Cascadia

Who: Dylan and Skye
When: Afternoon
Where: Outside a random take-away store

Dylan had spent most of his Saturday lounging hopelessly around his father's house trying to recover from the night before. The bonfire had been fun but he had overestimated his drinking skills. The walk home with Nate had sobered him up a little but in the morning he had woken up in his bed and with one hell of a hangover anyway. He had tried to fake that he was okay in case it was against the rules or Frank got mad at his two sons but mostly he stayed on the couch and watched whatever he could find on the TV.

This got boring around 3pm and finally, Dylan dragged himself up from the chair. He showered, dressed and after leaving a note to say he was out, left the house. He hadn't even been in town for three days so didn't know where he was headed but he hoped he could find something interesting. A skatepark, maybe, or at least a mall. He didn't have a skateboard anymore, the one he did have was locked away in his aunt's shed just like the rest of his old life but maybe he could convince a kid to lend him a try until he had the courage to ask Dad to buy him a new one. After almost an hour of walking, he came across a couple of small shops. They weren't much, a small chicken take-away and a liquor store beside it but there were benches out the front that he sat down on. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. It was going to get dark soon and he should probably find his way back home but he didn't want to just yet. It felt weird to be in a new town when he had spent his whole life in the one place and even weirder to be with his father. He gave a small sigh and opened his eyes again in time to spot a blonde girl around his age. He didn't know her but he raised his hand in a lazy wave anyway, it couldn't hurt to say hi to the locals.

Skye, in her wandering way, waved back at Dylan. And then meandered over to him. She was bored, and she really didn't have a problem talking with perfect strangers. If they were offering her candy from the back of a windowless van, maybe, but Skye really didn't see the harm in chatting up folks. "Hi. Did you wave me over?"

The last thing Dylan expected was for the girl to actually come and talk to him. That never happened back home but then again, he never had the courage to wave at perfect strangers either. The bay area felt a lot different to this smaller, more rural town. For a moment, he wondered if she was going to mug him but she didn't look very dangerous and he couldn't remember ever hearing of a female robber anyway. Besides, if she was dangerous then he could just go into the shop for help or something. It didn't seem too bad so he smiled up at her and shrugged. "I don't know, yeah, I guess. I'm Dylan, do you go to the school around here?"

"Yeah, I go to the high school." Skye didn't look old enough to be going to it; she looked younger then she was. Maybe in a couple decades she'd be thankful for it, but as it was she wasn't all that interested. Skye would've fit in much better in a middle school. She pulled the elastic out of her hair and started to pull her hair back again, getting the strands that were escaping back into the ponytail she had going on. "You?"

"I will," Dylan said. He had already been for the last day of the week but he thought of that more as a chance to get to know his new school instead of actually go to class. Although he had already made one friend and he counted that as a win for the week, the first in a long time. He tipped his head back to look up at her from where he sat and offered her a small smile. "I just moved in with my dad and brother so I'm kind of new. Uh, I'm Dylan, by the way. Dylan Alden."

Skye grinned. "I just moved here like, three weeks ago. From up north, and a lot of west. I'm Skye Craddock. And it's very much a pleasure to meet you, Dylan Alden." Skye held out her hand to shake his. "When did you move here? A couple days ago or so?" She figured that would be the case, considering she was pretty sure she hadn't seen him before, and Skye was getting pretty good at least at spotting people in school, even if she didn't know their names.

"Um, Wednesday, I think?" Dylan scrunched up his nose and glanced down at the watch on his wrist but it was more a move out of habit than to actually get his bearings. The days seemed to go so slowly when he have anything to do and didn't know anybody well enough to go kill time with. Sure, there was Nate and he had met Leija on Friday but he didn't know either of them well enough to cling to until he made more friends. He thought it over though and found that he was right. He had arrived on Wednesday night, Thursday had been boring, Friday had been school and Saturday was... Well, now. He patted the seat beside himself. "Um, yeah, Wednesday. Moved in with my dad and his son, Nate. Anyway, nice to meet you too, Skye Craddock. I'm glad to see I'm not the only new one around, where's 'up north and a lot of west'?"

