Chapter 6: Liquid Bonding
Back in Love Heart’s hotel room, Alex flung himself on one of the beds, staring up at the ceiling. “Man, I haven’t been in one of these hotel rooms since my last birthday,” he said reverently, “I even remember going down that waterslide,” Alex added, pointing to balcony window.
“Waterslide,” Love Heart looked out the balcony window, seeing the large blue tube-like slide that led from a large tower down into a pool, and noticing that some kids were sliding down into the pool, “looks interesting.”
“Yeesh where did you grow up, Love Heart, in a cave?” Alex said, his voice showing his incredulousness and annoyance at possibly having to explain this.
“Actually, yes I did,” Love Heart replied, slightly ticked at this reply.
“You grew up in a cave. And you’re here in this city why?” Alex asked, as thought the very notion was ludicrous.
“It’s a journey I have to take and very long story,” Love Heart said, sitting down.
“Well save it, Love Heart,” Alex said, saying the bear’s name is a tone showing his slight contempt towards his name, which he clearly still considered to be a stupid name despite his appearance, “As long as we’re here I’m going swimming, once I buy some new trunks.”
“Well I’ve got nothing better to do so I’m going to join you,” Love Heart said, “here,” he tossed a card key to Alex so he could get back in on his own.
“Thanks,” was all Alex said before he left.
Love Heart hung back for a minute, speaking to himself, “Great, the first other animal like me that I met and he’s a rude little teenage fox. Ugg this is going to be more pain than its worth isn’t it?” he asked to no one in particular before getting up to go and buy a pair of trunks, something he knew he needed to swim in public but had never owned before because he bathed in a river in the woods until now.
By the time Love Heart got to the gift shop, Alex was just leaving and didn’t even give the green bear a second glance. Love Heart glared at the fox but didn’t have time to save anything before he disappeared into the pool area. Love Heart didn’t think too much on this as he entered the gift shop to buy his first pair of trunks, quickly settling on the first pair he grabbed that fit, he paid for them and left to go for a swim, heading for the place identified as a “changing room” to change into his new trunks.
Love Heart wasn’t able to see Alex when he entered the pool area from the changing room but he guessed that he was up in the waterslide. That suspicion was confirmed when Alex’s shouts were heard coming down the slide and shortly thereafter, he shot out of the bottom of the slide and into the pool. The fox poked his head out of the water, and rubbed the chlorine laced water out of his eyes, “Took you long enough,” he said, half-serious half-joking.
“Right,” Love Heart said, heading for the pool’s edge.
Alex looked at him strangely, “What, aren’t you going to go down the slide?” he asked.
“Why would I, I’ve been down slides before,” Love Heart said not really caring.
Alex snorted, as he climbed out of the water, “Wuss,” he said condescendingly, “and after that fight earlier I thought you had more guts than that.”
“Hey, I saved your life earlier, and I have plenty of guts!” Love Heart retorted, raising his voice.
“Prove it,” Alex said, heading for the stairs that led up to the water slide tower, “Or are you just scared?”
“I’m not scared you…” Love Heart’s decrying fell on deaf ears as Ales began his ascent. Love Heart was about to charge after him when he slipped and fell painfully on his rear, then he noticed the “no running” signs everywhere, ok that made sense. Getting up he followed Alex to the top of the water slide tower.
Because there were so few people around there was no line to go down the slide. Alex was standing there, grinning smugly at Love Heart as he reached the top.
“Finally made it,” the fox said, “Now prove you actually have guts!” he punctuated his last statement by quickly getting on his stomach and sliding down the waterslide as quickly as possible. Spurred on by Alex’s insults, Love Heart got in the slide, sat down and pushed off. The ride was fast and despite how much the fox had been annoying him, Love Heart found the exhilaration of the speed of his sliding calmed his nerves a bit and even more so when he hit the water at the end of his ride.
Love Heart swam away from the bottom of the slide and surfaced breathing and treading water. Alex floated nearby, hanging onto the side of the pool and grinning, “See, that wasn’t so bad now was it?” he asked sarcastically.
“No, it wasn’t, it was kinda fun actually,” Love Heart admitted, swimming over next to the fox.
“I used to come here a lot when I was younger,” Alex said, “I spent a few of my birthdays going up and down that slide all day,” the normally fierce expression on the fox’s face softened and a tear even formed in his eye, trailing down his cheek. He wiped it away then his expression become more rough again, “well now, this is a great way to kill time until supper,” Alex began to swim around on his back. Love Heart dog paddled briefly then began to do the front crawl swim.
The two animals swam around and went down the slide for about another hour before they got tired and went to change back into their normal clothes. As expected, getting fully dry took some time as they were both covered in fur.
