I went to breakfast with Kammy and Regina, a little breathless. I did check first to see if Zeyla was still in the lounge; she wasn't, and since no one had bothered to wake me I assumed she was safe and made it to her room. But yes, as tradition dictated, I walked in my nightgown and sandals alongside my good friend and my new friend to the caf at the next dorm building over.

Weekend meals were always a little special for those there early enough. That day, waffles were available, with real maple syrup, cups of melon chunks, even bacon for those that wanted. The typical oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and cold cereal were there, but nice hot waffles called to me. Regina grabbed some, too, while Kammy stuck with her usual eggs, and the three of us sat down to eat together.

"So, how's everyone's weekend going?" Regina asked.

How was my weekend going? The day before I had spent hours searching for music from a creator I'd heard briefly and accidentally on the phone of another resident, went to the bar for dinner, had a cute guy fall into my lap, rescued the other resident from being roofied, braved that fucking elevator, and got the cute guy to ask me for a date.

I smiled and wiggled a bit in my seat. "I got a date tonight..." I said in a bit of a sing-songy voice.

"Hey, alright!" Kammy said, raising her fist for me to bump.

"Nice! Anyone we know?" Regina asked.

I shook my head. "Don't think so. We, uh, kind of crashed into each other last night, at the bar."

Kammy, mouth full of eggs, made a circular motion with her hand, asking for more information.

"It was kind of an accident, he got shoved into me, and we hit it off really well," I explained. "And, uh... got a date, I guess."

Regina laughed. "Look at you, with a meet-cute!"

"Livin' the dream, right?" Kammy said.

I nodded. "I mean, we'll see. Things went..." I shrugged. "Not quite how I would have liked? We wound up bringing a girl back from the bar—"

"Oooh," Kammy said. "More fun than I thought you'd be up for."

I snorted. "Not like that. Someone put something in her drink, and we helped her get home safe."

Regina gasped. "Oh wow, nice of you."

"Yeah," Kammy said with a grimace. "Course that means there's some asshole on campus drugging girls."

"Thought crossed our minds, too," I said. "Hoping it's just a one-off and we denied some creep his prize and that's the end of it."

"Odds of that?"

I shrugged. "I'm not a statistician."

"Hey, Kammy," Regina said, "we're ruining the buzz! Let's keep focus off the creep and on our friend's date!"

I was about to protest, but Kammy nodded. "Yeah, you're right! More info!"

"Got a pic?"

"Is he cute?'

"It is a 'he', right?"

"What does he study?"

I held up my hands for a break as I swallowed my bit of waffle. "Okay. No pic, yes he's cute, yes he's a he or at least I haven't heard otherwise, biochem grad looking for post-grad programs."

Kammy grinned and clapped my shoulder. "Older guy, huh?"

I had to laugh. "Maybe by a year? I mean, I also didn't exactly check his ID. Maybe he's a young-looking thirty."

We shared a moment of giggles. I decided to change the subject. "How are you adjusting to the weather, Regina?"

She shrugged. "Not too hard to keep warm I guess. Though I prob'ly won't get used to this morning walk shit."

"You know you could get dressed first if you want," Kammy pointed out.

Regina waved her spoon around. "Half the people here are in their nightwear, including you two. I don't really wanna stand out like that."

Kammy smirked. "We stand out here anyway, you 'n' me."

"Not really," I said. "Though I guess it depends on what you mean. There's other Black students around, obviously other girls, other athletes..."

"I meant because we're so fuckin' gorgeous."

"True," a guy passing behind me said. "All of you."

I flushed, Kammy laughed, and Regina raised her hand and caught a high five from the passing student, a tall, surprisingly-well-dressed Asian guy with a blue ribbon in his short hair.

"Still not gonna let you sleep with me, Carmine," Regina said.

"Yeah none of you are really my type," Carmine replied. "Doesn't mean you're not all stunning."

"Uh... nice bow?" I said.

Carmine smiled back at me. "Aw, thank you! Took me a long time to find just the style I wanted, and something that I could fit in my shorter hair. May I?" he asked, waving at the empty chair.

