suit of cups | i

"You have pretty hair."

It was the first kind thing Basil Hawkins heard from another child since he and his mother moved to her home village in the North Blue. At ten years old, he was quite used to unsolicited commentary about his appearance, so he braced himself to fight, though he didn't hear the snickering of a bully's audience. Instead, he looked up to see you.

Though you stood while he sat, he could tell you were a few inches shorter than him and likely younger. You didn't look at his face or his brow, but truly, honestly, at the ends of his hair hanging past his chin.

"Go away."

Hawkins recalled the straw effigies he'd sprouted from his hands as he made to leave, but to his annoyance, you followed.

"I said go away."

"I'm going home."

"You're lying." He lengthened his steps the little bit his height allowed him.

"Am not. I live in the stone house with the outside kitchen."

That was generous. Smoke and steam wafted downwind to the wooded area where he lived smelling like fish and starches, from what had to be a pot over a fire pit at most. He liked being outside during this island's brief warm season, so he didn't relish when the air smelled like burnt food.

You shuffled quickly to catch up to him. "I heard there was a boy with powers. Is it you?"

"No."

"You're lying. I saw you grow pancit from nothing."

"Pancit?" he repeated.

"Noodles."

Hawkins looked at you sidelong as he slowed his pace slightly. If he was a misfit for the eyebrows he was told were his father's contribution, you stood apart from the villagers with your pitch-black waves while everyone else resembled his mother in coloring, straight, fair hair and fairer skin.

He stopped and held up his palm, conjuring a small scarecrow. You watched in fascination, and bizarrely sniffed the air before frowning.

"That's not pancit."

Other children would call him a monster or a witch and run away, shrieking, but you were unimpressed.

"No, it isn't."

You poked the scarecrow lightly with your finger, and he felt the foreign heat of your hand near his. Was it already that cold outside, or were you that warm? Then you grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.

"Come on!"

You lived so close by but a world apart from him, with three generations of family who seemed to be mostly fishermen and homemakers. You barely introduced him to the old woman bent over a wok in the small, fenced yard with more gravel than grass before you pointed at the colorful woven mat under her feet.

"Lola, is that straw?"

She hummed affirmatively, and you grinned at him, though he wasn't sure what reaction you were looking for, then or throughout that evening of boisterous adults speaking half a different language while you piled his plate high with food, fragrant with garlic and vinegar and peppercorn. He'd always been left to his own devices, free to come and go as he pleased with his mother's unpredictable hours, so he was unsettled to the very end when you tried your best to walk him home. In practice, you lagged behind him, hobbling with a bundle of leftovers your mother foisted on you that had to be a third your size until Hawkins held out his hand with a put-upon sigh.

"Give it to me."

"No. You're a guest."

"We're going to my house."

"Just for a second!"

"And we're never getting there at the speed you're walking."

You grumbled as he pried it from your fingers, hooking the veritable tower of containers into his own. It really was one of the biggest meals he'd had in recent memory. Neighbors had been curious about the two of them before and made token offers to look after him out of pity for his young, hardworking mother, but that usually ended once they realized how off-putting and somber he was besides his Devil Fruit.

Hawkins was sure your own interest would wane soon and your family was surely gossiping about him at this moment, but he'd at least savor the dishes you brought along before his familiar solitude. You'd probably turn tail now that he relieved you of your burden. You'd probably pretend not to know him once other children got wind of his powers, and he'd resent you for it more than he did anyone else so far, because there was something sadder than usual about a little kid like you discarding him.

But you kept coming back.

The next day, Hawkins stepped out of his house to find you sitting on the fence post with a book that looked much too mature for either of you. Even he scarcely read anything but the comics in the World Economic Journal, so he doubted you were far beyond picture books yourself. You didn't acknowledge him as he approached, but the tension was evident in your neck, like you were waiting for him to speak first. He took advantage of his height and long arms to pluck it from your grasp.

"Hey!"

"On the Heavenly Spheres," Hawkins read out loud. The page you were on had diagrams, not so much illustrations, and he kept his thumb there as he flipped through to see more of the same. "Did you steal this?"

"Borrowed," you corrected. You'd hopped down from the fence to try and take it back, swiping futilely at his shoulders before he handed it back to you.

"From who?" Your family didn't seem terribly bookish.

"This neighbor lady," you said with a sniff. "She smells weird but she has a lot of stuff like this. See?" You held it out, pantomiming for him to take a whiff, and he recoiled.

"No, thank you."

But he didn't mind laying in the grass a few feet away from you with his backlog of Sora, Warrior of the Sea clippings while you hummed and doodled on your left arm in fountain pen, the odd symbols he'd glimpsed in your book, until the sun rose past noon and you asked him for soap in a panic before you both were due for lunch at your house. He could tell your mother restrained herself from striking you for the faint smear of ink left behind, and the next day he gave you the rest of the newspaper to write in the margins of instead.

His own mother was surprised to see you the evening after that, and looked between the two of you curiously as you chatted to her about the trove of food their family of two had been reheating diligently for days.

"I'm glad you're making friends, Hawkins," she said softly when he returned from walking you home.

"We're not friends," Hawkins said. "I'm babysitting."

His mother smiled at that, a little sadly, and he winced. He'd never had one, but understood the concept. It'd always been the two of them.

Summer turned to fall. You tried to teach him go, which the elders of your family played, though he wasn't convinced you understood it, either, with how a pruned man whose exact relation to you was inconclusive scowled every time you clacked a stone down loudly. Hawkins finally unearthed the pack of cards misplaced in their move here, and you played what few games the pair of you could think of for two players, mostly slapjack that left both of you smarting and teary-eyed, except for the times he covered his hand with a thick layer of straw. He made you truly cry, once, and he'd never felt worse. His mother came home and laughed at the scene the two of you made, and you betrayed him by ignoring him that evening to learn knitting at her side.

"We've been here for ever," you said, "but everyone still thinks they're back home, so no one knows how to dress for winter."

Back home, someplace you'd never been but you and now Hawkins heard plenty about. A summer island in the Grand Line. All the straw baskets and mats in your home was waste from white rice, unlike the barley and wheat around here. Hawkins wondered if it was warmer than a Northern summer, or warm like the life you invited him to without hesitation, or warm like your hands.