“Ugg, this is the only thing I hate about this place,” Alex complained, rubbing his towel over various parts of his body vigorously to get them dry, “it takes forever to get my fur dry.”
“I know what you mean,” Love Heart said, repeating the same actions to dry his own fur off. They didn’t speak in the locker room after that, they finished drying off and re-dressed in the clothes they had worn before going to swim.
“So now what?” Alex asked.
“Supper?” Love Heart offered.
“Sure,” Alex said, not really having anything to complain about.
The two animals went to the restaurant and sat down, Love Heart ordered a burger and fries, Alex ordered chicken wings, dry ribs and fries. Once the food arrived they dove in, eating their food with relish. Love Heart watched Anger Heart eating with his hands rather than utensils and thoroughly enjoying the literal meat and potatoes meal, but didn’t comment on it. It wasn’t Love Heart’s place to criticize poor eating habits of anyone, especially not someone he had only just met and certainly not someone he didn’t really like and was only trying to get along with because he felt he had too, as Alex was the only other animal like himself he’d seen, other than his dad.
Alex, on the other hand, felt no such reluctance, looking at Love Heart’s burger, which had tomatoes and lettuce on it, and said, “Why don’t you try something more interesting?”
“Like what?” Love Heart asked, doing his best to ignore Alex.
“Like these, genius,” Alex said sarcastically, gesturing to his now half empty basket of boneless dry ribs, “This is some of the greatest food on the earth,” he said, before stuffing three of the ribs into his mouth and chewing on them with relish.
“Maybe I’ll try them some other time,” Love Heart said biting into his burger again. Alex just rolled his eyes and kept eating, chewing somewhat loudly. Love Heart was thankful that there was no one else eating in the restaurant at the moment or he would have really been embarrassed.
Once they ate and paid, both for their own meals, they headed back up to Love Heart’s room. Lying on the bed, Alex slipped the television on, hoping to find something decent on, cycling through the channels. Love Heart just watched, never really having watched TV, Sage Heart had never bothered to try and get electricity in their cave and when he was in town, Love Heart had only caught fleeting glances of televisions in some restaurants but owing to noise he had never really been able to watch them.
Alex stopped on some weird animated program about people with yellow skin and glanced at Love Heart’s perplexed expression. “Let me guess,” he said, irritably, “you’ve never seen a television before either.”
“I’ve seen them,” Love Heart retorted, his patience wearing thin with the way Alex treated him, “I just never really watched any shows before.”
“Well then watch this, it’s Sunday night and that means that there’s a bunch of great animated comedies on,” Alex lay back, using the pillows to prop his head up, “enjoy.”
Love Heart said nothing but lay back and watched the cartoons. Eventually Love Heart became too tired to stay up, crawled under the covers and fell asleep. Alex stayed up a little longer but he too was too tired to say up much longer and eventually fell asleep too, actually happy to have met Love Heart. Sure he had a weird name, knew very little about the world of technology and was irritating, but he had stepped in to help him in a fight, something that no one had ever done for him before so he could at least try to get to know him.
The next morning, Love Heart awoke early and decided to take a shower; he had done so a couple times before, but before now had mainly just bathed in the river near his old home. He adjusted the water temperature and stepped in, letting the torrent wash him off before he began to use the shampoo to wash off.
Alex heard the shower turn on and rolled over, trying and mostly failing to stay asleep, “He couldn’t have waited till later?” he muttered angrily to himself, rolling over again and opening his eyes.
Love Heart finished his shower and dried off, again taking longer than normal, before pulling his pants on and re-entering the main hotel room. Alex was sitting up in bed, checking the channels again when Love Heart appeared.
“Good morning,” Love Heart said.
“Yeah, sure, ‘morning,” Alex said, clearly till ticked that he’d been woken up earlier than he wanted to be. Alex shut off the TV and slid out of bed, heading to take a shower himself while Love Heart sat down on the bed and pulled the large book Sage Heart had left him out to read. He had at least a couple hours until check out and he might as well learn some of the basics of magic, just in case he decided to teach it to Alex at a later date. Most of what he read in the first chapters was stuff he’d learned from Sage Heart already, but it didn’t hurt for him to review it again while he had a minute or two.
Alex’s shower was shorter than Love Heart’s as he was more used to showering than the bear was. He dried off thoroughly, hating when his fur was wet all day, and emerged in the hotel room wearing just his underwear before going to get his clothes. He noticed Love Heart reading a rather large book and also, as Love Heart had not put a shirt on yet, the symbol of either differently sized hearts on the bear’s tummy, he’d noticed the symbol while swimming last night too but had thought it was just a strange reflection of the light off the pool water mixed with some chlorine in his eyes.
“What’s that?” Alex asked, as he pulled his own shirt on.