"Northern Alberta." Skye grinned faintly, and sat down beside him. "Enough of Northern Alberta to be not near anything besides a lot of trees and lakes and farms, honestly." She thought for a moment. "And, y'know. Bears. Things like that. Can I ask where you're from?"

Dylan's forehead formed a thin line between his eyebrows as he tried to remember where Northern Alberta was. He wasn't bad at geography but it still took a moment for him to remember. "Canada, right? You're Canadian! I'm from California, grew up in Berkeley my whole life. Well, until the last week anyway. It's got good music." He shrugged. She would probably want to know why, they always did, but he wasn't ready to talk about that yet so he continued quickly. "So what are you doing, just wandering the town or am I keeping you from some secret mission or something?"

"I'm totally a spy." Skye grinned, tucking a few random wisps of blond hair behind her ear. "Except my really awesome car is in the shop, and I'm not allowed to take any of the cool toys from the workshop unless I have my parents' signed consent, you know how it is. Insurance, all that stuff. But you're right. I'm very much Canadian. Born and raised. I take it, if you grew up in California, you're American. So I'm glad we have that all cleared up there."

"Who do you spy on?" Dylan grinned a little and tipped his head back, watching the sky. He wondered how soon it would be until the sun set and just which way he was supposed to go to find his way home or maybe he could call home instead but whichever he decided, he didn't want to leave just yet. He looked back at Skye and laughed softly. "Yeah, I'm American but sometimes I think California should just break off and form its own country then we could unite with your country and wage war on Bush. You in, Agent 99?"

"I'm not sure who I spy on. Once I get my orders, I'm sure I'll know." Skye grinned slightly. "Did you ever hear about the Cascadia proposal? British Columbia, Alberta, and a bunch of your western states - Oregon and Washington for sure, I think - wanted to break off and form a new country called Cascadia. It was in response to Quebec wanting to break off to form another country, I think." She didn't actually know much about it; she kind of skimmed that part of the book back home, and Skye seriously doubted they were going to be studying much Canadian history in class. But that's what she thought she'd read, anyway. "Something like that, anyway."

Dylan's eyes went a little wider as he listened to Skye but then he laughed and shook his head. "Serious? Oh wow, Cascadia, that's kind of cool." He pushed his hair from his eyes and held his hand against the back of his head for a moment. The name was cool but somehow, he doubted it would work like those people imagined it would. A lot of things sounded good in principal that never worked in real life. "How long ago was that? I bet we could make our own and call it... I don't know, Canadornia or Calianda or something. Something cool anyway, you should spy around and find other supporters for our cult, country, thing. After all, you've been here longer. Only ones who'd join if I asked would be Leija and my brother and only because I'd make him."

"Um, I know they had a politcal party thing going on a couple years ago." Skye thought for a moment, but she couldn't remember anything else. "We could look it up on the net at school, maybe? I really don't know much more. And I haven't been here that much longer."

"Yeah, that'd be cool." Dylan never liked to look things up on his own but he was curious about this new land now and even if he forgot to look it up when he got a chance, it sounded like this girl was hinting at hanging out with him. Having just moved to the area, he wasn't going to turn something like that down! He grinned in her direction and shrugged. "Or hey, make our own and this one won't fail. I can be the president and you can be my bodyguard or something, head of the D-I-A? I don't know, something with a cool spy title anyway."

"Tell you what, I'll be in charge of either finances or farming." Skye laughed. "I'm much better at both. I'm a lousy spy. I mean, I announced it to you and all. That's not what a spy should be doing." She sighed over-dramatically and put her hand to her forehead. "Man, I should totally fired from my spy company for this. What if you're one of the commies from Russia? It'd be horrible. There would vaguely annoyed persons in the Kremlin and all sorts of weird things. It's for the best that I don't work there now."