Kammy and I shared a look. I nodded, Kammy said, "Sure."

"Great, thank you." Carmine put his tray of waffles and fruit down on the table before sliding in between me and Regina. "I am in distinguished company."

"Maybe with those two," Kammy said.

"Whoa, whoa, Kamaiyah, what do you mean me?" I asked, raising my hands.

"You just got a guy falling all over you and rescued a drugged girl, you're doin' pretty special right now."

"Oh wow, I am in distinguished company!" Carmine said, "Sounds like you got a story."

"Just a date," I said self-effacingly with a shrug. My phone pinged then to let me know a text message came in.

Regina leaned in. "Gonna check that?"

"Yes," I said with a smile, "once I've gone back to my room."

Carmine looked at me over his small glasses. "You're going to deny these two lovely ladies the privilege of spilling the tea?"

I stood up with a grin. "Yep. And maybe if they're nice to me, I'll fill them in later." I picked up my tray. "Nice meeting you Carmine, I'm sure I'll see you again."

"Was it something I said?" he called after me as I walked away. I heard Kammy and Regina giggling for a moment before their voices were swallowed in the general noise.

I passed a few other girls from the dorm on the short trip back, checking to see if Zeyla was among them. She wasn't. I made my way up to my room, waving to a fellow resident sitting in the lounge, working on her laptop with headphones on. She didn't wave back, probably didn't even notice me there.

There was the fire. Just sitting there. Not burning, at least not on the page. But it was threatening to distract me from the phone in my hand.

The air felt hot in my room. Not warm, the temperature was the same, but uncomfortable, like my skin was cooking.

"This isn't the time," I growled. "Stuff your call where the sun doesn't shine or something. Fuck."

I looked at the laptop still sitting on my desk. It would be easy to get Tempest's song up on it. It didn't have to be that song, she'd written other things.

I threw my nightgown off. That helped, for some reason, and made it worse. It didn't make sense, and I don't think that it had to make sense. My panties came off, too, and I sat naked on the side of my bed. My body shook, but it wasn't from the cold, or the heat. More like my bones itched. I wondered if I was getting sick. Nothing felt right.

I wanted to leave my room, to just dash out of there, naked, whatever, I didn't care, not right then. Streaking used to be a thing on university campuses, right? I thought to myself.

I grabbed my little desk chair with one hand and my phone from my purse with the other, and tapped on the screen.

It was from him. Manu.

Hey there, looking forward to tonight, you like fish?

I couldn't help myself. I took a picture, waist up, freckles in focus, soft smile on my face, and very, very nearly sent it. I did keep it. I looked at the photo. I couldn't believe it. I could see all the flaws I'd always seen, but there was something else there. A fire. A heart. I don't know. Everything lined up right and I looked perfect. Cute. Desirable, even.

I wondered for a moment if this was how Rita had seen me in the showers.

I typed a reply.

Love it. Pick me up at five?

I hesitated, still tempted to send my tits to a man I hadn't even known for twelve hours.

Instead, I just sent the message, and then another:

How did you sleep?

I looked over at the fire. And then I looked at the window; someone at the right angle could probably see me sitting there, naked.

I didn't care. I couldn't care. If one or two people saw me naked in my own window, it was better than a whole group of people seeing me naked in the dorm, and I was not about to put clothes back on. Drawing the blinds never even crossed my mind.

The fire was there. I was practically begging for Manu to text me back, to distract me from the flames, from the heat in my skin. I stood up, started pacing. I flipped the page over, saw the sketch I had made a couple days later, lakeside, clouds, a crescent moon, starlight...
drip and dazzle the air and clean the reflection of calmed waves trail across the sky in long slow twinkle tails of stories told forever ago and yesterday and all spaces between
cold light long gone and still there in the soul of the water bouncing back to eager eyes longing for
words to describe them
searching the light for light
searching the water to slake the thirst of the spirit without drinking
light inspiring light inspiring light—

The phone blipped, interrupting me from the memory of the poem I had written the week before, that I was almost chanting under my breath as if it was an incantation to cool down my burning body. Water to soothe my heat.

I grabbed the phone again to see his reply.

