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"Okay. Is it made out of wood?"
Daylight hours burned soon enough into a frigid evening, with the sky rolling in deep somber greys, and the surrounding forest dense and tenebrous. Riya was no fan of the dark, not even if Kristal sent the contestants out into the elements with only the clothes on their backs and sleeping bags- some even worse off than that- but at least she was with good company.
She and Rosa were gathering firewood when she heard thunder roaring across the horizon, and cursed Kristal for the third time that day. Sensing her unease, Rosa had suggested icebreaker games to assuage their growing concern that they weren't guarenteed a full evening of firelight.
Rosa shook her head. Her hand reached for another marshmallow, now on an amount with which she's sure to thoroughly regret eating by tomorrow. "Nope. One question left."
Riya brought her knees to her chest. The wind was picking up, and getting nippy. "I don't like this game."
"You give up?" Rosa pitched smugly, recieving her answer in a stubbornly defeated noise. She brings her hand to her collarbone, and handles the golden pendant donned over it between her thumb and forefinger. "It's this."
Riya gives her a confounded look, gandering a little too long at the gleam of her necklace in the bonfire light. In feigned annoyance, she murmured, "Conceited."
"Hey!"
"I'm joking!" Riya snickered. "It's pretty."
"My sister got it for me," Rosa said, tenderly. "I wear it so much that it worries her when I don't."
"One of those zodiacs. Right? Ah- Lee-"
"Libra." Rosa huffed a laugh. "What were you going to say?"
Something stupid, maybe. "Don't worry about it." Riya dismissed, her ears warm. She was learning with time that Rosa had some curious way of disarming her.
"What does it all mean?" Riya asked.
"To be a Libra?"
Riya wound her fingers through her hair timidly. "The- the whole, belief."
Pressing her fists to her cheeks, Rosa spends a few thoughtful moments watching the fire crackle. "People make it what they want it to mean, usually."
"You're one of those people?"
"Sure," Rosa sounded uncharacteristically sheepish, "The stars… say stuff, and I listen."
Riya, too, was drawn to listen. Rosa spoke of fates and star-crossed destinies, and spoke so dreamily, wonder woven into her voice. Her hands wrung together like they had all this crackling passion they didn't know what to do with; All in a way Riya could only call cute, and other words that she smothers before they can become a coherent thought to dwell on.
"It just, guides me through things. Hard things, that I don't ask for or expect. Sometimes it's confusing." Her voice faltered. There was something there, but it feels like information Riya hadn't a right to know.
"But in the end," Rosa then stilled, and offered Riya a soft look, "They lead me to nice places."
Riya blinked, having briefly lost her words, then nodded gracelessly. "You have quite a lot figured out."
"Ha." Rosa sniffed. "Nooo, I don't."
The moon was still visible just above them, rippling behind stormclouds. They both gave it their attention in a pensive silence. Then Rosa turned and asked, "What's your biggest dream?"
"That's easy." Riya mused. "I want to be a movie star."
Rosa leaned in attentively, pinning her under inquisitive, upturned eyes, dark as dusk. "What would you do to get there?"
"Probably anything." Riya answered honestly. "That's a good thing. Right?"
"You're asking me?" Rosa's smile stretched enough to where Riya could see dimples, even in the dark. "I think anyone's dream is worth fighting for."
"So, if you wanted to be…"
"An entrepreneur,"
"You'd make it happen no matter what." Riya supplied.
Rosa shrugged uneasily. "Guess that's what brought me here."
"Good. Me too. So when we make final three with Lake, you have to let me win."
"Let you." Rosa parroted. Riya felt a fist against her shoulder, though it barely hurt. "How good of an actress are you? Could you cry on command if I asked?"
Riya startled with a sound between a laugh and a scoff. Rosa disarms her, but the banter was easy. Comfortable. "Wouldn't you like to know!"
Whatever Rosa could've said pales to an abrupt flash of lightning, bright and deafening. Riya let out an unbecoming shriek, which made Rosa bristle beside her. The worst of the storm was upon them, it seemed, wind shrilling about and lashing their tent with rain that hadn't just been there. She felt it even in the recluse of her sleeping bag, and began to shiver.