"Farming like with cows and stuff?" Dylan was a city boy all the way through, as if that wasn't already obvious from the way he scrunched up his nose at the thought of large, smelly cows and whatever other animals farms had. He had grown up in the Bay area and hardly ever left it until he moved across the country to a town that felt smaller than his school. (It wasn't, of course, but it still felt ridiculously tiny compared to Berkeley.) He thought about it for a moment longer then shook his head and gently bumped his shoulder against hers. "Yeah, you kind of suck as a spy. Unless, you know, that's your trick. Like you tell me you're a spy and I think, 'Oh yeah, she's kidding' but then you, like, I don't know, you pick pocket me or something when I let my guard down." He laughed again but very carefully snuck one hand down to his pant's pocket to make sure his wallet and phone were still there. Luckily, they were. "Like that Captain Sparrow line or whatever it was, I think it was from the first Pirates movie."

"Yup. In spite of me not wearing my hat, I'm a total cow girl. Dairy, if you want to get real specific. The black and white cows." She answered his first question, with a grin at the shoulder bump. "But I do have a hat, and I do suck as a spy. And, I bet this is going to sound real weird here, I have no idea who you're talking about when you say Captain Sparrow." Skye didn't check her wallet, for the simple reason that she hadn't brought it with her on her walk. Just her keys and phone, and that'd worked out well because this way she wasn't spending money left, right, and center.

"Cows come in other colours?" Dylan asked but then he laughed and shook the hair out of his eyes again. He really did need a haircut. When Skye said she didn't know what the movie was, he pretended to gasp and cover a hand across his mouth. "What? Oh man, you need to go hire it or something. It's this pirate movie about cursed gold, Mayan or Aztec or something. They have sequels too but the second one isn't as good and the third one came out in May but I haven't seen it yet. What sort of movies do you normally watch?"

Skye shrugged, amused. "I usually watch what was in the house, or we mooched off the neighbors. I come from a town of like, less than eighty people. There wasn't a place to rent videos or whatever. And yes, cows come in other colors. There's white cattle, black cattle, brown cattle, tan cattle, red cattle, and all sorts of colors in between cattle. Then you got the splotchy ones. But the black and white ones are the best for milking - they're called Holsteins." She grinned, knowing that sounded completely insane coming from someone who looked younger than she was, and (thanks to Chrissy) nothing like a cowgirl. "And that's what we had."

"That's a lot of types of cows. I mean, never seen one up close and all I know about them is they say 'moo' and have, uh, otters, utters? No, udders, I think that's what they're called anyway." Dylan held his hands up to his chest as if he was cupping imaginary breasts and tried to think of what else he could call them but when he realised what he was doing, he quickly dropped his hands down by his sides and his cheeks flushed a bright pink. Wow, that probably wasn't the best way to kick-off a friendship. He gave an embarrassed chuckle, flicked his hair out of his eyes and checked his watch. He was surprised by how late it had become, he hadn't noticed. "So, uh, do you mind if I cut this short? Please don't think I'm running out but my dad might worry if I'm not home before dinner. Maybe anyway, I'm not too sure but I'm not willing to test it either, you know?" He stood up and stretched his arms above his head until one of his shoulders popped loudly. "But we'll do this again, like at school or something, yeah? I'm a junior, what about you?"

"I'm a junior too." Skye grinned. "But please, I don't want you to get in trouble." Skye stood up too and offered her hand to shake. "It was a pleasure in meeting and talking with you, Dylan. And you were right on the third try - it's udders."

"Maybe we'll be in the same classes then or we'll at least see each other around. I don't really know anyone yet so I'll probably be that loser sitting alone in the corner." Dylan knew that wasn't true at all and eve if he didn't manage to make many friends, his older brother would let him sit with his group, even if maybe it was at the far end of the table. He grinned at the thought and shook Skye's hand, the other one clasping warmly over hers before he dropped it and took a couple of steps back, the way he had come. "Nice to meet you too, Agent 99, and don't worry; Your secret identity is safe with me."