The Serenade of Seagull's Bay - part 1b

The Serenade of Seagull's Bay
part 1b

The wind picked up near the ocean, making Lucien's walk from the bench to the nearby community college campus feel much longer than it all ready was. He passed several large buildings that were dedicating to housing students which were marked with signs labeling them as "dorms", glad to know that Rachel never had to stay in one of them. The area looked more than a little run down. Sure, he had to deal with her father and her brother, but he knew that men and women lived seperate in these dorms just by reading the signs. Lucien felt insecure about this whole new world he was thrust into, about the technology he encountered at every turn (he swore at that sign which told him not to cross the street at every intersection), and how the people generally spoke to each other.

His spirits perked up when he heard Rachel's voice down the road a bit. "Okay, so you guys are telling me that that girl who worked at the old Narnes and Boble in the Megaplex is actually dating now?" She was so surprised.

A male voice answered just as loudly, "Yeah! They got together when you guys left on that choir trip last year. No one imagined the coldest of all the hearts in our graduating class would actually come back with a boyfriend, at the same time Aurora got one."

The voices got louder. They were coming closer. Rachel then said, "You're calling me the coldest heart in our graduating class?"

"Damn straight," the male replied. "I made passes at you every day and you just snubbed at me."

"Mark, you and I aren't compatible and you know it." Rachel was standing at the other side of the intersection where Lucien stopped to wait for her. Her hair was pulled up into a bun at the top of her hair, and she wore an old set of overalls that were smeared in paint, charcoal, and the mixture used for paper mache. She waved at him when she realized Lucien was standing there. "Hey, Lucien! Always coming to get me. You're the sweetest thing."

Mark laughed. "The infamous Lucien!" he said as they crossed the street. "You're so lucky to have been able to catch someone like Rachel, you know. She's talented, but she can be such a bitch sometimes. I'd been trying for years to get with her, and she comes back from being lost in France with someone like you? I'm so unlucky like that." He tapped Lucien's shoulder, completely throwing Lucien off guard. "I still don't believe it."

Rachel just laughed at him. "Hey, asshole, go be bitter somewhere else. I know, the Megaplex is a hub for dejected wastes of time like you."

Mark watched Rachel and Lucien share some sort of embrace where Lucien tried to avoid getting covered in the art supplies on her overalls. He didn't want to come off as a prick, but what he said was true. He did like Rachel quite a bit growing up, and she never gave him the time of day. He just waved as he walked off in another direction.

"I still don't understand how you can consider him a friend and talk to him like that," Lucien said quietly. "The way people talk to each other here confounds me."

"Lucien, dear, it's not just in this town. It's worldwide." Rachel answered. "So what were you doing before heading up out here? Sitting on the bench at the beach again?"

"I don't know what to do with all this free time," he said. "Truthfully, it seems that is something this world has to spare."

"Oh yeah. People don't spend their days laboring away like they did in the past. It doesn't take a huge family to grow a field of crops just to sell at a market or pay taxes. Things work a lot differently now." She shrugged. "I never thought a lot about it because I'm so used to how things are, but you are right. We tend to fill our time with things that don't really matter, like even we don't know what to do with our extra time." Rachel turned to take another direction along the road. "We should head home early. I want to avoid Dad at all costs today."

"He's your father. The lord of the castle you reside in. Shouldn't you be a bit more respectful?" Lucien asked. He didn't understand a lot about how Rachel operated after coming back to her hometown. There were things about her that radically changed, and he was disappointed with that fact.

"I don't live in a castle, Lucien. Times have changed. Radically."

"No, but you are a lady under his care, correct? The same principles apply. Why do you wish to avoid your father so much?"

Rachel didn't look back at him. "He hates the fact that I brought you back with me. He hates the fact that he can't put me in an arranged marriage to align himself with another powerful family because now I'll fight it until I'm dead. I wasn't going to do it before. I didn't care about love until... until I had the most peaceful time of my life in Treble Castle." She kept walking along the sidewalk. "I didn't want to come back here. I knew facing that darkness that I'd have to come back to this mess, and that's why I avoided it so much. You taught me to care about myself and what I want in life, Lucien. My father hates that."

Lucien thought about that for a moment. "Perhaps times haven't changed that much after all."