you know what it should sound like, you just can’t get it there.”  Key nodded, reaching to the window to raise the shades and let some light into the dim room.  Grey stormlight, as it turned out, but better than none.  “Wow, nice little hurricane out there.  Sure, I was just fiddling around with this stuff, it’ll wait til I’m bored again.  So what’ve you got?”

Talic cleared his throat, opened his mouth and raised a questioning eyebrow.  Keagan stepped over to the desk where his keyboard sat, pushed a quick series of buttons, and turned back to nod.  One quick breath and Talic let the song out, tune minor and eerie, lyrics snapping unevenly between the notes.  He sang the first verse and chorus, then the tentative second verse he’d worked out to give Key something to work with.

“I can be simple, true and kind sweet lover, in the world beyond a star’s a data streak – better believe me when I say… and chorus again.  It doesn’t really work, and I’m not so sure about the first verse either.  Whatcha think?”

Keagan tapped some buttons on the keyboard and turned back around.  “Chorus is sweet.  Nice minor punch on the last line there, and the images are pretty good.  Don’t think I need to mess with that, but the second verse is just fragments, you know that.  How about…”  His lips moved for a moment and Tal waited, amazed as always that Key could just hold onto the words and move them around in his head with no need for a pen and paper or anything.

“Okay, you’re trying for a total rejection of this girl or whatever, right?  I’m only a lover in the world beyond, on the wires, right?”  Talic nodded and Keagan grinned.  “Cybersex, heh.  Okay, off the top of my head – don’t have the tune down yet, but the words – I can be a simple, kind, true sweet lover, only as a cypher where stars are data streaks… How’s that compare?”

“Oh, sweet!  Cypher, perfect.  Can’t touch me, I’m insubstantial where it counts!”

Keagan gave him a look, lips twitching, and Talic blinked.  They sniggered at the same time, Talic rolling his eyes.  “In the heart, brainfritz, not that.”

“Well, glad to hear that, newb, I’d hate to think you were miligning talents of mine you know nothing about,” Keagan retorted smoothly.

Talic gave him the Raised Eyebrow of Supreme Doubt.