Chapter 1
~*~
“We really need to stop doing that when it’s this hot,” he huffed.
“Agreed,” Gloria panted. The ceiling fan did its best to swirl the air of the room, but it didn’t do anything for the humidity. “I forgot how hot it could get. You’d think, I grew up in Sulani. I would know how hot things could get. But then we could always jump in the water to cool off,”
“Summer is a gift here in Brindelton Bay, but it doesn’t feel like it. Why does it have to be so hot…”
Gloria tilted her chin, a glint of humor in her eye. “It gets hotter in the summer because the planet tilts more towards the sun, making the days longer and adding more sunlight to the exposed surface. The sun is our main source of heat-” she recited and giggled as Seneca shoved her shoulder.
“Really, I thought that you were the main source of heat around here,” he smirked. “You’re certainly hot enough.” He rolled over and caressed her face.
“Thanks, hotstuff, but we’re both incredibly sticky right now, and I don’t feel very sexy.” she smirked, rolling out of his reach and towards the bathroom.
Seneca sighed and plopped his head back into the pillows. “You know,” he said as Gloria closed the door to the bathroom, “Your whole [i]eco friendly[/i] thing is putting a blocker on our relationship. I’m not sure I can get behind it,” he said with a grin, loud enough for her to hear through the door. “I mean, no air conditioning? Is that really the enemy? It’s certainly not my enemy…”
“Air conditioning takes more power, which comes from coal, which is extremely harmful to the planet! So as much as you love cool air- as much as you love me- we can restrain our usage of it.”
Seneca propped himself up on the bed by his elbows. “Can I join you for a shower? It’ll save water…”
~*~
Seneca sat down on the couch with a plop, holding the mail in his hand. Mostly bills and junk mail, but letters that are from people always stand out. A letter from his mother, obvious from the fine cardstock used in the envelope, faced him.
He carefully tore open one side of the envelope, and removed the paper, looking it over.
“Is that from your mother?” Gloria asked as she walked over to her spot on the couch.
“Yeah….” he said as he read the letter. “You how she is. She uses so many words to convey a small message. Ember is driving her crazy with her liberal views, saying that the environment should be a bigger issue in the government than it’s weighed as….”
“I’m kinda surprised that they can get along at all. Your mother doesn’t play well with others. But then again, she’s not the only one making decisions. She was elected to represent the people, she has to try and listen,” Gloria picked up her knitting from her basket, looking to find where she had left off in her pattern.
“I swear, in another life, my mother would have wanted to be a queen with absolute power,” Seneca smirked, setting down the letter and turning on the tv.
“Oh, this show again?” Gloria asked as knives and vegetables flashed across the screen. “I know you like food, but do we have to watch cooking shows all the time? My medical drama is on tonight…”
“But food is the spice of life!-”
“That’s variety, honey,”
“-And Henry was so good at cooking. I want to be as good as he was, maybe better. You’ve had my cooking lately, it’s better than it used to be! I thank these shows, they’re educational.”
“They’re on PBS, that’s why they’re educational,” she said, sighing. It had been nearly two years since Henry had died, leaving Seneca devastated and without his best friend. And his cooking had been better lately.
“Ok, how about this; We’ll watch one episode of this, then we’re watching what I want, then we go to bed.” Gloria compromised.
Seneca stroked his beard in mock consideration. “Very well, I can agree to this.” His face broke from it’s mask of seriousness and his signature smirk emerged.
~*~
The house was nearly beyond their means, but it had belonged to a friend of Seneca’s family before they bought it. It had been in ill repair, dirt everywhere, biffs in the walls and holes in the floor were only a handful of the problems they had experienced, but over the last year and a had worked hard to restore the building.
Most of their furniture was thrifted or bought from the cheap build-it-yourself warehouse store which had surprisingly good meatballs. With a bit of spicing up it was passable as a middle class home, but they both knew that it wasn’t sustainable and they couldn’t live off of savings forever.
It was a fine night, just past 10 at night, and Seneca was reading in the living room, a small lamp illuminating the pages. He’d always loved the way stories could take him to new places, make him see new perspectives, and put him in situations he’d never have to be in in the practical world.
Turning another page, he heard a floorboard squeak. Turning his head, he saw Gloria standing in the doorway. She wore a baggy sweater over her tank top and a pair of old sweatpants with slippers on her feet. “Sen, let’s go outside. The sky is so clear,” she said with a sleepy smile.
“But- but bugs,” he said, motioning with his book. “And you look like you should be sleeping,”
“I’ve tried sleeping, it isn’t working. Come on, come outside with me.” She urged, taking his hand gently in hers, her fingers cooler than his palm. She led him outside, and out into their backyard.
Seneca had seen several cities and states in his time, usually because his mother wanted him to visit wherever she was staying at the time. She moved around a lot as the president, and while he groaned about having to travel, he liked seeing the different places and ways people lived. A few places were quiet, some were loud and crowded, and lots of places had so much light pollution that you couldn’t see the stars properly.
Here in Brindleton Bay you could see the stars clearly. He had a few neighbors, but they lived a walk away, and the town was about two miles away and it wasn’t big enough to make the stars seem less bright. Gloria had grown up in Sulani and still had family there. The stars shone bright in Sulani, and Gloria watched them like a calendar, noting how they changed through the night and seasons.
Laying down in the grass, Gloria looked up at the stars, drawing peace from them. Her mother had once told her that she thought the sky seemed impossibly far away and that she would fall into it if she let go of the ground, but Gloria had never had that problem.
“Have you ever thought about what you’d like to do with your life?” she asked Seneca.
He exhaled, thinking. “More and more, actually. But I don’t know what I want to do. I know that I don’t want to be a public servant like my mother, but I’m not sure otherwise.”
“I think you’d make a good author,” Gloria mused. “You’re always reading, and you tell good stories. You’d be a hit, I’m sure of it.”
“Eh, I don’t know the first think about writing,” Seneca said, doubt on his face. “I could be an editor?”
“Don’t you have to go to college for that?”
“What’s wrong with going to college?” he asked. “Mom went to college.”
“Sometimes I feel like your mom was around before colleges were invented…” Gloria teased. “She’s always talking about ‘back in her day,’”
Seneca rolled his eyes, but an idea was clicking in his head. “I could go to college. How else are we going to pay for this house? We can hardly finance the repairs, we need good jobs,”
“Exactly, we can hardly pay for the repairs, how are we going to pay for you to go to school? That’d have to be one hefty scholarship,”
“Can’t hurt to try, right? And who’s going to deny the president’s son?” He rolled over onto his elbows. But while I’ve got you here on your back…?”
“Aren’t you forward?” she arched an eyebrow.
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