T - First Place Winner

Usually I'd be posting a story today for Story Day. Buuut because of the contest I ran a month ago, I ended up with three fantastic stories that I needed to share with you guys, and what better Story Day than getting to read the first place story? Especially if it has lucky tea dragons? ;P

Karissa Chmil's take on childhood, separation, and brotherhood is fantastic. She explores the aches of growing up with a deep, thoughtful approach sprinkled with just enough humor to keep the story light. It's gorgeously balanced. Besides that, she uses some great literary techniques (full circle ending, for example) to pack all the right punches.

I can't wait for you to read it. ;D

T by Karissa Chmil

Beni would always lie down first, because he was the tallest. He would wrap a dirty cloth around the nearest brick for a pillow, and then Kaito would flop down with his head on Beni’s stomach and his heels resting on the alley wall. And there they would sleep, looking, for all the dragons, just like a lopsided T. T for talking, which they usually were. T for trouble, which they sometimes were. And T for together, which they knew they would always, always be.

— | —

“I haven’t seen Beni in weeks,” Kaito informed the teapot with a huff. The teapot was silent. Kaito had paused outside the shop window and now had his nose pressed against the glass to share his woes with the teapots inside. Back when Beni was fun, the brothers would sneak into this shop and pretend to pour tea from all the teapots until the elderly, half-blind shopkeeper would chase them out with a croaking voice and a waving cane. But now that Beni was “old” and “mature” and “thirteen”, he was working at a restaurant all day, and somehow teapot escapades felt dull without him. “And I don’t like it,” Kaito told the teapot.

The teapot considered him. It was a short, squat little teapot that still managed a certain air of elegance, streaked with thin red lines that looked like smoke from a distance and a spider web up close.

Kaito brightened. “I should go visit him! That’s a wonderful idea, teapot!”

The teapot accepted this praise with modest silence. Stepping back and taking a moment to admire the smudge his nose had made on the window, Kaito dashed off, barefooted, towards the restaurant.

— | —

Restaurants were Kaito’s new least-favorite thing. He had had a lot of them in his nine years of being alive. Grasshoppers. Umbrellas. Women with voices like sugarcane who always asked him if his mother knew where he was. But as he sat swinging his legs in the tall chair, he decided restaurants were the worst of them all. He couldn’t even see Beni—apparently he was running an errand somewhere, and no one knew when he would be back.

A cough startled him, and he glanced up at a short man with a thin, wavering mustache standing in front of him. His arms were crossed, and his was wearing a scowl that must have taken him years to perfect. “What do you want to order?”

“Order?”

“You do plan on ordering something, I presume?” The words were like lemons and made Kaito’s face twist instinctively. “I’m sure you know that this restaurant was not designed for young boys to take up space in.”

Kaito squirmed. “Can I have tea?” He’d tell Beni that he needed a coin later. At least it would give him a good reason to talk to his brother.

“What kind?”

“Uh. . . the best kind.”

Sniffing and muttering something under his breath, the little man disappeared, and Kaito slumped in his chair, absent-mindedly cracking his knuckles. He perked up when the man brought the tea out. The cup was medium-sized with blue circles around it, a white saucer on top. Grinning and wondering what kind of tea it was, Kaito raised the saucer and yelped. There was no tea in the cup. Instead, there was a tiny dragon, just the size of the cup, curled up inside with his eyes closed, though he didn’t look asleep. He looked cozily warm—almost as if he had just drank an entire cup of tea. When Kaito dropped the saucer on the table with a clatter, the little dragon’s eyes snapped open. Catching sight of Kaito, he squeaked. “I can’t talk.”

Kaito gaped. “Are you sure?”

The dragon blinked. “Not really.”

Glancing side to side, Kaito leaned in closer. “How’d you end up in the cup?”

The dragon pulled himself to his feet in the teacup, puffing out his red chest. “I’m the restaurant’s lucky tea dragon,” he said. “So I’m very important.”

Kaito lit up. “Have you seen Beni? He just started working here.”

“Is he important?”

Kaito hesitated. “He is to me.”

“What does he look like?”

“Taller than me, with black hair and brown eyes, and never wearing shoes.”

“Hmm. . . never seen him.”

Kaito sighed and leaned back in the chair again. “What does a lucky tea dragon do?”

The dragon also sighed, resting his elbows on the edge of the cup and looking up at Kaito. “More than nothing but less than a lot.”

After working this out for a moment or two, Kaito cocked his head. “Do you want to go on an adventure?”

A cunning look slithered into the dragon’s eyes that made Kaito wish Beni was there to explain it to him. But all he said was, “How about a visit to the fountain in the square?”

Kaito shrugged. “Why not?”

— | —

It took Kaito thirty-seven minutes to lose the dragon. They had made it to the square in about half that time, Kaito ducking under elbows and umbrellas, the dragon perched on his shoulder and screeching for Kaito to be careful. But they had both made it, alive and in one piece, to the fountain. Kaito had clambered up on the smooth white stone and stood just close enough to one of the spouts to let the mist dampen his hair. But when he looked around for the dragon, he was gone.

Kaito leapt off the fountain and scanned the crowd, looking for a flash of red. But all he could see were browns and blacks and pinks, and so he plunged back into the swirl of people to try to find him.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled again and again, getting knocked side to side.

