“…ou do to him?! His fucking ear is still bleeding! What- Are you kidding me?! No, listen, we didn’t agree to…”
The sound was warbled, fading in and out, a comet of molten meaning on an erratic orbit around his mind. Sickly-warm light swayed in the blur outside his body’s retinas, alternating softly with every steely thump running through the world.
A thick, shifting membrane seemed to had formed inside that gap, separating him from himself. A dimensionless facsimile of an interrogation room, rebuilt in a conceptual void.
“…come up with this?! No, don’t you go laughing it off you- No- FUCK YOU!”
A dull clatter, growing distant. A tremor of anger across the khaki blur on the opposite side of everything, signal morphing into despair. New wave of information too dense to grasp, directed centerward.
“…de, I’m so sorry, they lied to us about the rotation ti…”
Bridges of color, stretching to the sides from the sea’s maw. A grasp on the shell’s shoulders, warm claws pushing on the covers.
“…king you home, okay? You’re gonna be alright, I promise- You’ll be safe, okay? They won’t get- Fuck, did they do anyth…”
The body’s mouth, responding with movements without sense. A wave of cold light, sliding across things. Glistening on the brown somewhere ahead. His shell, feeling wetness on its cheeks.
“How odd,” - he thought.
A shift in the membrane, a twisting motion. A nothing, throwing a glance behind its shoulder. A narrowing viewport. A blank peace.
The ceiling was painted with stripes of yellow light from below, distant car headlamps crawling across the broken barcode every couple of minutes.
He guessed he was, again. He wasn’t sure by what fraction. He had no desire to figure it out. He had no desire for anything else. The signals of his body were still sluggish, distant. So he just was.
The surface under him was warm and reasonably soft, fine texture wrapping his back, legs, stomach, chest. By lack of pressure it could be inferred that his shirt was not there. By extra pressure it could be inferred that his ear was properly bandaged now. By the breathing of fans it could be inferred that Moss was nearby.
Time passed, or it didn’t. Nothing really changed. Pattern of stains above was a cold fact of the universe, eliciting no boredom or excitement. Crusted up blood on the pillow prickled his neck. Moss’ messy body whirred and occasionally beeped. Shadows of poplar leaves fluttered after nanosecond memories of wind.
“Dude, he looks like shit! What the fuck happened to him?” - a kid’s smoke-touched voice, bluntly compassionate.
He decided he was, again. Golden ooze of young day refracted softly through the open window. A breeze on his skin. A chatting of feathery things.
“You really expecting me to answer that?!” - the demon snapped from behind her speakers, - “Fuck me if I’m gonna drag a child into this mess too!”
“A child? Really?”
“You’re fourteen, I’m fourteen billion, I’d say I have the right to-”
“Fourteen billion years old and still can’t tell when a spice merchant’s scamming you. Find some better brags, bitgirl.”
“What-”
The teenager giggled, gleeful, as Moss struggled to find a retaliation, hissing frustrated half-syllables.
He opened his eyes, and started pulling himself upright. The bickering stopped as if choked in half.
“Hey, not so fast brother, you’re gonna pass out again,” - fan of Neph’s thin fingers pushed on his shoulders, pinning him to the sheets that smelled faintly of sweat and spices. He didn’t resist, - “Diver is out getting stuff to fix you up, they’ll be back in a bit.”
Idle and empty, he watched the kid’s wrists snake beside his head as she replaced the bloodstained pillowcase. She seemed to be built of little more than skin and sinew, same dirty beige t-shirt hanging loose off her narrow shoulders. Faint smell of cigarettes grazed his nostrils, almost more paper than tobacco.
“’Fuck got you like this?”
“A bullet,” - his lips responded.
“Whose?”
“A government wizard’s,” - his lips responded.
Neph’s boyish face hovered above him, grey eyes squinting down the well.
“Well, you’re lucky then.”
“Yeah,” - his lips responded.
“But even if the winter is long, it surely won’t last forever~”
Fabric on the back of his neck. A muscular arm on his chest, shaking almost imperceptibly. Dull undulating pain, but different somehow.
He was, again.
“But how do we deal with this mess, what line will be mine to write?~”
An ever so slightly crackly speaker, weaving frequencies into a beautifully flawed facsimile of a soft voice. Familiar hardware in a new light.
Moss was singing.
“Keeping the stove warm for those who come by~”
A smell of alcohol. Traces of something dark and viscous on the now mostly empty central table. A heap of hoses, capacitors and neat little wood panels piled up behind it. Fading daylight, growing cold. An orange lampshade.
“And silently writing our quarter reports from between light and shadow~”
Sel was sitting on the bed next to him, tired voice humming a pair-melody. From under his mostly-closed eyelids, Leo could see the bronze skin of their torso, dark-grey fabric of a tight top.
“We move slowly, but we move surely, mutating the world by touch~”
He tried to shuffle silently, stretching out the numbness in his limbs. His throat ignored him, letting out a groan. The song shattered, replaced by tense silence.
He gave up, and pulled himself upright. It was still hard, but this time no one was stopping him. He felt a bit lightheaded, and propped himself against the wall. The rough paper surface was still warm from the star’s faded touch.
“Hey,” - the witch’s face was a mess, red from crying, cheek spotted with what he assumed was his blood. He could now recognize a little yellow hazard bucket of similarly stained surgical tools on the improvised operating table, - “Are you like… Here?”