“This, it’s a book my dad left to me,” Love Heart said, closing the book as he had read pretty much everything he already knew.
“Not the book,” Alex said, irritably, “That tattoo thing on your stomach.”
“Oh this,” Love Heart placed his hand over the tummy symbol. In all honesty he rarely thought about the eight hearts of different sizes on his tummy; the symbol was almost always covered by his shirt and no one had really mentioned it before. “Honestly, I’m not sure, my dad said he gave it to me somehow with his own tummy symbol and that’s it really.”
“Well that’s something all right,” Ales said, not really sure what to make of it. Love Heart Bear was an interesting person to be sure.
Once they had both dressed and Love Heart had gathered his things together, they checked out of the hotel and left, standing outside on the sidewalk. In all honesty, Love Heart hadn’t really thought through what he’d do once he met another being like himself not to mention he didn’t know anything to do in this town.
Alex saw Love Heart’s mystified expression and sighed irritably, “Yeah, you have no idea what you’re doing. Follow me,” Alex said, leading Love Heart across the street over to the bench that he knew was where the bust stopped. Love Heart was a bit mystified but when the bus pulled up, Alex gestured for Love Heart to get on. “Just pay $2.50 and we can ride most places in the city,” Alex said, placing a small plastic card form his wallet on a receiver, “drop the money in the slot and grab the transfer paper.”
“Alright,” Love Heart said, placing the coins from his wallet in the clots, and grabbing the slip the machine printed out. Love Heart went to sit with Alex, causing the fox to groan but not say anything.
They sat on the bus, not saying anything for close to an hour before Alex reached up and pulled the rope that caused the “next stop” sign to light up. A minute later the bus stopped on the side of the road.
“Get up, we’re here,” Alex said, to Love Heart. The bear hadn’t been paying attention, his mind had wandered off into a memory. Alex scowled, “Hey, get up!” he shouted. Love Heart snapped out of it and glared at the fox, getting out of his seat.
“OK, I’m up,” Love Heart said. Both animals got off the bus and Alex pointed out their destination.
“There, Wascana Park,” Alex said, “It’s a nice place to hang out, I’d take you to my other favorite place but I don’t want to spend all say showing you the current library of computer games.”
Love Heart was left confused by this statement but didn’t reply and just followed the fox into the park. The park itself was nice, trees, grass, people picnicking, and a lake in the middle of it all. Alex lay back on the grass and stared at the sky and Love Heart sat down next to him. He’d only known Alex for a day and didn’t feel particularly close to him, but he had to keep trying for his dad’s sake.
As if reading his mind, Alex popped a question to Love Heart that he wasn’t expecting, “So, Love Heart, you mentioned you had a father, where is he now?”
Taken aback, Love Heart just sighed sadly, “He’s dead. He was killed a week ago.”
Alex’s expression, which was almost always anger or at the very least passive irritation, softened suddenly and he sat up. “Killed? By who?” the fox asked.
“A man who called himself Dusk Heart, he attacked the town that was near where we lived, turned the people there into monsters. When my dad and I got to town, he was waiting for us and my dad, Sage Heart, fought him to protect me but Dusk Heart ran his through and kicked his over a waterfall.” Love Heart’s eye had teared up considerably and he was holding back his crying with great effort as talking about a tragedy so fresh in his memory was extremely painful for him, “I searched for him, I thought he might still be alive, but he was gone. Then I had to destroy the monsters that Dusk Heart changed the townspeople into, blank beings.” Love Heart reached into his shirt and pulled out the locket that he had found at the top of the waterfall that day, “This is all that I found left by him after he was killed,” he opened the locket to reveal the image from his last birthday of him and Sage Heart.
Alex looked at the image and actually smiled, “So that’s your dad eh, where’s your mom?”
“I didn’t have a mother, Sage Heart Bear wasn’t my birth father, he adopted me when he was originally human,” Love Heart was cut off by Alex.
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa, human?! OK, Love Heart, start from the beginning, tell me your story.”
“If you insist,” Love Heart said, closing the locket and putting it inside his shirt again. Over the next couple hours, Love Heart told Alex his story, starting with Sage Heart’s life as Koran Terada, finding Love Heart, changing into Sage Heart, raising Love Heart, and finally ending right before the battle with Sage Heart. Love Heart sighed and wiped the tears from his eyes and sighed. “That’s my whole story.”
“Hmm,” Alex said. He was impressed with the bear’s background and then sighed, “My grandparents were killed couple months ago by a criminal.”
“Really?” Love Heart asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it,” Alex turned his head away from Love Heart.
“He never talks about his past,” a voice chipped in, “And believe me I don’t think anyone will ever know.”
Alex tensed up, recognizing the voice, “Oh no, not him,” he groaned.