One woman in a blue silk dress caught his arm. “Does your mother know you’re out here alone?”

“I’m not alone—at least, I wasn’t—have you seen a little dragon? I think he belongs to a restaurant—”

“A restaurant’s lucky dragon!” the woman exclaimed. “I know they’re interesting, but you can’t expect to find one here—the restaurants guard them far too closely. And you’d best not get mixed up with any dragon thieves, either; the law doesn’t treat them lightly. Now get along with you!”

Kaito stumbled away, backing into the fountain and sinking to the ground, shivering. He hadn’t thought about what would happen if the restaurant found out that he took the dragon. Maybe they would throw him in prison. Or maybe it would be even worse - maybe they would fire Beni, and then Beni would hate him forever and ever and ever. Kaito buried his head in his arms, listening to his own hollow breathing for a moment.

Then he heard another voice—a squeaky one, sounding even squeakier than normal because it was almost about to cry. “Please open the door! Please, I won’t be able to come back for a long time—”

Kaito raised his head and saw the dragon a few feet away, standing at the bottom of the fountain wall, banging on one of the stones. He crawled towards him. “What’s the matter?”

The dragon might have been crying—it was hard to tell when he was already so red. But he hung his head and muttered, “My brother doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh.” Kaito chewed on his lip and started cracking his knuckles again. “You have a brother?”

The dragon nodded. “We used to both be the lucky tea dragons—that’s why the restaurant did so well. But then he started living with the fountain dragons and helping them keep the fountain working, and I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

Kaito swallowed. “I haven’t seen Beni in a long time either. But–but at least the restaurant still has you?”

The dragon looked up at him with a sudden flash in his eyes. “I’m not going back until my brother and I are together again!”

“But what if he doesn’t, ever?”

“Then I won’t go back, ever.” The dragon crossed his arms.

Kaito stared. “But—but then the restaurant won’t do well and it’ll be my fault and Beni will be mad at me and things will never be like they used to be.”

The dragon sniffed, and Kaito couldn’t decide if he was trying to be disdainful or if he was just sad.

Kaito leaned back against the fountain and closed his eyes, trying to think. What he did instead was remember.

— | —

The alleyway was perfect for seeing the stars. It was far enough away from anyone with money that no lights were on at night, and the buildings on either side made silhouettes against the glittering sky—almost like a giant T of gleaming specks.

“Can someone ever touch the stars, Beni?” Kaito asked, a yawn eating up half of his words.

Beni’s voice rumbled in his stomach when he answered. “I bet someone can, somewhere.”

“Do you think we ever can?”

“Maybe.”

They lay there for another few moments, thinking.

“Beni,” Kaito murmured, half-asleep, “what if one of us touched them and the other one didn’t? Wouldn’t we be far apart?”

Beni chuckled—at least that’s what it felt like to Kaito, with his head on his stomach. “Far away and far apart don’t have to be the same thing, I think.”

“Oh,” Kaito said. “What does that mean?”

This time the chuckle was for real. “It means that even if we’re not next to each other, we’re always together.”

Kaito smiled into the warm darkness. “I like that.”

“Me too.”

“Night, Beni.”

“Good night, Kaito.”

— | —

“I think together and next to each other are different things,” Kaito said slowly.

The dragon eyed him suspiciously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that even if your brother’s here and you’re at the restaurant, you still. . . like each other, right? And you—you—”

“Trust each other,” the dragon finished in a murmur.

Kaito nodded. “Yeah. That’s it.”

The dragon sniffed again, and this time Kaito knew that he was just sad. “But I miss him.”

“Yeah,” Kaito said softly. “Me too.”

After another moment of staring at the fountain, the dragon slowly turned towards Kaito. “I’m ready to go back now.”

Kaito gently picked him up and set him on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

— | —

The restaurant looked like a teacup with too much tea that someone was stirring vigorously. Kaito slowed just outside and set the lucky tea dragon on the ground. The dragon took a deep breath, squeaked something to itself, and nodded up at Kaito, who nodded back down at it. “I’ll see my brother sometime, right?”

“That’s what brothers do.”

As Kaito watched the dragon scamper towards the restaurant in a tiny red blur, he caught sight of a thirteen-year-old boy standing near one of the doors. Kaito waved. And Beni waved back.

— | —

That night, as Kaito snuggled down in the alleyway all by himself, he stared up at the sky and knew that Beni would be back soon. Once he was, they would sleep like they used to, even if they were a little bit different now—Beni stretched out straight, since he was the tallest, and Kaito with his head on Beni’s stomach and his feet propped up on the brick wall. And there they would sleep, the two of them, just like a lopsided T. T for talking, which they would do a lot of. T for trusting, which Kaito was trying to be. And T for together, which they knew that, however far apart they found themselves, they would always, always be.

---

AHHHHH ISN'T THAT SO GOOD?!?! 😍 That was the third time I've read it and I still love it. XD Thank you so much for submitting this masterpiece, Karissa! ^_^

Can you relate to Kaito or the dragon? Do you have siblings? Which of the three placing stories (or poem XD) were your favorite? Should I do another contest?

Until next time,

Take courage, pursue Christ, and smile while you still have teeth!! ;P

-Joelle

(P.S. If you want to read more of Karissa's work, you can find out how here! ;))