not Gold

            We once sat on the bench on the abandoned park. She looked troubled, the fiery determination I've seen so often gone. She never smiled unless she was talking to some ghosts or something, but it never disturbed me. Now, though, she looked like she needed someone to talk with.

   'What would you be, were you an element?' I said. She shrugged, eyes on the swings nearby. It creaked interestingly.

   'I don't know, I never paid attention much to Chemistry. I guess I never considered it important enough to compare myself to metals and things I can't see.'

   'Ghosts aren't exactly visible either but I get what you mean.' She glanced at me with a probably amused smile that said, I pity you, and an eyebrow raised, but I didn't pay it any heed.

   'Of course,' she said. We fell into silence after that. I wasn't even sure what or whom she was replying to when she said that.

   It was November and the cold breezes swept past us, but there was a certain spring freshness to it. The small bells  hanging on the unicorn rides run like it was bobbing to some happy tunes. It was rather strange and nice, as if something stuck around to lighten things up. It was like car freshener.

   My thoughts trailed back to my own question. Artemisia was like an unstable element�"not the fast radioactive ones, but the ones that didn't have an even amount of protons. She was someone with a rare personality, passion for things majority of people didn't care about, and even with discouragements from all sorts of people, she kept fighting. A fascinating human.

   'What element would you be?' she said. I shrugged.

   'I don't know either. Hydrogen, maybe.'

   'Hydrogen?'

   'Yeah,' I said, 'Hydrogen's like the building block of the sun, I guess. you know, how it burns Hydrogen to get Helium. It's really common. The fusion might be age, I guess. I still have things to do to be Helium, a better me.'

   'That's an interesting interpretation. What would I be?'

   'That might be hard to say. I'd say you're like Iridium.' She looked at me, eyes reflecting something other than boredom. I wasn't sure whether it was from the element, or why I deducted that she was so.

   'Yeah. It was another platinum, you can say. But Iridium was different than platinum, it couldn't be called platinum. So they named it after Iris, because it was strongly coloured. It was highly corrosion-resistant, one of the rarest element, second densest after osmium, and very hard. I guess it's very much like you.' I grinned.

   'What makes you think so?'

   'You're not easily deterred away,' I said, 'nor is your personality common. You have special eyesight, you don't care about others' opinions, you're very stubborn.' My grin widened at her raised eyebrow. 'Yeah, I'd say it's very fitting.'

    She seemed to relax instead of reacting like what I'd expect. Well, frankly, I didn't know how she would react, but relaxing wasn't in the nonexistent list.

    'I'm glad it wasn't gold or anything useless like that,' she said, staring at the sky. A bird chirped somewhere in our right.

    'What makes you think so?'

    'Family wealth, maybe? People seem to associate money with gold, and since you could get a lot of them by exploiting me, it's natural to assume that I am money.' It was my turn to look incredulous.

    'That sounds so wrong.'

    'If you remind me, it does, somehow.'

    'Well, if this will make you feel better,' I said, leaning back on the rusty bench, 'you're not like gold at all. Sure, you're, expensive, if you don't mind me using that word, but gold is more common compared to Iridium. It's soft, and I really doubt you're that bendable.' A smirk grew on her face, but it was sort of a lazy smirk, half-way a smile or maybe a grin.

    'It did. I don't know why I really dislike gold though. Maybe because people seemed to be obsessed with it, ignoring practically everything in favour of the most expensive metal. A lot of people like it. I don't like that part. And there's this part that to really be useful, it had to be combined. It can't stand by itself.'

    One of the things I learned about her in a short period of a week was that she hated to depend on someone. It was expected, but I didn't know what to say about it. Dependency was inevitable, and I wondered how, for all her keenness, she never seemed to notice that.

    'Well, for one, because gold needs other metals to be more solid, it might raise the usefulness of those other metals,' I said, 'and so even if it needs someone else to help it raise to its full potential, it also brings others with them.'

    She stared back to the sky, where the sun peeked from the thick clouds. The air was chilly, but not too much. It was a nice day, over all. We sat on the bench for an undetermined amount of time, probably around one hour or so. It was nice.

    'I guess so,' she said slowly.

Author's Note

Typed this in an almost hurry (read: rage) so do point out any mistakes or jumbled sentences. Critiques welcome. Apologies if too much science.