"Wilting water."

It really is much like the salt in the ocean. When oil and grease and disease cry on water, the salt just clings onto it forever and washes it away. When old friends grow, the salt in you will stay known to them, the salt in them is nothing different either. The oldest salt, though, sometimes gets the purest qualities out of you like it always has.

A rig must have exploded today, then. GCF was crowded with about more than a hundred people there, tightly compact and compressed to the point that the naturally chilly room turned into a near lava flow. My heart could have exploded from my calcium-induced bones, torn into rips of eggshells, myocardium, meat and all. After the taxi pulled us up, I had to walk by myself as my mom took my brother to Greenhills.

My diaphragm was probably scrambling inside me as I rushed up the stairs, aimlessly wondering where the heck everybody was. I almost tripped off my shoelaces, until them plastic aglets stood firm enough to carry me to Madee, Sam, and Sab. They started to notice my hair turned so inexplicably different, so did my voice--they concluded my hair to be shorter, and my voice to be deeper. Great.

Then I caught up with Jeho, Justin, and Mint. Mint had the same hair, only longer and with better bangs than I, Justin was the same, and Jeho got taller and had braces. I'd have to say it was surprising to see Mark, who lost his glasses and got even taller than me, as he used to be just below my shoulders before. I followed them to the upstairs, where Erk and Matt were seated in cinematic-esque seats. I was once again outraged by the fact that I'm the only girl in Cigauan whose voice deepened and whose hair shortened.

Before the Closing Rites took place, they unscrupulously stole my bag, rummaging through my stuff, like my unused cellphone, my drawings and comics, almost my wallet (which I luckily snatched), and my Joker and Batman toys which they made gay and turned their heads a full 360-degrees. This does not give posthumous credit to Heath Ledger. SHAME.

As Erk and I took animation photos with my camera, the other people sitting with us, unaware of what we were doing stirred up a furl of laughter in our row. We were jittering guppies trapped in 9-centimeter nets, laughing so hard that we didn't pay much attention to the award recognitions until a play in the form of a comedic, childish tellanovella began uncoiling in front of us. Oh when cheesy renditions of Filipino classics rain.

And just two hours after it all seemed so good, my dad has to ruffle my hair and take me home, as he got sick and my brother and mom were asleep in the car. It was a short two hours, but a memorable two hours. Couldn't be happier in that partition of the day. My brother bought a Punisher/Jigsaw collectible package. It came along with a Bishop (of the X-Men) comic, which he willingly gave to me. Rock on, younger bro.

When I came home, I just drew comics with my brother again, made new plots, new ideas, new comics, new stuff. I have this idea about two siblings named Harry and Jude, who became orphans and live in a treehouse, and for all their life they've been making comics until they look out for people who would want to adopt them. One loving couple takes them in, but they aren't quite so happy with their new parents. They one day go to the circus and are treated with the care and love any normal family would give and even more. Through their comics, they also transform their new friends into superheroes based on their comics. Would their current adopted parents approve?

It all depends on The Parody Boys.

Before this nutshell's roasted, in the end, we all got to clean up the earth in such a minimalistic, yet joyful way. The water may evaporate and rain, but that's the sun's job. We're just here to filter out the salt, and bulldozer the dirt where it belongs--in No Man's Land.

...but not without any ice cream to celebrate.