Imaginary friends are the OG original characters before fan fiction ever became a thing after the internet blew up. The following is a scene in my mind if I ever had the chance to introduce my two favorite imaginary friends together (this is definitely still a work in progress):
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Wary eyes glared at each other from across the room. Ice blue locked on dark brown, both filled with judgement and more than a hint of dislike. It wasn’t about who came first, but about who did the most for their creator. Who held her when she cried as a child versus who destroyed her enemies now when the world became too much. Protectors, they both were, but friends. Did they know friendship outside what was designed in them? Love? Could they understand the dichotomy they represented in the mind of someone who once saw herself as righteous compared to the realist, the grey, the demon who wasn’t really a demon as much as a djinn with too much fire, too much power, and not enough morality to care what she did with it. Both pairs of eyes rolled. She was thinking too much again, they said without words. They didn’t need words. Just smug smirks of understanding. Of acknowledgement. No, they’d not ever be friends. They both thought they knew best, wanted to be the sole protectors and providers. Their creator apologizes, has apologized, for that glitch in their matrix. She hadn’t wanted them to become as she was: a servant, a server, a provider. But broad shoulders shrugged off her useless sentiments, not in anger but acceptance. They were who they were and happy with their places in life. One, a dark knight, a paladin, with a righteous fury that slashed at her creator’s enemies with a broadsword and held evil at bay. Another, the djinn, a creature of fire and nature, a destructive force that brushed off what was considered right or wrong and thought only of what was wanted, who catered to her creator’s every whim because why the fuck not?
“You didn’t even give her an actual name,” El chuckled. She sat slouched in an easy chair in the corner of the room, limbs spread out and head back as she stared at the ceiling. She tired of staring contests, and didn’t feel like glaring anymore at the knight sitting quietly on the sofa to her left.
Chris sighed and rolled her eyes a second time, snarling softly at El’s comment, “She wasn’t exactly of an age for that to matter, Galadriel.”
An angry hiss was El’s only reply. She really did hate her name and I had no regrets because I still hate mine most days.
I shrugged my shoulders and nodded in agreement with Chris, my own face still apologetic even with that understanding, “I could have at least figured out what Chris was short for, I always flip flopped between Christina and Christian. But seriously, calling you either when you’re already a knight is so overkill. I fucked up there.”
Chris waved a hand dismissively, “It’s fine. You were 12, much too young to really see the implications or know how you’d feel about it all in the future. At least you didn’t name me something stupid or,” that smirk came back to Chris’s face, “use my name as a joke.”
I cringed, silently giggling because El’s name will never not be funny, but also recognizing that El would probably always feel that loving exasperation at my childishness. I took a glance at her to see how she would react the Chris’s remark, catching the tail-end of another eye roll on El’s part. At this rate, both of them would have eyes rolling on the floor. I wouldn’t be the one to pester them about it.
“It’s a decent enough name, and fuck you very much for trying to get a rise out of me,” El retorted. She let out a small groan as she did a full-body stretch on the easy chair. How she didn’t topple over, I haven’t a clue because the chair was probably a third of her size. Giant of a djinn. “Honestly, I couldn’t care what you named me, doll. Apparently, neither of us do. How about we talk about something else, yeah?”
Erisel Cruz 