"We'll be alright." Rosa reassured, despite helplessly watching the storm snuff out their firepit.
Two, five, ten minutes pass; The sky doesn't relent. They shot each other worried looks whenever thunder growled a little too near, but then Rosa's head whips in full attention to the sound of Riya sneezing.
"Do you get sick easily?"
"I," Riya yawns behind her hand. "I don't know. I don't think so. Hope we won't find out tomorrow when we wake up?"
She sniffed, which did her no favors, and she briefly entertained what Kristal might do if someone did get sick. Riya began to dread the night again, rendering their icebreakers fruitless.
"Would it be weird if we— um." Rosa hesitated. Then she offered her arms, stretched them out as much as the space would allow. Riya balked at her for a moment, and Rosa almost takes her silence for rejection before she found her wits and nodded feverently.
"Yes! No! I mean. It's fine, that's fine." Fine enough that she carefully tipped her weight— which felt strangely cumbersome now— into Rosa's embrace.
Her hands loitered cluelessly in the air like hugging was a foreign concept to them. She fastened them just below Rosa's shoulders, while arms snake up her torso with timid energy, idling around her back.
They were hemmed in, as they'd have it, knees flush against each other, bodies swathed in the quaint sleep sack not unlike a cocoon; Riya felt compromised, but the space between Rosa's arms was oddly not the worst place to be in. The latter tilts her chin up just enough to catch Riya's eye. "You're very cold."
"Warm me up, then." Riya quips, not entirely sure what had compelled her to say that. "Is this really okay?"
"Do you snore?"
"Don't think so." Her pulse stuttered at the implication to sleep the night away like burrowing animals, bundled up together.
Rosa angled her head back down to rest it beneath Riya's chin. When she heaved a yawn, Riya felt it against her neck. "Then it's fine."
She doesn't argue, feeling warm all over, not from the touch alone. She's too weary to discern any other reason.
Her back was going to give her trouble in the morning for sleeping upright- the rain makes everything feel slow and languid; suddenly tomorrow's consequences felt so distant. Lightning cracks not too far away, and she doesn't even flinch, but Rosa holds her tighter anyhow. Keeping her eyes open became a losing battle.
"I'd watch your movies." Rosa hummed into her shoulder, after a while. Riya had to strain to hear her, even with their proximity. Her own heartbeat felt louder.
"Mm," That reality is farther from reach than Riya is comfortable with, she thought sourly. She indulges nonetheless. "If you'd let me see your store first. Ribbon cutting day."
Riya feels her smiling against her chest. "If you insist."
Neither of them knew who fell asleep first. One speaks, the other answering until they couldn't anymore. When they wake, the air crisp with fog and morning dew, Riya almost wishes they could stay.
It's only mid-spring, yet Soluna Island bakes under cloudless sunlight, and heavy, damp heat. The day the sky finally bursts with rain, Rosa camped out with the rest of her team waiting for some rain-based challenge that never arrived. When it's well into the afternoon and Emily still doesn't show her face, some chose to sleep until it was over.
She's seated on the staircase just below the roof, watching the downpour come in torrents. Instinct tells her to seek shelter, just two steps behind her, instead of hugging her own arms. A selfish, guilty part of her is louder.
On better days Rosa has unbidden thoughts of her during a challenge, or sees her in the little callous happenings in between. The gentler reminders are harder to evade, the sick aftertaste of them. Her mind has been working against her for a while; It conjures up the figure of Riya beside her, holding her steady, dizzying her with the scent of perfume and woodsmoke. She doesn't have to think too hard to imagine it- frankly, it came as seamless as any other night.
…It's too cold to be outside. Rosa curls up on the wooden floor, which felt like a leathery sleeping bag if she'd let her mind wander enough (she can't, she doesn't, that territory is dangerous, she knows). Stormshowers echoing, above, below, all around her- just wishing she was somewhere warm.
(Wondering, resentfully, if Riya thinks of her when it rains, too.)
"When you make it big, with all those awards and red carpets and you end up on my TV," Rosa joked, through her half-lucidity. "You ought to remember me."
"Sure I will," Riya said, so easily, so fondly. "I don't think I can ever forget about you."