When the last of the pearly white buttons was unclasped, she snaked her shirt above her head and threw her hands up in a victorious wave, applauding herself with a second round of breathless laughter, her hair wild with static and slime. Ava stumbled over to the pool in a clumsy, makeshift dance, wriggling out of her mud-stained jeans and situating them beside a shrub with her blouse. Clad in her bra and underwear, she glanced briefly over her shoulder at Jade, now sitting on a small mound of earth, his head turned pointedly in the opposite direction, as though there weren’t an almost naked girl just a few feet away. The blonde heaved a grateful sigh and waded into the pool.
“I told you I’d be quick, didn’t I?” She shivered, her body adjusting to the feel and temperature of the water, and hastily submerged her head, scrubbing the mud off her face and neck with a kind of ruthless determination. After a few moments, she surfaced and began washing the length of her arms, surprised by the amount of dirt that floated away. “Thanks. For letting me go first, I mean. You’re too nice to me.”
When she found she was satisfied with her arms and legs, she combed her fingers through her hair, delighted by the silken sensations of the water, the way it sluiced over her shoulders and smelled like moss and fresh rain, the way the liquid appeared to glow green as it reflected the treeline. Ava reached out and grabbed her clothes, giving them a few quick dunks to loosen up the dried mud.
“Priscilla?” she echoed. “That’s just about the prettiest name I ever heard.” She fished her belongings out of the water and reluctantly stepped away from the pool. “Hope the poor kid wasn’t too shaken up. Did you swoop in and rescue him like some kind of superman?”
She drifted absently toward the mound where Jade sat, chewing her lip as she struggled to wring out her cheap blouse, which seemed to have absorbed a tub’s worth of liquid while she wasn’t looking. “Your turn,” she announced to his backside, then paused, silently contemplating the scope of how much her friend could distinguish despite his eyes being trained elsewhere. Ava didn’t understand ordinary vibrations, let alone the vibrations that the fae had graciously tried to elaborate on, but when he had kissed her earlier, he’d hit the bullseye on the first try, no fussing or fumbling, regardless of the muddy ground beneath them. She wouldn’t dream of underestimating her friend, but perhaps her naivete had colored her perception of his abilities, if only a little.
“I won’t peek,” she insisted, shaking her head and rearranging her wet blouse to curtain her torso, “but if you want I can leave, or I can even use my shirt as a blindfold.”