May We Meet Again Solo Finished

07.07.2022
Edinburgh Suburbs

❀
“Though miles may lie between us, we are never far apart,
for friendship doesn’t count miles, it’s measured by the heart.”
❀

Their last meeting as a group of friends before they would all separate to different secondary schools was bittersweet. They all planned to stay in contact – something that Glen knew would be far more difficult for her than the others, given that she wouldn't have a mobile – but this would be the last time for quite a while that all eight of them would be in one place.

Carol, Andrej and Elena would go to the same school but that was still no guarantee they'd end up in the same class; Marjam and Corey's families were moving. While Marjam was only moving to the other end of Edinburgh, Corey was moving to Glasgow. Lou would, like Glenys, be attending a boarding school and Aziz would go to another school than the other three. None of them were looking forward to splitting up. Oh, most of them were still excited about meeting new people at their new schools – Glen certainly was – but their was a certain gloom hanging over all their heads as they met up in Andrej's backyard.

Aside from Glen, Elena and Lou were the most artistic ones, but it had been Aziz actually that had come up with the idea of making sectioned friendship bracelets as a token to remember each other. Marjam had organized the materials – her mother worked next door to a arts&crafts store – and they planned to spend part of today to make them.

They spent the first hour or so just chilling in the yard around a plate of biscuits and just catching up on how things were going, what they expected, looked forward to, dreaded, etc. From what Glenys could hear, Corey was not particularly nervous about the new school but he was nervous about living in another city. Lou seemed both excited and terrified of the 'boarding' part of boarding school; a notion Glen could understand all too well. In her case the excitement outshone the terrifying by far, but Lou would not have learning to actually cast magic as an additional incentive to be excited, so they were leaning a bit more to the terrified side than Glenys.

Elena was low-key panicking about not getting the same class as one or both of the other two, but both Carol and Andrej apparently figured they could easily stay close either way. (Glenys couldn't help but envy them a little.) Aziz and Marjam seemed to be the most even keeled about the future out of the eight of them.

Merlin, Glenys would miss them.

Andrej's dad had offered to occasionally pop outside to take photos of the group, so that they would have a fresh batch of pictures as a memento, too. (The man was a bit of a hobby photographer. Just a bit. He did not take over 100 pictures that day alone. No. Not at all. Glenys was more surprised that Andrej was surprised by the amount of pictures than she was by the amount itself. His dad was a menace with a camera. Andrej's last birthday party had been horrible. Well no, it hadn't been horrible, but trying to eat the cake in between all the pictures his dad had taken, that had been really annoying. Glenys didn't mind photographs normally, but there were limits. Letting them eat the birthday cake in peace after a few obligatory pics was one of them.)

After a while they migrated inside to (re)watch a movie – Encanto – while making the bracelets. Each of them would make a section of the bracelet and then pass it on to the next person to add their section and so on. Glenys wasn't quite sure how well that would work, especially since they did not all want to use the same materials (for example, Aziz had decided he wanted to use thin leather strips, while Glenys naturally wanted to use different coloured threads and Elena planned on including beads,) but Marjam assured them that her sister helped her make a trial one and that once they figured out the how, it would work.

The whole thing turned out quite chaotic and Marjam had to show the rest of them how to start the new section connected to the prior one a couple times, but in the end they somehow managed to create decent bracelets. There had been a short discussion on whether or not the bracelets should have seven sections or eight – representing the respective others or just representing all of them – but in the end they settled on seven. The bracelets were borderline too big already with just the seven. Glenys' sat a bit looser around her wrist than she would've preferred even knotted as close together as possible, but at least it was still tight enough that she would not accidentally loose it, though it was close.

After eating dinner – Andrej's parents had ordered them pizza halfway through the movie – and finishing the bracelets, they played a round or two of Carcassonne (praise the expansions, it was hard to find games that all eight of them could play together) before falling asleep in a blanket fort in the living room.

Breakfast the next morning was sad, since once they returned to their homes, they wouldn't be able to meet up like this again for about a year at least. There might've been some tears.