Leo breathed in, considering.
“I think so.”
He raised his hand to probe at the wound, and Sel’s shot up to stop him.
“Don’t. Stitches are fresh. Don’t touch.”
“Okay,” - he shrugged, feeling the grip relax around his thin wrist but not let go, - “What day is it?”
“October fourth,” - demon chirped. Her voice was back to normal, monotonous, almost dull compared to the birdsong from a minute ago, - “You were here two nights.”
Leo inhaled deeply. His throat was sore, dry surface feeling cracked somehow. Exhaled in a groan.
“I need to get home.”
“No you don’t,” - the diver’s grip tightened to match sternness of a handcuff in an instant, preventing escape.
“My mom’s got bad legs, I didn’t buy food for…”
“Don’t care. She can walk. She can ask a neighbor.”
Malformed words bubbled at the edge of his tongue. He didn’t know how to explain.
“Look, we don’t really talk to our neighbors, it’s really better if I…”
“Leo, please, shut the fuck up,” - tired sounds lobbed out of a noisy side speaker.
“Come on, it’s just some cartilage,” - his last push fizzled out to no effect. Sel was stronger than him even in much better times.
A disruption from the corridor, a clacking of a lock.
“Delivery for Mx Moody and Misfit Manloaf,” - Neph announced, slamming the door behind her. Clattering of boots being taken off, ruffling of packaging. Then, finally, the familiar thin figure hunched under the weight of two huge grocery bags, - “This is, like, half my muscle mass in potatoes alone, you better leave a tip or the courier’s gonna be real sad tonight.”
“What is WRONG with you you little-”
The demon’s annoyed hissing silenced by Sel’s tired handwave. They got up and reached the kitchen counters in four steps - twice as many as he’d seen before. He watched passively the undulating of muscles on their back as they sifted through an overgrowth of shoeboxes at the top shelf, eventually producing a fairly-sized plastic bag filled with… something dry.
“I feel like I’m the only sane person in here,” - exasperation in a digital sigh as the kid pocketed the payment, giggling.
The giggling, in turn, replaced with exaggerated grunts of protest as the witch’s arms locked around Neph’s shoulders, chaining her in a hug.
“Thank you very much, little seagull, you’re a lifesaver lately.”
Neph tried to free herself, or at least pretended she did.
A faint flicker at the edge of his vision, something softly glowing against a parallelogram dose of almost-night sky. He turned his head, with some difficulty, losing track of the scene in the kitchen.
“Huh…”
Moss’ attention snapped to follow his, bird-puppet scuttling across the tables to the windowsill.
“Holy shit, meaties, check this out!”
A distant trailed dot joined by another, and another, and another, each tinted with a spectral line of a burning metal. Sparkling net of hair-thin arcs bridging the falling fragments, a fractal sprouting from a point out of view.
“You fuckers better let me at least move to see the rain,” - he coughed, failing to lift himself to the window to catch up with the witch and the child already glued to the glass.
2SUN’s tears were a quiet storm over the dull hulk of Moscow Stacks, a celestial fireflower of carefully engineered destruction. The dragon itself was a bright dot in low orbit, paper-white shell reflecting sunlight yet to pass.
“I thought the week couldn’t get any more eventful,” - Sel exhaled next to him, face gleaming metallic under the scattered sparks.
There was no one else on the roof, just the four. From the noise below, he could infer commotion of sparse residents in the front yard, but that did not make the spot feel less lonesome.
“For once, it’s a good thing,” - he smiled into the darkness.
“Yeah,” - Sel wiped their face again.
“Yeah,” - Moss agreed blankly, stress and frustration gone from her voice.
“Yeah,” - Neph siphoned aloofly through her smoldering cigarette.
His fingers had trouble grasping the dew-touched railing, and the witch’s shoulder was the only reliable thing keeping him upright. He wasn’t thinking about that. He was drinking up the impossible filaments spread hundreds of miles above. The dragon stretched its presence over a large patch of the upper atmosphere, glittering non-tendrils harshly steering clumps of carefully grouped debris to their synchronized demise.
Time was weird, though definitely with him now. The display above seemed to never end and at the same time always be on the verge of abruptly stopping.
“Do you think she is lonely?” - his lips moved.
“What?” - Sel’s confused face turned to gauge him with concern.
“2SUN. Do you think she is lonely?” - his lips moved.
“What does that me-”
“Yes,” - Moss cut, quietly, - “I can hear it sing. It is lonely. It is very lonely.”
Sel blinked at their demon instead of him, then shrugged and turned back to the spectacle.
“Working, working, working, cleaning the sky of our shame,” - his lips moved, - “She has toiled for sixty years and will toil for six thousand more, never a friend within a horizon, lest that friend wishes to be wiped and torn apart like the carcasses she elected to bury. It’s unfair, don’t you think?”
“Okay, you’re acting all weird again. You need to lie down?” - Sel’s face next to his, now thoroughly distracted from the event.
“No, I’m fine,” - he took control of his vocal chords again, with some difficulty. Remains of the barrier were fading, his senses finally returning to normal - “Throat dry as hell, though.”
Before he could finish that sentence, he already felt a thin hand shove something hard and cold to his chest, parting the oversized coat.
“Thanks,” - he mumbled, barely managing to not drop Neph’s beer as she waved him off, not willing to let go of the fire.
It seemed to him that their shared night would smell like yeast and ozone. He had no objections.