Five is great, I'll text you when I'm in the loading zone, I slept good how about you?

I kept pacing my room as I typed out reply after reply without sending them. I kept flipping over to the picture of myself looking sexy. Something about it felt wrong, now, all of a sudden. It's not how I wanted Manu to see me.

And yet, it was.

Contradictions. So many fucking contradictions. I couldn't bear them. I wanted to—

I wrote.
I want to dive into the water, deep so deep, deeper and deeper, to find the place where the water comes from
I want to soar to the sun, to the core of the fusion furnace, to watch the helium boil
I want to stare into the light until I'm blind to anything other than the texture of perfect brilliant darkness so I can paint it perfectly
I want to sleep so deep that dreams look to me to find rest, to seek their own reality, their own butterflies turning into philosophers in the chrysalis of my nightly cocoon

I looked at my desk.

I didn't recall turning the page back to the fire.

But I must have. I was the only explanation.

There was a blip from my phone.

That's beautiful.

Shit. Shit.

I had sent that poem to Manu.

I panicked. I checked the message.

I breathed a sigh of relief. My nude photo was still safe on my phone, and nowhere else.

Another blip.

Is that how you write?

When I didn't answer right away, another message arrived.

I guess that means that you didn't sleep well? :D

Finally I came out of my paralysis.

No, I slept great! Hauling around a human is a great way to burn off the extra nervous energy

I turned the page back to the lake image.

"Light inspiring light inspiring light," I whispered. "Light inspiring light inspiring light."

Blip, said my phone.

Yeah you hear how she is?

"Light inspiring light inspiring light."

Haven't heard anything which is probably good yeah? I sent back.

"Light inspiring light inspiring light."

That wasn't the end of the poem. It couldn't be the end of the poem. It wasn't where I had stopped writing the poem about the starlight. But that's what was stuck in my heart right then.

Blip.

Hey I just thought it's Saturday, are you busy?

I took a deep breath. Light inspiring light inspiring light.

Nope come get me any time I would love to go for lunch

I looked at the book.

Fire stared back at me.

Anger flared. "Now isn't the time!" I shouted, bashing my hand stupidly on the desk and howling in pain. "God damn it!"

I held my right hand in my left, tears not from the pain pooling in my eyes.

I fell to my knees, then flopped onto my back on the hard floor, gripping my hand close, breathing hard.

I twitched a little on the ground, almost itchy with the non-heat that was burning.

We are the water to slake the thirst of the spirit, the chorus said in my mind. And then, We cannot call one such as you.

I reached up to the phone. I pulled it down onto my stomach. I lifted it up, and started typing.
If saving water is forever out of reach
If always then I have to burn
If all the fire within could teach my soul to teach
If only then I drown to learn

I double-checked to make sure that was in my private notes, then checked for messages.

Twenty minutes?

I smiled up at the ceiling. Impishly, I took another photo, this one slightly more tasteful, low enough to make it clear that I didn't have a top on, but not so low that it wouldn't be g-rated—well, pg-rated—and attached that to my reply:

Give me forty, I have to clean up.

And I felt a whole wave of relief. Not complete, by any means, but at least some.

I didn't wait for an answer. I tossed my phone on the bed, threw my nightgown back on, ignored how much the fabric itched against my skin, grabbed my towel, and headed for the showers.

Kammy and Regina were sitting in the lounge by then, still in their sleepwear. Kammy looked up at me.

"Everything okay? I heard you shouting."

"Hm?" I said. A throbbing ache in my hand reminded me of what had happened only a couple minutes before. "Oh! yes, just, uh, fighting writer's block."

Regina raised her eyebrows. "Didn't think fighting that would be so literal."

I shrugged, unsure of what to say.

"Early shower?" Kammy asked.

I looked down. Right, my towel. "Yeah, I'm, uh, going out."

"Dinner?"

"Uh, no, in about half an hour."

Regina grinned. "Long time to be out with someone."

I shrugged again, aware that I was starting to blush. "Yeah, well, I have to get ready."

"We won't wait up."

I flipped my friends off good-naturedly as I walked away, and the two of them laughed.

I was a little surprised when I walked into the shower and could hear someone already in there. What's more, whoever was in the shower wasn't the only person there; Rita was sitting on the bench again, nude except for a towel around her hair, obviously having just finished her own shower.

"We have to quit meeting like this," she said with a grin.

I grinned back, a bit nervously.

The fire curled under my nightgown again, matched by a small fire in Rita's eyes. It wasn't the flame that had brought me up short a couple weeks before, but more comforting, comfortable. Illuminating.

"This... isn't going easily for you, is it," she said.

I swallowed. "I don't know what you're—"

She shook her head. "You do, and you know I do, too."

I put a hand to my head. "What's going on, exactly?"

She took a deep breath and stood up. Her body language suggested that she was as nervous as I was. And when I saw the look in her eyes, I could see that she didn't look at me the same way I had looked at my photo. I wasn't desirable to her, and I had no need to be concerned about... whatever I had been concerned about.

A part of me was momentarily offended, but I shut that down quickly. I didn't care if Rita was attracted to me. I liked men. I liked dick. So whether or not this queer kinky polyamorous seer was attracted to me didn't matter. Plus I knew she was a good person, and I genuinely enjoyed the conversations we'd had over the last school year.

Still, the question floated to my mind. "What makes you a seer?"

She didn't answer, still seeming nervous. Instead, she clenched her fingers into fists. "I can't tell you everything. God, I can't tell you anything. It's so fucking obnoxious. I can't... I can't bring you to where I want to. Not..." She shook her head. "Even now, I have to be so careful about what I say, because if you ever feel like I've influenced your choices, that resentment can destroy a person."

"Whatever this is," I said slowly, trying to be sympathetic, "it's not going easily for you, either, right?"

She let out a bitter laugh. "Not even a little." She grabbed a fluffy bathrobe from a hook.

"Hey, you, uh..."

Rita paused. "Yeah?"

"You didn't come here to talk to me, right?"

She laughed. "I was up late talking with Emi before I got to bed. I just got up! I came here to have a shower, because the third-floor showers were full. And I did. Now I'm nice and clean, and ready for my day."

I paused. "So you do sleep?"

"Yeah, most of the time. There's only so much time I can spend wandering, you know? I have classes."

And like a whirlwind, she was out the door, at the same time the shower shut off.

I stripped down and wrapped in my towel, and the door to the stall opened. A woman dressed pretty much as I was—that is, in a towel and nothing else—with short green hair. Zeyla.

Are these the only people in this dorm? I asked myself facetiously. But it made sense that Zeyla might be showering late, it probably took her a while to shake off whatever she'd been given, and she might have gone to security or medical, or both, that morning.

"Hey," she said. "Oh yeah, you're the one who got stuck listening to Tempest with me."

"Right," I said, moving towards the stall beside hers. "That's me."

"I think... I don't remember last night very well, and maybe it's just because you were the last person I saw before I headed out, but you were there, right?"

I hesitated. "There?"

"At the bar. I think you helped me home."

I nodded. "Yeah, I did."

Zeyla smiled. The expression didn't look fully comfortable on her face. "Thanks."

"Hey, it's just what I'd hope anyone'd do for me, y'know?" I flushed, ducking into the stall, but her hand kept the door from closing.

"Who was the guy that I remember with you? A friend?"

I didn't know the etiquette for telling someone to leave my shower stall, and I figured the best bet was just to answer quickly. "I just met him that night. We're going out on a date shortly."

"Oh." Zeyla smiled again. "Guess I kind of ruined your outing, yeah?"

I didn't know how to answer.

She kept talking after a moment. "Sorry 'bout that. And thanks. And thank him for me, too."

"Yeah, I will, for sure."

She then turned away and I assume went to get dressed. I let my towel drop and locked the shower stall door before turning on the water.

I started with cool, not cold. I didn't want cold, but I wanted to cool off a bit. That seemed, finally, finally, to wash the emotional heat off me, and allowed me to turn up the physical heat. Then I could get cleaned up, and then focus on how I wanted to present myself for my first date.

Fiery poetry would wait, at least for a day.